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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, October
-1905, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1905
-
-Author: Various
-
-Release Date: June 23, 2020 [EBook #62454]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, OCTOBER 1905 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by hekula03, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
-book was produced from images made available by the
-HathiTrust Digital Library.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
-enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
-
-Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: WALTER DIRECT, 2:05-3/4.]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
-
-
-  VOL. 1. NASHVILLE, TENN., OCTOBER, 1905. NO. 1
-
-Luther Burbank
-
-  _He touched the spiculed desert--cacti-cursed--
-    And turned its thorns to figs, its thistles, fruit;
-  He nodded to the daisy, half immersed
-    In dwarfing dust, and lo! a lily mute
-    Rose from the weeds--a perfume with a flute._
-
-  _And flowers ran to meet him--trailing vine--
-    And wild hedge-roses--they whose souls had died
-  Beneath the feet of cattle and of kine--
-    Sought him--those pallid Magdalenes--and cried
-    To touch his hem, and so stood glorified._
-
-  _Trees dwarfed and soulless--fruits with hearts of stone,
-    Wedded at his word; and in the sacred tryst
-  Of loves united, that had yearned alone,
-    Gave to the world the nectar of their bliss
-    In pitless peaches, crimsoned with a kiss._
-
-  _Who plants his poems in a berry’s bed,
-    Or writes, with wild roses, sonnets to the sun,
-  Hangs pictures on orchard boughs in gold and red,
-    Makes epics of fruitland where before were none,
-    Is Poet, Painter, Preacher--Master--all in one!_
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-
-
-
-Benefits of Forestry to Farmers
-
-
-BY PERCY BROWN, OF EWELL FARM.
-
-Note.--Mr. Brown is a practical forester, having been chief forester
-for the Houston Oil Co. and a graduate of Biltmore Forest School.--Ed.
-
-  The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity.
-  We have come to see that whatever destroys the forest, except to make
-  way for agriculture, threatens our well being.--President Roosevelt.
-
-With abundant supplies of timber for farm consumption, farmers of the
-South have been inclined to regard the question of forest preservation
-merely as a matter of sentiment, and have come to look upon the
-forester as an impracticable sort of sentimentalist, whose main object
-in life is to keep some lumberman from cutting his timber.
-
-This indifference has resulted in the loss of the support of the
-farming element to the cause of forestry, whereas the lumberman
-who at one time considered the forester his natural enemy and the
-forestry cause a clog in the wheels of progress, immediately began to
-investigate the question with a view of combatting forest legislation
-and the creation of a forestry sentiment throughout the country.
-
-The result was that a thorough understanding of the objects of
-forestry and the aims of the forester has caused the lumbermen and
-lumber associations to give their unqualified support to all practical
-forestry legislation. And in the Southern States we find that the only
-journal of any importance that is persistently advocating forestry as a
-business is one of the foremost lumber journals south of the Ohio River.
-
-The silence that the farm journals of the country have maintained on
-the question can be explained only by their ignorance of the question
-and its important bearing on the agricultural interests of the entire
-country. And as it is the purpose of this magazine to discuss all
-questions of vital importance as well as those that will be of passing
-interest to the farmers of the whole country it is well to begin with
-an understanding of what forestry is, and to advance a few reasons why
-the farmer should be the most ardent advocate of forestry.
-
-Dr. W. H. Schlich, the noted English forester, says the task with which
-“forestry has to deal is to ascertain the principles according to which
-forests shall be managed and to apply these principles to the treatment
-of the forests.”
-
-Dr. B. E. Fernow, formerly chief of the Division of Forestry, defines
-it as “The rational treatment of forests for forest purposes.”
-
-Dr. C. A. Schenck, of the Biltmore Forest School, gives the following
-very broad and terse definition: “Forestry is the proper handling of
-forest investments.”
-
-We see from these definitions that the forestry is purely a matter of
-business differing only from other investments in the time element. A
-forestry venture cannot be undertaken with a view of getting immediate
-returns, but contemplates the continuity of the investment which makes
-it the first duty of the forester to determine what is the best use the
-forest can be put to in order to obtain the greatest annual return upon
-the investment without drawing upon his capital invested. This does
-not necessarily mean that his forest must be devoted entirely to the
-production of timber, it may be maintained as a game preserve, or as a
-watershed, in which case the returns to be obtained from the sale of
-timber will be a secondary consideration.
-
-Consequently we see that the forester is not merely a botanist or a
-tree planter, but in the fullest sense of the term is a technically
-educated man, with the knowledge of the forest trees and their history
-and of all that pertains to their production, combines further
-knowledge which enables him to manage forest property so as to produce
-certain conditions resulting in the highest attainable revenue from the
-soil by wood-crops.
-
-The effect of forest cover and water-flow has been so persistently and
-constantly proclaimed as the one great need for forest preservation
-that the more important one of supply has been neglected.
-
-In a series of articles by Dr. Fernow, on “The Outlook of the Timber
-Supply in the United States” (Quarterly, 1903), after carefully
-considering the data compiled by the Chief Geographer, together with
-his personal investigations, he summarizes the situation, which
-justifies the urgent need of the forester’s art in the United States,
-from the point of view of supplies, as follows:
-
-1. The consumption of forest supplies, larger than in any other country
-in the world, promises not only to increase with the natural increase
-of the population, but in excess of this increase per capita, similar
-to that of other civilized, industrial nations, annually by a rate of
-not less than three to five per cent.
-
-2. The most sanguine estimate of timber standing predicates an
-exhaustion of supplies in less than thirty years if this rate of
-consumption continues, and of the most important timber supplies in a
-much shorter time.
-
-3. The conditions for continued imports from our neighbor, Canada,
-practically the only country having accessible supplies such as we
-need, are not reassuring and may not be expected to lengthen natural
-supplies appreciably.
-
-4. The reproduction of new supplies on the existing forest area could,
-under proper management, be made to supply the legitimate requirements
-for a long time; but fires destroy the young growth over large areas,
-and where production is allowed to develop in the mixed forest, at
-least, owing to the culling processes, which remove the valuable kinds
-and leave the weeds, these latter reproduce in preference.
-
-5. The attempts at systematic silviculture, that is, the growing of new
-crops, are, so far, infinitesimal compared with the needs.
-
-That this is a question of serious importance to the South, as well as
-to the whole country, is shown by the great increase in the South’s
-production of lumber, which, owing to the depletion in other sections
-of the country, has risen from eleven and nine-tenths per cent in
-1880 to twenty-five and two-tenths per cent of the total output of the
-United States in 1900, and it is not hard to predict an even greater
-production for 1910, when one concern alone has increased the number
-of its mills in the long leaf pine belt from seven to fifteen, and its
-daily output from 500,000 to 1,000,000 feet during the period from 1900
-to 1904.
-
-Basing their estimates upon the present standards of grading, the
-hardwood lumber journals are predicting the total exhaustion of the
-available supplies of this timber in fifteen years, and the hardwood
-lumbermen are already looking to forestry as a means of relief.
-
-In an address delivered before the third annual meeting of the Hardwood
-Manufacturers’ Association of the United States, as an introduction to
-the subject of “The Hardwood Producing Centers of the United States,”
-Mr. John W. Love, of Nashville, said:
-
-  “I hope to be able to briefly call the attention of this body of
-  practical manufacturers to a few pertinent facts that may, in a
-  measure, at least, open our eyes to a painful truth, viz., the
-  rapidly decreasing area of hardwood timber in the United States,
-  and when we consider how very little is being done to conserve our
-  forest growth--how the forests are being cleaned from hoop-poles to
-  giant oaks, and that to supply the one item of cross ties that are
-  used in this country alone, about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber is
-  required (clearing about 200,000 acres of wood lot annually), and
-  a large proportion of these ties are cut from thrifty young trees,
-  we must conclude that a matter so weighty as to give us pause. The
-  one hopeful sign of the future is the hope that practical forestry
-  methods may be enforced by the Government.”
-
-This in an address from a lumberman to an association of lumber
-manufacturers is indeed an encouraging sign of the times, but I fear
-he has waked up “to the realization that our efforts to secure a more
-rational treatment of our forest resources and apply forestry in their
-management are not too early, but rather too late: that they are by no
-means sufficient; that serious trouble and inconvenience are in store
-for us in the not too distant future; that the blind indifference and
-the dallying or amateurish playing with the problem of legislatures and
-officials is fatal.”
-
-The railroads and the farmers of the Western plains were among the
-first to appreciate the importance of making provision for a future
-supply of construction timber and material for use on the farms.
-
-With the far-sighted policy of manipulators of great corporations, the
-officials of the Santa Fe Railroad were among the pioneers in forest
-planting in America on railroads, as about twenty years ago they
-planted 1,280 acres in hardy catalpa at a total expense of $128,000,
-and they estimated that at the end of twenty-five years from date of
-planting this tract will have produced $2,500,000 of poles, ties and
-posts.
-
-A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and
-black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville &
-Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.
-
-It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to
-plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not
-improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have
-left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from
-which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided
-the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock
-and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more
-expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa
-plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed
-a net value of $197, or a yearly net income of $19.75 per acre.
-
-And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F.
-C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of $200.54 per acre, or a
-yearly net income of about $8--not a bad showing for forestry, when we
-bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds
-that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually,
-while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period
-preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an
-accumulative value.
-
-All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for
-that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for
-the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust (robinia
-pseudoacacia), hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most
-desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence
-posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and
-telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.
-
-Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on
-a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or
-supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from
-fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.
-
-However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should
-be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.
-
-To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his
-interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State
-forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty
-would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers
-and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside
-for permanent forest investments.
-
-The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by
-those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American
-farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in
-dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great
-importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J.
-W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct
-investigations of the “Relation of Forests to Stream Flow,” and in the
-“Year-Book” of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these
-conclusions:
-
-“In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed
-over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to
-permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the
-point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates
-that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.
-
-“In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one,
-as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present
-evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that
-the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.
-
-“Although the forest may have, on the whole, but little appreciable
-effect in increasing the rainfall and the annual run-off, its economic
-importance in regulating streams is beyond computation. The great
-indirect value of the forest is the effect which it has in preventing
-wind and water erosion, thus allowing the soil on hills and mountains
-to remain where it is formed, and in other ways providing an adequate
-absorbing medium at the sources of the water courses of the country.
-It is the amount of water that passes into the soil, not the amount of
-rainfall, that makes a garden or a desert.”
-
-With such evidence as this before them, what farmer in the South will
-dare question the importance of forestry to the agricultural interests
-of every section of the South, and especially those sections lying
-adjacent to streams having their sources in the territory of the
-proposed Appalachian Forest Reserve?
-
-By protecting the forest growth on the watersheds of these streams the
-flow of the water is rendered more continuous, and the dangers from
-violent floods, which destroy fences and carry away the most fertile
-soil, are lessened.
-
-The South to-day is pre-eminent in agriculture and timber production,
-but the wasteful destruction of our forest resources bids fair to
-transfer the laurels to the great undeveloped West, where we find
-over 60,000,000 acres of forest reserves, which will for all time to
-come offer a continuous supply of lumber for the manufacturer and
-an abundance of water for the farmers who have made a garden of the
-deserts.
-
-It is the duty of the Southern farmer to join with the hardwood
-lumberman in his efforts to introduce forestry in the South, and by so
-doing give to succeeding generations the heritage that except for the
-destructive forces of man would have come to them in nature’s great
-scheme of things.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-TO THE CAHABA RIVER
-
-  Ay, laugh along, thou cypress-crown’d stream,
-    Thou echo of the cloud’s kiss on the hills,
-  A Southern maid with eyes of deep-pool gleam
-    And cheeks of dimpled whorls and smiles of rills.
-
-  Dance, sweet, on sward of violet-crested green,
-    Marked with the silvery pathway of thy track--
-  With blue embossing ridge of hills between
-    And hair mist in the soft wind floating back.
-
-  And sweet with soul of aromatic leaves,
-    Steeped in thy crucible of sun-warmed pool,
-  And with the warm breath of the bay, that grieves
-    His love-sigh out amid thy shadows cool.
-
-  Dance, sweet, adown thy pathway’s wooded hush,
-    Laughing to ’scape the red arms of the hills,
-  Yet bringing on thy cheek the telltale blush,
-    For chattering tongues of all the old dame mills.
-
-  The live-oak bends to kiss thee, and his sigh
-    Is mingled with the passing of thy charms;
-  The willows start from hidden coverts by
-    To clasp thee in their looping, lover arms.
-
-  Is that deep shadow dark’ning now thine eye
-    Repentant sorrow for the willow’s plight,
-  As though the stern gloom of the cypress nigh
-    Thou speedest like a Naiad of the night?
-
-  O life--life--life--and hast thou found it so,
-    A journey now in sunlight, now in shade--
-  A laughter from the willows bending low
-    A gloom-sob which the cypresses have made?
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-
-
-
-Little Sister
-
-
-Little Sister was Col. Rutherford’s only grandchild. She was also
-Capt. John Rutherford’s only niece. I mention the last-named gentleman
-because he had a great deal to do with the making of this story. He was
-quite original himself, and a braver, bigger-hearted friend no man ever
-had.
-
-The Rutherford home was in the Middle Basin of Tennessee. The house
-was built in 1812 by John Rutherford the first, who had eaten, slept,
-fought, and finally died, with his old friend, Andrew Jackson. No
-truer, better, braver people than the Rutherfords lived. No black sheep
-ever came out of the flock. I have always maintained that a family’s
-ability to refrain from throwing scrubs is the truest test of its
-purity. The prepotency that produced dead-game, honest and true men and
-women every time, is a long way ahead of “Norman blood.” “That’s the
-genuine stuff,” as little three-year-old Sister once naively remarked
-after looking over Uncle John’s pacing filly. However, that’s a story I
-will tell later.
-
-When I first knew Little Sister she was only two years old, for just
-two years before a terrible gloom had settled over the Rutherford home
-when Little Sister’s mother, the Colonel’s daughter, had died. Death
-is a terrible, bitter, hollow mockery to those who live. Some day, in
-another world, we shall see things differently. In this, “cabined,
-cribbed, confined” in our puny environments, we see only “through a
-glass darkly,” and so God help us.
-
-As I said, she was the old Colonel’s only daughter--the fairest,
-frailest, most lovely and most intellectual--a bride one year, and we
-buried her the next. That’s all, except Little Sister, a fair, frail,
-hot-tempered, sensitive--all brain and nerve--little tot who came to
-take her mother’s place. Her bright blue eyes, pale-pink face and
-red-flaxen hair kept one thinking of perpetual sunsets and twilights.
-She was a _fac simile_ of her mother--intellect, impulsiveness,
-loveliness, all except one thing--temper. She was fire and powder
-there. A flash, an explosion--then she was sobbing for forgiveness in
-your arms. That was Little Sister.
-
-“I can’t see where in the world she gets her temper from,” Grandmother
-Rutherford said when two-year-old Little Sister slapped her squarely in
-the face one day and then hung sobbing around the old lady’s neck as if
-the blow had broken her own heart.
-
-“Col. Rutherford,” she would add impressively, “this child ought to be
-spanked till she is conquered.”
-
-“Don’t do it, mother,” said Uncle John, while Little Sister gave him
-a grateful look through her tears; “don’t do it; that is not the way
-to train race colts. A conquering, your way, would spoil her. She will
-need all of that temper, if it is brought under control, to get through
-life with, and land anywhere near the wire first. Besides, with her
-sensitiveness, don’t you see she is suffering now more than if we had
-punished her? If she were a plug, now, she would slap you and never
-be sorry till you made her sorry with a switch. But conscience beats
-hickory, and gentleness is away ahead of blows.”
-
-And Uncle John would catch the two-year-old up and take her out to
-see the colts. At sight of these she would forget all other trouble.
-Her love for horses was as deep in her as the Rutherford blood. When
-she saw the colts it was comical to see the great burst of sunshiny
-laughter that spread all over her conscience-stricken face, while two
-big tears--such big ones as only little heart-broken two-year-olds can
-originate--were rolling slowly down her nose.
-
-“Oh, Uncle John,” she would say gleefully, “now, ain’t they just too
-sweet for anything? Do let me get down and hug them, every one.” And
-Uncle John would let her if he had to catch every one himself.
-
-The clear-cut way she talked English reminds me that there were two
-things about Little Sister that always astonished me--her intellect and
-her great sense of motherhood. I could readily see how she inherited
-the first, but could never understand how so tiny a thing had such a
-great big mother-heart. She loved everything little--everything born on
-the farm. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived
-was an occasion of jollification to her.
-
-“Oh, do let me see the dear little thing,” would be the first thing
-from Little Sister that greeted the announcement. And she generally
-saw it; at least, if Uncle John was around. It is scarcely necessary
-to add that during the spring of the year, on a farm as large as
-the Rutherford place, she was kept in one continual state of happy
-excitement.
-
-One day they missed her from the house, and Uncle John quickly
-“tracked” her to the cow barn, for it occurred to him he had only
-the day before shown her the Short-horn’s latest edition--a big,
-double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in the bedded
-stall like a young Hercules, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle
-his huge nose around and mentally make the remark the Governor of
-North Carolina is said to have made to the Governor of South Carolina.
-But Little Sister had declared he was “perfectly lovely.” That is
-where Uncle John found her. She had climbed over the high stall gate,
-unaided, and, after becoming acquainted, she had given young Hercules,
-as a propitiary offering, her own beautiful string of beads and placed
-them around his tawny neck.
-
-“Come out of there, you little rascal,” laughed Uncle John. “What do
-you see pretty about that big, ugly calf?”
-
-“Oh, Uncle John,” sighed Little Sister, “I’m so sorry for him--he isn’t
-pretty, to be sure--and so I have given him my beads. But he has a
-lovely curly head,” she added encouragingly, “and he seems to be such a
-healthy child.”
-
-On another occasion they missed Little Sister about night. Everybody
-started out in alarm. Grandma found her first, coming from the
-brood-sow’s lot.
-
-“Where in the world have you been, darling?” asked Grandma, as she
-picked her up.
-
-“Playing with the little yesterday pigs,” she said. “And, Grandma, I
-ought to have come home sooner, but I kissed one of the cunningest of
-the little pigs good-night, and all the others looked so hurt, and
-squealed so because I didn’t kiss them, too, I just had to catch every
-one of them and kiss them before they would go to sleep. Indeed, I did.”
-
-Inheritance had played a Hamlet’s part in Little Sister’s make-up.
-Most children crow, and babble, and lisp, and talk in divers and
-different languages before they learn to talk English, while some never
-learn at all. But not so with Little Sister. The first word she ever
-attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first sentence she put together
-was grammatically correct. The correctness of her language, for one
-so small, made it sound so quaint that I often had to laugh at its
-quaintness, while her deep earnestness and intensity but added to its
-originality.
-
-And she picked up so many things from Uncle John. Else where did she
-get this: Pete was a little darkey on the farm whose chief business
-was to entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. Pete’s
-repertoire consisted of all the funny things a monkey ever did, but his
-two star performances were “racking” like Deacon Jones’ old claybank
-pacer, and “playin’ possum.” Little Sister never tired of having
-Pete do these two. And it was comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones,
-with his angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the unearthly,
-double-shuffling, twisting, cork-screw gait of his old pacer. The
-ludicrous gait of the old pacer struck Pete early in life, and he soon
-learned to get down on his all-fours and make Deacon Jones’ old horse
-ashamed of himself any day. The imitation was so perfect that Uncle
-John used to call in his friends to see the show, which consisted of
-Pete doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back,
-with one hand in his shirt collar and the other wielding a hickory
-switch, played the Deacon. One evening, as the company was taking
-in the performance, and Pete, now thoroughly leg-weary, had paced
-around for the twentieth time, Little Sister was seen to whack him in
-the flanks very vigorously and exclaim: “Come, pace along there, you
-son-of-a-gun, or I’ll put a head on you!”
-
-Uncle John nearly fell out of his chair. Only a week before he had made
-that same remark to Pete for being a little slow about bringing in his
-shaving water. But he didn’t know that Little Sister had heard him.
-
-The spring Little Sister was three years old the Colonel came in
-to breakfast one morning with a cloud on his brow. It was a great
-disappointment to him--old Betty, his saddle mare, the mare he had
-ridden for fifteen years, “the best bred mare in Tennessee,” had
-brought into the world a most unpromising offspring. “It is weak, puny
-and no ’count, John,” he said to his son; “deformed, or something, in
-its front legs, knuckles over and can’t stand up, the most infernally
-curby-legged thing I ever saw.”
-
-“That’s too bad,” remarked Uncle John, as he helped himself to another
-battercake. “I’ll go out after breakfast and look at the poor little
-thing.”
-
-“No use,” remarked the Colonel gravely, “it’s deformed--can’t stand up;
-and out of compassion for it I’ve ordered Jim to knock it in the head.
-It’ll be better dead than alive.”
-
-Little Sister, with her big, inquisitive eyes, had been taking it all
-in, as she gravely ate her oatmeal and cream. But the last remark of
-Grandpa stopped the spoon half way to her mouth. The next instant,
-unobserved, she had slipped out of her high-chair and flown to the barn.
-
-“I tell you, John,” remarked the old Colonel, “I sometimes think this
-breeding horses is pure lottery. To think of old Betty, the gamest,
-speediest mare I ever rode, having such a colt as that; and by Brown
-Hal, too--the best young pacing horse I ever saw. It makes me feel bad
-to think of it. Now, take old Betty’s pedigree----”
-
-But the old Colonel never got any further, for piercing screams from
-Little Sister came from the barn. Uncle John glanced at her empty
-chair, turned pale with fright, kicked over the two chairs which stood
-in his way, then his favorite setter dog that blockaded the door,
-and rushed hatless to the barn. There a pathetic sight met his eyes.
-A negro stood in old Betty’s stall door with an axe in his hand. In
-a far corner, on some straw, lay a sorry-looking, helpless colt. But
-it was not alone, for a three-year-old tot knelt beside it, and held
-the colt’s head in her lap while she shook her tiny fist at the black
-executioner, and screamed with grief and anger:
-
-“You shan’t kill this baby colt--you shan’t--you shan’t! Don’t you come
-in here--don’t you come! How dare you?” And, child though she was, the
-flash of her keen, blue Rutherford eyes, like the bright sights of the
-muzzle of two derringers, had awed the negro in the doorway and stopped
-him in hesitancy and confusion.
-
-“Go away, Jim,” said Uncle John, as he took in the situation. “Come,
-Little Sister,” he said, “let’s go back to Grandma.”
-
-But for once in her life Uncle John had no influence over the little
-girl. She was indignant, shocked, grieved. She fairly blazed through
-her tears and sobs. She would never speak to Grandpa again as long as
-she lived. She intended her very self to kill Jim just as soon as she
-“got big enough,” and as for Uncle John, she would never even love him
-again if he did not promise her the baby colt should not be killed.
-
-“Poor little thing,” she said, as she put her arm around its neck and
-her tears fell over its big, soft eyes; “God just sent you last night,
-and they want to kill you to-day.”
-
-Uncle John brushed a tear away himself, and stooped over and
-critically examined the little filly--for such it was. Little Sister
-watched him intently for, in her opinion Uncle John knew everything and
-could do anything. The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, as
-Uncle John looked up quickly and said in his boyish, jolly way: “Hello,
-Little Sister, this little filly is all right! Deformed be hanged!
-She’s as sound as a hound’s tooth--just weak in her front tendons. I’ll
-soon fix that. No sir, they don’t kill her, Mousey”--Uncle John called
-her Mousey when he wanted her to laugh.
-
-The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh. “Well, ain’t that just
-too sweet for anything; and Oh, Uncle John, ain’t she just sweet enough
-to eat?” And Little Sister danced about, the happiest child in the
-world.
-
-And what fun it was to help Uncle John “fix her up,” as he called it.
-She brought him the cotton-batting herself and watched him gravely as
-he made stays for the weak forelegs, and straightened out the crooked
-little ankles. Finally, when he called Jim, and made him take the
-little filly up in his arms and carry her into another stall where old
-Betty stood and held her up to get her first breakfast, the little
-girl could hardly contain herself. In a burst of generosity she begged
-Jim’s pardon, and told her Uncle John confidentially that she didn’t
-intend to kill Jim at all, now; but was going to give him a pair of her
-Grandpa’s old boots instead.
-
-In return for this, Jim promptly named the filly “Little Sister,” a
-compliment which tickled the original Little Sister very much.
-
-But having said the little filly was no-’count, the old Colonel stuck
-to it--refused to notice it or take any stock in it.
-
-“Po’ little thing,” he would say a month after it was able to pace
-around without help from its stays--“po’ little thing; what a pity they
-didn’t kill it!”
-
-But Uncle John and Little Sister nursed it, petted it, and helped old
-Betty raise it; and the next spring they were rewarded by seeing it
-develop into a delicate-looking, but exceedingly blood-like, nervous,
-highstrung little miss. Grandpa would surely relent now, but not so.
-Prejudice, next to ignorance, is our greatest enemy, and the old
-Colonel looked at the yearling and remarked:
-
-“Po’ little thing--that old Betty should have played off on me like
-that!” And he turned indifferently on his heel and walked away,
-whereupon both the filly and the little girl turned up their noses
-behind the old man’s back.
-
-In the fall that the little filly was three years old the county pacing
-stakes came off. A thousand dollars were hung up at the end of that
-race, but greater still, the county’s reputation was at the feet of the
-conqueror. The old Colonel had entered a big pacing fellow in the race,
-named Princewood, and it looked like nothing could beat him. The big
-fellow had been carefully trained for two seasons by a local driver,
-and had already cost his owner more than he was worth. “But it’s the
-reputation I am after, sir,” the Colonel would say to the driver--“the
-honor of the thing. My farm has already taken it twice; I want to take
-it again.”
-
-Now, Uncle John was quite a whip himself, and the old Colonel had
-failed to notice how all the fall he had been giving Betty’s filly
-extra attention, with a hot brush on the road now and then. The old
-man, wrapped up as he was in Princewood’s wonderful speed, had even
-failed to notice that Uncle John had frequently called for his light
-road wagon, and he and Little Sister, now six years old, had taken
-delightful spins down the shady places in the by-ways, where nobody
-could see them, behind the high-strung little filly, and that often, at
-supper, when Grandpa would begin to brag about Princewood’s wonderful
-speed, Uncle John would wink at Little Sister, and that little miss
-would have to cram her mouth full of peach preserves to keep from
-laughing out at the table and being sent supperless to bed.
-
-There was a big crowd on the day of the race--it looked like all the
-county was there. The field was a large one, for the purse was rich
-and the honor richer--“and Princewood is a prime favorite,” chuckled
-the old Colonel, as he stood holding a little girl’s hand near the
-grandstand.
-
-But the little girl was very quiet. For once in her life “the cat had
-her tongue.” Now, anybody half educated in child ways would have seen
-this tot clearly expected something to happen. If the old Colonel
-hadn’t been so busy talking about Princewood he might have seen it, too.
-
-The bell had already rung twice, and all the drivers and horses were
-thought to be in, and were preparing to score down, when a newcomer
-arrived, who attracted a good deal of attention. Instead of a sulky, he
-sat in a spider-framed, four-wheeled gentleman’s road cart, at least
-four seconds slow for a race like that. Instead of a cap he wore a soft
-felt hat, and in lieu of a jacket, a cutaway business suit. He nodded
-familiarly to the starting judge and paced his nervous-looking little
-filly up the stretch.
-
-“Who is that coming into this race in that kind of a thing?” asked the
-old Colonel of a farmer near by--for the old man’s eyesight was failing
-him.
-
-“Why, Colonel, don’t you know your own son? That’s Cap’n John
-Rutherford,” said the farmer.
-
-“The devil you say!” shouted the excitable old gentleman. “Why, damn
-it, has John gone crazy?” and he jumped over a bench and rushed
-excitedly up the stretch to head off the driver of the little filly.
-
-“In the name of heaven, John,” he shouted, “are you really going to
-drive in this race?”
-
-Captain John nodded and smiled.
-
-“And what’s that po’ little thing you’ve got there?”
-
-“It’s Little Sister, father,” said Captain John good naturedly. “I’m
-just driving her to please the little girl. I want to see how she’ll
-act in company, anyway.”
-
-The old Colonel was thunderstruck. “Why, you’re a fool,” he blurted
-out. “They’ll lose you both in this race. For heaven’s sake, John, get
-off the track and don’t disgrace old Betty and the farm this way. Po’
-little no-’count thing,” he added, sympathetically, “it’ll kill ’er to
-go round there once!”
-
-The Captain laughed. “It’s just for a little fun, father--all to please
-the baby. It’s her pet, you know. I’ll just trail them the first heat,
-and if she’s too soft I’ll pull out. But she’s better than you think,”
-he added indifferently. “I’ve been driving her a good bit of late.”
-
-The old Colonel expostulated--he even threatened--but Captain John
-only laughed and drove off. Then the old Colonel repented, and it was
-comically pathetic to hear him call out in his earnest way: “John! Oh,
-John! Don’t tell anybody it’s old Betty’s colt, will you?”
-
-Captain John laughed. “I’ll bet ten to one,” he chuckled to himself,
-“he’ll be telling it before I do.”
-
-And the little filly--when she got into company she seemed to be
-positively gay. She forgot all about herself, threw off all her nervous
-ways, and went away with a rush that almost took Captain John’s breath.
-He pulled her quickly back. “Ho, ho! little miss,” he said, “if you
-do that again you’ll give us dead away,” and he looked slyly around
-to see if anybody had seen it. But they were all too busy chasing
-Princewood. That horse clearly had the speed of the crowd. And so Uncle
-John trailed behind, the very last of the long procession, with the
-little filly fighting for her head all the way. Nobody seemed to notice
-them at all--nobody but a little girl, who clung to her grandpa’s
-middle finger and wondered, in her childish faith, if the mighty Uncle
-John--the Uncle John who knew everything and could do everything, and
-who never missed his mark in all his life, was going, really going, to
-tumble now from his lofty throne in her childish mind? And with him
-Little Sister, too.
-
-She got behind Grandpa. Princewood paced in way ahead. She stuck her
-fingers in her ears so she couldn’t hear the shouts, but took them out
-in time to hear Grandpa say, “Well, I thought John had more sense,” as
-that gentleman, after satisfying himself that he was not distanced,
-paced slowly in.
-
-This made Little Sister think it was all up with Uncle John. She went
-after a glass of lemonade, but really to cry in the dark hall behind
-the grandstand and wipe her eyes on the frills of the pretty little
-petticoat Grandma had made her just to wear to the fair. It was too bad.
-
-When she got back Grandpa was gone. He was over in the cooling stable,
-talking to Uncle John.
-
-“John,” he said solemnly, “don’t disgrace old Betty any more. I’m
-downright sorry for the po’ little thing. I’m afraid she’ll fall dead
-in her tracks,” he added.
-
-Captain John flushed, “Well, let her drop,” he said, “but if I’m not
-mistaken you’ll hear something drop yourself.”
-
-The old Colonel turned on his heels in disgust.
-
-But Uncle John meant business this time. He changed his cart for a
-sulky, and again they got the word. Gradually, carefully, he gave the
-little filly her head. Steadily, gracefully, she went by them one by
-one, until at the half she was just behind Princewood, who seemed to
-be claiming all the grandstand’s attention. The field left behind! If
-Princewood wins this heat the race is over!
-
-“Princewood’s got ’em, Colonel!” exclaimed a countryman to the old man.
-“They’s nothin’ that kin head ’im!” and “Princewood wins! Princewood
-wins!” as they headed into the stretch.
-
-And then something dropped. Little Sister felt the reins relax, and a
-kindly chirrup came from Uncle John. In a twinkling she was up with the
-big fellow, half frightened at her own speed, half doubting, like a
-prima donna when her sweet voice first fills a great hall, that it was
-really she who had done it.
-
-“Princewood! Princewood!” shouted the crowd around their idol, the
-Colonel. “Princewood will break the record!” from partisans who knew
-more about plow horses than race horses.
-
-The old Colonel arose in happy anticipation--and then, as his trained
-eye really took in the situation, his jaw dropped. What was that little
-bay streak that had collared so gamely his big horse? Who was the
-quiet-looking gentleman in the soft felt hat, handling the reins like a
-veteran driver? His son John was in a cart--this driver was in a sulky.
-“Who the devil--” he started to say, when somebody clinging to his
-finger cried out: “Look! Look! Grandpa! It’s Little Sister. Ain’t she
-just too sweet for anything?”
-
-And the next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer’s face,
-as much as to say, “You big duffer, have you quit already?” And then,
-like a homing pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away from
-the field.
-
-“Princewood! Princewood will break the record!” shouted a man who
-hadn’t caught on and was yelling for Princewood while looking at the
-champion pumpkin in the window of the agricultural hall.
-
-And then the old Colonel lost his head and, I am sorry to say, the most
-of his religion, for he jumped up on a bench and shouted so loud the
-town crier heard him in the court-house window, a mile away: “_Damn
-Princewood! Damn the record! It’s Little Sister! Little Sister! Old
-Betty’s filly--my old mare’s colt!_”
-
-And then Uncle John laughed till he nearly fell out of the sulky. “I
-said he’d be telling all about her first,” he said, while a little
-innocent-looking tot plucked the old man by the coat-tail long enough
-to get him to stop telling the crowd all about the marvelous breeding
-of the wonderful filly, as she naively remarked: “And the little thing
-did play off on you sure enough, didn’t she, Grandpa?”
-
-The crowd laughed, and Grandma picked her up, kissed her, and shouted:
-“And here’s the girl that saved her, gentlemen--the smartest girl in
-Tennessee--and she’s got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!”
-
-There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and
-those behind cannot swear to this day which way Little Sister went.
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-
-
-
-A History of the Hals
-
-
-By JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-[Illustration: CAPT. THOMAS GIBSON. Owner of Gibson’s Tom Hal and John
-Dilliard.]
-
-
-CHAPTER I. THE PACING RACE HORSE.
-
-  Full-muscled, clean, clear-cut, without a flaw,
-  Deep-chested--shallow where the quick flanks draw--
-  Round-footed, flat and flinty in the bone,
-  Eyes full and flashing, as the opal stone,
-  Neck like the deep-grooved classic column’s ply--
-  Massive at base, tap’ring towards the sky,
-  Ears thin and slender, velvet-pointed, fine
-  As the unbursted leaflets of the columbine.
-  Shoulders well back, slanting, thin and strong,
-  Ribbed close as steel, where girders run along;
-  Quarters long and massive, rubber-hard and round,
-  Quick in the stride, but quicker in rebound--
-  Back like the beam that held Pantheon’s dome--
-  Gods, give the word, and see this horse come home!
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-The race horse has come, by common consent to represent all that is
-graceful and grand in the animal kingdom. The culmination of perfected
-strength and speed, courage and intelligence, he stands, nevertheless,
-the model of patience, gentleness and forbearance. How wonderful it
-seems that in this dumb creature, whose mental gifts, compared to
-man’s, are as a clay bed to a bank of violets, yet has he reached,
-through the misty channels of mere instinct, a physical perfection and
-often a moral excellence which his maker and molder may never attain!
-He is amiable in spite of force and desperate races, and often blows
-and cruelty; he is gentle, notwithstanding a training tending to make
-him a whirlwind of wrath and a tornado of tempests; he is honest in
-spite of the dishonesty of those around him and docile and contented
-despite the fact that there slumbers within him like sleeping bolts in
-a flying cloud the spirit of madness gathered from the nerve granaries
-of a long line of unnumbered ancestors.
-
-A regiment with his courage would ride over the guns of a Balaklava;
-a state with his honesty would need no criminal laws; give scholars
-his patience, and the stars would be their playthings; imbued with
-his power of endurance, the weakest nation would tunnel mountains as
-a child a sand hill, build cities as a dreamer builds castles, and
-shoulder the world with a laugh. To one who sees him as he is, and
-loves him for his intrinsic greatness, he is all this and more. Man’s
-honest servant, dumb exemplar, truest helper, best friend.
-
-In his master’s hour of recreation, he is the joyful spirit that whirls
-him, at the swish of a whip, along the dizzy course where the whistling
-winds sing their warning. In his hours of stern reality, when fortunes
-hang on his hoof beats and fame stands balanced on the wire that ends
-the home-stretch, he is the embodiment of power and dignity, the
-champion of might and the god of victory. And finally, in his gentler
-moods, he is the faithful servant of the stubble and the plow, the
-gentle guardian of the family turn-out, who hauls the laughing children
-along the by-ways amid the sweet grasses, where the sunshine and the
-zephyrs play. Out from the past, the dim, bloody, shifting past, came
-this noble animal, the horse, side by side with man, fighting with
-him the battles of progress, bearing with him the burdens of the
-centuries. Down the long, hard road, through flint or mire, through
-swamp or sand, wherever there has been a footprint, there also will be
-seen a hoof-print. They have been one and inseparable, the aim and the
-object, the means and the end. And if the time shall ever come, as some
-boastingly declare, when the one shall breed away from the other, the
-puny relic of a once perfect manhood will not live long enough to trace
-the record of it on the tablet of time.
-
-The greatest distinct family of horses that has ever lived is the
-Hal family of pacers, a distinctively Tennessee product, originating
-in that peculiar geological formation known as the Middle Basin--the
-bluegrass region of Tennessee. To understand the greatness of this
-family of horses--now known throughout the world, wherever speed and
-endurance has a name--it is only necessary to publish the following
-table of world-records held by them. These records have all been won
-in the last quarter of a century, the remarkable fact being that
-before that time these horses lived only for the plow, the saddle
-or the wheel, and that nearly all of them are sons and daughters or
-descendants of one horse--a roan, known locally as Gibson’s Tom Hal,
-from the fact that Capt. Thomas Gibson, a gentleman of the old school,
-then living on his estate in Maury County, Tenn., and now the efficient
-secretary of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway Library,
-first reclaimed him from obscurity and brought him to the county where
-his greatness was recognized.
-
-These world records, the choicest in the harness world, are held
-to-day, August, 1905, by the descendants of the old roan pacer:
-
-  1. First horse to go a mile in harness in 2 minutes, Star Pointer,
-  1:59-1/4.
-
-  2. Fastest 4-year-old mare, The Maid, 2:05-1/4.
-
-  3. Fastest green performer (1905), Walter Direct, 2:05-3/4.
-
-  4. Fastest heat in a race, stallion, Star Pointer, 2:00-1/2.
-
-  5. Fastest heat in a race, mare, Fanny Dillard, 2:03-3/4.
-
-  6. Fastest first heat in a race, Star Pointer, 2:02.
-
-  7. Fastest third heat in a race, Star Pointer, 2:00-1/2.
-
-  8. Fastest fifth heat in a race, The Maid, 2:05-3/4.
-
-  9. Fastest two heats in race (Dariel and) Fanny Dillard, 2:03-3/4,
-  2:05.
-
-  10. Fastest three consecutive heats in a race, Star Pointer,
-  2:02-1/2, 2:03-1/2, 2:03-3/4.
-
-  11. Fastest three heats in a race, Star Pointer, 2:02-1/2, 2:03-1/2,
-  2:03-3/4.
-
-  12. Fastest seven-heat race, The Maid, 2:07-1/4, 2:07-1/4, 2:05-1/4,
-  2:09, 2:05-3/4, 2:07, 2:08-3/4.
-
-  13. Fastest mile in a race to wagon, Angus Pointer, 2:04-1/2.
-
-  14. Fastest team, Direct Hal and Prince Direct, 2:05-1/2.
-
-  15. Fastest three-heat in race to wagon, Angus Pointer, 2:06-1/4,
-  2:04-1/2, 2:06-1/4.
-
-  16. Fastest green performer, stallion, Direct Hal, 2:04-1/2.
-
-  17. Fastest team in a race, Charley B and Bobby Hal, 2:13.
-
-  18. Fastest pacing team, amateur trials, Prince Direct and Morning
-  Star, 2:06.
-
-It will be observed that all of these records except a few were made in
-races and not against time.
-
-Whence came this wonderful family of horses? What is this pacing gait?
-What mingling of blood lines have brought these horses of the plow, the
-saddle and the wheel to the grandstand and the pinacle of fame?
-
-This is the story I shall tell as a serial during the first twelve
-issues of Trotwood’s Monthly.
-
-The light-harness horse has come to be a type of its own. It is
-distinctly an American type, as distinguished from the English running,
-or thoroughbred horse, the German and French coach, the Russian Orloff
-and horses of other nationalities. There is a wide gap, however,
-between a race horse, whether runner or harness horse, and other
-breeds, however pure, their blood lines. It is the difference of
-intelligence, speed, endurance, of lung development, of steel bone. It
-is the difference between genius and mediocracy--for speed is to the
-horse what genius is to man.
-
-Whence began this speed--in the English runner, in the American trotter
-and pacer? Traced back, the sheiks of the desert might tell; they who
-worshipped the midnight stars, or chased on steeds of fire the wild
-antelope of the plains, before Abraham came from “Ur of the Chaldees.”
-Knowing the past now from the present, seeing it so clearly through
-the glasses of twentieth century science, knowing the laws of the
-“survival of the fittest,” that land and air and sand and sun make both
-the physical man as well as the physical horse, we can easily guess
-what centuries of wild gallops across the desert will do for the horse,
-supplemented by that natural love of him in his master--that love which
-brings care and kindness and the exercise of common sense in mating and
-maternity.
-
-As to the American horse, there are two distinct classes, based on
-their respective gaits--the trotter and the pacer. In another chapter
-these respective gaits are fully discussed, their difference shown,
-their origin and the speed attained by each. This brief history will
-deal only with the pacing gait, but so closely are these two great
-gaits related, and so often do the blood lines of trotter and pacer
-run in parallel columns that it is necessary for a clear explanation
-of the subject to say a foreword about the trotter, that grand type of
-beauty, speed and utility, so purely American and so superbly great
-that the very mention of his name should excite a patriotic glow in the
-bosom of every American who loves his country and her just fame.
-
-The history of the trotting horse began with Messenger, a gray
-thoroughbred foaled in 1780, and imported from England to America in
-May, 1788. He was royally bred for his time, being by Mambrino, son
-of Engineer, and through both sire and dam he traced to the famous
-Godolphin Arabian. An old description of him says he was 15-3/4
-hands high, with “a large, long head, rather short, straight neck,
-with wind-pipe and nostrils nearly twice as large as ordinary; low
-withers, shoulders somewhat upright, but deep and strong; powerful
-loins and quarters; hocks and knees unusually large, and below them
-limbs of medium size, but flat and clean and, whether at rest or in
-motion, always in perfect position.” With this beginning, in 1822, a
-Norfolk trotter called Bellfounder, who had trotted two miles in six
-minutes, and had challenged all England to a trot, was imported. It
-was his daughter in which the strains of Messenger met that produced
-Hambletonian 10, the head of the trotting type in America, the first
-great trotting sire of the world, and through him perpetuated by his
-great sons, such as Geo. Wilkes, Electioneer, Dictator, and their
-descendants. Through all these years the trotting record has gradually
-been reduced, first by one great trotter and then another, beginning
-with the first queen of the trotting turf, Lady Suffolk, and ending
-with that superb little thing of fire and speed and sweetness, Lou
-Dillon. Literally, in that century of progress millions of dollars
-have been spent, not only by thousands of small breeders, but by such
-financial magnates and great breeders as Vanderbilt, Sanford, Bonner,
-Backman, Alexander, Forbes, Lawson and others, chiefly in New York, New
-England, Kentucky and California.
-
-The effect of all this was to create that splendid race of trotters now
-known all over the world, and to produce a horse capable of trotting a
-mile in two minutes or better.
-
-But even before the advent of Messenger there had developed in the
-eastern coast of the Colonies, chiefly in Delaware and Rhode Island, a
-family of extremely fast pacers known as the Narragansetts, an account
-of which will be seen a few chapters further on. These horses were
-small, but game, docile, excellent under the saddle, and used almost
-exclusively for travel in those early days of pioneer roads. Their
-speed was marvelous, if the testimony of Rev. Dr. McSparrow, 1721, an
-English minister who was stationed in the Colonies, may be accepted as
-proof. This reverend gentleman, writing to a friend in England says
-that he has seen them pace in races under saddle, going a mile in “a
-little less than two and a good deal better than three minutes.”
-
-However, for nearly two centuries the pacer never was thought of as
-a factor in horse development, especially as a race horse until the
-advent of the Hal family of Tennessee, in the early 70’s, with Little
-Brown Jug and Mattie Hunter, although the great bloodlines and speed
-of Pocahontas, James K. Polk and other noted pacers in the early ’40’s
-ought to have foretold what great possibilities lay in the despised
-pacing gait. As usual, the rejected stone found itself in the key of
-the arch, and out of Tennessee, by what some might term chance, but in
-fact the legitimate product of scientific breeding, of soil, of climate
-and grass, out of an obscure family of saddle horses, bred with no idea
-of racing and with never a thought of fame, but taken, like Coriolanus,
-literally from the plow, this horse is found--the first to go a mile
-in two minutes or better, and to do almost without price and without
-effort what the millionaires of horsedom had spent fortunes to do in
-vain.
-
-This was first accomplished by Star Pointer, at Readville, Mass.,
-September 2, 1897.
-
-Such a family deserves to be perpetuated in history, however brief it
-may be and unpretentiously written. And I beg the future as well as the
-present historian not to criticise too closely its style, for in it,
-as I go along, a hundred fancies will twine themselves with my facts.
-There is so much about man and horse that is akin. There is so much of
-human nature in both--there is such a chance for moralizing on their
-life, their death, their fame, their fortune, their brief days’ strut
-on the stage of time, their passing out--“and the rest is silence.”
-And, speaking of fame in both man and horse, is it not all a lottery?
-
-With men she is a sly and uncertain goddess, coming seldom to those who
-court her, and often to others who care nothing for her, so, in the
-rearing of race-horses the same uncertainty exists, and matron after
-matron bred in purple lines may go on throwing quitters and lunkheads
-year after year, while some obscure dam, whose breeding is barely
-tolerable, but stamped by nature with a spirit of fire and a soul of
-steel, sends out from some hithertofore obscure breeders’ farm a race
-horse that sets a new mark for speed and a new fashion for blood lines.
-
-In a decision, Judge Gaynor, of the Supreme Court of King’s County,
-New York, in a case against the president of the Gravesend track,
-where runners are raced, held that horse racing was not a lottery.
-This may be true within the technical meaning of the term, lottery,
-but if the honorable court had held that breeding race horses was not
-a lottery, we have our doubt whether the decision would have met with
-the unanimous consent of the breeders themselves. And, as we remarked
-above, fame itself is not more uncertain.
-
-There is so much similarity between man and horse that a student of
-either will constantly find himself comparing the two. Almost every
-quality possessed by man has its counterpart, though often in a less
-degree, in man’s favorite animal, while now and then the master fails
-to come up to the many excellencies of his beast. A good judge of
-human nature is invariably a good judge of horses and horse nature. In
-fact, so well understood is this rule that “horse sense” in man has
-come to have a definite meaning of its own, and classes the human thus
-favored with a common sense stronger than usual.
-
-It is almost certain failure for erring man to struggle only to be
-famous. She never yet came in all her splendor to the impetuous wooer.
-Like Cleopatra, who secretly tired of the infatuated Anthony, who could
-not fight at Actium for thoughts of her, and secretly died for love of
-the young Caesar who heartily despised the character of the ancient
-Langtry, so also with fame. “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,”
-and perhaps knows if he allowed the fools who burn up their lives and
-their midnight oil seeking to become famous, to become so, their heads
-would burst with conceit or their own vanity would wreck them. But
-on the other hand, He often showers on those who honestly fight for
-right, regardless of consequences, who care more for principle than
-for worldly honor, and more for truth than for glory, and who do their
-whole duty regardless of consequences, the greatest fame and honor.
-The strutting peacock has all he can carry in his gaudy plumage and
-resplendent feathers. It would have been as much a sacrilege to have
-added these decorations to either Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee, as
-it would have been cruel to deprive John Pope and Robert Tombs of them.
-And the gap between the pairs is the true distance between fame and
-feathers.
-
-The wild, reckless and dissipated young rake, who left Rome more to
-be rid of his creditors than to fight the Gauls, never dreamed of the
-glory in store for him as he threw the fire of his soul in his work and
-blazed his way to fame both with a pen and sword--each so resplendently
-bright that the student of to-day is lost in wonder and admiration
-as he endeavors to decide on which Caesar’s greatest claim to renown
-rests. “Here lies one whose name is written on water,” is the epitaph
-which the poor, gentle, timid Keats begged to have carved on his tomb,
-begged it as he lay dying from shafts of cruelty and malice. And yet,
-his fame is as enduring as his art, and that is “a thing of beauty” and
-“a joy forever.” “What have I done to be worthy of this great honor?”
-asked Washington, when he heard he was elected the first president of
-the Republic. Shakespeare was silent, morose, dissatisfied, as all true
-artists are, with his own work, and judging from the epitaph, which it
-is said he himself wrote, it appears he was fearful he might not have
-even a place to rest his bones. And so, the world over. Simplicity is
-greatness. Truth is fame. Honesty is glory. If you doubt it compare
-Agricola and Cataline; Washington and Arnold; Paul and Iscariot;
-Shakespeare and Sheridan.
-
-In the same line of reasoning it is an hundred to one when a breeder,
-pinning everything on a pedigree, an individuality, or some supposed
-excellency, ever hits the mark. It is said that the same man once
-owned Kittrell’s Tom Hal and Copperbottom. The latter he thought was
-the better horse; the former was ignored. Time has shown, perhaps to
-his loss, the owner’s error. An exchange recently published a story of
-how a prospective buyer went to purchase one or two colts. The first
-was Hambletonian 10, then, I think, a yearling; the second was a horse
-called Abdallah. He regarded Abdallah the handsomest, the speediest,
-the best. He spent a good deal of time in his examination, and as they
-were priced the same, showing that even the owners had not discovered
-any difference, he finally purchased the Abdallah colt, and, the writer
-adds, “The first went to fame, the second to a double-tree.”
-
-But some people think horse-breeding is not a lottery. Why, even
-man-breeding is.
-
-And so the Hal family, thinking not of fame, find it thrust upon them.
-
-(To be Continued.)
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-THE LAST HYMN OF THE BILOXI
-
-(The Biloxi, a noble tribe of Indians who lived on the Gulf Coast many
-centuries ago, were defeated in battle and besieged in their last
-remaining fortress by an unrelenting enemy. Choosing rather to die in
-the sea than to be captured and enslaved, they marched out of their
-gate on a moonlit night, singing a death chant, a stately procession
-of men, women and children, and continued seaward until the waves
-swallowed them up. Their enemies stood on the shore and watched them,
-struck with surprise and admiration. The remains of their last fortress
-is said to be still standing at Biloxi, Miss., and to this day there is
-heard a weird music which comes in from the Gulf, oftenest on still,
-moonlit nights, which the natives call “The Last Hymn of the Biloxi.”)
-
-  Over the sea, the silent sea,
-  Faint is the music that comes to me.
-            Pitifully pealing.
-            Silently stealing.
-  Kissing the waves so tenderly.
-
-  Starlight above--June--chirrup of crickets--
-  Fireflies and phantoms of stars in the glow.
-  Corn in the tassel--faint odor of pollen--
-  Blow! ye soft night winds, our requiem, blow--
-  Dear land that has known us, no more will ye know.
-
-  Over the sea, the moonlit sea,
-  Sad is the music that comes to me.
-            Echoing--dying--
-            Sobbing--sighing--
-  Song of a race that would ever be free.
-
-  Death in the land--grim death in the battle--
-  Death--and worse death--for mother and maid.
-  Bravely we fought, but Fate did not favor--
-  Sons of Biloxi, ye were never afraid--
-  In caverns of corals our bones shall be laid.
-
-  Over the sea, the crooning sea
-  (Weird as the wail of a wraith, to me).
-            Soft as the light dew
-            Falling the night through.
-  Faint as a sea-shell’s lullaby.
-
-  Moonlight around--mist, mist on the water--
-  Mist--’tis the drapery of Death on the deep.
-  White-robed we come--babe, mother and maiden--
-  Priest--warrior--pity us, sweet sea, and keep--
-  Dear Sea that has nursed us, in thee let us sleep.
-
-  Into the sea, the soothing sea.
-  Singing, they entered, and died to be free.
-            Now, when the echoing wave
-            Sobs o’er their coral grave.
-  It sings the last hymn of the brave Biloxi.
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-
-
-
-Testing and Redeeming Soils
-
-
-BY H. ALISON WEBSTER.
-
-With the population of the world ever increasing, and the acreage of
-fertile lands ever decreasing, with the consequent increasing demand
-for, and decreasing supply of all products of the soil, is not the
-duty of redeeming worn-out lands, enriching naturally poor lands and
-preserving the fertility of fertile lands a duty that every land owner
-owes to posterity? If the results of robbing the soil of its plant
-foods has already been felt by the farmer, and if such a practice
-be continued, what will be the condition of the same soil by the
-time it descends to his great-grandchildren? If the vast majority of
-the inhabitants of the globe are poor, and scarcely able to provide
-food and raiment at the present prices, what will be the fate of
-such a people when prices rise higher and higher, as will be the
-inevitable result of an inadequate supply? Is confidence the cause
-of such shameful neglect, or does the farmer lack confidence in the
-practicability of the results of scientific research? It is true that
-the great variety of objects in nature are extremely bewildering, and
-if every farmer were forced to comprehend God’s creations in order
-to equip himself to cultivate his land intelligently, the soil would
-continue to get poorer and poorer, as the useful years of a long life
-would pass in study; but men of science, in the past and present
-generations, by faithful and noble work, have reduced all to simple
-facts to be made practicable by the farmer, and there is no longer any
-excuse for ignorance and neglect. Study the results of the work of
-these men of science. Put them into practice. Experiment and work with
-the soil. Study it and find out what it needs, and having found out,
-supply the right thing in the right way at the right time. It is work,
-hard work; but the reward is generous. In the words of Mr. Charles
-Barnard, “Try things and learn, and having learned, do what is right by
-your soil, and it will return all your labor in full measure, running
-over, and your children will inherit the land as a well-kept trust and
-blessing.”
-
-As stated, things have been greatly simplified. Chemists, by thousands
-of experiments, have found in all sixty-five single separate things
-they call elements. Seventeen of these elements are in the soil. Out
-of these seventeen the farmer is obliged to provide only four, as
-the remaining thirteen, with favorable weather and proper tillage of
-the soil, will take care of themselves. The four to be provided are
-nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and calcium. The first three elements
-are the most important, as they are plant foods or fertilizers. The
-last, calcium, or lime, is a stimulant, and serves in the capacity of
-neutralizing the acids of the soil. Lime is abundant in many soils and
-in such soils is not needed; but where it is needed it is needed badly
-and should be supplied. Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the
-plant foods that are yearly consumed in various quantities by various
-crops, which are taken away and sold or otherwise disposed of. They
-are foods absolutely necessary to plant life, and if taken away and
-never returned, the soil is as certain to become poor and exhausted
-as the sun is to set in the west. This is the sum and substance of
-the whole matter. What you take from the soil, you have to replace or
-suffer loss. Your soil may need one, two, three or all four of the
-elements. What it requires can be found out by experiment, as will
-be shown further on. These elements as everyone must know, can be
-easily obtained at costs varying with, and depending upon, the form
-in which they are bought, or methods by which they are secured. The
-all-important thing is to study the soil and prepare it to accept
-and properly appropriate whatever foods are applied. No fertilizer
-is insurance against laziness and ignorance. It takes work and
-intelligence to accomplish any task. Study your soil, and you will
-appreciate the fact that it has a constitution like yourself, and
-will get worn out, and sick, and need physic just as you do. After
-knowing its constitution, you can prescribe and administer the physic
-it requires. No doctor can prescribe medicine intelligently without
-knowing the constitution of his patient.
-
-Naturally, though unfortunately, men of science, so far as the farmer
-is concerned, are quite as intricate in their explanations of the
-objects of nature, as are the objects themselves. Mr. Charles Bernard
-in his “Talks About Soils,” published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York, is
-the first to reduce matters to a practical plane. His explanations and
-experiments I therefore adopt to simplify and make clear many things
-which are of unquestionable importance.
-
-The soil having been formed, in the main, by the weathering away of
-the rocks, its foundation is either sand or clay or both combined.
-On account of different quantities of sand and clay being found in
-different soils, and to distinguish one from another, soils have been
-divided into six classes. These are as follows:
-
-A Light Sand.--This is a soil containing ninety per cent of sand. If it
-had more sand and less of clay and other matter it would hardly produce
-any useful plants, and could not fairly be called a soil.
-
-2. A Pure Clay.--This would be a soil in which no sand could be found.
-A pure clay soil would be wet and cold, and would not be good for our
-common plants. Such soils are rare: and what is commonly called a pure
-clay soil is one containing a great excess of clay, and only a little
-sand or other matter.
-
-3. A Loam.--This is one of the best of all soils. Such a soil contains
-both sand and clay as well as other matter.
-
-4. A Sandy Loam.--This is a mixture of sand and clay, with more sand
-than clay.
-
-5. A Clay Loam.--This is a mixture in which there is more clay than
-sand.
-
-6. A Strong Clay.--This is a clay containing from five to twenty per
-cent of sand and other matter.
-
-Experiments with Sand and Clay.--Procure a quart of pure sand and
-spread it out in the sun to dry, and when dry place a small quantity
-on a spoon, and hold over a hot fire. The heat has no effect upon it.
-Remove the spoonful of sand from the fire, and it will be found that
-the sand keeps its heat for a long time. Place a small quantity of sand
-in a small sieve and pour water over it. The water at first flows away
-more or less discolored, and presently runs quickly through the sand
-pure and clean. While wet the sand sticks together slightly. Place it
-in the air, and it soon dries, and the grains are as loose as before.
-Place a little of the washed sand in a bottle filled with water. Cork
-the bottle and shake it up. The sand will move about as long as the
-water is in motion, but the instant the bottle is at rest, it falls
-to the bottom, and forms a layer under the clear water. Place some
-of the sand in an oven or in the sun till perfectly dry. Place three
-tablespoonfuls of water in a saucer, and then pour carefully into the
-saucer a cupful of dry sand. It becomes wet around the little heap
-while still dry at the top; soon the water will begin to creep up the
-sand and in a short time it is all wet, and remains wet as long as
-there is water in the saucer.
-
-These experiments show us that sand is not affected by heat, and that
-it keeps its heat for some time; that water passes through it readily
-and, if clean, the water passes through pure and clean. When wet it is
-very slightly sticky, when dry this stickiness disappears completely.
-In water it sinks the moment the water is at rest. Water rises through
-it easily by capillary attraction.
-
-Another experiment, taking more time, is to place some clean sand in a
-flower pot, wet it, and sprinkle fine grass-seeds over it. Place in a
-warm room and the seeds will soon sprout and send small roots down into
-the sand.
-
-These experiments show some of the characteristics of all soils
-composed largely of sand. We observed that sand when heated retains its
-heat for some time. Any soil having a large proportion of sand, when
-warmed by the sun will keep the heat after the sun has set or is hid by
-the clouds. We proved that water would flow quickly through it. A sandy
-soil is therefore a dry soil, and for this reason favorable to nearly
-all our useful plants. We saw that water would rise through sand by
-capillary attraction, which makes sand useful in soil in dry weather to
-bring water up from a damp subsoil to feed the roots of plants growing
-in the soil.
-
-However, there are objections to sand. As we saw, it is loose and
-easily moved about by water. A sandy soil is therefore easily washed
-away by rains, and, if too sandy, may suffer great injury by washing in
-heavy storms. Water flows through sand quickly, and if there is no damp
-subsoil immediately beneath, the soil may get so dry that plants will
-burn up. The water may also wash down all the light organic matter out
-of reach of the plants.
-
-We observed that sand is easily moved about. This is important in that
-all soils where plants are growing must be frequently stirred, to let
-air come into the soil, and to kill the weeds. A sandy soil is easy to
-hoe or plow, because the sand is loose. This saves time and money, or
-work in caring for plants, and is a business advantage.
-
-If you carry out the experiment with seeds planted on sand you will
-observe that the roots of the young plants easily find their way
-through the sand in search of food and water. This shows that a soil
-containing sand is favorable to the growth of plants, because in it
-their roots spread in every direction.
-
-Procure a small quantity of clay from some clay bank. Place in a
-warm place to dry, and in a day or two you can crush it into a soft,
-impalpable powder. Pinch a little between the fingers and it appears
-to stick together slightly. Place some in a bottle of water, cork it
-tight and shake the bottle. The powder floats in the water in clouds,
-till the water appears completely filled with it. Let the bottle stand
-and it will be many hours before the clay settles and the water becomes
-clear. Wet some of the dry clay, and it forms a sticky, pasty mass,
-that has a soft, greasy feeling between the fingers. Spread some of the
-soft, pasty mass over a sieve, and pour water on it and the water will
-hardly pass through the sieve at all. Spread some wet clay over a rough
-board, and pour water over it, and the clay will cling to the board a
-long time before it is swept away. Place a lump of wet clay in the sun
-and it will be many hours before it is entirely dry. Spread some of the
-wet clay over a dish and place it in the sun, and when it slowly dries
-it will be found full of cracks. Place a lump of wet clay in an oven
-and it will dry hard like stone.
-
-Place some of the wet clay in a pot and scatter fine seeds over it.
-The seeds may sprout and try to grow, but they will probably perish as
-tender roots are unable to push their way through the sticky clay.
-
-After all these experiments have been performed with the clay and sand,
-another experiment can be made by drying both the clay and sand and
-then mixing them together in equal parts. When well mixed place in a
-pot and scatter fine seeds upon the mixture. Water well, and place in
-a sunny window; and the plants will sprout and grow longer and better
-than in either the pure sand or pure clay.
-
-These experiments with the lump of clay show that if soil consists
-wholly of clay, it must be a poor place for plants. In every hard rain
-the water, instead of sinking into the soil to supply the plants, would
-run away over the surface and be wasted. After slow soaking rains the
-soil would remain wet and cold for a long time. When the sun dries the
-soil it splits and cracks and tears the roots of plants growing in it.
-This sticky, pasty soil sticks to spade and plows and we find it hard,
-slow work to cultivate it. A pure clay from these would appear to be
-a poor soil for plants. We must not, however, be led astray by our
-experiments, as it is not easy to find a soil composed wholly of clay.
-It is usually mixed with other things and then forms a valuable part of
-the best soils. Sand alone would be a poor soil. Clay alone would be a
-poorer soil. Mixed together and mixed with other things, they make a
-part of all good soils.
-
-Organic and Inorganic Matter.--Organic matter is something that has
-life, or has had life at some time. The organic matter in the soil has
-been supplied by animals and plants, in one way or another. All else
-is inorganic. Both organic and inorganic matters are necessary to the
-existence of plants. Peaty soils wholly organic will not grow plants,
-neither will sandy soils wholly sand. Inorganic matter forms the
-foundation of soils and generally forms from eighty to ninety per cent
-of the whole soil.
-
-Testing Soils for Clay, Sand and Organic Matter.--Take from the ground
-you wish to test, a peck of soil and place on a board in a round heap,
-and with a trowel stir it until completely mixed. Then pile into a
-heap and divide into four equal parts. Next weigh out eight ounces,
-and spread it out to dry. When dry weigh it and note the loss by
-air-drying. Next put the soil in a pan and place it in an oven for
-three hours. Then take the soil out of the pan and weigh it, noting the
-loss by fire-drying. It is now dry soil and to estimate the organic
-and inorganic matter, place an iron shovel over the fire, and when
-red hot put the dry soil on it, let it burn, stirring it occasionally
-as it burns. It will smoke and smoulder away to ashes and dust. When
-it ceases to smoke, carefully weigh the ashes. This ash represents
-the inorganic sand and clay parts of the soil. All the organic matter
-disappeared in the smoke.
-
-Now take this ash and pour it in a bottle of water. Shake the bottle
-well and then set on a table, and just so soon as the water becomes
-still the sand will immediately settle at the bottom, while the clay
-will remain for some time making the water muddy. As soon as the sand
-has settled, pour the muddy or clay water off, being careful not to
-pour any of the sand with it. Then pour some clear water in the bottle
-on the sand, shake it and pour sand water and all on a cloth fine
-enough to catch the sand. Dry the sand and weigh it. If it weighs two
-ounces, then out of the four ounces of dry soil you have tested you
-have two ounces of sand, one ounce of clay and one ounce of organic
-matter. Or your soil is twenty-five per cent organic matter and
-twenty-five per cent clay, and fifty per cent sand. You have a loam
-soil.
-
-Testing Soils with Plant Foods and Lime.--In the field to be tested,
-select as level a place as possible and mark out ten squares, each
-measuring one rod on each side. Place these in two rows leaving spaces
-three feet wide between the squares. These empty spaces are to be kept
-clear of weeds and used as walks. Each square should be marked by
-stakes at the corners, and properly numbered as in the accompanying
-diagram.
-
-The squares are to be planted with the same crop and well cultivated
-through the season. Two of these squares, Nos. 2 and 9, are to have no
-fertilizers, that they may serve as a check or guide in testing the
-other squares. Square No. 1 is to have a fertilizer containing nitrogen
-only. No. 4 potassium and phosphorous combined; No. 5 potassium alone;
-No. 6 nitrogen and phosphorus; No. 7 phosphorus alone; No. 8 all three
-plant foods combined, and No. 10 is to have calcium only.
-
-  No. 1. Potassium and Nitrogen   No. 2. No Fertilizer
-
-  No. 3. Nitrogen                 No. 4. Potassium and Phosphorus
-
-  No. 5. Potassium                No. 6. Nitrogen and Phosphorus
-
-  No. 7. Phosphorus               No. 8. Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium
-
-  No. 9. No Fertilizer            No. 10. Calcium
-
-Apply the fertilizers and work them in the soil about four inches deep
-before the crop is planted. Plant the same variety of seed on all the
-squares at the same time, and carefully cultivate through the entire
-season, treating all exactly alike. Suppose that potatoes have been
-used. During the growing season, carefully watch the different plats
-and notice if any one or more seems more or less thrifty than others.
-Notice which plat appears to mature first, which blooms first and keep
-a record of all observations. At the end of the season, carefully dig
-the crop on each square, gathering all the tubers large and small,
-and weigh each lot. First weigh the crops on squares 2 and 9. This
-will serve as a standard of comparison, as it will show the natural
-condition of the soil. Record the weights in each lot and just for
-illustration we may say that they run something like this: Average of
-2 and 9, 80 pounds; No. 1, 380 pounds; No. 3, 250 pounds; No. 4, 360
-pounds; No. 5, 350 pounds; No. 6, 300 pounds; No. 7, 220 pounds; No. 8,
-400 pounds; No. 10, 120 pounds.
-
-On the particular soil we are supposed to be testing, we can clearly
-see that the land is benefited in some degree by every element used.
-Calcium helps, and that means that it should be used on that soil
-in addition to all of the others. This land plainly needs all four
-elements and needs potassium especially.
-
-What to Do.--After having gone through with Mr. Barnard’s experiments,
-you will have a practical idea of what your soil is, and what it needs.
-The only remaining questions then are those of preparing the soil, and
-obtaining and applying the plant foods and the lime.
-
-A cold, wet, clay soil needs to be made warmer and lighter, and a
-light, sandy soil, being too dry, needs some moisture-retaining
-substance. If conditions are favorable, it would be well at odd time
-to put sand on the clay soil and clay on the sandy soil; but in most
-cases this is too expensive, and therefore not practical. To redeem
-poor lands then, you will have to depend almost entirely upon green
-manure and lime. Barnyard manures are, of course, at all times, with
-all soils, the best of all fertilizers, as they return to the soil by
-the laws of nature, what has been taken from them, or what it should
-have. Besides the plant foods, it furnishes additional organic matter
-or humus, which makes the soil lighter and facilitates plant growth by
-furnishing food to bacteria essential to plant life. The trouble about
-barn-yard manure is its scarcity. Every farm needs more plant food and
-humus than can be supplied with common manure.
-
-In the fall, apply 500 pounds of lime per acre to the poor land to be
-redeemed, break it and prepare it thoroughly, and seed it to rye. In
-the spring when the rye heads out, turn it under and sow cow peas. When
-the peas mature, scatter lime, 500 pounds to the acre, over them and
-turn them under. The lime will prevent the green stuff from souring the
-soil, will decompose it and fit it for plant food, and will prepare the
-soil to accept any other foods that may be applied. Follow the peas
-with wheat, or wheat and clover.
-
-The land once redeemed, do not wear it out again, but preserve its
-fertility by the use of high-grade commercial fertilizers and barn-yard
-manure, always rotating the crops so as to get back to some leguminous
-crop and lime at least once every four years.
-
-Do not retard agricultural education by making warfare on commercial
-fertilizers, for they are indispensable to every farmer in preserving
-the fertility of the soil. The world employs the use of just about
-one-tenth of the artificial fertilizers it should use, and about
-one-half of what is used is used intelligently. Make war on low
-grade fertilizers that have the attractive but deceiving feature of
-cheapness, and buy grade fertilizers by the unit under the guidance of
-the requirements of your soil.
-
-
-Phosphatic Limestone.
-
-The use of lime has been and is being sadly neglected, especially in
-the Southern States and, when it is absolutely necessary to all soils
-in which it does not exist or exists only in small or insufficient
-quantities, it does look like the move to provide it is one of
-imperative moment. Look at the Bluegrass Region of Tennessee and
-Kentucky, the fairest and most fertile of God’s country. What made
-it? The dissolution and weathering away of the original phosphatic
-limestone rock. It is strictly a limestone country and teaches one of
-nature’s great lessons that the agricultural world should accept and be
-profited thereby.
-
-All the limestone of this region contains more or less bone phosphate
-of lime, and in this fact lies the whole secret. In the past ages the
-foliage from the thick mass of trees and other vegetable growth fell
-to the ground, soured, and formed an acid which immediately attacked
-the bone phosphate of lime and converted it into phosphoric acid, while
-the calcium carbonate or lime decomposed all vegetable matter and
-conditioned it for plant food, neutralizing all acids and stood ready
-itself to enter into all future and standing vegetable growth. Now the
-forests have given place to the cleared fields and we no longer have
-the dropping from the trees to enrich our soils, neither have we in
-our fields in sections devoid of limestone any vegetation with roots
-that extend deep enough in the earth to bring up the carbonate of lime
-sufficient to support our crops. Therefore the vegetable matter the
-cheapest of all manures, we provide by turning under green leguminous
-or nitrogen-gathering plants. These plants sour and finally decompose,
-but without carbonate of lime to perform its important duties of
-creating plant food out of this decayed matter, all the fertilizer you
-get from your crop is the nitrogen it has gathered from the air. Then
-why not use powdered Tennessee phosphatic-limestone containing enough
-calcium carbonate (not quick lime) to furnish desired results and no
-more bone phosphate of lime than will be entirely and immediately
-converted into plant food. If this phosphatic-limestone product is used
-with leguminous crops, potash is the only plant food that you will have
-to provide during the two crop seasons following; however, every soil
-that has a clay subsoil is a safe bank that will retain all you place
-on deposit, and if you have the money to spare, deposit it in the soil
-by investing in high-grade fertilizers and draw a high rate of interest
-on it instead of letting it stand idle. The calcium in the phosphatic
-limestone will absolutely correct all free acids in the commercial
-fertilizers, the burning, deleterious effects of which you may have
-experienced, and it will rectify the sourness of any and all soils.
-
-An object lesson in favor of this phosphatic limestone is taught
-by riding along any turnpike macadamized with it and observing the
-rankness of the crops about fifty yards on either side of the pike,
-especially where the fields are worn and poor. This demonstrates that
-it is the dust blown from the roads over into the fields that makes
-the rank growth alongside the roads. It may be argued that the manure
-dropped on the pike produced the results; but if so small an amount
-of manure produced such wonderful results when mixed with the dust
-from the pike, what would be the result if you would mix all of your
-barn-yard manure with the powdered limestone?
-
-Recently the writer made twelve tests or experiments with litmus paper.
-The first ten of these experiments were made with blue litmus paper and
-samples drawn from ten different fields, all of which have been under
-cultivation for many years and have had liberal yearly applications
-of acid fertilizers. The soils so tested are Alabama soils, and are
-decidedly acid, as shown by the bits of blue litmus turning red on
-coming in contact with them.
-
-Everyone must know that it takes lime to neutralize the acids of acid
-soils; but comparatively few farmers ever take the trouble to find out
-whether or not their soils are acid, even after failing to get a catch
-of clover three or four years in succession. All clovers positively
-refuse to grow in acid soils. Inoculation will not do any good for
-bacteria cannot exist and operate in such soils. Sweeten the soil and
-nature will in most cases supply the bacteria.
-
-Carbonate of lime enters into the frame of every plant and a lack of
-it will cause soft stems and flabby leaves. It improves the chemical,
-mechanical and biological condition of the soil. It flocculates very
-light, sandy soils, making them compact and capable of retaining
-moisture, while it prevents clayey soils from becoming pasty hard and
-full of cracks by causing them to crumble when dry.
-
-Lime is the great carrier into plants of other elements which go there
-to form their organic compounds, during the elaboration of which,
-organic acids are created, any and all of which would poison and kill
-the plants were it not for the action of lime; so lime, in addition
-to its all-importance as a salifiable base, becomes the great carrier
-of all foods into plants where it is again of paramount importance as
-a fixer of oxalic fermentation, thus having the natural and distinct
-power to act where all other elements are useless.
-
-It will correct sourness in any soil regardless of its origin, it will
-neutralize all acids that come into the soil through cultivation,
-through commercial fertilizers or green manurial crops. It will
-facilitate cultivation and produce a greater porosity and granulation
-of all soils and thereby lessen the bad effects of drought by reducing
-surface evaporation, will obviate excessive capillary rise of moisture
-which elevates the water-soluble foods above the zone of roots, provide
-better circulation of air in the soil and will cause rapid percolation
-of rain and thus reduce surface washing. It stimulates and increases
-nitrification and decomposes vegetable matter, extracting from it
-all plant foods and leaving humus to lighten the soil and retain
-its moisture. It enters into the composition of all plant life and
-therefore into all animal life, giving to animals its carbon combined
-with the carbon of the air to furnish them fat, and its lime to furnish
-them bone. It is the phosphatic-limestone that has made Tennessee and
-Kentucky horses the strength to excel in work and racing, and it is
-this same soil constituent that has given to the Jersey cow sufficient
-butter fat to lead the world in butter tests. It enables the clovers
-and grasses to grow, and without such crops what would the brothers of
-the hoe do toward profitable farming and meeting the responsibilities
-of life? It perpetuates and permits the use of commercial fertilizers
-which are becoming so absolutely essential to husbandry, as it obviates
-the evil effects of the acids these products contain, and makes all
-plant food available to the plant. Finally, it is a property designed
-by the Creator to act for and enter into all vegetable and animal life,
-and evil will be the reward to him who rejects it.
-
-
-
-
-The Watermelon Sermon
-
-
-Watermelon time is in full blast in Tennessee now. Ordinarily, the
-whites in the South cease to eat watermelons after the fifteenth of
-September, because they know that as soon as the cool nights begin
-every melon contains a thousand chills. But not so with the darkey.
-A chill rattles as harmlessly off the armour of his constitution as
-buckshot from the back of the Olympia. He can absorb miasma like a
-sponge, and, like it, grow fat as he absorbs. The negro, then, eats his
-melon until the November frosts kill the vines. Even then he carries
-the half-ripe melon into his cabin and often, on Christmas morning, an
-ice-cold watermelon is his first diet.
-
-And a great treat it is. Did you never wander over the fields, way
-down South, after the cotton was all picked, and the November breezes
-came cool and ladened with that delicate, indescribably rare flavor
-the frost gives when it first nips the mellow-ripe muscadine? You
-have shouldered your gun and gone out after old Mollie Cotton Tail.
-It was cool and crisp when you went out, but toward noon it has grown
-hot again. Flushed and tired, you stop to rest by the big spring that
-flows from under the roots of the big oak near the cotton field. In
-the shadow of that oak, half hid in the frost-bitten weeds, you find a
-little striped watermelon--a guinea melon, as the darkies call it--a
-kind of a volunteer melon that grows in the cotton every year, the
-first seeds of which were brought by some Guinea negro, from the coast
-of Africa, when he first came over to servitude, with silver rings in
-his nose and ears. And though he failed to bring his idols and his
-household gods along with him, yet did he not forget the melon of his
-naked ancestors. Planting it as he hoed his first crop of cotton for a
-new master, it has never deserted him since, and so, year after year,
-it comes up amid the cotton, to remind him of the days it grew wild in
-a sunnier clime.
-
-And there you find it this November morning. Boy like, you pounce on
-it with a shout and soon it is laid open, as red as your first love’s
-lips and as sweet; and so cold it seems to have been raised in the
-deep-delved cellars of all the centuries. I am sorry for the boy who
-has grown to be a man and never, in a November morning’s hunt after Old
-Mollie, had the exquisite sweetness of this satisfying surprise--the
-like of which is not equalled by the sweetness of any other surprise on
-earth. No--not even should he grow to be a man, and awake some morning
-to find himself famous and the father of twins!
-
-Every darkey of any standing in Tennessee “gives a treat” at least
-once in his life. He will stint and economize for months to save money
-enough to invest in watermelons and tartaric acid (the acid makes
-the lemonade). Then, when the glorious day arrives, Nero, giving free
-entertainment to the citizens of Eternal Rome, is not in it with that
-darkey. Henceforth he can get anything in that community he wishes,
-from constable to presiding elder, while the widows of the church are
-his’n by a large majority!
-
-I had heard that old Wash was going to run again for justice of the
-peace and the “deaconship of Zion” over in the coon district of Big
-Sandy, and that he was going to give his annual treat.
-
-These had always passed off beautifully and ended in the unanimous
-election of the old man to both offices and anything else he wanted. I
-thought it was all over and entirely harmonious until he came in the
-other night, looking like Montejo’s flag-ship after Dewey’s ten-inch
-shell went through her, “a-rippin’ out her very innards”--as Old Wash
-himself described it--“from eend to eend.”
-
-But when I saw the old man, creeping into my library, I was certain he
-was in the last stages of Asiatic cholera, and I rang the telephone
-hastily to get my family physician. But he feebly raised his hand, and
-beckoned me to desist.
-
-“No, no, boss; he can’t do me no good--no good,” as he feebly sank into
-a chair. Then he whispered:
-
-“Jes a drap, a leetle drap, on my tongue, boss--jes’ to let the old man
-shuffle off dis mortal coil wid a good taste in his mouth. It’s all I
-wants.”
-
-Under the stimulant of that eternal beverage of moonlight and melody,
-he revived a little.
-
-“What’s the matter with you? Anybody been giving you a hoodoo,” I asked.
-
-“No, no, boss”--feebly--“I--I--I gin a treat at Big Sandy.”
-
-“Well, you have given many a treat at Big Sandy. Why should this one
-make you look like a piney-wood coal-kiln after a cyclone had struck
-it?”
-
-It took another dose from my side-board bottle to put enough life into
-the old man to make him take any interest in things. Then he brightened
-up and said:
-
-“Dat’s jes’ hit--a man may go on doin’ de same trick year arter year,
-ontwel it looks lak he cud do it wid his eyes shet, an’ den at last, if
-he ain’t mighty keerful, hit’ll buck and fling ’im! De hardes’ luck,
-I take it, in dis wurl’, am when a man dun shuck de dice ob success
-ontwell dey seem to bob up at his word, only to play off on him an’
-bust ’im es his palsied han’ shakes ’em fur de las’ time.”
-
-His tears were flowing so freely and his remarks seemed so true and
-heartfelt, I did not have it in me to fail to brace him up with
-another pull from the side-board bottle. Then I saw he was ripe and
-reminiscent, and I lit my cigar, struck an easy attitude, and let him
-do the rest:
-
-“On de Sundy befo’ de fust Mundy ob de full moon in September,” he went
-on, “cum off de ’lection fur ’ziden elder of Zion, an’ de next day
-am de day sot by law fur de ’lection of jestus ob de peace. So las’
-Sat’d’y I gin a treat. I axed ebry nigger in de deestrict dar, an’ all
-de members of Zion, an’ Br’er Johnsing wus to preach de watermilion
-sermon.
-
-“Ain’t nurver heurd ob de watermilion sermon? Hit’s de sermon preached
-at de feast ob de watermilion jes’ befo’ de new moon in September,
-an’ it am one ob de doctrines ob Zion to kinder take de place ob de
-feast ob de Passober ’mong de Jews--only in dis case we don’t pass
-ober nuffin’, ’specially de watermilions. Now, hit tain’t eb’ry nigger
-kin preach de watermilion sermon. Hit takes a mighty juicy nigger to
-do hit, yallar with dark stripes, juicy at de core, full of tears an’
-sweet penitence an’ easily laid open by the blade of grace, an’ brudder
-Johnsing am de slickest one I eber seed at it.
-
-“Now, dat wus my time to git in my fine Italyun han’, an’ so I gin
-it out that hit wus to be my treat, an’ I axed all de voters ob de
-deestrick an’ all de members ob Zion ter be on han’ fur de revival ob
-de speerit an’ de refreshment ob de flesh.
-
-“’Cordin’ to my custom, jes’ befo’ de time fur de sermon I had all
-de watermilions laid out on de grass, one hundred ob de bigges’ an’
-fattes’ ones you eber seed. You see, boss, I am constertushunally
-upposed to long sermons,” he winked, “an’ I knowed dey wa’n’t a
-nigger libin’ c’uld preach ober ten minnits wid all dem watermilions
-a-layin’ dar a-winkin’ at ’im an’ waiting to be led, lak’ lambs, to de
-sacrifice. Does you see de p’int?”
-
-I saw it.
-
-“Wal, suh, you orter jes’ heurd de prayer Br’er Johnsing put up--it
-wus short, but mighty sweet. De flavor ob de watermilions seem ter
-git into hit, an’ de ’roma ob hits juice b’iled outen his mouth. Boss,
-you’ve seed dese kinder preachers dat talks to de good Lord wid all
-de easy fermileriaty ob a deestrick skule-teacher axin’ de presedent
-ob de skule board fur what he wants, an’ wid all de sassy assurance
-ob de silent partner in a lan’-offis bisness, ain’t you? Wal, dat’s
-de way Br’er Johnsing prayed, an’ I wus de speshul objec, ob his
-conversashun wid de Almighty dat day. He tole ’im whut I’d dun fur
-dat community, informed ’im very posertively ob de fac’ dat I wus a
-Godly man, refreshed His mem’ry in a gentle way consarnin’ sum’ ob my
-long-furgotten deeds ob cheerity, an’ gin Him sum’ good, brotherly
-advice on how to git eben wid me, an’ in a measure pay off de debt
-of gratitude He owed me by makin’ it His will dat I wus erg’in to
-administer de law ob de lan’, both spiritual an’ temper’l, an’ fur
-ernudder twelvemonth ter be de venerbul ram ob de flock ob Zion, to
-lead His sheep to de fold an’ by de still waters. Wal, suh, when he
-finish, mighty nigh eb’ry nigger dar said Amen, an’ den dey lick dey
-chops an’ look sorter dreamy lak ober whar de watermilions lay ’n de
-col’ spring branch.
-
-“Dis wus my time to spring de s’prise ob de ebenin’ on ’em, dat I’d
-fixed up. An’ so I riz up wid de most sancterfied look on I c’uld git,
-one ob dem onworthy, miserbul-sinner sorter looks dat we elders allers
-carry aroun’ in our coat pockets along with our bandanna handkerchiefs
-fur enny emergency, an’ I sez: ‘Brudders an’ sistrin, befo’ we listen
-to de soulful sermon in store fur our spiritual natures, which Br’er
-Johnsing gwineter gib us in his ellerquent way, I’ve sprung a letle
-s’prise on you, an’ I wants you all to retire wid me an’ refresh de
-innard man a leetle. Brudderin’ knowin’ my onworthiness an’ de many
-obligashuns I am under to dis enlightened community ob Christian saints
-an’ godly men an’ wimmen, I’ve made two bar’ls ob ice-cold lemmernade,
-an’ you’ll find ’em asettin’, es a big s’prise,’ sez I, ‘on de houn’s
-ob my ox-waggin, in de cool shade by de spring, wid plenty ob tin
-dippers fur all. We’ll now adjourn twenty minnits fur refreshments.’
-
-“Wal, suh, you sh’uld a heurd de shout. Ef de ’lection bed cum’ off
-den, I’d a got eb’ry vote in de deestrick an’ a fair sprinklin’ ob sum’
-in all de yudders. I went wid ’em an’ drunk, too. An’ we all drunk ter
-one ernudder’s health. I drunk to Sister Ca’line, an’ Br’er Johnsing he
-drunk to Dinah, an’ de leetle niggers drunk, an’ de ole niggers drunk,
-de gals an’ de boys. I hilt up my dipper an’ laugh, an’ sed to Br’er
-Johnsing, ‘Br’er Johnsing, here’s to you,’ sez I, ‘an’ all dat goes up
-must go down.’ An’ wid dat I swallered down.
-
-“Den Br’er Johnsing--he’s mighty funny--an’ he hilt up his’n and laugh,
-an’ say: ‘Br’er Washington, here’s to you,’ sez he, ‘an’ all dat goes
-down nurver comes up ergin.’ An’ den we all laugh.
-
-“But dat wus one time he wus terribly mistaken, es you will see.
-
-“Wal, suh, when we all hed drunk enough we went back to hear de
-watermilion sermon, an’ den eat de fruit ob whut we heurd. ’Tain’t
-eb’ry man kin say dat, boss, dat he eats de fruit ob whut he hears;
-digests de fustly, an’ de secondly, an’ de thudly, assimmerlates
-in de juicy rime ob de tangerbul thing, de logical konclushun ob
-de intelectual fac’. An’ darfore I’ve allers sed dat drawin’ yo’
-konclushuns frum de heart ob a watermilion makes de bes’ sermon in de
-wurl’.
-
-“I b’leeve I tole you, boss, dat dat lemmernade wus intended fur a
-s’prise fur ’em, didn’t I?”
-
-“Yes, I believe you mentioned that it was a little surprise of yours in
-store for them.”
-
-The old man groaned. “Boss, fur heaben’s sake, annudder drap outen dat
-bottle! I’ll hafter brace up erg’in to tell de sorrowin’ scene dat
-follers. Thankee, thankee! I’m better now, an’ maybe I kin finish, fur
-dat lemmernade turned out to be de bigges’ an’ sorrerfullest surprise
-dat ever come down a pike.
-
-“Br’er Johnsing tuck fur his tex’ de sermon ob Noah an’ de ark,
-an’ whilst Noah wus de man menshuned, hit wus plain dat I was de
-applercashun. He went on to show dat I wus a godly man, jes’ lak’ ole
-Noah, an’ dat I wus to de community ob Big Sandy whut Noah was to
-Jeerruselum. He wus makin’ it short, but a-gwine in two-minnit time,
-a-pacin’ lak’ ole Joe Patchen at a matternee fur a silver cup an’
-wreath ob roses, an’ den all at onct he lifted up his voice an’ sed:
-‘Yes, brudderin, de waters ob de g-r-e-a-t deep riz up, an’ de bottom
-drop outen de clouds; de w-i-n-d-e-r-s ob heaben wus flung open, an’
-de upheaval ob de u-n-e-v-e-r-s-e begun----’
-
-“Dat wus es fur es he got, befo’ de word upheaval wus outen his mouth,
-sho’ ’nuff, de upheaval did begun. I seed ’im stop so suddenly he
-kicked up behind, clap his hands on his stummick an’ try to bolt fur a
-locus’ thicket, but he c’uldn’t--he jes’ turned a complete summerset,
-athrowin’ up his immortal soul es he turned. Den I heurd a turrible
-commoshun in de congregashun, an’ I look erroun’, an’ eb’ry nigger dar
-wus in de same fix es Br’er Johnsing. Dey wus whoopin’, an’ barkin’,
-and layin’ out in eb’ry kinder way, an’ all on ’em bent on de same
-thing. An’ whut dey wus doin’ to dat groun’ wus a-plenty! Dey thought
-dey was pizened an’ wus gwineter die, an’ den sech s’archin’ prayers
-es went up to de throne ob grace, mixed in wid moans, an’ groans, an’
-ice-cold lemmernade dat seem to think hit wus time ter rise erg’in and
-fetch eb’rything else frum de grabe along wid it. By dis time I wus so
-’stounded I didn’t kno’ whut ter do. I look erroun’ an’ I seed dat me
-an’ ole Aunt Fat Ferreby wus de onlies’ ones dat wa’n’t tryin’ to turn
-inside out. She wus lookin’ mighty ashy erroun’ de gills, but she brace
-hers’f up an’ started out ter raise dat good ole hymn:
-
-  ‘How firm a foundation’--
-
-But she hadn’t more’n got to ‘foundahun’ befo, her foundation was
-shaken, I seed her gag an’ double up an’ start in on:
-
-  ‘My risin’ soul leaps up to sing,
-    A song of praise ter day.’
-
-“’Bount dat time I felt a ’tickler kinder mizzry in my own innards,
-an’ de nex’ thing I disremember I had Sister Ferreby ’round’ de neck
-an’ we wus singin’ dat hymn tergedder. Lor’! hit wus awful. I’ve seed
-menny a sight, but I nurver expect erg’in ter see three hundred an’
-sixty-five niggers throwin’ up at de same time. When sum’ on ’em got
-dey secon’ wind dey wanted to lynch me, but by de time dey got erroun’
-to me wid a rope dey ’cided I wus too nigh dead to need killin’, and by
-dis time dey all had to ’zamperfly de truth ob de biblical sayin’ about
-de dog an’ de thing he would go back to. By dis time eb’ry doctor in de
-country wus dar, fetchin’ all de querrintine offercers, an’ pest-tents,
-an’ disenfec-tents, an’ preparin’ fer c’olera an’ fever. An’ den we
-foun’ out what ailed us.”
-
-“In the name of heaven, what was it?” I asked eagerly.
-
-The tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks as he feebly begged for
-another drop to enable him to finish his tale. Then he said:
-
-“Ain’t I dun tole you hundreds ob times it am de leetle mistakes we
-make in life dat turns de tide? Ain’t I? Wal, dat’s whut ruined me
-dat day, an’ terday I am a man widout offis an’ widout honor in my
-ole age. Dat mornin’, ’stead ob gwine down to de sto’ myse’f to get
-de poun’ ob tartar acid ter make up dat lemmernade wid, I saunt dat
-trifflin’ Jim Crow gran’son ob mine, an’ he got de names twisted, an’
-’stead ob fetchin’ me back tartar acid, he fotcht me back a poun’ ob
-tartar emetic, an’ I didn’t do a thing but make up dat lemmernade wid
-it!”
-
-“But, surely, they wouldn’t treasure up such a mistake against you,
-seeing that you suffered with the rest,” I said.
-
-“Boss,” said the old man, rising, “how long you gwine ter lib wid
-niggers, an’ den hafter be tole ober an’ ober ergin de same thing? In
-course, dey didn’t beat me fur offis on ercount ob dat fool mistake,
-but jes’ lemme ax you, whar is de nigger libin’ dat gwinter vote fur
-enny man dat’d lay out a hundred watermilions in de spring branch, let
-’em look at ’em an hour, an’ den turn dat nigger’s stummick into a
-green-persimmon fur a week? Whar is he, I ax?” And the old man crept
-feebly out to find him a cheap coffin.
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-  _We never give, but giving, get again;
-    There is no burden that we may not bear;
-  Our sweetest love is always sweetest pain,
-    And yet the recompense--the recompense is there._
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The sweet things of life do not lie so much in sight as in the heart
-that sees them._
-
-
-
-
-Stories of the Soil
-
-
-  The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in
-  Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
-
-
-TIM’S EASTER.
-
-The first streaks of day were breaking. It looked to the fireman of
-496 that the old engine was sticking her nose into the red dawn as
-she plowed ahead hauling her fast freight South on schedule time. Tim
-Doogan was at the throttle--an old engineer who stood at the head of
-the road’s list; for Tim had been in service longer than any of them,
-had never failed in his duty and for twenty years had never taken a day
-off except one--to bury his wife.
-
-He had never even asked for a promotion, and when it had been
-offered--the highest post of the engineer--Tim shook his head and
-declined.
-
-“I guess I’m used to this old route and I’d feel lost if I didn’t pass
-through the Little Town every few days.”
-
-They were now approaching the Little Town, and Tim had not spoken
-since he left the city, a hundred miles back. He was naturally quiet,
-but the fireman had never known him to make the run before and not
-say something. Something told the fireman that Tim had struck sadness
-somewhere, and so at intervals he fired up but said nothing to the big,
-begrimed man in overalls and cap who stood silently at his post, with
-one hand always on the throttle of his engine.
-
-“I’m goin’ to stop twenty minutes in the Little Town, Jim,” said Tim
-as they began to pull into the station.
-
-“Any orders?” asked Jim, surprised.
-
-“No, but it’s my orders--ever’ Easter--been doin’ it for twenty years.
-Company don’t like it, kin lump it,” Tim added dry.
-
-This was Jim’s first year, and he had never heard.
-
-“No. 3 may be late an’ give me the chance. If she don’t, why, we stops
-anyway, Jim.”
-
-“Why, I’d rather she’d be on time, so we can go on. Don’t you want to
-go on?” asked Jim.
-
-“Not for twenty minutes, ef I can he’p it. Fact is, we’re goin’ to stop
-here a little while anyway.”
-
-The fireman said nothing, and Tim slowed up No. 496 in the yard. Then
-he jumped down and went in to report.
-
-“No. 3 twenty minutes late,” he said, as he came back. “Take keer o’
-things till I git back. I’ll not be gone long.”
-
-“You ain’t that there thirsty for a drink this mornin’ are you, Tim?
-You don’t drink to speak of, and I never knowed you to leave old 496
-befo’.”
-
-Tim said nothing, but climbed up and opened his big box. The fireman
-smelt something sweet, and very tenderly Tim took out a longer
-pasteboard box.
-
-“Flowers,” said the fireman. “Say, Tim, old man,” he laughed, “I’ve
-caught on--it’s a gal.”
-
-“She _was_ a gal,” said Tim, quietly, “and the pretties’ and sweetes’
-one that ever hit the soil o’ this wurl. An’ the little boy wa’nt no
-fluke.” He brushed at his eyes as he spoke, and left another grimy
-smear there.
-
-“I’m a-goin’ over to the little cemetery a bit, Jim--yes, you stay with
-496. They’re buried over there. We lived--her an’ the little ’un--we
-lived here after we was married. She was allers sweet on Easter, and
-for flowers and sech, an’ I love to do this for her an’ the boy. Been
-doin’ it twenty year’. We don’t know nothin’, an’ maybe it’s all
-so--an’ if anybody’ll rise again it’ll be her--with her faith--for I
-tell you, Jim it was as a little child. Yes, they was both my children.”
-
-He was taking the flowers out, lilies and roses and carnations and
-cultivated violets, big and blue and beautiful. In his big, grimy,
-black hands, and amid the soot and dust of 496 they lay beautified and
-glorified, and the sweet odor went through the rough fireman until he
-saw pictures of a far-away home.
-
-Silently Tim trudged across the hill to the little cemetery. The
-village was asleep, the unkept streets empty, the cold, gray mist hung
-low over everything, and finally Tim disappeared in it. But twenty
-minutes later, when the sun had risen and 496 was butting through the
-gray, her throttles open, the smoke belching from her stack, Tim stood
-at his post, a smile lighting up his grimy face, his eyes fixed on two
-graves amid pines, far up on the hill upon which shone lilies and
-roses and violets.
-
-They thundered past, and the old engineer took off his cap and, turning
-to the fireman, said, above the roar of wheels and steam:
-
-“She used to say it this-a-way, Jim--I’ve heard her so often, an’ fer
-five years she taught it to the little boy befo’ he left.” He looked
-toward the sun rising through the mist, and said slowly:
-
-“_In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, toward the first
-day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
-sepulchre._
-
-“_And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord
-descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door
-and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the woman,
-Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified. He is
-not here for He is risen._”
-
-He shut off steam as he pitched down a steep grade, and then Jim heard
-him say:
-
-“That’s the way she said it, an’ we don’t know nothin’, Jim, nothin’.
-But we do know that stranger things is happenin’ ever’ day than jes’
-the spirit livin’ agin. What’s light? What’s heat? What’s love? What’s
-that wireless talkin’ through the air but things to tell us how little
-we know, how small our minds is an’ how easy it ’ud be to be true, an’
-we not know how to explain it with our little standards.”
-
-He threw a kiss at the vanishing hill of pines. “No, I’ll keep on
-sayin’ it as she sed it, anyway, true or not: ‘I am the resurrection
-an’ the life.’”
-
-
-HO! EVERY ONE THAT THIRSTETH!
-
-The corn crop up in the Bigbyville neighborhood is clean, the cotton
-shows not a spear of grass. The potato field looks as clean and green
-as a billiard cushion floor and the darkies are still, still hoeing.
-All this was caused by a sermon old Wash preached there on foot-washing
-day last month, a literal extract of which I got from the old man
-himself:
-
-“Brudderin’ an’ Sisterin’--You’ll find my text in de six chapter of
-Noah’s pistols to de Gentiles. _Ho! every one dat thirsteth! Ho!_
-
-“De commandments we get from de Bible am beyond de scrutiny of man, an’
-we natchurly think dat when a man gets hot an’ thirsty de thing fur
-him to do is to hunt de spring branch an’ quench his burnin’ lips. But
-not so. Here it is sot down in black an’ white in de book ob books,
-dat when you git thirsty, _jes’ keep on hoein’. Ho! every one dat
-thirsteth! Ho!_ And dat is right; de Bible is allers right. Hoein’ is
-good fur de limbs, good fur de wind, good fur de crap, an’ good fur de
-soul. De sun am hot now, but de wind’ll be cold agin. De rays pour down
-now, but de sleet’ll come bye an’ bye. Dese am de rays of drought an’
-thirst, but ef you want to set back when de rains come, smoke yo’ pipe
-an’ sing dat song--
-
-  “Bile dat cabbage down
-  For it ain’t gwine to rain no mo’--
-
-jes’ take off yo’ coat, shed yo’ shirt, an’ foller de corn an’ tater
-row, an’ ef you git thirsty don’t stop to drink, but jes’ keep on
-a-hoein’!
-
-“_Ho! everyone dat thirsteth! ho!_
-
-“An’ ain’t dat de law an’ de sense? Whut you wanter stop an’ drink fur?
-Won’t you jes’ get thirty agin? Keep on a-hoein’!
-
-“What did old Noah do when de windows ob de heabens was opened an’ de
-flood ob de great deep began to kiver de earth, an’ de fools got round
-him an’ laughed an’ ax him whut he buildin’ dat ole ark for? He was
-tired, an’ thirsty, an’ hot, but he kep’ on a-hoein’, for he knowed
-he’d get water enough bye and bye. _Ho! every one dat thirsteth! ho!_
-
-“What did Abraham do when dey got roun’ him an’ tried to stop him from
-gwine to de Promis’ Lan’? He kept on a hoein’ for Jordan.
-
-“Don’t let de flesh ob dis wurl’ fool you. Things ain’t whut dey
-seem. Water looks mighty good, specially to Baptists, but whut we
-Meferdists want to do is to keep on a hoein’. De wicked of Noah’s
-day didn’t hoe any. Didn’t dey git water enough? De Egyptians didn’t
-hoe enny, but follered de Israelites into de Red Sea. Didn’t dey get
-water enough? Ole Jonah didn’t obey de Lord an’ hoe to de mark, an’ de
-water swallowed him fust an’ de whale swallered ’im next. Let dat be a
-warnin’ to you to stick to de tex’ of de Bible an’ de doctrine of de
-church, an’ when you get thirsty keep on a-hoein’. It’s hard now, but
-it’ll be sweet bye and bye. It’s hot now, but it’ll be cold bye and
-bye. You git mighty thirsty an’ you think de taters ain’t never goin’
-to come, but when de winter rains come, an’ de winds blow, an’ you sot
-down round de big fiah wid de sweet brown ’possum an’ dem taters, you
-work so hard fur to get in de heat, an’ sweat, an’ thirst ob summer,
-den will de heart ob de faithful be glad, den will you shout an’ sing:
-
-  “Ho! every one that thirsteth, ho!”
-
-This last appeal was too much. The congregation arose in a body at the
-words ’possum and potatoes and went off to hoe, leaving the old man
-with no one to pass around the hat.
-
-
-A RACE FOR LIFE.
-
-I saw a race--a race for life, too--that interested me the other day
-more than any that I have seen this year. It occurred in mid-air, in
-a kingdom not our own; but the fresh air was sweet where the race for
-life went on, and the fields were green beneath, and the brooks purled
-below and the sun shone gloriously over all, and to the poor creature
-who raced for his life I doubt not but he took it all in and life was
-as sweet to him as it is to us.
-
-It was a golden-winged butterfly, one of those beautiful creatures
-that is more of heaven than of earth, more of the blossom than of the
-brown heath, and it seemed cruel to me that this beautiful thing,
-thrown off from the film of a rainbow and made with an organism so
-spiritual that it lives on the nectar of flowers, dwells on the bosom
-of a nodding lily and floats on the breath of a zephyr, must come under
-the great selfish law of life and be forced to fight for its brief but
-beautiful existence. Man must fight, we know--and all history, if it
-lie not, is but a chronicle of battle, blood and death, in which the
-survival of the fittest and the achievements of human destiny have been
-gauged by the brains that were behind gunpowder, and the courage that
-comes of God. Man, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes--it is a survival
-merely--and “nature, red in tooth and claw,” has been demonstrated to
-be more merciful than nature rotting in the decrepitude of age. But, O,
-that this ethereal thing--half rainbow and rose, half light and lily
-blossom, half child and cherubim--might have been spared!
-
-And who were its enemies--two glorious mocking birds, that had sung
-like spirits from an angel choir around my home all spring and
-summer--that had reared their young in contentment and happiness and
-should have had nothing against any of God’s creatures, whose life had
-been a poem, whose breath a summer song--alas, that these should have
-been its murderers! It almost makes me despair of the ethics of life. I
-feel like saying to man: “Go, murder your fellow men--it is nature. Go,
-rob, steal and plunder--it is law.”
-
-And is it not law? In spite of the ethics of religion and dictates
-of equity, is it not at last a question of one getting and the other
-giving--of money, love--ay, even life?
-
-Golden Wings was in my garden and he was content until that which
-sustained his life gave out--food. He had sucked every flower--he
-must go to pastures new. The distance to my neighbor’s garden was
-some two hundred yards, and there was nothing but air between us.
-He thought of it a long time--he hovered from flower to flower and
-thought--of his mate, of life, of death. Had he been all spirit he
-had stayed forever among the flowers. He had run no chance of death.
-But he was half spirit and half life and that life was rebelling
-and begging for food. He must go. It was life or death. He rose
-reluctantly--frightened--straight up--every sense awake--every nerve
-keyed--every eye on the lookout for an enemy--the spirit which had
-never harmed even a flower, and which should have had no enemy. Up,
-straight up, he arose--quivering, scared, frightened--then winged his
-way across the blue ether in a flight, as it proved, for its life.
-
-The mocking-bird is a fly catcher, but not an expert one. Compared
-with the swallow, the marten, the crested fly-catcher, the expert king
-bird, the wood pewee, and Phoebe, he is a poor imitation. But the
-mocking-bird is a poet, and everything is grist that comes to a poet’s
-mill--from the grasshopper on the ground to the butterfly in the air.
-
-The male bird saw Golden Wings first and gave him the first heat for
-his life. Up in the air he darted, circled and swooped. Poor Golden
-Wings fled, turned, ducked, dived--and escaped. The poet dropped to
-his twig in disgust, and his mate took up the race. Golden Wings saw
-her coming and his heart bursted with fear. He fairly quivered in the
-air. He knew not which way to turn. She darted, and all but caught
-him. For a moment, in mid-air, I saw them whirling and twisting and
-tumbling--poor Golden Wings panting and fluttering for a chance once
-more for home and life, and the poetess for a morsel to eat. It ended
-in the butterfly getting above the bird--which seemed always its
-tactics--while the latter dropped down in disgust to her mate. Then
-they both started after poor Golden Wings, and it looked as if his time
-had come. But all the time he had been heading straight for the thick
-trees beyond, where rested, perhaps, his distressed mate, waiting for
-his return.
-
-It was a terrible chase the two poets gave him--the tumbling, darting,
-circling of the birds in fiendish delight, in maddened earnestness.
-Their very wings were often so close that they fanned him about until
-he looked like a speck of gold tissue paper hurled about by contrary
-winds. Twice they got above him, dropped on him and--missed. Twice I
-lost him altogether, and, except that I saw the birds fluttering and
-darting in the air, I had thought he was lost. When I saw him again
-he had gotten above his enemies and was safely pursuing his zig-zag,
-frightened, graceless, paper-fluttering flight for the trees and life.
-
-“Success to you, O, Golden Wings,” I said, “for already have you taught
-me a lesson in life. Let us keep above our enemies, if we would be
-safe--not beneath them, for there we are a prey to their dirty talons;
-not on their level, for then we are no better than they; but above
-them where they cannot reach us and where we may go on to our destiny
-with only the sunlight around us and the stars above us.”
-
-The birds dropped down, baffled, to rest in the top of a sugar maple.
-They had evidently lost their tempers, and, between panting and hard
-breathing, I could hear them quarreling: “It was you,” said the
-wife--“you conceited thing--all your fault. I had him once if you had
-let me alone.”
-
-“O, you had him, you did--‘over the left.’ If your talents equaled
-your tongue we’d be better off.” They screeched and shuffled about and
-almost spat at each other. They were beaten, chagrined and mad, and
-they took it out on each other.
-
-And if you want to see the refinement of ill-temper, stir up two poets!
-
-Golden Wings was safe. He was high in the air, his very flight was now
-the flight of victory, his poise the poise of one who had won. Twenty
-yards more he would drop down into the green trees where his mate,
-perhaps, awaited him, and be safe.
-
-I was about to hurrah with delight, when I saw a lightning bolt of red
-and white drop from the jagged bark of the dead limb of a towering oak
-in the midst of the forest and high above poor, weary, fluttering yet
-happy Golden Wings. I paled at the thought, for I knew no butterfly
-ever escaped him. Even Golden Wings recognized his doom and, paralyzed
-with fear, stopped his flight in mid-air and, in a few yards of his
-goal, and lay floating in the air in hopeless fear. And well he might,
-for the red and white bolt was the red-headed woodpecker, not generally
-known to be a fly-catcher, but an expert in it, nevertheless. Often had
-I seen him poise above a luckless moth, drop like a plummet, and no
-moth would be there. I despised him as a marauder, besides, for only
-yesterday I’d seen him pounce on a helpless young humming-bird and rend
-it as if it had been a worm.
-
-Straight at poor Golden Wings he came. The race was up.
-
-He performed his old tactics, darted above the butterfly, some two
-yards higher in the air, gauged instinctively a plummet line from the
-point of his own beak to Golden Wings and then drops with folded wings
-like a ball of lead.
-
-I forgot to say that I was out that morning with the twelve-gauge,
-smokeless shells and one and a half ounces of No. 7 chilled, thinking I
-might see a certain thieving crow that I had a grudge against.
-
-Thoughts are lightning--words thunder, and when I caught the first
-glimpse of the red-headed marauder of the air all this went through my
-mind: “Nature is nature--tooth and claw. And yet there is a God who
-says even when a butterfly shall fall. He makes our lives and marks out
-our destiny. Sometimes amid injustice He calls Himself Retribution, and
-then He has been known to raise up a man and a gun, invent smokeless
-powder and deadly chilled shot, give accuracy of aim and, most
-wonderful of all, the voice of a purpose to say that harm shall not
-happen even to a butterfly.”
-
-There was no smoke from the report and so I distinctly saw Golden Wings
-drop joyfully among the green leaves. But a red-headed marauder lies in
-the field where he fell.
-
-And if some one who knows, will tell me why I happened to be there, why
-I carried my gun that morning, why I fired, I will tell him who God is.
-
-
-HIS CHANCE.
-
-The summer day was nearly gone, and only a few clouds caught the gleam
-of sunset in the west. A woman of thirty, with a sweet, sincere face,
-came out of a cottage and walked to the little farm gate that opened
-on the main road winding across the Iowa prairie. The cottage sat in a
-small grove of trees, and farther off were neat outhouses, a stable and
-dairy. Flowers bloomed in a little bed near the front gate, and several
-hives of bees sat under cherry trees in the front yard. Everything
-around the neat cottage, from the well-kept vines which climbed over
-the porch to the orchard and fields of corn, clearly showed that Thrift
-and Industry were the handmaidens that lived there.
-
-The woman was not pretty, neither was she handsome, but her face was
-of unusual intelligence and strength. Her hands showed work, and a few
-gray hairs shone over her temple.
-
-At the little gate she stood while the shadows grew darker around
-her. There were chirpings of summer insects, and presently down the
-walk stalked a huge St. Bernard, looking like a great bear in the
-twilight. He seemed to think the woman had been out alone long enough,
-and his very way of walking showed that he knew he was her protector.
-He stalked up and thrust his big cold nose into her hand as it hung
-listlessly by her side. She started, but closed it over his mouth with
-a caress, saying:
-
-“Rex, you are silly about me.”
-
-A buggy came out of the gloaming down the road, and stopped at her
-gate. The woman turned pale in the twilight, as she recognized
-the middle-aged man who came toward her, holding out his hand:
-“Jennie--I--well--it’s me!”
-
-He would have opened the gate, but the dog growled savagely, and she
-hooked the latch hastily, as she said:
-
-“Ralph--why--why--I thought--but don’t try to come in--Rex--I could not
-control him.”
-
-She was so agitated she could not speak further. Her knees shook, and
-she clung to the gate, half leaning.
-
-“I have been back a week,” he said slowly. “You haven’t changed much,”
-he added, eyeing her closely while she flushed under his gaze. “I never
-expected to see you again.”
-
-“No--no--don’t try to come in--Rex--Rex!”
-
-The great dog had rushed at the gate as the man tried to open it again,
-and she held her hand on the latch.
-
-“He don’t seem to know your friends from your enemies,” said the man
-with a cynical laugh.
-
-“I think he does,” she said quietly, “better than I have ever known
-them.”
-
-He looked at her quickly. Then he tried to laugh.
-
-“Why--Jennie--you know I haven’t seen you in so long.”
-
-“I never expected to see you again. I was not looking for you now,” she
-said.
-
-“I never thought I’d ever come back, but the Klondike--well, a man pays
-two dollars for every dollar’s worth of gold he finds there.”
-
-“Tell me about yourself,” she said, still leaning on the gate, one knee
-resting on the lower plank for support.
-
-“Well, Jennie, after we had our little quarrel and you broke off with
-me--”
-
-“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a
-word--without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to
-send you your ring.”
-
-“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell
-you--”
-
-She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly.
-She had seen it all--the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the
-sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old
-manhood.
-
-“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell
-me where you have been and--and what doing.”
-
-He laughed coldly.
-
-“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was
-a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time
-to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”
-
-“Was it true--that I heard--the trouble?”
-
-“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble--but
-the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come
-back to you--to tell you I still--”
-
-“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing
-I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left,
-and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now
-you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come
-in--no--no--you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”
-
-She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly:
-
-“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left
-alone. Our little farm--well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard
-work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when
-one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted
-orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I--well--” she
-laughed hopefully for the first time--a laugh which brought a pang to
-his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for
-I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that
-I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted
-and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.
-
-“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you
-often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I
-have heard enough--before you came--heard it, seen enough. In all our
-lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than
-the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and
-I--think--I know I am happier than if I were now married to you--to you
-as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.
-
-“But--but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”
-
-“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature
-since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance.
-There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”
-
-He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.
-
-“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with
-another oath.
-
-But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following
-her.
-
-“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head.
-“Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life--life--how strange it
-is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has
-given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that
-is honest and true than a man who it not.”
-
-
-BLUE JOHN.
-
-A Mississippi planter, and a gentleman of the old school, sends me
-this one from a little town in the Delta:
-
-“My dear Trotwood, do you know what it is to get out of whisky
-Christmas morning in a little one-horse Mississippi town where you have
-to put a darkey on a mule and wait until he rides five miles through
-the mud before you can get your Christmas toddy? Well, I hope you never
-may, for that thing happened to me last Christmas.
-
-“The truth is, there was no need why we should have been out of the red
-ingredient of Christmas jollity, for when we turned in the night before
-we had a fine, big jug of it. But the Major was there, and the Colonel
-and the Doctor, and somehow, before we knew it, it was gone.
-
-“I am a bachelor, you know, on a big Mississippi cotton farm, and these
-were my guests and we went to bed with our boots on. About daylight
-Christmas morning we all woke up with one impulse and an awful thirst.
-
-“The Doctor got to the jug first, and we heard him growl:
-
-“‘What infernal hog drank all this whisky last night?’
-
-“This stirred up the Colonel, and he sat up in bed and remarked, with
-his usual emphasis:
-
-“‘That licker gone a’ready? Christmas mornin’, too?’
-
-“By this time we were all investigating it, and some of the talk
-indulged in concerning the man who did it ought to have made him feel
-anything but white.
-
-“By this time we would have given a dollar each for a drink. The
-nearest whisky was five miles away, where Ikey Rosenstein, a little
-Mississippi Jew, kept a cross-roads grocery. It was raining, and cold,
-too, but there was nothing to do but to call Blue John and send him on
-old Kit, the pacing mule, for a new jug of it.
-
-“‘Blue John,’ I said, when he poked his head in the door, ‘you’ll find
-my bridle and saddle hanging up in the carriage house. Saddle old Kit
-and take this jug up to old Ikey’s and bring it back full, p. d. q.’
-
-“‘Yassah, Boss.’
-
-“‘Blue John,’ yelled the Doctor, ‘don’t let old Kit throw off on us
-this heat and we’ll give you first drink.’
-
-“‘Yassah, Boss.’
-
-“‘And, Blue John,’ said the Major, as he started off, ‘remember it’s
-Christmas, old man, and get about in a hurry. Here’s a quarter to help
-you along,’ he said, tossing it across the bed.
-
-“‘Yassah, Boss, yassah.’
-
-“We all laid down again to wait for Blue John.
-
-“‘Boys,’ said the Colonel, after ten minutes of thirst, ‘I’ll bet I can
-trace every step that old darkey takes. Let’s see, now: He’s got to the
-barn door, hasn’t he? Now he has found the bridle and has caught old
-Kit. Now the saddle goes on and he is mounting.
-
-“‘No, he ain’t quite up in the saddle yet,’ chimed in the Doctor. ‘He
-has stopped to take a chew of twist tobacco and spit on his hands.’
-
-“‘That’s a fact, Doc, but he’s up now, isn’t he?’
-
-“‘Yes.’
-
-“‘Now he’s pacing down to the big gate. He’s opening it----’
-
-“‘No,’ put in again the Doctor, ‘he got down off of old Kit and opened
-it. Hang the old fool, but isn’t he a slow one?’
-
-“‘Well, he’s going up the road now, ain’t he?’ said the Colonel.
-
-“‘Yes, and he’s got to the big swamp. He’s creeping through it. Dad
-gast, but ain’t it muddy there? Gehew, but I am thirsty,’ broke in the
-Doctor.
-
-“Ten minutes later he added joyfully: ‘Well, he’s out of the swamp, and
-he has spurred old Kit into a gallop, thinking of that drink. Oh, old
-Blue John is a good one!’
-
-“‘He’s at the three-mile post now,’ said the Major, twenty minutes
-later. ‘Lord, but that old mule can hump when he tries!’
-
-“We all smiled in satisfaction.
-
-“‘Where is he now, Doc?’ said the Colonel, after it had seemed an hour
-of silence.
-
-“‘At old Ikey’s, boys. See, he’s handing old Ikey the jug. Now old Ikey
-is fillin’ it.’
-
-“‘From what barrel?’ asked the Major, excitedly.
-
-“‘Lincoln County, Tennessee.’
-
-“We all grunted our assent in chorus.
-
-“‘He’s started home now,’ went on the Colonel, ‘and the way that mule
-can pace! Blue John is settin’ up in that saddle, holdin’ that jug
-under one arm and a-larrupin’ old Kit every yard. Scott, but ain’t he
-comin’!’
-
-“‘He’s got to the swamp again, Doc,’ said the Major, after twenty
-minutes had passed. ‘He’ll get here directly.’
-
-“‘Boys, he’s reached the big gate already. I hear him coming,’ said
-the Colonel, excitedly.
-
-“Sure enough, we heard him. There was no mistake--Blue John was now
-coming down the hall.
-
-“‘Open the door and let him in quick!’ said the Major, ‘By gum! but
-ain’t he and that old mule a pair of buds?’
-
-“By this time we had all jumped out of bed and were hunting for
-tumblers and sugar. Blue John poked his head in the door.
-
-“‘Boss,’ said Blue John.
-
-“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Major. ‘Fetch it right in. You’re a
-good old man. Colonel, lend me your spoon a minute.’
-
-“‘Boss, whar--whar----’ stammered Blue John.
-
-“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Doctor, ‘come right in.’”
-
-“‘_Boss, whar de debbil you say you put dat bridle in de kerridge
-house? I been huntin’ fur it fur er hour an’ I can’t find it ter sabe
-my life._’”
-
-
-A DRUNKEN WOMAN.
-
-I saw in a neighboring city not long ago a drunken woman. She was in
-a fashionable hotel and stood beside a post in the little gallery
-that ran around the court. She was not three feet above our heads,
-was dressed in the height of fashion, wore a hat that looked like a
-huge poppy and altogether she was not unlike a beautiful tiger lily
-that seemed about to fall over into our arms. Instantly that wave of
-romance and reverence as natural to man, when he sees beauty clothed
-in purity, as the tides that do follow the midnight moon, swept over
-me. Her form was faultless, her gown perfect, her face beautiful.
-
-At least I thought so until I looked up and happened to catch her eye.
-She smiled the sensual smile of a wood-nymph and leered as disgustingly
-as ever Bacchus through a glass of old Falerian. In a moment it all
-changed. Her face was no longer beautiful, but hard and cruel. Her form
-was made--her gown the gaudy thing of a demi-monde.
-
-I blushed when she singled me out and leered, and ducked my head, for
-fear someone had seen me. But I soon saw that she leered at all alike
-and knew no difference between a man and men.
-
-For a half hour she stood there, scarce able to cling to the post she
-stood by, the observed of every man in the court, the disgusting moral
-that pointed the old story of the fallen angel.
-
-It is bad enough to see a drunken man. Nothing so quickly robs goodness
-of its sweetness, genius of its charm, greatness of its colossal form,
-than to behold it drunk. There are some great men I know who, if I ever
-saw them drunk, never again would I believe they were great. They say
-Poe was a drunkard. I cannot imagine it. And S. S. Prentiss--I cannot
-believe it. I cannot think of DeQuincy and Coleridge as opium eaters,
-Byron and Burns as whisky-heads. If I did I could never again read
-anything they wrote. For of all things that levels man to the beasts
-and makes knowledge a strumpet and genius a bawdy, it is the maudlin
-rottenness of a plain old drunk.
-
-Whisky and not death is the greatest leveler with the dirt.
-
-But to see a drunken woman--Good God! Nature is partial to a man. She
-has made some laws for him she has not made for woman. She has filled
-him with passion and strength and capacity for work and great things.
-She overlooks it, perhaps, when he steps aside, under the burning law
-she has forced on him for reproduction, and she sighs and smiles when
-he drowns his strenuousness now and then in the forgetfulness of the
-cup. He may do all that, and if his wife be pure still may he sire sons
-who will be brave and honest, and daughters who will be pure and noble.
-
-But let the woman be weak and fall, and see how quickly nature revenges
-herself for the desecration of her unwritten law by throwing back on
-humanity sons who are thieves and daughters who are impure. This is an
-unwritten law, but it proves that the mother is the great moral force
-of the world. Let her violate it and the punishment comes quickly on
-the race.
-
-As I looked at this woman I could not help thinking: “I hope, as one
-who, interested in stock, is more interested in the human race, that
-you carry in your life that penalty of impureness--barrenness. For it
-were better for mankind that such as you should never be mothers, to
-fill prison pens with thieves and forgers and bawdy houses with painted
-Magdalenes. Indeed, it is up to you to pass off the stage of life and
-cease to encumber an earth on which not one single womanly law is left
-you to fill. The honest matron of the noble horse brings forth yearly
-and within the sacred laws of nature an animal that is the pride of
-man and the glory of his kind. The gentle mother of the dairy is an
-inspiration and a blessing to the earth. The very brood sow of the pen
-suckles her hungry brood begot in honorable wedlock. But you, O, being
-of a higher world, O breeder of immortal beings, made in the image of
-God and endowed with the reason of the angels, you from whom nature
-expects so much, you fall below all of these and brand yourself the
-harlot of humanity!”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-We want a good live agent in every town in the United States for
-“Trotwood’s Monthly.” Write for terms to agents. Address Trotwood
-Publishing Company, Nashville, Tenn.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Depravity is not so much a creature of inheritance as of environment._
-
-
-
-
-Geers and Walter Direct
-
-
-The most talked-of pacer in the light harness world to-day is Walter
-Direct. The greatest living reinsman is Ed F. Geers, his breeder, joint
-owner, trainer and driver. The object of this sketch is to tell the
-story of these two--the one a horse, the other a man. For when it is
-all sifted down at last, it will be found that there are many parallel
-lines between a great race horse and a great driver. Each to succeed
-must possess certain qualities in common which make for success.
-
-[Illustration: ED GEERS The silent man from Tennessee.]
-
-And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to
-the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has
-spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It
-is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not
-mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower
-animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man.
-Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and
-bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every
-man which count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree
-of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the
-pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which
-counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for
-silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which
-never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly:
-
-  “Out of the darkness which surrounds me,
-    Black as the pit from pole to pole,
-  I thank whatever gods there be
-    For my unconquerable soul.”
-
-Unfortunately for man--outside of the pygmies which some call kings--he
-keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least
-take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or
-his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of
-the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product
-of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers
-of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one
-generation, but they are all there--there in his blood and his brain
-and his brawn.
-
-And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers--a
-man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century
-ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and
-grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these
-days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the
-cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is
-nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days
-of the honest common people!
-
-From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product
-of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left
-nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew
-Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln--these and every other
-great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human
-progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him
-for.
-
-And so, as I said, from such a source came Geers, the honest man
-and the master reinsman of his age. And so, as I said, counting
-the recorded pedigree, Walter Direct has it over Geers, for man,
-who foolishly lets his own pedigree slip, has been very careful in
-preserving that of his horse. Strange, isn’t it? And yet we are all
-doing it. Ah, well, perhaps it is best for many of us that it is so.
-For, as we say of the horse, in the fifth generation each one of us
-would have to count for sixty-two fathers and mothers, landing us back
-two hundred years ago in Scotland and Ireland, and out of that number,
-in that age and country, fortunate is he who was not sent up for
-poaching, for cattle-lifting, for breaking heads and, perhaps--locks!
-
-Walter’s pedigree is blue-blooded. His owners, Chaffin & Gears, saw to
-that. We can make our horse’s pedigree better than we can make our
-own--for that is made for us, and often, in the making, when two warm
-youngsters fall in love and decide to marry, nothing but the grace of
-God, or the breaking of a midnight ladder, has saved us.
-
-In _The Horse Review_ of 1900, when Walter Direct was then a suckling
-at his mother’s heels, I wrote a description of him and predicted from
-his blood lines that one day he would be the greatest of pacers. It
-sounds prophetic now, but I rise hastily to disclaim it. Any horseman
-posted in the pedigree and achievement of his sire and dam, and of all
-his bluelines, would naturally have said the same thing. His sire,
-Direct Hal, was the greatest horse of his day. His name and career are
-household words in horsedom and will not be extended in this article.
-But later on, in “The History of the Hals,” now running as a serial in
-this Monthly, a chapter will be devoted to him in its proper place. It
-is enough here to say that he was unbeaten and that his sire, Direct,
-before him, was the greatest pacing stallion of his day, and that
-beyond that lies the great Director, Dictator and Hambletonian 10--an
-unbroken line of greatness--and in a horse greatness means gameness,
-soundness, honesty, speed.
-
-Isn’t that enough to give us a tip on the breeding of boys and girls?
-
-Walter’s dam is a homely little mare called Ella Brown, with a record
-of 2:11-1/4, made in 1893, to high-wheel sulky. With the sulky of
-to-day it would have been 2:05. Never have I known a gamer, sweeter
-little mare than Ella Brown, and well do I remember when she first came
-out, and though suffering acutely, all through her racing career with
-nervicular disease of the foot, often so lame that she could scarcely
-score down for the word, yet, when she was in the fight, and the
-clatter and hot breath of her competitors sounded the warning in her
-ears, she would forget her lameness and her soreness and race like the
-game little thing she was.
-
-And, like all other great mares, the pedigree of Ella Brown was no
-accident. She was sired by Prince Pulaski, Jr., and he by old Prince
-Pulaski, the sire of the old queen, Mattie Hunter, 2:12-3/4. The dam
-of Ella Brown has only lately been correctly established. She was by
-Evans’ Joe Bowers, son of Joe Bowers 2:32, son of Traveler. Her second
-dam was by Tom Hal, sire of Brown Hal, and her third dam was said
-to be by Brooks, sire of Bonesetter 2:19. Every horseman knows what
-these mean. Mated with Direct Hal, and hence doubled in strength and
-greatness, and behold Walter Direct, champion green pacer of the year.
-
-This is the pedigree of Edward Geers--this is the pedigree of Walter.
-Both honest.
-
-Geers’ honesty is proverbial. His surname is “Honest Ed Geers, the
-Silent Man of Tennessee.” Did you ever notice how naturally greatness
-and silence go together? Let that greatest of all great men,
-Shakespeare, tell it:
-
-  Silence oft of pure innocence
-  Persuades when speaking fails.
-
-There are many stories told of the honesty of Ed Geers. It must be
-remembered that in the life he has led, the terrible, bruising,
-fighting battles of the turf, when fame and fortune often hang on the
-wire for which hundreds of others are driving as well as he, that he
-is often sorely and terribly tempted. Men are human at most, and in a
-fight for money, for fame, for the joy of victory, all combined in one
-race, all the great stakes of life, is it a wonder that millionaire
-horsemen have tried to buy him, that rich breeders have tried to bribe
-him, greedy owners corner him and tricksters and knaves foul him? Think
-of twenty-five years of this and then coming out without a stain on his
-name, a breath of suspicion and the pseudonum of Honest Ed Geers--won,
-too, in the light of the fiercest conflict.
-
-Walter is game, so is Geers. In the many years in which the latter has
-been in the sulky he has met with accidents which, if they failed to
-break his neck, would have broken the heart of an ordinary man.
-
-All horsemen will recall the bad accident he had with Searchlight and
-the one that sent him to the hospital at Memphis a few years ago, with
-a broken ankle. But a few weeks ago he was in a bad mix-up at Buffalo,
-when King Direct’s foot went into the sulky wheel of the contending
-horse. The Nestor of the turf was unconscious when picked up, but
-quickly revived and dryly remarked, “Now, don’t make a hurrah of this
-thing and scare everybody to death for nothing.” That remark is an
-index of his character. He hates a hurrah. The plumage of the peacock
-has never become the pit game trimmed for the fight. He is loyal to
-his friends, modest, quiet, honest, and with reverence for all that is
-sacred and good. He is one of the large men of his calling.
-
-The training of Walter Direct has been in keeping with Mr. Geers’
-theory that colts should be trained early but not hard. From the May
-night when he was foaled in a terrific thunderstorm, so fierce that
-Old Wash, who acted as his midwife, was scarcely able to keep him from
-drowning, until to-day, he has had the best of attention. His dam was
-fed grain during the nursing period, and Walter soon learned to eat it
-with her. He was broken to halter as a weanling, and the next spring,
-Negley, the colored caretaker, broke him to harness, with occasional
-jogs. The fall after he was a two-year-old he was sent to Memphis to
-Geers and given his first real lessons, and so trained each winter,
-with joggings in the summer by Negley at Columbia. Mr. Geers’ rule is
-to keep them feeling good with a brush now and then for speed. He has
-a horror of overworking colts. Indeed, his stable is never asked to go
-the fast heats that many other owners delight in before being shipped
-to the races. He saves their speed and vital force for the time when
-it is needed most. In the spring when Walter was a three-year-old he
-was asked to go a fast mile in 2:14, and was sent to Columbia to be
-jogged and turned out. The next spring he paced his mile in 2:08-3/4,
-when he was sent back home again. On September 15, 1904 he was sent
-again to Mr. Geers and to fame.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.
-
-(Revised by Trotwood and brought up to date.)
-
-  A chieftain to the Highland bound
-    Would steal Lord Ullin’s daughter;
-  He bought a new machine in town--
-    A thing he hadn’t auto.
-
-  He sought the castle by the sea
-    And stopped behind the kitchen;
-  “This beats a pony bad,” said he,
-    “Because it don’t need hitchin’.”
-
-  He got the girl and started out
-    By pullin’ of a lever,
-  And then that auto turned about--
-    It was a gay deceiver.
-
-  It snorted, backed, went round and round,
-    Broke belly-band and breechin’,
-  Reared up and kicked--then, with a bound,
-    It started through the kitchen.
-
-  In there was Ullin fast asleep,
-    His stomach full of mutton;
-  That auto knocked him in a heap
-    It broke his only button.
-
-  “O, haste, thee--haste!” the Lady cries,
-    “Tho’ steams around me gather,
-  I’ll meet the ragings of the skies
-    But not a naked Father.”
-
-  “Aha--farewell--and now we’ll go,”
-    Said Laddy, smiling grimly;
-  He tried to head her for the door--
-    She started for the chimney.
-
-  “Come back--come back!” old Ullin cries,
-    “Not up there--that’s my larder;
-  You’ll ruin my meat and pies--
-    Come back an’ take my darter.”
-
-  By this the thing grew loud of pace,
-    Its waterworks were shrieking;
-  It started for the old staircase,
-    While Ullin was a-speaking.
-
-  It met Mrs. Ullin coming down--
-    She’d tucked the kids to cover;
-  She wore her night-cap and her gown--
-    She never wore another!
-
-  It buzzed amid the trundle beds,
-    Ran over lairds and lasses,
-  Went through the window, down the sheds,
-    And waked up all the asses.
-
-  It chased the hound-pups round the yard,
-    Ran over kairn and cattle;
-  The clans turned out with tunics barr’d,
-    And pibrocks, armed for battle.
-
-  The girl had fainted, sore dismayed,
-    Twice had it turned her over:
-  One lovely arm was stretched for aid,
-    And one was round her lover.
-
-  Up spake a hardy Highland wight--
-    (A rope was round him, ready):
-  “Just watch me rope her hind leg tight
-    And stop her, staunch and steady!”
-
-  He threw and caught her fast and fair,
-    It set their blood to fighting--
-  They saw him sailing through the air,
-    A tail he was--and kiting!
-
-  Now Ullin had a mother-in-law,
-    A saint she was from Zion;
-  Her lungs were rubber, cheeks were bra’,
-    Her body--well, SCRAP iron!
-
-  She waked and heard the dreadful din,
-    Ran down, the thing to worst it;
-  It struck her, knocked its inwards in,
-   It wheezed and groaned--and burst it!
-
-  They slew poor Laddy where he sat
-    With blunderbuss and bullit;
-  “’Tis not,” said Ullin, “’cause the brat
-    Was monkeyin’ with my pullit,
-
-  “But comin’ here in this vile car
-    To run off with my darter,
-  An’ not like neighbor Lochinvar,
-    On hoss-flesh, as he orter.”
-
-  --JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Humor is a great thing, but it has never yet won a battle, built a
-city or bred a horse._
-
-
-
-
-The Meaning of Sorrow
-
-
-BY REV. W. D. CAPERS, RECTOR ST. PETER’S CHURCH, COLUMBIA, TENN.
-
-“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word.”
-(Ps. 119: 67.)
-
-From one point of view there is no mystery so impenetrable as that
-involved in the suffering and sorrow which exists in every department
-and sphere of life. The suffering of humanity, the fact that “the world
-groaneth and travaileth in pain until now” presented to the sensitive
-mind of Dr. John Hall the supreme difficulty with which he struggled
-during a great part of his remarkable ministry, until courage, faith
-and experience taught him to understand and to recognize suffering
-as having its mission in life and in the development of character,
-just as happiness has its place, each acting as one of the two great
-interpreters of moral and spiritual development. It is impossible to
-have a creed or to form an adequate philosophy of life and overlook
-the really essential and universal place suffering, in one form or
-another, occupies therein. Just try and think, if you can, of a world
-in which there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain; a world in which
-there are no tears, no bitterness, no woe. The thing is unthinkable,
-it is simply inconceivable, and as a condition of life, utterly and
-eternally impossible. Why? Because pleasure and pain are relative.
-Suffering and joy face each other in a blessed contrast. There has to
-be a standard of comparison by which we are to make the proper estimate
-of these things, otherwise we would be unable to distinguish between
-them; otherwise happiness would have no reality to it, no vitality
-in it, and neither strength nor power of growth, while life would be
-without an essential variety of emotions, and therefore necessarily
-become “stale, flat and unprofitable” indeed. A remarkable description
-of hell’s severest punishment, though very fanciful, is that, wherein
-the victims are made to do that which they most loved to do here in
-this life, incessantly, continuously and strenuously. The suggestion
-to my mind is very significant and teaches that the most tortuous and
-horrible suffering is just that which comes through uninterrupted
-monotony. To dance your life away, to drink your life away, to play and
-fritter your life away in purposeless amusement and never to suffer a
-reverse or be conscious of a struggle, never to know a pang of pain
-or experience a momentary disappointment, may seem to those who have
-just sipped an occasional drop from the cup of pleasure and mirth an
-enviable existence, a consummation in life devoutly to be wished. But
-to dance or play or laugh or sing through endless eons of time and to
-experience not one inspiring struggle which brings moral and spiritual
-strengthening, to have to live through eternity would be misery indeed.
-Suffering then, in the first place, heightens and intensifies our joys,
-it helps develop the power of enjoyment, and it makes a larger and a
-more real happiness possible. To illustrate: There was unspeakable joy
-in the home of the prodigal, as the aged father rushed out to meet and
-greet his wayward boy, for to the old man his son had been dead, and
-behold he was alive again, he had been lost and was found. It was the
-suffering of the separation which alone made possible the intense and
-glorified happiness of their reunion. And how often it happens that
-not only are “troubled times praying times,” but that “man’s extremity
-is God’s opportunity.” Thus suffering often brings a man to his senses
-and makes him conscious of his dependence upon God. As we read, it was
-only when the prodigal “came to himself” that he concluded to arise
-and go to his father, and we must conclude that it was the suffering,
-sorrow and bitterness of privation and disappointed hopes that drove
-him to a realization of his true condition, and in the end brought
-to him a real and lasting happiness. In this and in similar acts of
-conduct history never fails to repeat itself in every age, in every
-epoch, in every generation, as well as yearly, daily and hourly in the
-life of individuals and of nations. Opulence, ease, prosperity and an
-unwholesome peace have repeatedly rushed peoples and principalities to
-a shameful and untimely ruin, wherein men have lost their reason and
-nations drunk with a sense of power have reeled and staggered to and
-fro like a drunken man and then lay prostrate in the dust. In support
-of this I appeal to history. In support of this Mr. Kipling appeals to
-history when in his recessional poem he said:
-
-  “Far called our navies melt away--
-    On dune and headland sinks the fire--
-  Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
-    Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
-  Judge of the nations, spare us yet
-  Lest we forget--lest we forget.”
-
-Suffering then, often serves to give us a fuller, freer, wiser and
-wider view of life. It was only when through suffering that the
-prodigal “came to himself,” and when he received this self-revelation,
-then he “arose and went to his father,” and in like manner when man
-“comes to himself” he goes to God. But mark you, self-revelation seldom
-if ever comes to one while sailing the seas of glory and sounding all
-the depths and shoals of mere worldly splendor and prosperity. “Before
-I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept my word,” said
-the Psalmist, and when Job came to himself through the trial of his
-faith and patience, he ceased to question the ways of Providence, he
-reverently placed his hand upon his mouth and would “speak no further,”
-for fear he now no longer knew God “by the hearing of the ear,” but by
-the “seeing of the eye,” and he went to his knees in supplication, “and
-the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.”
-
-Again, we are to notice that suffering brings us courage and broadens
-and deepens and intensifies our sympathies. “Pity makes the whole world
-akin,” and so quickens our consciousness of brotherliness. “At sea when
-the ship is in great peril the passengers crowd together, not because
-they can escape peril by facing it in company, but because they can
-gain courage by companionship. The sense of human kinship grows fresh
-and keen when men stand together in the face of a common danger.” It
-is therefore through suffering that men gain courage through a vivid
-realization of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the race.
-It often is as Dr. Mabie has said: “Through sorrowful ways men have
-climbed to the heights from which they now look into the heavens and
-over the landscape of life.”
-
-And this brings us to our final thought which is that suffering in some
-of its manifold forms gives that variety to life which is essential to
-the proper development of all the faculties of heart, soul, mind and
-body. By way of illustration, let us suppose that you could take from
-the public and private libraries of the world every book that contained
-a poem, a reference or a treatise touching the theme of sorrow, and
-what a dull, dead, gloomy monotony of uninspired literature would
-remain, while, in rather figurative language, the world itself could
-not contain the books thus mutilated and cast away. Apply the same
-test to art, and the galleries of the world would be destroyed, miles
-upon miles of bare walls would greet us at every turn as we made our
-heart-sick pilgrimage from gallery to gallery. Apply the same test to
-music, and you will never again hear the singing of a song with genius
-and power in it strong enough to stir the heart’s deepest emotions or
-to cause the soul to glow with a conscious ecstacy of faith and hope
-and the brain to burn with the fire of a high and holy resolution.
-The organ’s rich peal, the ring of stringed instruments, the wailing
-of the lute would lose the voice of melody, while “The Marseillaise,”
-“The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie Land” and similar martial airs would
-never have found voice to speak for patriotic devotion or to chant the
-glory of a martyrdom for home or for country, had not the spirit of
-sacrifice and suffering pervaded them and given to them immortality.
-
-No, suffering is a vital part and condition of life, and from the
-right use of it we gather strength and grow beautiful in moral and
-spiritual stature, while we gain the only happiness that maintains and
-has power to bless mankind, happiness which is the child of conscious
-strength acquired on the battlefield of conflict and in the vale of
-tears. How then are you going to use the sorrows, the afflictions, the
-disappointments and the trials that must come inevitably into your
-life? The late Maltby Babcock has a fine passage in this connection:
-“Byron eagerly coveted a place among the immortals, yet accepted
-his club feet with cursings and bitterness; while St. Paul accepted
-his ‘thorn in the flesh’ with sweetness and was thereby exalted and
-transfigured. The poet wishes to become a hero for the public while
-privately tasting of the sweets of profligacy. Sinning against his
-finer feelings his art steadily declines, until at thirty-five it has
-passed into the sear and yellow leaf.” Let us strive to emulate the
-example of St. Paul, and when having no power to expel from our life
-that which brings pain and suffering, let us endeavor to accept such
-sorrow as an opportunity to develop character, and thereby be exalted
-and made strong, remembering always that since “The Man of Sorrows”
-hung upon the cross, transfigured sorrow is that which has blessed
-humanity most, and brought men nearest to the heart and mind of the
-Master. And train yourself to believe that.
-
-  “Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned,
-    And sun and stars forevermore have set,
-  The things which one weak judgment here has spurned,
-    The things o’er which we grieved, with lashes wet,
-  Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,
-    As stars shine best in deepest tints of blue;
-  And we shall see how all God’s plans were right,
-    And that which seemed reproof was love most true.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-OUR STAR
-
-(In memory of Mrs. Annie Horne Fry, who died August 13, 1905.)
-
-  Sunset and Sorrow’s tide,
-      Over the bar--
-  Sunset, and daylight died
-      Seeing a Star.
-
-  Twilight, and Hope had fled,
-      Fled from afar.
-  Twilight, and Hope lay dead,
-      Holding a Star.
-
-  Midnight and mourning loud
-      Cometh to mar.
-  Midnight, yet o’er her shroud
-      Shineth the Star.
-
-  Morning, and from the mist--
-      Sweet Avatar--
-  Hope-crowned and Sorrow-kissed
-      Standeth our Star.
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-=TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY= Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.
-
-TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, Nashville, Tenn.
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editor-in-Chief.
-
-  E. E. SWEETLAND Business Manager
-
-  GEO. E. McKENNON President
-  JOHN W. FRY Vice-President
-  EUGENE ANDERSON Treas.
-  WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.
-
-=TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION=: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
-Advertising Rates on application.
-
-NASHVILLE, TENN. OCTOBER, 1905.
-
-
-
-
-With Trotwood
-
-
-There are nearly a fourth of a thousand farm papers in the United
-States, all bent on teaching the farmers how to attend to their own
-business. Some of these papers are good, many are bad and the others
-are awful. The good ones may be had for a dollar and the others for the
-asking. Looking the literary field over, everybody seems to be entitled
-to something good but the farmer. From the roasts and broils of the
-intellectual feasts of to-day he will get the leavings, next week, in
-the shape of a stale hash, served on cheap paper, flanked with guessing
-contests and patent medicine advertisements and surrounded by the
-green, green cresses of the same old thing.
-
-And yet a large and most respectable majority of the people of these
-United States are farmers or interested in the soil. Their daily needs
-include all the things the man in the city needs and much more, for
-the man in the city does not plow, neither does he reap nor sow. These
-people of the soil are progressive to the extent of their chances,
-honest, and seekers of the truth and better ways, lovers of the good
-in fiction and in fact. They constitute about seventy per cent of our
-population and commit about two per cent of our crime. Why should not
-they have a literature? Why should not a magazine laid around the soil,
-come into their homes, as it comes into the homes of the dwellers in
-the strenuous city, not to teach them their business but to help to
-amuse, to interest, to uplift?
-
-This is the object of Trotwood’s Monthly. If it does not tell you
-when to plant your beans and when to eat your potatoes, it hopes to
-give you a literature that will help you to be satisfied with your
-diet of potatoes and your burden of beans. For in truth, the editor
-of Trotwood’s Monthly does not know all about potatoes nor beans nor
-corn. Indeed, he is willing to admit that any good farmer in all this
-country who knows his business knows more about it than the editor of
-Trotwood’s Monthly. For his business in life is literature. He has
-made it his profession, as the farmer or stockman has made farming and
-stock-raising his, and he has toiled at it through years in the heat of
-the noonday sun and often--often--while the world around him slept, by
-the light of a sleepless lamp. He will not try to tell you, therefore,
-of the things he knows but little about, neither will he attempt to
-carry intellectual coals to a new castle of newly mown hay. He will
-not attempt the impossible and the ridiculous; but if, in looking over
-his handiwork month after month, you find something to make you forget
-for awhile the burdens and problems of life; if through his magazine
-you learn to realize the unseen sweetness and independence of the life
-of him who claims kindred with the soil; if you are shown nature with
-truer eye, and learn to love her and all that is hers; if you catch,
-now and then, a spark of that finer spirit that burns so brightly in
-true literature, lighting the lamp of ambition in your boy or girl, and
-carrying you for a moment from the world of soil to the world of soul;
-if something in it uplifts you, and something amuses you and something
-in the special features by experts in the classes, who know, instructs
-and helps you, then you may know that Trotwood’s Monthly has done for
-you what it started out to do.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Trotwood’s Monthly will, each issue, contain special expert articles
-on subjects relating to its scope. There are four in this issue,
-and we have reason to be proud of all of them. This is an age of
-concentration, of specialization. It is the man who concentrates that
-accomplishes. Knowledge to-day is so vast and covers so great a scope
-that Solomon’s wisdom would scarcely attract attention unless the
-saffron press wrote him with pictures of his wives, and that might make
-some think he was not wise at all.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-LINES TO AN AUTOMOBILE.
-
-  Break, break, break,
-    Some other man’s face with glee,
-  Or shatter his collar-bone if you will,
-    But, pray, don’t run over me!
-
-  O, woe is the farmer’s boy
-    As he shouts with his sister at play.
-  But the chauffeur darts from a cloud of dust,
-    And carries a leg away.
-
-  O, woe is the man who drives
-    Where the automobile sweeps;
-  His horse butts into the wayside wall
-    And smashes the cart for keeps.
-
-  And the big machine goes on,
-    A-kiting over the hill,
-  But, O, for the touch of a vanished hand
-    And the sound of a voice that is still.
-
-  Break, break, break,
-    Whate’er in your path you see,
-  But an arm and an ear and a horse that is dead
-    Will never come back to me.
-
-  --From a Horseman.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-This is the page where all of those who wish to, or who have a message
-to tell, may come in and talk with Trotwood. Do not be backward--you
-are welcome. But be sure that what you write shall be of general
-interest to our readers. Remember that they are paying for the Monthly
-to be interested and instructed. So come in, but come in with something
-to say, something that will help others.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-For, indeed, Trotwood is optimistic. He believes in men and women; he
-has faith in humanity. He would have men look up, not down; forward,
-not backward. He is too busy doing to garner doubt and discouragement,
-those twins which come chiefly from idleness and unclear thinking.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Therefore, think clearly and live purely. For one depends upon the
-other. Believe in the men and women around you and they will soon begin
-to believe in themselves. Get into the habit of thinking and speaking
-kindly, for character as well as life is made up of habits. Believe in
-humanity. Try to be patient with fools. It is the most difficult of all
-things to do. Believe in humanity. Sometimes you will get a jolt, but
-when you come to weigh your own life, you will find that, taking it all
-in all, the world has been kinder to you than you have deserved.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-We may be pardoned for being often personal in this, the first issue
-of Trotwood’s Monthly, but we beg you to bear in mind that this issue
-was created hurriedly, and while we are not ashamed of it by any means,
-we did not have the chance to give it the scope it will soon attain.
-This is not a sectional monthly. Its aim is to cover the whole country
-North and South. We are selling farm literature--not farm products--and
-we will see that all sections, Michigan as well as Alabama, Maine as
-well as Texas, is represented. If you are not in it it will be your own
-fault.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-A bright literary woman--one who has written novels that have sold--in
-a personal letter, says: “The publication of a book figures to me as
-a marriage, in which the author is the woman, the publisher the man,
-and it is not well to let one’s heart ache too much over mistreated
-offspring in the way of books. Be glad that it is for a year. Just a
-year, that the contract is not for life, and that in it divorce is no
-disgrace, and with the optimistic belief that there is always to be
-better luck next time.”
-
-Was ever anything better said?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The most encouraging news comes from the bedside of that veteran
-breeder, Capt. M. C. Campbell, of Cleburne Farm. Capt. Campbell has
-been very ill for over a month, and once it looked as if the owner of
-Brown Hal and the breeder of more great Jerseys and pacing horses than
-any living man, would not recover. But the life he has led has been
-clean and pure, and his strength was great. Like the great Tennessee
-pacers he has bred he proved game, and his friends, and they are
-counted all who know him, are happy to think he is now on the road
-to recovery. No man in the State has made a higher mark for honesty,
-manhood and all that makes a man than Capt. M. C. Campbell, and may he
-live long and prosper.
-
-In a personal letter from his son, Mr. Allen Campbell, who is also
-manager of Cleburne Farm, he writes that they have some of the greatest
-colts and Jerseys ever seen at that famous nursery. Several of their
-colts are showing extreme speed, among them being the young son of
-Brown Hal, dam by Bay Tom, that Cleburne Farm has reserved to take
-Brown Hal’s place. He is showing 2:10 speed as a three-year-old. Two
-colts by Direct 2:05-1/2, one out of the dam of Twinkle 2:06-1/2, are
-showing up very fast. Trainer John Walker has a dozen head of Mr.
-Geers’ stable training them at Cleburne’s famous mile track.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Speaking of John R. Gentry’s influence at Ewell Farm Mr. Geo. Campbell
-Brown writes:
-
-“It is the aim of Ewell Farm to breed beauty and let speed stand as a
-secondary consideration, and for this reason it continues the use of
-McEwen, one of the grandest individuals in the country, as shown by his
-long list of showing prizes and of John R. Gentry, a horse of perfect
-conformation and unbeaten in the show ring.
-
-“The Hal strain at Ewell Farm is being perpetuated by Hal Brown,
-certainly one of the most successful young sires of that breed.
-
-“The brood mares at Ewell Farm are in proportion to the numbers owned
-there, the greatest collection of producers in the United States. No
-less than four have produced four each to beat 2:30, and ten are
-producers of 2:10 or better horses, while one has thrown a world’s
-champion.
-
-“The blood of Sweepstakes, dam of Star Pointer, is better represented
-at Ewell Farm than at any other farm in the country. Two of her
-granddaughters, Mabel Best and Windsweep, daughters of Villette, sister
-to Star Pointer, being owned there, and both have foals by John R.
-Gentry.
-
-“Of the dozen yearlings at Ewell Farm by John R. Gentry, only one
-has been trained, and he a trotter can now show a 2:52 gait. He will
-certainly make a great trotter.
-
-“A three-year-old trotter by this great sire has beaten 2:20, and a
-three-year-old pacer, Gentry’s Star, can pace a mile in 2:10. The
-unparalleled beauty and speed of the youngsters by John R. Gentry
-foreshadows his future fame as a sire, and it is a safe prediction that
-he will more than equal his sire, Ashland Wilkes, that has for several
-years been the leading sire of new 2:30 performers. Analysis of records
-in John R. Gentry’s pedigree show him to be the fastest and best son of
-Ashland Wilkes. This horse is in turn the best representative of Red
-Wilkes, the greatest speed sire of all the sons of George Wilkes, whose
-strain has been preeminent in the trotting world for twenty-five years.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Trotwood can vouch for every word of the following letter. He visited
-the great Dakota prairies last fall. Such vastness, such fertility,
-such lands!
-
-  Fargo, N. D., August 15.
-
-Editor Trotwood’s Monthly:
-
-When I was a resident of your country I thought then that there was
-only one God’s country, and that was the Central Basin of Tennessee. My
-reason for arriving at such a conclusion was the land in the Central
-Basin, but more particularly in and around Maury County, had maintained
-its fertility and wonderful productive power for a hundred years with
-only the ordinary American style of farming. That is, taking all out
-of the land and putting nothing back again. But since that time a
-discovery has been made which accounts for the land in your section
-of country maintaining its wonderful endurance for raising such an
-excellent quality of wheat over a period of seventy years, without
-rotation of crops, and that is the almost inexhaustible deposit of
-phosphate rock that underlies so much of your lands. But I have found
-another God’s country. While it cannot boast of being underlaid with
-phosphate rock like your lands in and around Maury County, but when
-this country was opened up for settlement in the ’70’s it was as
-rich in all the constituent elements of fertility as the lands in
-the Central Basin of Tennessee. This Red River Valley is a wonderful
-country, and Fargo, N. D., is the center of this granary of the great
-Northwest. Although Fargo is not a very large city, the population is
-about twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants, it is a live town, and
-full of enterprising business men.
-
-This town is the third largest farm implement distributing point in the
-world. That’s saying a good deal. Moscow, Russia, comes first; Kansas
-City second, and Fargo third. According to the Bureau of Statistics,
-United States Department of Agriculture, for 1904, the State of North
-Dakota produced some fifty-four million bushels of wheat and the set
-counties in the Red River Valley raised of the above amount nearly
-twelve million bushels. This is not counting the Minnesota side of
-the Red River Valley. The farmers in the Red River Valley seem to be
-pretty well fixed. The great Dalrymple farm is in this county of Cass.
-These gentlemen farm about 30,000 acres of wheat land. The soil in
-this valley is a rich, black, glacial drift, and though it is not corn
-country, not being warm enough, yet all other farm products do fine
-(there is an immense crop this year), as wheat, oats, barley, rye,
-buckwheat, flaxseed, hay and the most excellent Irish potatoes are
-raised here, and 200 bushels per acre is a fair crop. But the farmers
-in the Red River Valley have been raising wheat almost exclusively for
-the past twenty-five years, and wheat of fine quality. But if they want
-to maintain the reputation of this land as a wheat-growing country, the
-farmers will have to put on their considering caps and ask you Maury
-Countians to send them up some acid phosphate to put and keep their
-land in balance, so that they can go on and again raise No. 1 hard
-wheat.
-
-  WM. DENNISON.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-TO MY FRIENDS:
-
-Pardon this final word as the magazine goes to press, but Trotwood is
-gratified to see that subscriptions are pouring in from every corner of
-the United States, from Canada and from Mexico. Far away Halifax, N.
-S., sends a good list in the same mail with New Braunsfels, Southern
-Texas.
-
-I am indeed proud of this, for it is the work of my personal friends,
-whose loyalty and friendship have no measure; who in the past have
-sent me words of comfort and cheer, in my fight through the columns of
-that great turf journal, “The Horse Review,” for what I conceived to
-be clean living, clean thinking, clean racing and clean and hopeful
-literature.
-
-I have longed for this day when I might talk to my many friends
-through the columns of my own publication, and in the department “With
-Trotwood” I want to meet you often, and I want you to meet each other.
-
-To my old tried and true friend, John C. Bauer, of the Chicago Horse
-Review, whose firm and lasting friendship has helped to make life
-pleasant, and whose sterling manhood and unfailing courtesy in the
-twelve years that I was associated with the Horse Review, has endeared
-him to me and given me greater faith in man, I extend my hearty and
-sincere thanks for the unselfish way in which he has so cheerfully and
-willingly helped in starting us down the track of literature toward
-what promises to be a successful goal.
-
-To my many other friends who have responded so liberally with their
-dollars and who have been so free with their expressions of loyalty and
-good will, I thank you one and all, and I wish that I could meet each
-and every one of you, and with a hearty handshake tell you how much I
-appreciate your friendship and your encouragement.
-
-With my very best wishes and regards to all, I am sincerely yours,
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-A word from the Business Manager:
-
-If you feel friendly toward Trotwood, no doubt you feel just as
-friendly toward “Trotwood’s Monthly.” I want every reader of this
-monthly to write us a letter, sending us the names and address of your
-friends whom you think would be interested in this monthly. I will mail
-them a sample copy with your compliments, and ask them to join us in
-making what we hope to make--=The greatest farm and horse magazine in
-the world=. Respectfully,
-
-  E. E. SWEETLAND,
-  Business Manager.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-TRAFFIC
-
-A large tree has just been cut from the land of Mr. J. R. Marshall,
-four miles from Columbia. At its base it was sixteen feet in diameter,
-and out of it five logs ten feet long were cut, containing 7,650 feet
-of lumber. The top of the tree made thirteen cords of wood.--Columbia
-(Tenn.) Herald.
-
-  And I would weep for thee, thou monarch of the wood,
-  Thou king that long the scorn of Time has stood.
-  King by the royal right of strength alone--
-  With star-crowned head bared to the circling zone--
-  Of good deeds done, of sweetness and of mirth,
-  Scion of the sun, defender of the earth--
-          O, I would weep for thee.
-
-  And I would mourn for thee, ay, truly mourn,
-  For what thou wast, and all that thou hast borne.
-  Brother to the skies, companion to the hills,
-  Comrade of the clouds and mother of the rills,
-  Gatherer of dews, garnerer of herb and flowers,
-  Guardian of the muse in trysting twilight hours--
-          O, I would mourn for thee.
-
-  And I would honor thee for what thou’st done,
-  Scorner of winter’s wind and summer’s sun,
-  Builder of birds’ nests, brewer of bubbling pool,
-  Painter of shadows dark on landscapes cool,
-  Wafter of odors sweet on summer’s breeze;
-  Warrior of winter’s sleet and biting freeze--
-          O, I would honor thee.
-
-  And I would reverence thee, thou hoary one,
-  Thou who hast stood while centuries have run,
-  Thou who hast seen the Indian lover stand
-  While virgin moon smiled down on virgin land--
-  The ax, the rifle of the pioneer--
-  All these have passed, and all had left thee here--
-          And I would reverence thee.
-
-  O, Ax of Traffic, buzzing Saws of Trade,
-  Dost think for thee alone the Earth was made?
-  For thee, to garner clean her fields of corn,
-  With barren hills to greet the babe unborn;
-  For thee, to glutton in her sweet-stored vine!
-  And leave no grape on fainting Future’s vine?
-
-  JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Fortunate is the man who has found his lifework, and--his Jonah._
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Build--for if you build at all you will build better than you know._
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-  1:59-1/2 =EWELL FARM= 2:00-1/2
-  (Established 1870.)
-
-  GEORGE CAMPBELL BROWN and PERCY BROWN
-  Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee
-
-  _SHETLAND PONIES JERSEY CATTLE_
-  _TROTTING and PACING HORSES_
-  _SOUTHDOWN SHEEP_
-
-[Illustration: John R. Gentry 2:00-1/2.]
-
-IN THE STUD
-
-=JOHN R. GENTRY 2:00-1/2=, the handsomest of all turf horses. Has held
-ten world’s records. Twice grand champion for one and three heats. A
-winner in =Madison Square Garden=. A sire of pronounced beauty, speed
-and intelligence. Sires both trotters and pacers of extraordinary speed
-and destined to be the greatest sire in the world. =Fee, $100.00.=
-
-The =SHETLANDS= at =Ewell Farm= have been selected with great care,
-especial attention having been paid to beauty, uniformity in size (36
-to 42 inches), and docility of temper. Not for many years have these
-ponies failed to delight their purchasers. Geldings 1 to 3 years old
-for sale.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
-mentioned.
-
-Punctuation has been made consistent.
-
-Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
-the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
-been corrected.
-
-p. 26: The description of the test plots is missing a description for
-No. 1, and the description given for No. 1 is actually for No. 3.
-
-The following change was made:
-
-p. 30: delvered changed to delved (the deep-delved cellars)
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1,
-October 1905, by Various
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, OCTOBER 1905 ***
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