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+Project Gutenberg's Hope Farm Notes, by Herbert Winslow Collingwood
+
+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: Hope Farm Notes
+
+Author: Herbert Winslow Collingwood
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2020 [EBook #63243]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOPE FARM NOTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
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+
+
+
+                             HOPE FARM NOTES
+
+                                   BY
+                         HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
+
+                             REPRINTED FROM
+                          THE RURAL NEW YORKER
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                       HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
+                                  1921
+
+                           COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
+                    HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+                        THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
+                              RAHWAY, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    L. D. C. AND A. F. C.
+    WHO REPRESENT
+    “_The Hen with one Chicken_”
+    AND
+    _The Chicken_.
+
+
+Most of these notes were originally printed in the _Rural New-Yorker_
+from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers
+of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of
+them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection,
+and I wish to acknowledge here the great help which I have received
+from my daughter, Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has
+been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological order. “A Hope
+Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother” were originally printed in 1902. The
+others follow in the order of their original publication. The reader
+must understand that the children alluded to represent two distinct
+broods,—the second brood appearing just after the sketch entitled
+“Transplanting the Young Idea.” From the very first the object of these
+notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful
+side of Farm Life.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+    THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN                   1
+
+    A HOPE FARM SERMON                          21
+
+    GRANDMOTHER                                 26
+
+    LAUGHTER AND RELIGION                       33
+
+    A DAY IN FLORIDA                            38
+
+    THE BASEBALL GAME                           45
+
+    TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA                51
+
+    THE SLEEPLESS MAN                           58
+
+    LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY                          63
+
+    UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY                       69
+
+    A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE                        75
+
+    LOUISE                                      82
+
+    CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY                         88
+
+    “THE FINEST LESSON”                         94
+
+    “COLUMBUS DAY”                             107
+
+    THE COMMENCEMENT                           114
+
+    “ORGANIZATION”                             122
+
+    THE FACE OF LIBERTY                        130
+
+    CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR                     138
+
+    “SNOW BOUND”                               147
+
+    “CLASS”                                    155
+
+    “I’LL TELL GOD”                            163
+
+    A DAY’S WORK                               171
+
+    PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY                 181
+
+    COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL          189
+
+    HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES                   198
+
+    THE INDIANS WON                            206
+
+    IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL                         214
+
+    OLD-TIME POLITICS                          224
+
+
+
+
+HOPE FARM NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN
+
+
+As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set out for me every
+day. During the Winter it was sawing and splitting wood. Our barn stood
+so that somehow on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road, and
+it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other was turned so it was
+always cold and frosty, with little if any sun. The hens, the cow and the
+sheep always made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented the
+comfortable and the bright side of life. The old gentleman who brought
+me up always put the woodpile on the frosty side of the barn. He argued
+that if the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would stop to look
+at the passers-by, feel something of the joy of living, and stop his work
+to absorb a little of it. We were brought up to believe that labor was
+a curse, put upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and
+never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side, he must move fast in
+order to keep warm. He would not stop to loaf in the sun, he could not
+throw stones or practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens
+on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was that the boy would
+accomplish more on the frosty side, and realize that labor represented
+the primal curse which somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the
+farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed much of my life on the
+frosty side of the barn, silent and thoughtful, while the hens cackled
+and sang on the sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could not
+see that the thing which made the hens lay would surely make the boy work.
+
+There will always be a dispute as to whether a boy or a man does his
+best work under the spur of necessity, or out of a full bag of the oats
+of life. And they do it with greater or less cruelty as more or less of
+their life has been spent on the frosty side. I never yet saw a self-made
+man who did anything like a perfect job on himself. They usually spoil
+their own sons by giving them too easy a time, while work is a necessity
+in building character. Work without play of some sort is labor without
+soul, and that is one of the most cruel and dangerous things in the
+world. I have noticed that most men who pass their childhood on the
+frosty side of the barn have what I call a squint-eyed view of youth.
+They spend a large part of their time telling how they had to work as
+a boy, and how much inferior their own sons are since they do not have
+chores to do. That man’s boys will pay no attention except when his eye
+is upon them, and rightly so, I think. The man looks across the table at
+mother, with a shake of his head, for is not the Smith family responsible
+for the fact that these boys do not equal their wonderful sire? I have
+learned better than to expect much sympathy from my boys for what
+happened 50 years ago.
+
+The old gentleman would come now and then and look around the corner of
+the barn to see if I was at work. The frosty side of the barn in youth
+has one advantage. It forces the boy to think and reason out the justice
+of life. Uncle Daniel had not read enough of history to know that Guizot,
+the great French historian, says that the only thing which those who
+represent tyranny, injustice or evil are afraid of _is the human mind_.
+What he means is that whenever you can get the plain, common people to
+think clearly and with their own brains, they will sooner or later wipe
+off the slate of history and write freedom in big letters. On the sunny
+side I think I should have talked and so rid myself of my thought before
+it could print itself upon my little brain, but there on the frosty side
+of the barn I know that I said little, but reasoned it out with the clear
+wisdom of childhood. If Uncle Daniel had been a student of Shakespeare,
+he would have gone straight to that famous passage in Julius Cæsar which
+probably expresses the thought of 90 per cent of the humans capable of
+thinking, who have ever lived to maturity:
+
+  “Let me have men about me that are fat,
+  Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;
+  Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
+  He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
+
+I was thinking out my problem, and I want to tell you younger men that
+the questions which started at the teeth of my saw on the frosty side
+of that old barn have cut their way through the years, and chased
+and haunted me all through life. The injustice of labor and social
+conditions—that is the foundation of the trouble in the world. Upon
+it all helpful education should be based. Youth’s ideals will always
+chase you like that, if you give them half a chance, and you never can
+have better mental companions. I was trying to reason out one of two
+resolutions. Off in that dim future of manhood when I should grow up, my
+time would come, and I might have power over some other boy, or maybe a
+man. I could put him on the frosty or on the sunny side of the barn, as
+I saw fit. What would I do to him to pay for my session on the frosty
+side? Somehow I think it is natural for human beings to seek reparation
+and promise themselves to take their misfortunes out of someone else when
+their power comes. I think I should have grown up with something of that
+determination in mind had it not been for the poet Longfellow.
+
+Now you will smile, you successful farmers, you dry old analyzers and
+solemn teachers and you budding young hopes. What has poetry to do with
+farming or agricultural education? What did the poet Longfellow ever do
+for farming? Did he ever have a hen in an egg-laying contest that laid
+300 eggs in a year? Did he ever raise a prize pumpkin, or a prize crop of
+potatoes? Did he even originate the Longfellow variety of flint corn? Do
+not men need solid pith rather than flabby poetry in their thought? It is
+true that Longfellow would have starved to death on a good farm. Yet his
+poetry and the thought that went with it were one of the things that made
+New England dominate this country in thought. My childhood was passed
+at a time when we had no science to study. Bacteria were swimming all
+about us in the air, the food and the water. I had, no doubt, swallowed
+millions of them at every mouthful, and we grew fat on them. We had
+no books on science or bulletins, but every farmhouse had its copy of
+Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes. The best duck-raiser
+in our town was a man who could recite Bryant’s poem, “To a Water
+Fowl,” with his eyes shut. I think I could safely challenge many famous
+poultrymen to recite even one verse of that poem, yet who would say that
+he would not be a better poultryman and a better man if he could carry in
+his heart a few verses of that poem?
+
+  “There is a Power whose care
+  Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.”
+
+  ...
+
+  “He who from zone to zone,
+  Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
+  In the long way which I must tread alone,
+  Will lead my steps aright.”
+
+I had recited Longfellow’s “Resignation” in school. I gave it about as
+a parrot would, but on the frosty side of the old barn one verse shoved
+itself into my little brain:
+
+  “Let us be patient;
+  These severe afflictions
+  Not from the ground arise;
+  But oftentimes celestial benedictions
+  Assume this dark disguise.”
+
+Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it was a great thing for a
+boy to think about. I looked both words up in the dictionary and got,
+perhaps, half of their meaning. In all our town there seemed to be no one
+except our old minister to come around on the frosty side of the barn
+with comfort or promise, but this celestial benediction which the poet
+told about got right to you. It might even live under that awful pile of
+wood which I was to saw, and it would be worth the job of sawing it if I
+could find such a thing under the pile. I heard people speak of a “nigger
+in the woodpile” in terms of reproach, but a celestial benediction down
+under the wood was certainly entitled to all respect. I did not fully
+understand it, or what it meant, but it got into me and stayed there,
+where the multiplication table or the rule of square root never would
+remain. My belief is that if I had committed to memory in place of that
+poem some excellent classroom lecture at college I should have become a
+little anarchist, and gone through life pushing such people as I could
+reach toward the frosty side of the barn. As it was, that poem, repeated
+over and over, made me vow as a child that if I ever could influence or
+direct the lives of farmers I would do my best to see that they lived and
+did their work on the sunny side of the barn.
+
+In my day children were brought up on “the Scriptures and a stick,” both
+well applied, and yet all these “lectures and lickings” never stuck in
+my life as did the noble poetry we read in school, and the few pictures
+which hung on the walls of the home. There is a curious thing about some
+of these pictures. I am told of a case where two boys in the Tennessee
+mountains volunteered for the navy. Their mountain home was as far
+removed from the ocean as it well could be. They had never seen even a
+large pond. For three generations not one of their ancestors had ever
+seen the salt water. Yet these boys would not listen to any call for the
+army, but they demanded a place in the navy. The story came to an officer
+in a nearby camp, and he became interested and visited that home. Both
+father and mother were puzzled over the action of their boys, and they
+could not understand why Henry and William had demanded the ocean. As the
+officer turned away he noticed hanging on the wall in the living-room
+of that house the crude picture of a ship under full sail and on an
+impossible blue ocean. It had come into that family years before, wrapped
+around a package of goods, and mother had hung it on the wall. From their
+youth those boys had grown up with that picture before them, and it had
+decided their lives. It was stronger than the influence of father and
+mother—they could not overcome it. I speak of that in order that you men
+and women with children of your own may understand how the dreams, the
+poetry, the visions of youth may prove stronger influences than any of
+the science, the wisdom, or the fine examples you may put before your
+little ones.
+
+On the wall of our old living-room at home was a chromo entitled “Joseph
+and His Brethren.” It was an awful work of art. It showed a group of men
+putting a boy down into a hole in the ground. It would have made the head
+of an art department weep in misery, and yet it affected me deeply. I
+used to stand and study it, with the result that at least one chapter of
+the Bible gave me great joy, and that was the story of Joseph and his
+brothers. That story helped to keep me sweet and hopeful on the frosty
+side of the barn, for I reasoned it all out as I worked. Here, I thought,
+was a farm boy. He did rather more than his share of living on the frosty
+side, and see what he came to. I used to picture Joseph in mind as he
+came walking over the desert carrying his father’s instructions about the
+sheep and the management of the farm. His brothers saw him coming, and
+they said among themselves, “Behold, this dreamer cometh.” You see, even
+in those days, practical men could not understand the value of a dreamer,
+a poet or a thinker as the first aid to practical agriculture. I have no
+doubt that Joseph the dreamer often forgot to water the sheep. I have no
+doubt but that they got away from him when he was herding them, and so
+his brothers quickly got rid of him, and they sent him off to the place
+where they thought dreams never came true. And that is where they made
+their mistake, and the same mistake is often made in these days by other
+practical farmers, for dreams that are based on faith and pure ambition
+always come true. If Joseph had not been a dreamer, carrying the ideals
+of his childhood into Egypt, we can readily understand which side of the
+barn his brothers would have gone to when they appeared before him later.
+But Joseph was a man who remembered the dreams and the hopes of his
+childhood kindly; he gave those brothers the sunniest side of the barn,
+and by doing so he made himself one of the great men in history.
+
+You may surely take it from me that at some time in your life, if you
+prove worth the salt you have eaten, your State or your country will call
+you up before the judgment seat, and will say to you:
+
+“I demand your life. In your youth you had ideals of manhood and of
+service. I have trained you and given you knowledge. I now demand your
+life as proof that your old ideals were true.”
+
+That comes to all men not only on the battlefield, but in all the humble
+walks of life—the farm, the factory, the shop, wherever men are put
+at labor, and it means a life given to service, the use of power and
+knowledge, in order that men less fortunate may live on the sunny side of
+the barn.
+
+We had something of an illustration of this when America entered the
+great war. Many of us felt honestly that our boys were not quite up to
+the standard. We thought they were a little lazy, inefficient or spoiled,
+because they did not think as we did about labor and the necessity for
+work. We did not realize what the trouble was, and so we generally
+charged it to the influence of mother’s side of the family. We could not
+understand that by education, training and example, we had simply taught
+those boys only the material and selfish side of life. They demanded
+unconsciously more of its poetry and romance and thus the war swept
+them away in a blaze of glory. We suddenly woke up to find that under
+the inspiration of an unselfish desire, our lazy and careless boys had
+become the finest soldiers this world has ever seen. They were made so
+through the power of poetry and imagination, for “making the world safe
+for democracy” is only another name for making the great life offering
+in order that helpless men and women may know the comfort and glory of
+living on the “sunny side of the barn.”
+
+I think I have lived long enough and under conditions which fit me to
+know human nature better than most men know books. Our present improved
+man came from a savage. Originally man was a confirmed dweller on the
+frosty side of the barn. As human life has developed, the tendency has
+been for this man to run for a warm place on the sunny side. In order to
+get there, his natural tendency has been to crowd some weaker brother
+back into the frost. We may not like to admit it, but as we have crowded
+poetry and imagination and love out of agricultural education, we have
+lost track of the thought that there is one great duty we owe to society
+for the great educational machine she has given us. That one great life
+duty is to try to carry some more unfortunate brother out of the frost
+into the comfort of the sunny side of the barn. We are too much in the
+habit of trying to leave this practical betterment to the Legislature
+or to the Federal Government, when it never can be done unless we do it
+ourselves, as a part of human sacrifice. You must remember that in spite
+of all our scientific work, the world is still largely fed and clothed
+by the plain farmers, whose stock in trade is largely human nature and
+instinct. The shadow which undoubtedly lies over farming today is due to
+the fact that too many of these men and women feel that they are booked
+hopelessly to spend their lives on the frosty side of the barn.
+
+It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep resentment,
+such as in a very much smaller way came to me as a little boy, for
+you will see how real and true are the ideals of childhood. The great
+aim of all education should be to find some way of putting poetry and
+imagination into the hearts of the men and women who are now on the
+frosty side of the barn. There is more in this than any mere increase
+of food production, or increase of land values. A great industrial
+revolution is facing this nation. Such things have come before again and
+again. They were always threatening, and every time they appeared strong
+men and women feared for the future of their country. Yet in times past
+these dark storms have always broken themselves against a solid wall of
+contented and prosperous freeholders. They always disappear and turn into
+a gentle, reviving rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That
+is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken apart and remade,
+better than ever before, by skilled and happy workmen. It is on the
+frosty side of the barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down and
+destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can be no human progress
+except that which is finally built upon contentment and faith. Men and
+women must be brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to
+remain the land of opportunity, and such men and women as we have here
+must do the work.
+
+If you ask me how this is to be done, I can only go back to childhood
+once more for an illustration. I know all the characters of the following
+little drama. We will call the children John, Mary and Bert. John and
+Mary were relatives of the old gentleman who owned the farm, and they
+came for a long visit. Bert was the farm boy, put out to work on that
+farm for his board and clothes, one of the thousands of war orphans who
+represented a great legacy which the Civil War had left to this country.
+John and Mary were bright and petted and pampered. You know how such
+smart city children can usually outshine and outbluff a farm boy. The
+woman of the house, a thrifty New England soul, decided that this was her
+chance to get the woodshed filled with dry wood, and so she put the three
+children at it. Before Bert knew what was going on, those city children
+had it all “organized.” Bert was to work on the frosty side of the barn
+where the woodpile was, and he was to saw and split all the wood. John
+played until Bert had split an armful, then John carried it about two
+rods to the shed, where Mary took it out of his arms and piled it inside.
+I have lived some years since that time, and I have seen many enterprises
+come and go, and if that arrangement is not typical of thousands of cases
+which show the relation between the farmer and middleman and handler, I
+have simply lived and observed in vain, _and Bert represented the farmer_.
+
+And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange for that
+combination was still more typical. Now and then the woman would think
+the woodshed was not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery
+to labor was necessary. She would then come out with half a pie, or a
+few cookies, to stimulate the work. Strange to say, the distribution of
+this prize was always given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely
+useless work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies were
+handed to her for distribution. For a great many centuries, it must be
+said that the farmer never had much of a chance with the town man when it
+came to receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution of that
+pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths of it, and handed the
+balance to Bert, for even then those city children had formed the idea
+that a silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast of burden,
+fit for the frosty side of the barn.
+
+And just as happens in other and larger forms of business, there were,
+in that toy performance of a great drama, forms of legislative bribery
+for middlemen and farmers. Those children were told that if they would
+hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive pleasure and a
+present. John and Mary, as middlemen, might go to the circus, while the
+boy on the saw would receive a fine present. This would be a book which
+told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood in two weeks,
+and then asked his mother if he couldn’t please go down the road and
+saw five cords more for a poor widow woman during his play time. Ever
+since the world began, that seems to have been the idea of agricultural
+legislation. The real direct pleasure and profit have gone to John and
+Mary, while to Bert has gone the promise of an education which will teach
+him how to work a little harder. Looking back over the world’s history,
+the most astonishing thing to me is that society has failed to see that
+the best investment of public money and power is that made closest up to
+the ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have received
+it, largely because they have been able to organize and make a stronger
+appeal to the imagination.
+
+Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where
+the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came
+one day particularly cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty
+wood to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for play, and put an
+extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just how the battle started; it may have
+been caused by Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world
+the relations between two boys and a girl have upset all calculations
+and changed the course of history. Or it may be that the spirit of
+injustice boiled up in the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away
+his peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found fault because he
+did not work faster, Bert dropped his saw and tackled the tormentor. If I
+am to tell the truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science at
+all about the battle which that boy put up for the rights of farm labor.
+He should, I suppose, have imitated some of the old heroes described
+by Homer and Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most
+effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and I regret to say
+that he lowered his head, and, without regard for science, butted John in
+the stomach and knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took hold of
+his hair with both hands, and proceeded to pound his head on the frosty
+ground, while Mary danced about, not caring to interfere, but evidently
+waiting to bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John was
+getting ready to call “enough” the kitchen door opened and out came the
+woman of the house with the old minister.
+
+She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice as she peered
+over her spectacles at the boys on the ground, and the three children
+were arraigned before her. “What shall I do with these children? I shall
+never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on these children
+already, and see how little they have piled, and here they are fighting
+over it. I think the best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the
+saw.”
+
+I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister as he rolled up
+his wrinkles and prepared to answer. It was worth a good deal to see how
+he looked out of the corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.
+
+“My good friend,” said he, “this is not a case for prayer or for
+punishment, or for investigation, or for education. It is a case for
+an adjustment of labor and pie. That boy on the saw has been doing
+practically all of the work, and getting almost nothing of the reward. He
+is discouraged, and I don’t blame him. You cannot crowd more work out of
+him with a stick. Move him out into the sun, give him the pie, and let
+him eat his share and distribute the rest. Make the other boy split and
+carry and pile all that wood, and put that girl at washing windows. _The
+closer you put the pie up to the sawbuck, the more wood you will have
+cut._”
+
+Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that does not tell the
+whole story. It is the pie of life, or the fair distribution of that pie,
+which leads men and women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need
+most of all in this country is some power like that of the old minister,
+who can drive that thought home to human society, and it will not be
+driven home until our leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more
+of the poetry and the imagination which lead men and women to attempt the
+impossible and work it out. You will not agree with me when I say that in
+a majority of the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle,
+humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the harder and sterner
+influence of science and sharp business practice. As the years go on you
+will come to see that I am right.
+
+I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for some of us to
+understand, for modern education has led us away from the thought. In
+our grasp for knowledge we have tried to substitute science entirely
+for sentiment, forgetting that the really essential things of life
+cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together by faith. In
+reaching out after power we have tried too hard to imitate the shrewd
+scheming of the politician and the big interests. We have failed thus far
+because we have neglected too many of our natural weapons. Over 200 years
+ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:
+
+“I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to make
+all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”
+
+Andrew Fletcher’s wise man knew what he was talking about. Very likely
+some of you older people can remember the famous Hutchinson family in
+the days before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire farmhouse
+where they were raised. It was just a group of plain farmers who traveled
+about the country singing simple little songs about freedom. That plain
+farm family did more to make the American people see the sin of slavery
+than all the statesmen New England could muster or all the laws she could
+make. There was little science and less art about their singing, but it
+was in the language of the common people and they understood it.
+
+  “The ox bit his master;
+    How came that to pass?
+  The ox heard his master say
+    ‘All flesh is grass!’”
+
+There came a crisis in the Civil War when soldier and statesman stood
+still wondering what to do next, for they were powerless without the
+spirit of the people. Then William Cullen Bryant wrote the great song in
+which he poured out the burning thought of the people:
+
+          “We’re coming, Father Abraham,
+            Three hundred thousand more,
+          From Mississippi’s winding stream
+            And from New England’s shore.
+          We leave our plows and workshops,
+            Our wives and children dear,
+          With hearts too full for utterance,
+            But with a silent tear.
+
+  “We’re coming, we’re coming, the Union to restore;
+  We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!”
+
+Had it not been for such songs and the spirit they aroused the Civil War
+never could have been won. We now understand that during the great war
+the French army was at the point of mutiny, and was saved not by stern
+discipline but by a renewal of its spiritual power. I think it will be as
+hard as for a man to try and lift himself by his boot straps to try to
+put farming into its proper place through science and material prosperity
+alone. We need poets to give us songs and playwrights to put our story in
+such pictures that the world must listen to it and understand. The one
+great thing which impels us to work on and fight is the hope that the
+property which we may leave behind us will be safe and put to reasonable
+use. Some of us may leave cash and lands; others can give the world only
+a family of children, but at heart our struggle is to see that this
+heritage may be made safe.
+
+For most of us make a great mistake in locating a storage place for the
+heritage which we hope to leave to the future. We work and we toil; we
+struggle to improve conditions; we strive to capitalize our worry and our
+work into money and into land in order that our children may carry on our
+work. Have you ever stopped to think who holds the future of all this?
+Many of you no doubt will say that the future of this great nation lies
+in the banks and vaults of the cities where money is piled up mountains
+high. We have all acted upon that principle too long, digging wealth
+from the soil and then sending it into the town for investment, until
+we have come to think that our future lies there. We are wrong; it is a
+mistake. The future of this land, and all it means to us, lies in the
+hands of little children, who are playing on the city streets or in the
+open fields of the country, and it is not so much in their hands as in
+the pictures which are being printed on their little minds and souls.
+And this future will be safer with poetry and imagination than with the
+multiplication table alone.
+
+I know about this from my own start in life. I was expected to be
+satisfied with work until I was 21, and then have a suit of clothes and a
+yoke of oxen. One trouble with the farmers of New England was that they
+thought this a sufficient outfit for their boys. I think I might have
+fallen in with that plan and contented my life with it had it not been
+for a crude picture which hung in the shop where we pegged shoes. It was
+a poor color scheme, a perfect daub of art, in which some amateur artist
+had tried to express a thought which was too large for his soul. A bare
+oak tree, with most of its branches gone, was framed against the Winter
+sky. It was evening; a few stars had appeared, and the sky was full of
+color. The artist had tried to arrange the stars and the sky colors so
+that they represented a crude American flag, with the oak tree serving
+as the staff. His great unexpressed thought was that at the close of
+the Civil War God had painted His promise of freedom on the sky in the
+coloring of that flag. As a child, that crude picture became a part of
+my life. I have never been able to forget the glory of it, as I have
+forgotten the meanness, the poverty, the narrow blindness of our daily
+lives, so that all through the long and stormy years, wherever I have
+walked, I have seen that flag upon the sky, and I have waited hopefully
+for the coming of the sunrise of that day when, through the work of real
+education, when with the help of such men and such women as are here
+today, every hopeless man, every lonely woman, every melancholy child
+upon a sad and desolate hill farm, may feel the thrill of opportunity,
+and the joy and the glory of living upon the sunny side of the barn.
+
+
+
+
+A HOPE FARM SERMON
+
+
+No use talking, the best part of a vacation is getting home. We were all
+sorry to leave Cape Cod. To tell you the truth duty seemed to be stuck
+full of thorns a foot long as we looked back at it from the easy bed of a
+loafer on his vacation. No wonder the poor little Bud cried when our good
+host kissed her good-bye. We looked at her with much the same expression
+as that on the face of the woman who missed an important train by half a
+minute and listened to the forcible remark of a man who was also left! We
+got over that, however. The harness was put on our shoulders so gently
+that we hardly felt it, and here we are again with a soft pad of gentle
+and happy memories to put where the rub comes hardest. Everything was
+all O. K. at home. Grandmother was in good spirits, the Chunk reported
+good sales, and the weather had been fair for farm work. The boys had
+the corn all cleaned up and the weeds mostly cut. The strawberries have
+been transplanted; the alfalfa clipped off; the squashes have grown into
+a perfect tangle of vines, the sweet potatoes look well, and there is no
+blight in the late white ones! The children found nine new little pigs
+and 30 new chickens waiting them. Yes! Yes! It was a happy homecoming. I
+climbed the hill on Sunday and looked off over the old familiar valley.
+There were the same glorious old hills with the shadows chasing along
+them, the little streams stealing down through their fringes of grass
+and bushes, the cultivated fields, and the homes of neighbors peeping
+out through the orchards! Surely home is a goodly place after all. Other
+places are good to come away from, but home is the place to go to!
+
+Now, I know that many of my readers are in trouble. I am, and every
+mail brings news from people who are carrying crosses and facing hard
+duties with more or less bravery. There are women left alone on the farm,
+striving to drag a heavy heart through life. Men have seen wife and child
+pass away. Others have seen hopes and ambitions crushed out. This season
+has been hard for many. I will quote from a letter just at hand from
+central New York, where flood and storm have scarred the hillsides and
+ruined crops:
+
+“One neighbor hung himself; one says he shall have an auction and go to
+the old ladies’ home; another had the blues until he cried.”
+
+Now, in spite of all the talk we have of the Nation’s great prosperity, I
+know that there are thousands of sad hearts in country homes, sad because
+they have seen the cherished things of life and the work of self-denying
+years swept out of their grasp by a power which they could neither master
+nor comprehend. The picture of a strong man dropping his head upon the
+table and crying like a child is the saddest vision that can rise before
+our eyes. Farm life has its tragic side, and the sadness of it would
+crush us down at times if we would permit it to do so. No wonder men and
+women grow despondent when with each year comes a little more of the
+living blight which slowly destroys hope and faith in one’s physical
+ability to master the secret of happiness. I do not blame men and women
+who give way to despondency under pressure of griefs which have staggered
+me. I only regret that they cannot realize that for most of the afflicted
+of middle years the only true help is a moral one.
+
+I feel like repeating that last sentence, though it may come like the
+application of a liniment I knew as a boy. The old man who brought me
+up invented a certain “lotion.” Whenever I cut or burned my flesh that
+lotion bottle was hauled out, a hen’s feather inserted and a liberal
+allowance smeared over the wound. It was like rubbing liquid fire on the
+flesh, but it _did_ pull the smart out and carry it far away. I used to
+imagine that the “lotion” gathered the pain all into a lump and pulled it
+out by the roots with one quick twitch. One of the most helpful books I
+have ever read is a little volume entitled “Deafness and Cheerfulness.” I
+read it over and over, and I wish that every deaf man or friend of a deaf
+man could have it. I find in this little book the following message which
+I commend to all who feel their courage giving way:
+
+“The noblest dealing with misfortune is in manly silence to bear it;
+the next to the meanest is in feebleness to weep over it; the wholly
+unpardonable is to ask others to weep also.”
+
+With the first and third of these propositions I fully agree. It is not
+always a sign of weakness for a man to get off into solitude somewhere
+and find relief in tears. When the tear glands are completely dried up
+the man loses an element of character which all the iron in his will
+cannot replace. But “manly silence” _is_ the “noblest dealing with
+misfortune”—and also the hardest. It is human to cry out and complain at
+the pain of what we call injustice, but if the child is human should not
+the grown man be something more? What are years and the burning balm of
+experience given us for if not to enable us to rise up nearer to divine
+strength? As I look about me it occurs that most of us who have reached
+middle life or beyond have grown unconsciously away from childhood and
+youthful strength. We somehow feel that people ought to regard us as
+others did 25 years ago. The fat man of 45 is no longer the young sprout
+of 20, though he may think so. If I am not mistaken, one great trouble
+with many of us is the fact that we crave and beg for the things that
+go with youth when in reality we are grown-up men and women! It is our
+duty now to face life and its problems, not with the careless hope of
+youth, but with the sober and abiding faith that should come with mature
+years. Run over a child’s ambitions and, after his short grief, his
+spirits rise again for the next opportunity. The man’s hopes are shaken
+by repeated defeat, and hope of physical victory finds itself caged at
+every turn by former defeat. We may grieve or despond over this and play
+the child; or we may act the man, raise our hopes and ideals above the
+range of former defeat, and find comfort and courage in doing the things
+which shame infirmity and affliction. I know some of you will say that
+this complacent man may moralize—but give him a touch of trouble, and
+how he would whine! I hope not! Trouble has taken many a mouthful out
+of us but, if I thought any honest friend really meant that, it would be
+the greatest trouble of all. I repeat that the greatest comfort to the
+despondent must be a moral one, yet the riding of some harmless hobby
+helps one to walk with fortitude. Let a man say to himself that he will
+study and work to breed the finest pigs or raise the finest strawberries
+or master some science or public question, and he will find strength and
+comfort in his work! I’ll promise not to attempt any more preaching for
+a good while if you will let me end this little sermon with a quotation
+from Whittier:
+
+  “Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind;
+  Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined.
+  Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,
+  And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.
+  In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high
+  Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly.
+  But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight,
+  And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night.”
+
+
+
+
+GRANDMOTHER
+
+
+The last celebration of Thanksgiving was about the most startling that
+any of the Hope Farmers remember. I have passed this holiday under quite
+varied conditions. “Boy” on a New England farm and in a boarding-house,
+cattle herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a lumber camp, teacher in
+a country school district, hired man and book agent on a Michigan farm,
+“elocutionist” in a dramatic company, “professor of modern languages”
+(with a slim grip on English alone) in a young ladies’ seminary,
+printer’s devil in a Southern newspaper office, ditcher in a swamp, and
+other capacities too numerous to mention. A man may perhaps lay claim to
+a bit of helpful philosophy if he can find some fun in all such days and
+carry along in his mental pocket “much to be thankful for.” He is sure
+to come to a time in life when these “treasures of memory” will be very
+useful. I would not refer to family matters that might well be marked
+“private” and locked away with the skeleton in the closet if I did not
+know that the plain, simple matters of family record are things that all
+the world have in common.
+
+A pirate or a man trying to hide himself might have seen virtues in the
+dull, misty fog that settled upon the city the night before Thanksgiving.
+Grandmother had been slowly failing through the day. The night brought
+her greater pain than ever. All through these long months we had been
+able to keep from her the real nature of her disease. I took it upon
+myself to keep the children happy. If we grown-ups found it hard to be
+thankful we would see that the little folks put out enough thanks for the
+whole family. I took them down to the market to pick out a turkey! We had
+a great time, and finally found a turkey fat enough. The market man gave
+each of the children a handful of nuts—and they now want Mother to give
+him all her trade. They went home fairly radiant with happiness. Was it
+not better for them to go to sleep with the pleasant side of the day in
+their hearts rather than the shadow which the rest of us could feel near
+us?
+
+The morning came dark and dismal. It didn’t seem like Thanksgiving
+as the Bud and I went after the doctor. The clerks and professional
+people seemed to be taking a holiday, but the drivers, the diggers and
+heavy workmen were at their jobs as usual. The streets were filled with
+children dressed up in ridiculous costumes, wearing masks or with faces
+blackened. These urchins went about begging money from passers-by. Our
+little folks were rather shocked at this way of celebrating Thanksgiving.
+Where this ridiculous mummery came from or how it crept into a
+Thanksgiving celebration is more than I can say. It may be as close as a
+city child can come to thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest! Charlie
+and his family came in from the farm, and Jack came from his school.
+Grandmother made a desperate struggle and was finally able to sit up so
+that her children and grandchildren might be about her. As the children
+grew restless in the house I took them out and we walked along the
+river. My mind was busy with other matters relating to other days, but
+the little folks, happily, saw only the great bright side of the future.
+Their past was too small to cast any shadow. We went as far as Grant’s
+Tomb and passed through the room where the great general’s remains are
+lying. As we passed in, the Graft and Scion saw the men take off their
+hats and they did the same.
+
+“Why do they make you take off your hat?” asked the Graft, when we came
+out.
+
+I tried to explain to him that this was one of the things that people
+should not be _made_ to do. They should do it because they wanted to show
+their respect or reverence. I doubt if I made him understand it, for when
+a boy is hungry and other boys are playing football in a nearby vacant
+lot even the gentlest sermon loses its point. Our dinner was such a
+success that we did not have chairs enough to go around. The children had
+to sit on boxes and baskets. A taste of everything from turkey down went
+in to Grandmother, but she could eat little. The plates came back again
+and again until the Hope Farm man was obliged to say:
+
+“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over after all.”
+
+He had not only to turn it over but scrape many of the bones clean. The
+farm folks finally went home and Jack too was obliged to go. Happily
+the little folks were tired out and they were asleep early. About two
+o’clock Mother woke me. She did not do it before, because it might have
+alarmed Grandmother, who did not, I think, clearly understand her
+true condition. There was apparently no pain or struggle at the end.
+We noticed that her face lighted up with a strange, puzzled look, of
+surprise and wonder—and well it might when one is called upon to lay
+down the troubles and toil of such a life as hers in the dim, mysterious
+country which one must die to enter.
+
+Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to tell the children about it.
+They must have known that some strange thing was happening. They woke up
+early and saw the undertaker passing through the room. Then Mother got
+them together and told them that poor Grandmother had suffered so long
+that God pitied her and had taken her to Him. The little folks sat with
+thoughtful faces for a while and then one of them said with wide-open
+eyes:
+
+“Is Grandmother _dead_ then?”
+
+And so the body of poor Grandmother passed away from us while her spirit
+and memory passed deeper than ever into the lives of the Hope Farm folks.
+Life with her had ceased to be comfortable. It was merely a steady,
+hopeless struggle against pain and depression. Mother was able to go
+through these long months calmly and hopefully because she knows that her
+mother had every service that love could render. It is with that thought
+in mind that I feel like saying a solemn word to those whom I have never
+met, yet who seem to be as close as personal friends can be. Do not for
+an instant begrudge the money, the time or toil which you may spend upon
+those of your loved ones who need your help. That is a part of the cross
+which you must carry cheerfully or reject. Do not let those whom you
+serve see that it is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. It is not
+merely a part of hard, cold duty, but the vital force in the development
+of character. It may be that I am now talking to someone who is putting
+personal comfort above the self-denial which goes with the sacred trust
+which God has put into our lives. Where will the flag of “comfort” lead
+them when the discomforting days come? A conscience is a troublesome
+thing at best, but one that has been gently and truly developed through
+self-sacrifice is a better companion than the barbed finger of trouble
+thrust into the very soul at last by the relentless hand of fate!
+
+A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record
+of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts—coming
+from the best stock this country has ever produced. This is not the
+narrow-eyed, cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the hillside
+farms who went to the valleys and at the little water-powers laid the
+foundations of New England’s manufacturing. These sturdy people saw
+clearly into the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power of
+the valley streams they cultivated and restrained their own powers until
+the man as well as the machine became a tremendous force. Honorable
+misfortune befell this manufacturing family, but could not crush it.
+In those days the boys, under such circumstances, dropped all their
+own ambitions and took the first job that presented itself, without
+a murmur and with joy that they could do it. The girls did the same,
+though there were few openings for women then outside of housework and
+the schoolroom. Grandmother had a taste for music, and became a music
+teacher. She finally secured a position as teacher in a little town
+in Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm man was born
+she went into what was then a strange country for the daughter of a
+Massachusetts Abolitionist! What a journey that must have been, before
+the Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother was then. The South
+was in a blaze of excitement, yet this quiet, gentle Northern girl won
+the love and respect of all. There she met the man who was to be her
+husband—a young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted down by family
+cares, political convictions and ill health. He was a Union man whose
+family had made their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last.
+Grandmother was married and went to the South just before the storm
+broke. What a life that was in the dreary little town during those years
+of fighting! Her husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate
+service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon declare him too
+feeble and sick for even that desperate service. He cobbled shoes,
+leached the soil in old smokehouses for salt, and “lived” as best he
+could. Once he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of cotton
+which he sold to pay passage money to the North. After the war he was
+State Senator and Judge under the patched-up government which followed.
+Carpetbaggers and rascals from the North lined their pockets with gold
+and brought shame upon their party and torture and death to the ignorant
+black men who followed them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and
+thieving Grandmother’s husband never touched a dishonest dollar and did
+his best to give character to a despised and degraded race. Of course
+he failed, for the race did not have strength enough to see that what
+he tried to offer them was better than the hatred of their old masters
+and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held out. It was not all lost,
+for when he was buried I am told that around his grave there was a thick
+fringe of white people and back—at a respectful distance—acres of black,
+shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward stirring of manhood in
+hearts untrained yet appreciating true service to country.
+
+I speak of these things to make my point clear that Grandmother was a
+woman capable of supporting her husband through these trials and still
+capable of holding the love of those who opposed him. In the face of
+an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it this quiet,
+unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected and trusted by all. She
+took up her burdens without complaint, hid her troubles in her heart,
+and walked bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she found
+a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere Christian woman she
+lived and acted out her faith and did her life’s duty with dignity and
+cheerfulness. The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm
+and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed memories of her.
+
+
+
+
+LAUGHTER AND RELIGION
+
+
+I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who cannot laugh. He may
+have great learning or power or skill or wealth, but if fate has denied
+him a keen sense of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious
+flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we may call “the
+healing balm of tears.” Unless there chance to be some volcanic eruption
+of the heart they must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet,
+if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf see more of the
+ludicrous side of life than do those who have full hearing. It comes to
+be amusing to notice how men and women strive and worry over the poor
+non-essential things of conversation, and waste time and strength trying
+to make others understand simple things which the deaf man comes to know
+at a glance. Those who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear
+all the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may wonder why the
+inability to hear may act as a torture to the tender heart. They do not
+know how closely sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand
+without losing many of the finer things of life. Yet, as between the
+tearless man and the unfortunate soul who is denied the joy of laughter,
+the latter is more deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity but
+the other is nearer the gallows.
+
+One great reason why the negro race has come through its troubles with
+reasonable success is because fate has given the black man the blessed
+privilege of laughter. Many a time when other races would have gone out
+to rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or laugh his troubles
+away. So, as between the man who cannot weep or lash himself into a rage
+and he who cannot laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and
+far more to be pitied.
+
+I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject, as some years
+ago I was in the business of trying to inoculate some very serious and
+sad-minded people with the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so
+tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter to start them. I
+was stranded in a farm neighborhood in a Western State working as hired
+man through a very dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads
+when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a gloom and social
+stagnation which the modern town man can hardly realize. I did my work
+by day and at night went about to churches and schoolhouses “speaking
+pieces.” We called those gloomy and discouraged people together and tried
+to make them laugh.
+
+I remember one such entertainment held in a country schoolhouse far back
+in the mud of a January thaw. The dimly lighted room was crowded with
+sad-faced, discouraged men and women to whom life had become a tragedy
+through dwelling constantly upon their own troubles. At intervals during
+my entertainment two sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have
+made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful songs about
+beautiful women who died young or children who proved early in life
+that they were too good for this world. During one of these intervals a
+farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern artist can command
+a salary which enables him to ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood
+the financial manager was the boss.
+
+“See here now,” said the farmer, “we hired you to come here and make us
+laugh. Why don’t you do it? I’ve got my hired man in there. He’s all
+ready to go on a spree and he will do it if you don’t make him laugh. We
+have paid you $2.50 to come here and speak. That means $1.25 an hour or
+$12.50 for a 10-hour day. No other man in this neighborhood gets such
+wages. It’s big money, now go back and earn it. _Make that man laugh!_
+It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”
+
+There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity feeling that he would
+be a hero, the champion of the neighborhood, if he could hold humor at
+bay. When I went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by the
+stove and said it was the unanimous request of the audience that I should
+read or recite the “Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in
+my line, but who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years before
+I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the poem, and with the noble
+courage of youth I started the best imitation I could muster. No one, not
+even the author, ever considered the “Raven” as a humorous poem, but it
+struck the hired man that way. I had cracked jokes in and out of dialect.
+I had “made faces” and played the clown generally without affecting the
+hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of “Quoth the Raven—Nevermore!”
+the hired man exploded with a roar that shook the building, and the rest
+of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The rest of the audience
+joined with him, and long after the meeting closed and the lanterns
+twinkled down the dark and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter
+from the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there was about the
+“Raven” to explode that man I have never known. It changed his life.
+It broke a spring somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of
+laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood. The minister
+told me in the Spring that his people had received a great spiritual
+uplifting during the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the
+hired man.
+
+That same Winter I went to a church for another entertainment. I sat in
+the pulpit beside the minister and every time I stopped for breath he
+would lean over and whisper:
+
+“_Make them laugh! Give them something humorous! Make them laugh!_”
+
+He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It was a gloomy night.
+The people were sad and discouraged. Their religion was a torment to them
+at the time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I did my best
+with discouraging results. I will confess that I lost faith for once in
+my life and quit trying. There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer
+in the front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed my efforts
+straight to him. It came to be the one desire of my life to make that
+solemn-faced man laugh, and he would not do it. It seemed to me as if he
+sat there with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some wise old
+horse listening to the chatter of a young colt. I could not stir him and
+I confess that I quit ingloriously and “took up the collection.”
+
+But, when we all went out on the church steps while lanterns were being
+lighted and the boys brought up the horses I saw my solemn-faced friend
+talking with another farmer.
+
+“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the globe of his lantern, “how
+did you like the show?”
+
+“Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am so sore around my
+ribs that I’m going home to rub liniment on my sides.”
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that _I never come so nigh
+to laughing in the House of God as I done tonight_. When I get home out
+of sight of the elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and
+holler.”
+
+
+
+
+A DAY IN FLORIDA
+
+
+A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for him. He would
+rust out. There was “more life and human nature on Broadway, New York,
+in 15 minutes than in a week of Florida.” So I thought I would see how
+much “real human nature” the sun could observe as Putnam County revolved
+beneath his eye.
+
+As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly a cloud in the sky.
+The mercury stood at about 65 degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen
+from the orange trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the
+new leaves showed their light green against the darker old leaves. On
+the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove
+of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street,
+with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole
+in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For
+while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house
+door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every
+growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red hens with their broods
+of chickens ran about under the orange trees. In front of the house I
+found a group of “redheads and towheads” gathered around a fisherman who
+carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three young alligators and the
+children were buying them. They finally got the three for a dollar, and
+they intend taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to “raise”
+them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope Farm alligator. Finally
+the school bell rang and the older children scattered while the little
+ones played on. I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product in
+this locality. I understand there are but four white children of school
+age—not enough to maintain a school! There is a broken and abandoned
+schoolhouse here, but it has not been occupied for some years. There
+is a school for colored children. Our people opened a school here, but
+in this locality the State actually does more for educating colored
+children than for whites. Think over what that means and see if Broadway
+can match the “human nature” which comes out of such a situation. Our
+own children are rosy as flowers. They ought to be, for they have played
+out in the sun every day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot
+nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms—for that dread
+disease gets into the system through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter
+paradise for children and elderly people. As these children pen up their
+alligators and separate for school and play, an old man walks with firm
+and active steps down the shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old
+and is still planting a garden—very likely for the seventieth time! On
+the platform of the store he will meet a group of men who will sit for
+hours discussing the weather or looking off through the pines toward
+the blue lake. On Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set,
+anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce struggle for food,
+clothing, amusement and shelter. There is quite as much “human nature”
+about these slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun. In
+this little place where our folks have wintered there are nine different
+men who live alone. There are perhaps 30 voters in this district, and
+strange as it may seem they are about evenly divided between the two
+great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers have moved in
+here. They draw their pensions, work their gardens or groves and live
+in peace in this carefree land. “Human nature?” Ask these old soldiers
+with “warfare over,” as the sun goes down and they look out over the
+lake, why they ever came to Florida, and if they are disappointed. If you
+started a contest with a prize for the man who can take the longest time
+to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet it was in Florida
+that the world’s record for speed with a motor car was recently made.
+While some of our neighbors might consume two hours in going a mile, it
+was in Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27⅓ seconds. This
+contest in speed is a very good illustration of the contrary character of
+Florida climate and conditions. Many people fail here because they try to
+fit Broadway “human nature” to this balmy gentle land. You cannot use the
+same brand!
+
+The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man was working a mule
+on a cultivator—tearing up the surface of an old orange grove. The only
+auto in the town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough of
+the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing in the soft air.
+Charlie went by followed by a big colored man. They carry spades and
+axes for Charlie is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when
+a grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought home to be
+buried.
+
+Mother and I had planned to take the train at noon and go south for a few
+miles to do some shopping and look up a “colony” or land boom scheme.
+So we got ready and went to the station in ample time. And there we
+waited, as everyone else does in this land of tomorrow. An hour crawled
+by, and still there was nothing in sight up the track except the distant
+pines and the heat rising from the sands. No one quarrels with fate in
+Florida—what is the use? Under similar circumstances in New Jersey I
+should have been held in some way responsible for the delay, but here it
+did not matter—if the train did not come, another day would do. We waited
+about 100 long minutes and then the good lady announced that she was
+going home, as there would not be time to get around, and home she went,
+good-natured and smiling as the Florida sun.
+
+Let me add that the next day we waited nearly two hours again and then
+went home once more, but who cares whether he goes today or some future
+“tomorrow”?
+
+Having been cut out of our trip I became interested in the funeral. A
+little group of wagons was drawn up under the pines waiting for the
+train. I have said that an old resident was coming “home”—to be buried
+by the side of husband and relatives—in the rough little cemetery behind
+the pines. At last, a puff of thick smoke up the track showed where the
+dawdling train was showing the true speed of a hearse. Down the grade it
+came, halting with many a wheeze and groan in front of the little station
+where the fated box was taken off. Our little funeral procession was
+quickly made up. Uncle Ed drove old Frank ahead with the minister and the
+Hope Farm Man as passengers. Then came the dead in a farm wagon, and half
+a dozen one-horse teams straggling on behind. Your funeral on Broadway
+with its gilded hearse, black horses and nodding plumes might be far more
+inspiring. Who can say, however, that there was less of “human nature” in
+this little weatherbeaten string crawling over the Florida sand? I was
+thinking as we went how this dead woman had seen what seemed like the
+death of hope in this land. For right where we were passing, on these
+dead fields, she had seen orange groves in full fruitage, and had seen
+them all wiped out in a day of frost!
+
+You would have said that Charlie stood leaning on his spade beside two
+great heaps of snow. The soil was pure white sand, and as they threw
+it from the grave it had drifted in over the sides until no dark color
+showed. On Broadway there would have been an imposing procession, the
+organ pouring out tones that seemed to carry a message far beyond the
+comprehension of the living. Here in this lonely little clearing, my
+friend the minister led the way, the little group of mourners followed,
+and Charlie and Uncle Ed with a few neighbors carried the dead. I wish I
+could have had you there with me—you who say that life and human nature
+crowd into the “lively” places. I wish I could paint the picture as I saw
+it.
+
+The minister and the station agent’s wife began to sing. One of the men
+who helped carry the coffin laid down his load and joined the singers.
+They wanted me to make a quartette, but I am no musician and I could
+not have made a sound. It was better for me to stand in the background
+against a tree, by the side of the colored man who leaned on his shining
+spade and bowed his gray head. For does not the color line fade out at
+the grave? I wish you could have seen it, the trio of singers, the sad
+group under the pines, the earth piled up like snowdrifts, the pine tops
+quivering and moaning, and the Florida sun streaming over all. I felt the
+pine tree against which I leaned tremble as the wind blew through it.
+In a tree over us a gray squirrel turned his ear as if to listen. For
+gathered around those piles of glistening sand were men and women who
+carried all the world holds of “human nature”—tragedy, despair, hope,
+sorrow and peace. Not 100 feet from where I stood was a row of six little
+white stones where six old army comrades were buried. I studied their
+names, six men of the army and navy from New York, Maine, New Hampshire,
+South Carolina, Vermont and Ohio. There they lie in the sand, sleeping
+“the sleep that knows no waking.” And this woman wanted to be brought
+back to this lonely place that she might rest with her people. “Human
+nature?” I made a dull companion as old Frank toiled back with us to the
+village.
+
+Our folks had left the house and I followed them along the shady path to
+the lake. The younger people had been in bathing. They were sitting on
+the lake shore, the children were shouting and playing as they ran about
+the beach. I am glad they were not at the funeral. As Mother and I walked
+slowly back, the little ones came trailing on, waving branches of palm
+and singing. And there over the fence was our famous gallon-and-a-half
+cow—easily the most energetic citizen in the place.
+
+Night comes quickly in Florida and brings a chill with it. The sun seems
+to tumble directly into the west and to leave little warmth behind.
+Before we ended our slow walk home, darkness had fallen and Uncle Ed had
+started a grateful fire of logs. As if to demonstrate the Florida axiom
+that there are only two absolutely sure things—death and taxes—we found
+the county assessor before the fire. He had reached us on his rounds and
+was ready to tell us how much we owed the State. You will see therefore
+that the human life in Florida is much the same as anywhere else only
+“more so” for here there is no artifice or straining after effect. Men
+and women are naturally human—as they were meant to be.
+
+
+
+
+THE BASEBALL GAME
+
+
+“_Two strikes, three balls!_”
+
+A silence so intense that you could feel it fell upon 60,000 people who
+saw the umpire put up his hand to announce the second strike. It was the
+crisis of the first baseball game for the world’s championship between
+New York and Philadelphia. The great stands were black with people, and
+thousands more were perched upon the rocks which rose above the level in
+which the ball grounds are laid out. The boy and I sat on the bleachers.
+It was the only place we could get; we sat there three hours before the
+game began—and we were among the last to get in. Of course you will say
+we should have been at home picking apples—but without discussing that I
+will admit that we were packed away in that “bleacher” crowd.
+
+There were some 25,000 of us crowded on those wooden benches with our
+feet hanging down. Here and there in this black mass of hats a spot of
+lighter color showed where a woman had crowded in with the rest. There
+may have been 100 women in this crowd. The “stands” where the reserved
+seats are placed were bright with women’s gay colors. Our seats were not
+reserved, but well “deserved” after our struggle for them.
+
+I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of you have no doubt read
+that description in “Ben Hur” of the motley crowd which surged out to the
+Crucifixion. Gibbon describes the masses of humans who attended the Roman
+games. The world as known at that time gathered at these spectacles, yet
+I doubt if those old-time hordes could produce the variety of blood or
+color which showed within 1,000 feet of where we sat. Within four feet
+sat two colored men showing traces of two distinct African races. The
+young man on my right was certainly an Irishman. The fat man, who was
+wide enough to fill two seats, was a German. In front an Italian, behind
+a Swede, off there a Frenchman, a Spaniard and even a Chinaman. There
+was an Arab whose father ate dates in the desert. The son looked forward
+to this date as an oasis in the desert of hard work. Here were Indians,
+Japanese, Mexicans, Russians, Turks—the entire world had poured the blood
+of its races into that vast crowd. I do not believe the great Coliseum
+at Rome ever held a larger company. Yet this crowd was different. In
+the savage hordes of centuries ago the air was filled with a babel of
+sound—each race shrieking in its own language. This vast army of “fans”
+thought and spoke in the common languages of English and baseball. For
+there is a true language of baseball. Nothing can be popular unless it
+acquires a language of its own. It was an orderly crowd too. Somehow
+these waiting men seemed to feel that they had come to the hush and
+dignity of a great occasion. You may laugh at us—you poor unfortunate
+people who do not know a home run from a fly catch, but you have missed
+a lot of the thrill and joy of life. We feel sorry for you. To the true
+baseball crank this game represented the climax of the year, for here
+were the best 18 players in the world ready for the supreme struggle.
+So these thousands sat silent and watchful. As you know, when stirred
+by passion 60,000 people can give vent to the most hideous and awesome
+sound. Yet when stilled by the thought of what is to come the silence of
+this great army is most profound. Now, of course, you and I may say—what
+a pity that all these people and all the energy and money they represent
+could not be used for some more useful purpose. I could name half a dozen
+things which this country needs. If it were possible to gather 60,000
+people in behalf of any of these things with the claws of elemental
+savagery barely covered with thin cotton gloves no Legislature in the
+land would dare refuse the demanded law. That is true, but it is also
+true that human nature has not yet evolved from the point where at the
+last analysis the physical power and what it stands for appeals first
+to the young and strong. You cannot get away from that, and it must be
+considered in all our regrets about the “younger generation.” We can have
+anything we want in legislation and reform whenever we can work up a
+spirit and a demand for it which is akin to this baseball feeling! For in
+this silent, orderly crowd there was nothing but cotton over the claws.
+There was a dignified-looking citizen not far from us who looked like a
+fair representative of the “City of Brotherly Love.” You would choose
+him as one of a thousand to take charge of a Sunday school. Yet when a
+Philadelphia player raced home with the first run there came a hoarse cry
+that might have startled even a listless Cæsar 2,000 years ago. There
+was our Philadelphia friend on one foot waving his hat and shrieking
+defiance and taunts at the crowd of New York “fans.” Why, the germ of
+that man’s mind was back in the centuries, clad in hairy flesh and skins
+shouting a war cry at what were then its enemies! And when New York tied
+the score the entire bleachers seemed to rise like a great black wave of
+humanity with shrieks and cries and waving hats. For the moment these
+were hardly human beings—as we like to consider the race. They were crazy
+barbarians lapsed for the moment back to elemental motives. And as I came
+back to find myself standing up with the rest I was not sure but that the
+brief trip back to barbarism had after all been a profitable one!
+
+But we left the umpire standing with his hand up calling _two strikes_!
+It was the fifth inning, with the score one to one. There were two out
+and New York had worked a man around to third base. One more pitched ball
+would tell the story. Consider the mix-up of the races in this “American
+game.” The man on third base straining like a greyhound to get home was
+an Indian. The man at bat was of French blood, while the next batter was
+an Irishman with a Jew close behind him. The catcher was an Englishman
+and the pitcher a pure Indian. This Indian stood there like a silent
+representative of fate with the ball in his hand, eyeing that Frenchman,
+who shook his bat defiantly. I presume neither of them thought for the
+instant how 200 years ago it would have been tomahawk against musket in
+place of ball and bat. Yet the race traits were evident—the light and
+airy nerve of the Gaul and the crafty silence of the red man! Oh, how
+that ball did go in! “Ball!” shouted the umpire and the batter took his
+base. Then it seemed as if bedlam had broken loose. Men and women shouted
+and cheered and laughed and cried, for they thought that the Indian was
+“rattled” at last. But his ancestors went through too much fire for that.
+He stood in the center as cool as a cake of ice. The play for the man on
+first was to run to second when the ball was pitched, and run he did.
+I noticed that the catcher jumped six feet to the right as that Indian
+threw the ball. It went like lightning right into the catcher’s hands.
+The second baseman had run up behind the pitcher and took the throw from
+the catcher. Of course the runner on third tried to run in on this throw,
+but back came the ball ahead of him and he was out! Then in an instant
+the mighty crowd saw that New York had been ambushed. It was a great
+trick, and played so accurately and quickly and with such daring that
+even the Philadelphia “fans” were mind-paralyzed and forgot to cheer.
+The silence which followed the Indian to the players’ bench was the most
+eloquent tribute of the day. And it happened, as every “sport” already
+knows, that New York finally won two to one. The needed runs were made
+on mighty hits by an Indian and an Irishman, and the great crowd filed
+out and home to talk it over. I wish I could tell my children how some
+Cape Cod Yankee had a hand in it, but too many of these are occupied in
+telling what they or their ancestors used to do. I think the game was
+invented and developed by Yankees, and that they have made the most
+money out of it. Probably Cape Cod is willing to rest content with this
+and let the others handle the ball. I am ready to admit we ought to have
+been home picking apples, but we saw the game, and the apple harvest will
+go better to pay for it.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA
+
+
+Of all the planting that a farmer finds it necessary to do there is
+nothing quite equal to transplanting home-grown plants in the garden
+of education. Some homes might be called hotbeds, others are very cold
+frames, and there are grades running all between. Children grow up away
+from childhood and show that they are ready for transplanting—with
+evidences around the head to be compared with those on a tomato plant.
+You cut off their roots, and try to trim their heads and plant them in
+the hard field of practical life or in the sheltered garden of education.
+It is a large undertaking, for here is the best crop of your farm put out
+at a hazard. You may not have grown or trimmed it right, and the soil in
+which you plant it may not prove congenial, or some wild old strain from
+a remote ancestor may “come back” when it should “stay out.” You cannot
+tell about these things except by experiment, therefore there is nothing
+quite equal to this sort of transplanting. That is the way Mother and
+I felt as we took the two older children off to college. My experience
+has taught me both the power and the weakness of an education. He who
+can grasp the true spirit of it acquires a trained mind, and that means
+mastery. He who simply “goes to college” and drifts along with the crowd
+without real mental training is worse off than if he never had entered.
+He cannot live up to his reputation as a college man, and when a man
+must go through life always dragging behind his reputation he is only a
+tin can tied to the tail of what was once his ambition. I can imagine
+an intelligent parrot going through college, and perhaps passing the
+examinations, but all his life he would be a parrot, unable to apply
+what he had learned to practical things. I made up my mind long ago to
+give each one of the children opportunity. That means a chance to study
+through a good college. Each and every one must pay back to me later the
+money which this costs. My backing continues just as long as they show
+desire, through their labor, to think and work out the real worth of
+education. Should they become mentally and morally lazy and assume that
+“going to college” is like having the measles or raising a beard—out
+they come at once, for if I know anything at all it is the fact that the
+so-called student who goes through college just because his parents think
+it is the thing to do makes about as poor a drone as the human hive can
+produce.
+
+Where should the children go? The case of the girl was quickly settled
+by her mother. Years ago this good lady had her own dreams of a college
+education and knew just where she wanted to go. Denied the privilege of
+going herself, she nominated her daughter as her substitute. That settled
+it—there was no primary or referendum or special election. There seemed
+to me something of poetic realization in this setting of the only bud
+into the long-desired and long impossible tree of knowledge. As for the
+boy—the case was different. I would like to send at least one child back
+to my old college, and I think a couple of the smaller ones will go
+later. I know better than to try to crowd boys into associations which
+are not congenial. If your boy has intelligence enough to justify his
+going to college let him use his intelligence to decide something of what
+he wants. I advised the boy to select one of the smaller colleges of high
+reputation and keep away from the great universities. He made what I
+call a good choice—an institution of high character, lonely location and
+with one great statesman graduate who stands up in history like a great
+lighthouse, to show the glory of public life and the dangerous rock of
+his own private habits.
+
+Well, Mother and I traveled close to 900 miles up and down through New
+England on this trip of planning in the garden of education. I could
+write a book on the memories and anticipations which filled the minds of
+this Hope Farm quartette. As the train rushed up the country, winding
+through villages and climbing hills, we took on groups of bright-faced
+boys on their way to college. Before we reached the end of our journey
+the train was crowded with them. There was one sour-faced old fellow on
+the train who viewed those boys with no benevolent eye.
+
+“A lazy, careless lot. I’d put them all at work!”
+
+The old man was wrong—he was sour. Even the evidence of hope and faith in
+the future which those bright-eyed boys brought could not sweeten him.
+Here were the thinkers and dreamers and workers of the future. Underneath
+their fun and careless hope they carried the prayers of their mothers
+and the poorly expressed dreams of fathers who saw in those boys the
+one chance to carry on a life work. While the old man scowled on I found
+myself quoting from “Snow Bound,” Whittier’s picture of the college boy
+who taught the winter school:
+
+  “Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
+  Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”
+
+The responsibility of acting as “young apostles” would have wearied these
+boys, but unconsciously they were absorbing part of the spirit which will
+fit them for the work. Finally the train stopped and poured us out into
+a dusty road. There were not teams enough to carry 10 per cent of the
+crowd, and the rest of us cheerfully took up our burdens, crossed the
+river and mounted a steep and dusty hill. It took me back 30 years and
+more, to my first three-mile dusty walk to college. At the hilltop, as
+the glory of the college campus stood revealed in the shimmering light
+of the setting sun, it must have seemed to the freshmen that they had
+surely been “walking up Zion’s hill.” To me it was like old times patched
+up and painted with perhaps a few ornaments added. Two boys went by
+bending under the weight of mattresses. When I first hit college I bought
+a bedtick, carried it to the barn and stuffed it with straw. It was all
+the same, only there was the difference which the years naturally bring
+in comfort and convenience. But finally the darkness came and the moon
+seemed to climb up over the college buildings, flooding the campus with
+long bright splinters of light. As we walked back under the trees there
+came back to me the one, unchangeable, holy thing of college life—the
+undying, gentle, kindly spirit of the college which a man must carry as
+long as he lives.
+
+We got up before five o’clock and traveled far down the Connecticut
+Valley to plant the family flower. Those of you who have read “The
+Princess” and have fairly active imaginations may realize how the Hope
+Farm man felt at this institution. Here men did not even reach a back
+seat. There was absolutely nothing for me to do except stand about, hat
+in hand, and pay the bills. At the railroad station three good-looking
+girls of the Y. W. C. A. met us and told us just where to go. At the
+college another girl took a suitcase and walked off with it to show my
+daughter’s room. The express business and the trunks were all handled
+by a fine-looking woman who gave points on good-nature to any express
+agent I ever saw. The sale of furniture, the bureau of information, the
+handling of money—the complete organization was conducted by women and
+girls. It was all well done, in a thoroughly business-like manner and
+with rare courtesy. True, the girls who conducted the information bureau
+stopped now and then to eat popcorn or candy. College boys of equal rank
+would probably have smoked cigarettes. There was just one other man in
+the hall, who, like me, had brought his daughter there to plant her in
+the garden of education. I caught his eye, and knew that our thoughts
+were twins. I fully expected at any time to see “two stalwart daughters
+of the plow” approaching to do their duty.
+
+The spirit of this college seemed excellent. It may be a debatable
+question with some as to whether a school taught, organized and
+conducted entirely by women is more desirable than one taught by men or
+where co-education is permitted. There is no debate in our family, since
+the ruling spirit, whose instincts are usually right, has decided the
+question. It seemed to me that the training at this school is sure to
+give these girls responsibility and dignity. My two girls went into a
+store to buy furniture for the room, and I stayed outside until the time
+came for my part of the deal—paying for it. Across the campus and up the
+street came a beautiful woman walking slowly and thoughtfully on. Tall
+and shapely, but for her years she might have represented Tennyson’s
+Princess. Every movement of her body gave the impression of power. Her
+face seemed like a mask of patient suffering with an electric light of
+knowledge and faith behind it. I remember years ago to have seen another
+such woman walking across the village green in a country town. A rough
+man a stranger to me, took off his hat and said:
+
+“Some woman—that!”
+
+Yes, indeed—“some woman!” It is possible that some of these “daughters
+of the plow” had an eye on the Hope Farm man for watching ladies walking
+across the campus, but had they arrested me I should have told them the
+story of Billy Hendricks. Billy was apprentice in a printer’s shop in
+England. The boss offered a prize and a raise in wages to the apprentice
+who could set up a certain advertisement in the best form. Billy needed
+the money. He went to the foreman and asked:
+
+“How can I make this ‘ad’ so it will show true proportions?”
+
+“Look at me!” said the foreman.
+
+There he stood, big and broad-shouldered, a true figure of a man, and as
+Billy studied him he found the words of that “ad” shaping themselves in
+his mind. The others were mechanical. Billy had vision and won. Some of
+us who must admit that we have neither beauty nor shape are glad to have
+before our children an example of what the coming woman ought to be.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPLESS MAN
+
+
+Some of our people are telling us about the best or the most satisfying
+meal they ever ate. This question of food seems to depend on habit,
+hunger and personal taste. I saw a man once in a lumber camp eat plate
+after plate of a stew made of meat, potatoes and carrots—cooked in a
+big iron kettle over an open fire. At home, this man would have growled
+at turkey or terrapin, but here he was pushing back his plate again and
+again asking the cook to put more carrots in. “Why,” he said, “I thought
+carrots were made for horses to eat. I didn’t know human beings ate
+them!” He never had been a real human before—not until hunger caught him
+and pulled him right up to that iron pot. At his club in the city he
+could not have eaten three mouthfuls of that stew.
+
+It is different with sleep. The man with no appetite can get on after a
+fashion, but if he cannot sleep he is a pitiable object. I met one once—a
+rich man who had worked too hard—starved himself for sleep in order to
+get hold of rather more than his share of money and power. He had passed
+the limit of nerves and was denied the power of sleeping. A few snatches
+of rest were all he could get, but through the long still nights he lay
+awake, thinking, thinking with the constant terror that this would end in
+a disordered mind.
+
+We sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he told me all about
+it. To you sleep seems like a very common and simple thing. The night
+finds you tired and you shut your eyes and before you know it you are
+sailing off into a peaceful, unknown country. Here was a man who could
+not sleep. He must remain chained to the cares and terrors of his daily
+life, and the bitterness of it was that all the money he had slaved so
+hard to obtain could not buy him what comes to you and me with the mere
+closing of the eyes. It seemed to me the most despairing mockery for this
+man to repeat Sir Philip Sidney’s “Ode to Sleep”:
+
+  “Come sleep; O Sleep! the certain hour of peace,
+  The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
+  The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
+  The indifferent judge between the high and low;
+  With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
+  Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
+  O make in me these civil wars to cease
+  I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
+  Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
+  A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
+  A rosy garland and a weary head.”
+
+“That’s it,” said my friend, “_A weary head, a weary head_. Mine is
+weary, but sleep will not come.” He sat looking at the fire for a long
+time, and then he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his eyes.
+
+“I wish you would tell me about the _best sleep_ you ever had. Men may
+tell of their best meal, but I want to know about rest—the best sleep.”
+
+It was a strange request, but as I sat there, my mind went back to
+a hillside near the New England coast where the valley slopes away
+to a salt marsh with a sluggish stream running through it. A low,
+weatherbeaten farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept hill. It
+is a lonely place. Few come that way in daylight, and at night there are
+no household lights to be seen.
+
+It had rained through the night, and the morning brought a thick heavy
+fog. It was too wet to hoe corn, and Uncle Charles said we could all go
+gunning. He was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot. So
+we tramped off along the marsh following the creek until it reached the
+ocean. What a glorious day that was for a boy! I carried an old army
+musket that kicked my shoulder black and blue. We tramped along the shore
+and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers and other sea fowl.
+Now and then a flock of birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and
+Uncle Charles would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. It all comes
+back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the sea fowl and dull roar of the
+ocean as it pounded upon the beach. Late in the afternoon we tramped
+home wet and tired, but with a long string of birds. The ocean roared on
+behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.
+
+It was not good New England thrift to eat those birds—the guests at the
+Parker House in Boston would pay good money for them. While we had been
+hunting, Aunt Eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse had been busy
+with a “New England Dinner.” There was a big plate of salt codfish, first
+boiled and then fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed
+with it. There were boiled potatoes which split open in a rich dry flour,
+boiled onions and carrots and great slices of brown bread and butter.
+Then the odor from the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous
+pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! Ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy in a New England
+kitchen as a wet dreary night is coming on after a tiresome day? No? I
+am both sorry and glad for you. You have missed one of the greatest joys
+of life, but you have much to look forward to. When Uncle Charles began
+to cut that pan-dowdy, we boys realized that we could not do it full
+justice, so we went out and ran around the house half a dozen times to
+make more room for the top of the feast.
+
+After supper the dishes were washed, the house cleaned up, and we washed
+out our guns. The old musket had kicked my shoulder so that I could
+hardly raise the arm, but no human being could have made me admit it.
+We got Uncle Charles to tell us about the time he shot at the officer
+at Port Hudson during the war, and about the humpbacked man who carried
+the powder from Plymouth to Boston during the Revolution. Then through
+the gloom and fog came two young men to call on the girls. In those days
+it seemed to me very poor taste for one to listen to the conversation
+of girls rather than war stories. True, the war stories were time-worn,
+but the girl conversation was older yet. Soon the little melodeon was
+talking up and a quartette was singing the old songs of half a century
+ago. It may have been the day’s tramping, the old musket, the last plate
+of pan-dowdy or the tap of the rain on the windows, but sitting there by
+the warm kitchen stove, I felt a delicious drowsiness stealing over me.
+
+Bed is the place for sleep, and we boys climbed the stairs past the great
+center chimney, and quickly tumbled into bed. In the room below that
+quartette had started an old favorite:
+
+  “Along the aisles of the dim old forest
+    I strayed in the dewy dawn
+  And heard far away in their silent branches
+    The echoes of the morn.
+
+  “They stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,
+    Like chimes from a holier land,
+  As though far away in those haunted arches
+    Were happy—an angel band.”
+
+There was one great booming bass voice which had unconsciously fallen
+into the key of the dull roar which the distant ocean was making. The
+rain was gently tapping on the roof, and all the joys and pleasant
+memories of youth were whispering happy things in our ears as we sailed
+off on the most beautiful voyage to dreamland.
+
+I told this as best I could before the fire while my weary friend
+listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face.
+And when I stopped sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep.
+There are very few of us who would stand for a photograph taken while we
+were asleep, but this man’s face was free from care. An orator might not
+think it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience to sleep,
+but I am not an orator, and I would like to be able to give my friends
+what they consider the blessed things of life! And Peace, blissful Peace,
+had put her healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.
+
+
+
+
+LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY
+
+
+It brought the worst storm we have had this Winter. This season will pass
+on into history as about the roughest we have had in 20 years. There came
+a whirl of snow which filled the air and sifted in through every crack
+and hole. We let the storm alone, and got away from it. Merrill sorted
+out seed corn at the barn. Philip had some inside painting to do, the
+women folks kept at their household work, and the children got out into
+the storm. They came in now and then to stand by the fire—with faces the
+color of their hair. As for me, I cannot say that I hurt myself with hard
+labor. We piled the logs in the open fireplace and started a roaring
+fire. With a pile of books on one side and a pen and paper at the other,
+my big chair gave a very good foundation for a Lincoln celebration. I
+presume we all have our personal habits of reading. Some people read only
+one kind of books, and stick to the one in hand until it is finished.
+My plan is different. Right now I am reading Dante, “Rural Credits,”
+“Manufacture of Chemical Manure,” Whittier’s Poems and Lowell’s essay on
+Abraham Lincoln. A poor jumble of stuff for a human head you will say,
+but I turn from one to another, so that instead of a mixed-up jumble I
+try to have these different thoughts in layers through the mind. In this
+way one may get a blend which is better than a hash. It may seem absurd
+to think of putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless
+you can do something of the sort you can never get very far with them.
+
+That was the great secret of Lincoln’s power. As judged by knowledge or
+training or what we call “education,” there were many abler men in the
+country at his time, but Lincoln knew how to appeal to the imagination
+of the plain, common people. Read his speeches and papers and see how
+he framed a fact with a mental picture which the common people could
+understand. There were some wonderful pictures at the World’s Fair in
+Chicago. Some were called masterpieces of fabulous value. People stood
+before them and went on with something of awe in their heart—not quite
+grasping the artist’s meaning. One less pretentious picture was named
+“The Breaking of Home Ties,” and day by day a great throng stood before
+it, silent and wet-eyed. It was a very simple home scene, picturing a boy
+leaving his country home. Men studied it, walked away and then turned and
+slowly came back that they might see it once more. As long as they live
+people will remember that picture, because the poetry of it appealed to
+them as the higher art could not do. I think Lincoln held the imagination
+of the plain people much as that picture did. He was one who had suffered
+and had been brought up with plain and simple family habits which were
+fixed.
+
+The children have come running in to warm their hands. They are lined
+up in front of the big fire, rosy-faced and covered with snow. They
+stand looking at me as I write. Dinner is nearly ready, and there is no
+question about their readiness for it. Here comes Mother to look out at
+the storm, and she forgets to remember that this group of snowbirds by
+my fire have forgotten to stamp the snow off their feet. There will be a
+puddle of water when they move off—but it will soon dry up. As I watch
+them all it seems a good time to pick up Lowell’s essay on Lincoln:
+
+“_He is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it
+seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud.... He
+has always addressed the intelligence of men. Never their prejudices,
+their passion or their ignorance._”
+
+Now I think that intelligence and power to speak as people think can only
+come out of good family relations. Do I mean to say that the family group
+is superior to the college, the school or the other great institutions
+for training human thought? I do, wherever the family group is bound
+together as it should be by love, good will, ambition and something of
+sacrifice!
+
+This nation and every other is ruled by the family spirit. All public
+government is based on self-government, and the family is the training
+school for all. What could the college or the school do with a great
+crowd or mob of students who have never known the restraints of good
+family life? Ask any teacher to tell you the difference between children
+reared in a clean, careful family and those reared where the family
+relations are much like a cross-cut saw. Line up the adults you know,
+make a fair estimate of their character and see whether you can select
+those who in their childhood had a fair chance in family life. There are,
+of course, exceptions to all rules, but generally the boy or girl will
+carry through life the habits and the human policies which are given him
+in the family. As a rule these will be carried into the new family which
+the boy or girl may start, and thus be handed on like those qualities
+which are transmitted through blood lines. No use talking—the family unit
+is the most important element in human society. A nation’s fame rests
+upon the nation’s family.
+
+I think a man may fairly be judged by the way he treats his parents, his
+children and his wife. I do not care how he gets out and shows himself
+off as a great man and a good citizen. He might get an overwhelming vote
+for Congress or Governor, but God will judge him more by the votes of
+father, mother, son, daughter, wife! To me there can be nothing more
+beautiful than the best relation between a man of middle years and his
+aged parents. Perhaps the latter are feeble and not well-to-do. When
+they can sit in their son’s home happy and comfortable, knowing that
+the entire family has been taught to put them first of all in family
+regard, you have struck about the finest test of a man’s character that
+good citizenship can offer. When the children chase their father about
+and, out of their own thought, run to anticipate his wants, you can
+make up your mind that in that family are being trained men and women
+who can go out and absorb education and financial power which will be
+used for the true benefit of humanity. Most of us can never hope to be
+great men or to handle large public affairs, but we can make our family
+a training school for good citizenship. I have no thought that in this
+group of bright-eyed youngsters lined up by my fire we are to have any
+great statesmen or authors or merchant princes or big folk generally. On
+the whole I hope not, as it would seem to me that the great man has a
+rather lonely life. I do expect, however, that these children will always
+remember Hope Farm, and that in future years when the world may turn a
+very cold side to them they will remember this stormy day and will feel
+the warmth of this kindly fire.
+
+I have wandered away from what I wanted to say about Lincoln and his
+power over the people. It was this family feeling which made him strong,
+and if you want your boy or girl to be really worth while you must give
+them and their mother the best family surroundings you can possibly
+secure. The man who taps the spring or the well and sends the water
+running through his house does far more for his country than he who runs
+for Congress and taps the public pocket-book.
+
+But here comes Mother again, with “Come now, dinner’s ready. Don’t let it
+get cold!” Get cold? The children are already at the table! I wish you
+could come right along with me. I would put two sausage cakes on your
+plate and fill it up with mealy potatoes and yellow turnips. Then you
+would have rice in another dish. There is a dish of thick, brown gravy
+and nothing would suit me better than to have you call for an egg—fried
+or boiled. The Reds are laying well now. There are two kinds of bread and
+plenty of butter, and we will take a family vote as to whether we shall
+take peaches, strawberries, Kieffer pears, cherries or raspberries off
+the pantry shelves. I vote for Crosby peaches, but you will have a free
+choice and all you can eat. Surely the table makes a very strong family
+tie. Come on!
+
+
+
+
+UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY
+
+
+Uncle Ed had his home in Florida, but spent the Summer working at Hope
+Farm. At the time I speak of we were hoeing corn at the top of our hill.
+We had just planted the apple orchard, and we both realized the long
+and weary years of toilsome waiting before there could be any fruit. It
+was a hot day, and at the end of the row we stopped to rest under the
+big cherry tree where the stone wall is broad and thick. It was a clear
+day, and far off across the rolling country to the East we could see
+the sparkle of the sun on some gilded-top building in New York. It gave
+one a curious feeling to stand in that shady retreat on $50 land in a
+lonely neighborhood, practically untouched by modern development, and
+glance across to the millions and the might crowded at the mouth of the
+Hudson. Most of us feel a sort of pride on viewing the evidence of wealth
+and power, even though we have no share in it, or even when we know it
+means blood money taken from our own lives. I felt something of this as
+I pointed it out to Uncle Ed, and told him how probably the overflow of
+that great city would some day make an acre of our orchard worth more
+than a farm in Florida.
+
+This did not seem to impress him greatly. He ran his eye over the glowing
+prospect and then slowly filled his pipe for a smoke. I am no friend of
+tobacco, but I confess that sometimes I enjoy seeing a man like Uncle Ed
+slowly fill his pipe. I feel that some sort of homely philosophy is sure
+to be smoked out.
+
+“The trouble with you folks up in this country,” said Uncle Ed, “is that
+you work too hard. You get so that there is nothing in you but work and
+save. And for what? How many of you ever get the benefit of your own
+work? Down where I live we don’t exist for the mere sake of working. I
+have known the time when I got up determined to do a good day’s work
+cultivating. I got the horse all harnessed, only to find that my neighbor
+on the south had borrowed the cultivator, and I couldn’t do that. Then
+I thought I’d hoe, but the boys lost the hoe in the brush and couldn’t
+find it. Then there was the woodpile to be cut up, but my neighbor on the
+north had borrowed the ax.
+
+“Now up in this country if fate challenged a man like that he would
+start picking up stones and making a stone wall. Here is one now that
+we are resting against. I’ll bet some old owner of this farm piled up
+this heap of stones because he was determined that the boys never should
+play or go fishing. It is now the most useless thing you have on your
+farm. If, instead of picking up stones and building this useless wall,
+that old-timer had quit when fate gave him the sign, taken a day off and
+let the boys go fishing or play ball, this farm would be worth far more
+than it is today. Down in my country when the cultivator and the hoe and
+the ax all get away from us we accept it as a voice from some higher
+authority, and we _drop everything and go fishing_. After that I notice
+things straighten out and work goes right. You fellows work too hard, and
+don’t know it. But this won’t buy the woman a dress—we must hoe this
+corn out.”
+
+The rows ran to the south, and as we hoed on I could see, far away, that
+bright sparkle on the gilding of the big city. And I answered with the
+old familiar argument:
+
+“You have just told in a few words why there are more savings of the poor
+and middle-class people in that big city yonder than there are in the
+entire State of Florida.” That was 16 years ago and the statement was
+probably true at the time. Florida has gained since then.
+
+“Up in this country we believe that the Lord gives every man of decent
+mind and reasonable body a chance to provide for himself and family
+before he is 45. If he doesn’t do it by that time, he isn’t likely to do
+it at all. We think that there are three ways of getting money. You can
+earn it through labor, steal it, or have it given to you. For most of
+us there is only one way—that is to dig it out by the hardest work, and
+then practice self-denial in order to hold it. Up in this country the men
+who quit and go fishing when conditions turn against them, spend their
+declining years without any bait. That money off there where you see that
+sparkle was produced by men who did not go fishing when conditions turned
+against them.”
+
+As I look back upon it now that seems pretty cheap talk, but it was the
+way we looked at it in those days.
+
+“I know,” said Uncle Ed, “but how much better off are they when you sum
+it all up? I claim that the man who goes fishing gets something that the
+man who built that stone wall never knew. Who piled up all that money
+in the big city? Some of mine is there. The interest I have paid on my
+mortgage has come into one of these big buildings for investment. The
+profit on many a box of oranges I shipped before the freeze never got
+away from New York. It stuck there and you can’t get it out. And that’s
+just what I mean. You fellows work your fingers stiff and make a little
+money, and then you put it into some bank or big company or into stocks
+or bonds. In the end it all gets away from you and runs down hill to that
+big city. The hired man took $25 to the county fair. Ten dollars of it
+went for beer and rum. The local saloonkeeper passed the $10 on to the
+wholesaler, he to the brewer and he sent part of it to Germany and the
+rest to Wall Street. The other $15 mostly went in chance games or petty
+gambling. He lost $5 betting that he could find the little red ball under
+the hat. The man who won his $5 lost it that night playing poker. The
+gambler who won it lost it a few nights later in a gambling house. The
+gambling house man bought bogus oil and mining stocks and lost it that
+way. The oil stock man had sense enough to salt it down in respectable
+securities, and there it is now under that bright sparkle in the big
+city. You and the rest of you do pretty much the same. This man who built
+your stone wall did it. The money he made was not invested here. If it
+had been you never could have bought this farm. It is off there under
+that bright sparkle—and the boys and girls run after it. _You fellows
+work too hard!_”
+
+I undertook to come back with that text about the man who provideth
+not for his family—but I never was good at remembering texts. That is
+probably because I do not study them as I ought to. But at any rate I
+undertook to argue that it is a man’s first duty to provide for his
+family and also for his own “rainy day.” “_The night cometh, when no man
+can work._”
+
+“Down where I live,” said Uncle Ed, “we don’t have such rainy days as you
+do up here. Life is simple and straight and old people are cared for.
+We want them to live with us—we are not waiting for them to pass off
+and leave their money. Off in that big city where your money is turning
+over and over, thousands of human lives get under it and are crushed
+out of all shape. Down there under that sparkle only the poor know what
+neighbors are. Many a man lives his life in some tenement or apartment
+house never knowing or caring what goes on in the room on the other side
+of the wall. There may be joy or sorrow, death or life, virtue or crime.
+He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, because this never-ending grind of
+work has changed sympathy into selfishness. And in the end that is what
+all those dollars which you folks dump into the big city come to. If
+the habit is so strong that you’ve got to work and try to catch up with
+the man who has a little more than you have, why not invest your money
+at home and in the farm? Those fellows off under that sparkle will come
+chasing after your money if you invest it here, and you would be boss
+instead of servant! _Am I right?_”
+
+That was 16 years ago, and many things have happened since then. Uncle Ed
+has passed away—after many troubles and misfortunes. The world has been
+shaken up by the war and by great discoveries, so that we hardly know it.
+Yet there is a brighter sparkle than ever on the gilded roofs of the big
+city—greater wealth and more blinding poverty crouching beneath it. The
+hill where we hoed corn is now covered with big apple trees. Where then
+Bob and Jerry toiled slowly along with half a ton of fruit the truck now
+flashes down the hard, smooth road with two tons. But sitting on the old
+stone wall of a Sunday afternoon in late August I look across the valley
+and wonder how much there really is in Uncle Ed’s philosophy after all.
+What do _you_ think?
+
+
+
+
+A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE
+
+
+James and William Hardy were twins—born and bred on a New Hampshire
+farm. The family dated far back to pioneer times, when John Hardy and
+Henry Graham, with their young wives, went into the wilderness as the
+advance guard of civilization. It came to be a common understanding that
+a Hardy should always marry a Graham, and through four generations at
+least this family law had been observed until there had been developed
+one of those fine, purebred New England families which represent just
+about the highest type of the American. As the father of these twins
+married a Graham girl you had a right to expect them to be as much alike
+as two peas in the family pod—both in appearance and in character. Here
+you surely might expect one of those cases where the twins are always
+being mixed up, when not even their mother could be sure which was Jim
+and which was Bill. In truth, however, the boys were distinctly different
+from the day they were born—different in size, in appearance and in
+character.
+
+These twins innocently brought to the surface a sad spot of family
+history which both the Grahams and the Hardys hoped had been buried too
+far down ever to show itself. Far back in the French and Indian war a
+band of raiders from Canada burst out of the forest and carried off
+a dozen prisoners. Among them was the pride of the Graham family—a
+beautiful girl of 16. The settlers, hiding in their blockhouse, could
+only look on and see their relatives start on the long march to Canada.
+The next year some of these prisoners were ransomed, and came back to say
+that the girl had married a young Frenchman. She was happy, and sent word
+to her parents that she preferred to stay with her husband. Years went
+by, until one night there came to Henry Graham’s house a Canadian ranger
+and a young girl. It was their granddaughter and her father. The mother
+had died and had begged her husband to take her daughter back to the old
+folks as her offering of love. The father delivered his message, bade his
+daughter farewell and silently vanished into the forest. They never saw
+him again, but they realized that he had given full measure of devotion
+to his dead wife. The girl grew up to be a beautiful creature much like
+her mother, only darker, and at times there was a bright glitter in her
+eyes. She married a Hardy and settled down as a farmer’s wife. She was
+dutiful and kind, but sometimes her husband would see her standing at
+the door—looking off into the Northern forests with a look which made
+him shake his head. Years went by, and this spot on the family history
+had been forgotten until these twins uncovered it! Their mother knew in
+her heart that the spirit of the restless Frenchman was watching her
+from the cradle through the black shiny eyes of her strange baby. James,
+the light-haired, steady, purebred infant, slept calmly or acted just
+as a good Hardy should, but the wild spirit of the forest had jumped
+three generations right into the cradle, where this black-haired little
+changeling stared at her!
+
+There never were two children more unlike than these twins. Jim was
+solid, sound, a little slow, but absolutely trustworthy—“a born Hardy” as
+they said. Bill was bright, quick, restless, full of plans and visions.
+He did not like to work, and had no respect for the family skeleton. This
+was a mortgage, which for many years had sunk its claws into the rocky
+little farm. The truth was that this farm never should have been cleared
+and settled. It was rocky and sandy; farther out of date than the old
+mill rotting unused by the old mill pond. The mortgage hung like a wolf
+at the back door, demanding its due, which came out of the little farm
+like blood money. Jim Hardy, like his father and grandfather, grew up to
+regard that mortgage as a fixed and sacred institution. It was a family
+heirloom or tradition—something like the old musket which an older Hardy
+carried at Bunker Hill, or like grandmother’s old spinning-wheel. As for
+the poor, rocky farm, Jim and his father would stay and grind themselves
+away in a hopeless struggle just because the Hardys who went before them
+had done so. It was different with Bill. He had no use for the mortgage
+or for the rocky pastures, for the dash of French blood had put rubber,
+or yeast, into the covering of the stern New England thought. His father
+never could understand him and one day, when Bill was 17, the blood of
+the “changeling” burst into open mutiny. The father knew of only one way
+to act. He ordered the boy around behind the barn and took the horsewhip
+to him. As a Hardy, Bill was expected to stand and take his punishment
+without a murmur. As the descendant of a wild forest ranger he could only
+resent the blows. What he did was to catch his father’s arms and hold
+them like a vice. Neither spoke a word. They just looked at each other.
+The older man struggled, but he was powerless—he knew that his son was
+the master. He dropped the whip from his hand and bowed his head. The boy
+released him, broke the whip in two, and threw it away. The father walked
+to the house, a dazed and broken man. Bill watched him and then walked
+out to the back lot where Jim, the steady and faithful, was building a
+fence.
+
+“Good-bye, Jim,” he said. “I’m off. It had to come. I’m different, and
+yet the same, as you will see. You stay here and look after father and
+mother. I will help some day.” It was the Hardy in both the boys which
+made it impossible for them to come any closer in feeling. Bill walked on
+over the pasture hill; at the top he paused to wave his hand. Then he was
+gone.
+
+Bill was clean and sound at heart, and the French blood had given him
+a quick active brain. Instead of striking for the wilderness he headed
+for New York and he prospered. The old French ancestor drove him on
+with tireless energy, and the long line of clean farm breeding kept him
+true to his purpose to go back some day and show the old folks that he
+was still a Hardy. Years passed, until one day there came to Bill an
+uncontrollable longing to go home. Just a few brief, unresponsive letters
+had passed between him and Jim, but the time came when Bill longed with
+a great longing to see the old farm once more. And so, the next day, a
+well-dressed, prosperous man walked into the old yard and looked about
+him. There was Jim, the same old Jim, walking in from the barn with the
+night’s milk. Father was cutting wood at the wood pile and mother stood
+at the kitchen door—just the same home picture which Bill knew so well.
+Bill did great things during his short stay. He paid that mortgage,
+ordered a new barn built and left capital for Jim to improve the farm.
+He did everything that a Hardy ought to do—and more—and yet he could not
+satisfy himself. It all seemed so small and narrow. He had hoped to find
+great music in the wind among the pines, but it filled him with a great
+loneliness, which he could not overcome. He had hoped to find peace and
+rest, but these were for the untried farm boy—not for the restless and
+worried business man. It broke out of him at night on the second day,
+when he and Jim were on the pasture hill looking for the sheep. The
+loneliness of the early Fall day fairly entered his heart.
+
+“_Jim_,” he said, “_old fellow, I don’t see how you live in such a
+God-forsaken place_!”
+
+“Why, Bill,” said Jim, “New York must be like Paradise to beat the old
+homestead.”
+
+“Better a week on Broadway than a lifetime on these lonely hills.”
+
+“I’d like to try it and see!” said Jim.
+
+So Jim Hardy, the plain farmer, went to New York to visit Brother Bill.
+He had everything he could call for. Bill lived in a beautiful apartment,
+and he gave Jim a white card to see and do what he wanted. Bill was too
+busy to go around much, but Jim made his way. For a couple of days it
+was fine—then somehow Jim, just like Bill at the old farm, began to grow
+lonesome and oppressed. Right through the wall of Bill’s apartment house
+was a family with one child. The janitor told him the child was sick,
+so Jim knocked at the door to sympathize with the neighbors. They froze
+him with a few words and got rid of him. He saw a man on the street and
+stopped to converse with him. “Get out!” said the stranger. “You can’t
+bunco me.” Day after day Jim Hardy, the farmer, saw the fierce, selfish
+struggle for life in the big city. The great buildings, the theaters,
+Broadway at night—they were all splendid, but behind and under them lay
+the meanness, the selfish spirit, the lack of neighborly feeling, which
+galled the farmer to the heart. On the third night Bill took his brother
+to a great reception. Just as they walked into the brilliant room Jim
+glanced from the window and saw a policeman throw a weak and sickly man
+out of a public room where he was trying to get warm.
+
+“What did I tell you, Jim?” said Bill. “Isn’t this worth a year on your
+old hills?” And Jim could only think of one thing to say:
+
+“_Bill, old fellow, I don’t see how you can live in such a God-forsaken
+place!_”
+
+What do you make of it? One brother thinks God has forsaken the country,
+while the other says He has forsaken the city! To me they prove that God
+is everywhere. Some may not find Him, since they look for Him only in
+things which are agreeable to them, and those are rarely the places in
+which to look. I think, too, that, like Jim and Bill, all children come
+into the world with natural tendencies and inclinations which, if worthy,
+should be encouraged rather than repressed. Both Jim and Bill are needed
+in American life.
+
+
+
+
+LOUISE
+
+
+“_How is Louise now?_”
+
+“_She seems a little better!_”
+
+That message came over the ’phone on Friday evening, just as the members
+of the Hope Farm family were separating for the night. Early in the year
+we had a letter from a woman in the West who came back to the paper after
+15 years’ absence. As a girl she lived in New York State. Father took the
+paper and she remembered the talks about the Bud, Scion and Graft. “What
+has become of those children?” she asked. “Since I left home I have lost
+track of them. Now that I have a home and children of my own I would like
+to know what they came to.”
+
+These were the names given to the four children of our first brood. We
+had one little girl of our own whom I called the Bud. Her mother did not
+want her brought up alone, so we took in a small boy—a little fellow of
+an uncertain age. We did not adopt him, but he was treated just like
+our own child, and “grew up” in our home. I called him the Seedling! A
+noted botanist argued with me to prove that these names should have been
+transposed—but I let them go, for we tried to graft good things upon the
+Seedling. Then came two other little ones—Mother’s niece and nephew,
+needing home and protection. We took them in, and I called them Graft
+and Scion. These names may not have betrayed any great knowledge of
+botany, but they seemed to fit the children, although as the little ones
+grew up we were glad to let those names drop.
+
+This quartette of little ones grew and thrived. It was at times rather
+hard sledding for the Hope Farmers in those early years, but youth
+greases the runners with hope, and kids never know the true taste of
+tough mutton. They grew on through sickness, the wilfulness of childhood,
+powers of heredity and all the things which confront common children. For
+they always seemed to me just kids of very common clay, though Mother
+would at times come back from places where other children “behaved” and
+say: “You must understand that we have some very superior youngsters!” Of
+course I realized that the “Bud” would most likely be pretty much what
+her parents were, and it was a long-time hope that she would throw out
+our many undesirable qualities and concentrate upon the few good ones.
+Now comes our friend asking what has become of them—and I will try to
+answer for all! The Bud is a senior at one of the great Women’s Colleges;
+the Graft is with an engineering party running a new railroad through the
+Arizona wilderness; the Seedling is a captain in the Salvation Army—the
+Scion! ah! That is why I am writing this!
+
+Louise grew up a small, rather delicate young woman, ambitious,
+clear-brained and with a quick, active mind. There came a time when
+greater family responsibilities came upon us all. Her father died, and
+her mother became hopelessly ill, and four younger brothers and sisters
+came to us to form what we call our second brood. Even as a young girl
+Louise began to realize the stern responsibilities of life for those
+little ones. When she finished high school her ambition to be of service
+to this family group became fixed. She wanted to become self-supporting
+and to have a hand in helping with these younger children. Teaching
+is the great resource of educated women who are naturally fitted for
+the work, and Louise saw in the schoolroom her best chance for useful
+service. I think this was one of the rare cases where women are willing
+to work and prepare themselves for true unselfish service. Louise was
+timid and naturally nervous—not strong or with great dominating power. I
+do not think any of us understood how much it really meant to her to face
+direct responsibility and force her way through.
+
+Mother and I have always felt that if any of our children show real,
+self-sacrificing desire for an education we will practise any form
+of needed self-denial that the child may be college-trained. For an
+education worked out in that way will become a glory and an honor to all
+who have to do with it. So we felt it no burden, but rather a privilege,
+to send Louise to the Normal School. How well and faithfully she worked
+no one can ever realize. I often think that most reputations for bravery
+in this world are not fairly earned. Some strong, well-bred, naturally
+optimistic character, with health and heritage from a long line of
+dominating ancestors pushes and smashes his way through obstacles and
+acquires a great reputation for courage. I think such are far less
+deserving than women like Louise, small and delicate and nervous, who
+conquer natural timidity and force themselves to endure the battle.
+It is even harder to win confidence in yourself—to conquer the inside
+forces—than to fight the outside ones.
+
+Louise did this. She did it well, without boasting or great complaint
+and without flinching. At times she was depressed, for the task seemed
+too much for her, but she rose above it and won. She won honors at her
+school, and long before she expected it, on her own little, honest record
+in the schoolroom, she was employed to teach at a good salary. It was to
+be only four miles from home—amid the best surroundings—and there was
+no happier woman on earth than was Louise when she wrote us the first
+news about it. It came just before Christmas. There are many women who
+could not see any cause for Christmas joy in the thought of long years of
+monotonous and wearying service, but Louise saw in this something of the
+joy of achievement, for through honest, trained labor, the outcome of her
+own patience and determination, she was to become self-supporting and a
+genuine help to the children. I presume no one but a conscientious and
+ambitious woman can realize what that means. I know women who would look
+upon such power of self-support simply as selfish freedom. Louise saw
+in it the power of greater service. We have tried our best to train our
+children for that view of a life work.
+
+You may therefore imagine that the holidays at Hope Farm seemed like holy
+days indeed. They were all there except the Seedling and the Graft, and
+_they_ sent messages which left no regret, no sadness to creep in out of
+the past. Somehow I hope all you older people may know before you pass on
+something of what Mother and I did about our two broods as the old year
+passed on.
+
+Yet there it comes again—the old question. I came home a little later
+than usual on Friday night. The night was wet and foggy, and Mother met
+me at the train. One of the little boys who usually comes for me had gone
+to meet Louise. Her first week of school was over, and she was coming
+home—a teacher! As we drove into the yard the family ran out to meet
+us—“Something has happened—they want you on the ’phone at once!” Ah!
+but these country tragedies may flash upon us without warning. Halfway
+home Louise had been stricken desperately ill, and she now lay at the
+parsonage—three miles away—helpless. Just as quickly as fingers could put
+the harness on our fastest horse, Mother and “Cherry-top” were driving
+off into the fog and rain. We waited until they reached the parsonage
+and then we kept the ’phone busy. The poor girl, riding home after her
+first fine week in the schoolroom, had been stricken with an internal
+hemorrhage—and it was doubtful if she could rally! At nine o’clock came
+the message: “She seems to be better.” The little boys were coming
+home—and they soon appeared, white and troubled. Mother was to stay all
+night and she sent a hopeful message about coming in the morning with
+Louise. We went to bed to get strength and nerve for any emergency. In
+the early morning Mother walked into my room and turned up the light. We
+looked at each other for a moment. Then there were six words:
+
+“_How is Louise?_”
+
+“_She is gone!_”
+
+We said nothing more, but we were both thinking the same thing!
+
+“_The first break in our big family has come. How is Louise now?_”
+
+There was no way of saving her. Human skill and human love had failed.
+She was dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a beautiful service. There were only our own family and perhaps
+a dozen friends. We all wanted it so. We do not like the wild grief and
+public curiosity so often displayed at large funerals. There was just
+a great bank of flowers, a white casket and a simple service over this
+brave and loyal girl. I do not say “poor” girl, nor do I dwell upon the
+sadness of it. I thought that all out as Mother and I sat at the head of
+the casket. She died gloriously—like a soldier at his duty. She died when
+life was young. She had just won her little battle in the great world of
+affairs. She died in the joy of victory and in the faith that all things
+are possible. The wine of life was full. She never knew the sting of
+defeat, the shame and meanness of false friendships and ambitions, which
+has come to those of us who linger on the way. And so at the end of it
+all I ask the old question once more:
+
+“How is Louise now?”
+
+“She is better! Thank God! She is better!”
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY
+
+
+It is well enough to keep the Christmas tree standing until Spring
+cleaning at least. There may be those who open the closet door once a
+year and let the Christmas spirit out—somewhat like the family skeleton,
+to food and water—and then lock it up again. That does not suit me, for I
+would like to keep the door open so that Christmas may be with us every
+day in the year. The celebration just closed is about the best our family
+and community ever had, and it will do us permanent good.
+
+On Wednesday evening the children had their celebration at the church. It
+was a cold clear night, with good sleighing, so we hitched the two big
+grays to the bob sled and filled the box with straw, and the children
+cuddled down into this nest and pulled blankets over them. The Hope Farm
+man drove, with Mother on the seat beside him to direct the job and tell
+him when and where to turn out. Tom and Broker seemed to feel that they
+were, in their way, playing the part of reindeer, for they trotted off
+in great shape—a little clumsy on their feet, perhaps, but with strength
+enough to pull down a house. Broker is inclined to be lazy, and Tom did
+most of the pulling unless we stirred his partner up with the stick.
+Through the clear starlight we went crunching and jingling on over the
+hills and through the narrow level valleys, for our country has a badly
+wrinkled face.
+
+Part of the way lies through the woods, and then a stretch along the
+banks of a little river. There was just enough wind to make a little
+humming in the trees. Now and then a rabbit jumped out of the shadow and
+went hopping off across the snow. There was no danger—it was Christmas,
+and we do not carry firearms. I think I can tell you much about a
+person’s character and circumstances if you will tell me what comes into
+mind on a lonely road, when the wind is playing its wild tunes among the
+trees.
+
+  “Over the chimney the night wind sang,
+  Chanting a melody no one knew.”
+
+To some this melody brings sad memories or fear of trouble, but the
+happy group in our big sled heard nothing of these in the sound. As Tom
+and Broker pulled their load on beneath the trees I think each one of
+us heard in the wind’s singing something of the song which the angels
+sang when the shepherds listened long years ago. This may be but a fancy
+of mine, yet I think our little group came nearer to understanding what
+Christmas means—on that lonely road—than we had before.
+
+You know how pleasant it is to come trotting along a country road on a
+cold starry night and see the lights of the church burst into view far
+ahead. Our church is an old stone structure, full of years and honorable
+history. It was here, at least part of it, during the Revolution,
+and at one time Hessian prisoners were confined in it. There were no
+prisoners except those of hope inside the church that night. The boys
+and I made Tom and Broker comfortable and then we went inside to find a
+big Christmas tree and a crowd of happy children. Surely Christmas is
+children’s day, and they owned the church that night. Mother marshaled
+her big primary class for one chorus, and it seemed as if the entire end
+of the church was made of children. A couple of our Cherry-tops lent a
+little color to it. The Hope Farm man was escorted up to a front seat,
+where he was expected to look the part of prominent citizen. They ran him
+into the programme too for a Christmas story, so he got up and told the
+company about “Pete Shivershee’s Miracle”—a little Christmas memory of
+life in a lumber camp many years ago. Finally the simple presents were
+distributed, the sleepy little ones aroused, good wishes spoken and we
+all piled in once more for the home trip. Broker takes life as it comes,
+but Tom was chilly and disposed to be a trifle gay over the prospect of
+barn and cornstalks once more. He proceeded to pull the entire load,
+Broker trotting on with dangling traces! It was a sleepy and happy crowd
+that finally turned off the road into Hope Farm. “_We had a big time!_”
+
+In two of the villages near us the people organized community Christmas
+trees. These trees were placed in the public square or some prominent
+spot, the electric wires were connected, and colored bulbs hung all over
+to take the place of candles. These were lighted on Christmas Eve and
+kept going all through the holiday week. It was a great success, for it
+brought people together, made a better community spirit, and helped us
+all. In addition to this community tree arrangements were made to have
+singers go about the town singing the old Christmas carols. This revival
+of the old English custom was a beautiful thing and a great success.
+
+Shortly after three on Christmas morning our folks were awakened by
+music. I think the Cherry-tops thought it was Santa Claus, as it probably
+was. Out in front of our house a motor car carrying six young men had
+turned in from the road. There in the frosty morning they were singing:
+
+  “O come, all ye faithful,
+  Joyful and triumphant,
+  O come ye! O come ye
+  To Bethlehem.
+  Come and behold Him
+  Born the King of angels,
+  O come let us adore Him,
+  O come let us adore Him,
+  O come let us adore Him,
+  Christ the Lord.”
+
+They were beautiful singers and our folks will never forget that
+Christmas morning.
+
+  “Silent night! Holy night,
+  All is calm. All is light.
+  ’Round young Virgin mother and child
+  Holy infant so tender and mild,
+  Sleep in heavenly peace.”
+
+Finally the car started off, moving slowly down the road with the music
+creeping back to us through the clear air:
+
+  “Hark, the Herald angels sing.”
+
+Our folks heard them at the next neighbor’s, far down the road. I have
+no doubt many a weary and troubled soul waking in the night at the sound
+went back to happier dreams of a better tomorrow. It was a beautiful
+thing to do, and never before did Christmas morning come to us so happily
+as this year.
+
+I thought of these things all day, and the conviction has grown upon me
+that what we people who live in the country need more than anything else
+is something of this spirit which binds people together and holds them.
+We need it in our work, our play and in our battles. It is another name
+for patriotism, which means the unselfish love of country. The Duke of
+Wellington said the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of
+England, where boys were trained in manly sports. He told only half of
+it, for the spirit which turned that play into war came from the singers
+who in English villages sang Christmas carols or English folk songs. In
+like manner the wonderful national spirit which the German nation has
+shown has been developed largely through the singing societies which have
+expressed German feeling in song. In 1792 a band of Frenchmen marched
+from the south of France to Paris dragging cannon through a cloud of
+dust and singing the Marseillaise hymn, and even to this day the loyal
+spirit of France traces down from those dusty singers. Do I mean to say
+that farmers can come together and sing their troubles away? No, for some
+of the troubles have grown so strong and penetrated so deep that they
+must be pulled out by the roots. What I do say is that before we can
+hope to remove these troubles and make our conditions what they should
+be we must feel toward our friends and neighbors the sentiments which
+are expressed in these beautiful old songs. The time has gone by when
+we can hope to obtain what we should have from society as individuals
+playing a cold, selfish game of personal interest. We have tried that for
+many years and steadily lost out on it. The only hope for us now is in
+a true community spirit of loyalty and sacrifice, instead of the effort
+to get all we can for ourselves. That is why I say that there should be
+something of Christmas in every day of the year, and why I give these
+holiday memories.
+
+
+
+
+“THE FINEST LESSON”
+
+
+It is the privilege of youth and old age to make comparisons. One has
+little or nothing of experience to use as a yardstick—the other has
+everything life can offer him. One compares with imagination, the other
+with fact, and youth, having a wider pasture for thought, usually finds
+pleasanter places for feeding. My children have spent nearly every
+Christmas thus far before this open fire, while I have ranged far and
+wide, from Florida to the Great Lakes, and from Cape Cod to Colorado. As
+we sit in silence before our fire the boys can imagine themselves in some
+hunter’s camp, or with the soldiers in France, while the girls can drop
+themselves down from the wings of fancy in Cuba or Brazil. I might try
+that, but stern fact drags me down to other days, and old-time companions
+come creeping out of the past to say “Merry Christmas” and stand here, a
+little sorrowful that they cannot give the children something of their
+story. So I must be their spokesman, it seems, and the children give me
+a chance when after dreaming a while they come and ask me to tell about
+the real Christmas. “What was the finest Christmas lesson you ever had?”
+They do not put it in quite these words, but that is the sense of it.
+So there comes to me a great desire to live up to the highest test of
+story-telling—that is, so to interest your audience that they will forget
+to eat their apples.
+
+The room seems full of the shadowy forms of men and women who have
+stepped out of the past to bring back a Christmas memory. Which of these
+old life teachers ever gave me the best lesson? They were all good—even
+that big fellow who tried to kick me out of a lumber camp—and failed—or
+that slimy little fraud who beat me out of a week’s wages! I think,
+however, that those two women over by the window lead all the rest. One
+is an old woman—evidently a cripple; the other younger—you cannot see
+her face in the dim light, but she stands by the older woman’s chair.
+Yes, they represent the best Christmas lesson I have had. So come up to
+the fire, forget the wind roaring outside, and listen to it. I was a
+hired man that Winter in a Western State. Some of the farmers who read
+this will remember me—not for any great skill I showed at farm work, but
+because I spent my spare time (that meant nights) going around “speaking
+pieces.” I am greatly afraid that as an agriculturist I did better work
+at keeping air hot than I ever did at heating plowshares through labor.
+
+You see, it was this way. I was a freshman at an agricultural college, at
+a time when these institutions were struggling hard to live. The average
+freshman thinks he is the salt of the earth, forgetting that he is salt
+which has not gained its savor through losing its freshness. A man gets
+very little salt in his character until he goes out and assaults the
+world! At any rate, I had no money salted down and no fresh supplies
+coming in. I had to get out during the Winter and earn the price of
+another term at college. I tried canvassing for a book. We will draw the
+curtain down over that act. Some men tell me of making small fortunes
+as book agents. From my experience I judge these men to be supermen or
+superior prevaricators, to put it mildly. I worked the job for all I was
+worth in spite of all obstacles, such as the wrath of farmers who had
+been cheated through signing papers, the laughter of pretty girls and
+the teeth of dogs, and sold four books in two weeks! At last I struck a
+farmer who offered me a job digging a ditch. I made him a present of my
+“sample copy” and went to work.
+
+A dollar makes an interrogation point with a barb on it. About all a farm
+produced in Winter, those days, was enough to eat and drink and something
+to sell for the taxes. The farmer I worked for had a red colt that was to
+settle with the tax man, but just before the taxes were due the colt ran
+away and broke his neck. I cannot say that my labor was worth much, but
+education is not one of the few things which come to us without money or
+price. Then I suddenly made the discovery that I was “a talented young
+elocutionist.” At least that is what the local paper stated, and do we
+not know that all we see in print must be true? I suppose I could tell
+you of one Christmas long ago that I spent as “supe” in a big theater and
+what befell us behind the scenes. At any rate, I could “speak pieces,”
+and I had a long string of them in mind. So what was a rather poor mimic
+in a city became a “talented elocutionist” far back over muddy roads. You
+want to remember that this was a long time before the bicycle had grown
+away from the clumsy “velocipede.” There were few, if any “good roads.”
+No one dreamed of gasoline engines or automobiles. During an open Winter
+the mud was 10 to 20 inches deep, and every mile of travel was to be
+multiplied by the number of inches of mud. Amid such surroundings it is
+not so hard to be known as a “talented elocutionist” when your voice is
+strong, your tongue limber, your memory good, and you have had a chance
+to see and hear some of the great actors from behind the scenes.
+
+I made what they called “a big hit” at night, with audiences all the
+way from four or five up to 200. When life was dull and blue a neighbor
+would come with his family to our farmhouse and I would sit by the
+kitchen fire and entertain them. Once a farmer had a little trouble with
+his mother-in-law, who seemed to hold the mortgage. On his invitation
+I dropped in one night and a few of my “funny pieces” made this good
+lady laugh so that she forgave her son-in-law. Then I was called into
+the chamber of a very sick man to recite several “religious pieces.” I
+shall not soon forget that scene. The poor sick man lying there with eyes
+closed, the entire family and some of the neighbors grouped around like
+a company of mourners, and the “talented elocutionist” standing by the
+head of the bed in the gray light of the dying day. Yes, sir, the man
+recovered! They have a famous saying here in New York. “It’s a great life
+if you don’t weaken!” I found it so that Winter, and as life was young
+and full ambition had not been severely wounded, I did not weaken.
+
+But all this, of course, was mere practice for larger occasions. Whenever
+I could work up a crowd I would go about to schoolhouses and churches,
+entertain as best I could and then “pass the hat”! What evenings they
+were! They were usually in old-fashioned schoolhouses with the big iron
+stove in the center of the room. Such houses were rarely used at night,
+and there would be no light except as some of the audience brought lamps
+or candles. The room was usually crowded and the stove red-hot. In most
+cases the meeting would be opened with prayer and some local politician
+might make a speech. Then the “talented elocutionist” would stand up near
+the stove. He never was an “impressive figure” at his best. In those
+old days the best he could afford was a pair of thick cowhide boots, a
+second-hand coat which came from a long, thin man, and trousers evidently
+made originally for a fat man. Still, the light was dim and the speaker
+remembered hearing James E. Murdock say that if you could only put
+yourself into the _spirit_ of your talk the audience would follow you
+there and forget how you looked. I had seen a great actor play the part
+of Fagin in “Oliver Twist,” and at these entertainments I tried giving
+an imitation of him, until a big husky farmer tried to whip me. I had a
+job to explain to my friends that he was trying to punch Fagin—not me.
+The audiences knew no middle ground. They wanted some burlesque or some
+tragedy of their own lives which would tear at their heartstrings. Now
+and then as I recited in those hot, dim schoolhouses the keen humor of
+the thing would come to me, or like a flash the poverty and pathos of my
+own struggle would sweep over me with overwhelming force. Then I could
+feel that audience moving with me and for a brief moment I got out of the
+ditch of life and knew the supreme joy of the complete mastery of one
+who can separate the human imagination from the flesh and compel it to
+walk with him where he wills.
+
+These moments were all too brief. Back we came finally to the dim,
+stifling room, and the rather ignoble and commonplace job of trying to
+measure the value of a thrill by a voluntary contribution. I have had
+many a high hope and many a dream of a new suit of clothes blackballed
+on “passing the hat.” At first, when a man got up and said: “Gents, this
+show is worth a dollar, and I will pass the hat,” I took him at his word
+and expected a hat full of bills. Yet even when I shook out the lining I
+could find nothing larger than a dime. During that Winter I made a fine
+collection of buttons. It may be that most men want to keep the left hand
+from knowing what the right hand is up to, but evidently you must have
+one hand or the other under public observation if you expect much out of
+the owner. I have learned to have no quarrel with human nature, and I
+imagine after all that the hire fitted the value of the laborer’s efforts
+fairly well.
+
+Christmas came to us in that valley with the same beautiful message which
+was carried to all. It was a cold Christmas, and as we went about our
+chores before day and at night the stars were brilliant. The crinkle of
+the ice and snow and the hum of the wind over the fences and through
+the trees came to me like the murmur of a faraway song. It touched us
+all. We saw each other in something of a new light of glory. The woman
+of the house, I think, regarded me as a sort of awkward hired man. Now
+she seemed to see a boy, far from home, struggling with rather feeble
+hands against the flood which swept him away from the ambition to earn an
+education. I am sure that it came to her that the Christmas spirit must
+be capitalized to help me on my way. So she organized a big gathering
+for Christmas Eve at which I was to “speak” and accept a donation. It
+was to be over in the next district, and that good woman took the sleigh
+and drove all over that county drumming up an “audience.” I am sure
+that there never was a “star” before or since who had such an advance
+or advertising agent as I did on that occasion. She was a good trainer,
+too. The day before Christmas I husked corn in the cold barn, and this
+delicate woman ran through the snow with two hot biscuits and a piece of
+meat. There I worked through the day husking corn with my hands while I
+“rehearsed” a few new ones with my brain and sent my heart way back to
+New England, where I knew the folks were thinking of me.
+
+In these times there would have been a fleet of automobiles moored near
+the farmhouse, but in those days no engine had yet coughed out the
+gasoline in its throat. We came in sleighs and big farm “pungs.” Standing
+by the barn in the clear moonlight you could see the lanterns gleaming
+along the road, and hear the tinkle of the sleighbells and the songs
+which the young people were singing. Far down the road came a big farm
+sled loaded with young people who were singing “Seeing Nellie Home.”
+Sweet and clear came their fresh young voices through the crisp, frosty
+air:—
+
+  “Her little hand was resting
+    On my arm as light as foam
+  When from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,
+    I was seeing Nellie home.
+
+  “I was seeing Nellie. I was seeing Nellie.
+    I was seeing Nellie home,
+  ’Twas from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,
+    I was seeing Nellie home.”
+
+The old farmer on the front seat sat nodding his head to the music, and
+his wife beside him took her hand out of the muff and slid it under his
+arm. These were the fine old days of simple pleasures, when the country
+entertained itself and was satisfied. The other night my young folks
+took me off to a moving picture theater where we saw a great actress
+portraying human emotion in a way to make you shudder. My mind went back
+to my own feeble efforts as a star performer, and I was forced to admit
+that the usual Sunday school entertainment could have but a small chance
+in competition with this powerful exhibition. The thing to do is to carry
+this strong attraction to the country and not force our young people to
+travel to the city after it.
+
+Each sleigh brought not only its load of human freight, but a big basket
+of food, for there was to be a feast of the body with food as well as of
+the spirit with oratory. As the guest of honor I rode over with one of
+the school trustees, and he proved a good local historian.
+
+“This farm we visit tonight is owned by the Widder Fairchild. A nice
+woman, but homely enough to stop a clock. Her father left her the farm,
+and she got to be quite an old maid. We all thought she had settled
+down for such when she up and married the hired man, a nice man, but
+no farmer, and no property except a cough and an old aunt mighty nigh
+bed-ridden. Then the husband died and left the old lady on her hands. She
+might have sent the old thing to the poorhouse—ain’t no kin of hers—but
+just because her husband promised to keep her, Mrs. Fairchild has kept
+the old lady on. There the two women live on one of the best farms in the
+county.”
+
+“It’s the best because the Lord has blessed it.” That came from the wife
+on the back seat. She had tried to get in a word before.
+
+“No, no! Farms are made good by hard work and judgment. The minister went
+and talked to her about it, but all he got out of her was ‘And Ruth said,
+Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee: for
+whither thou goest I will go.’”
+
+“But, Henry, ain’t you ’shamed to call her homely?”
+
+“No, because it’s the truth. It wouldn’t be about you, now, but I told
+the minister that once. He has to be diplomatic and he hemmed and hawed
+and finally said, ‘She has a strong face.’ He’s right! Mighty strong!”
+
+If you ever acted in the capacity of _donatee_ at such a party you know
+the feeling. The big house was filled. Out in the kitchen the women
+sorted out the food and arranged it for supper. In the front room, beside
+a little table, sat “the hired man’s old aunt,” a beautiful old lady with
+white hair and a sweet, patient face. On the table stood a few house
+plants in pots. One geranium had opened a flower.
+
+“The only one in the neighborhood for Christmas,” said the old lady.
+“You don’t know how proud I am of it. It has been such a joy to me to
+see it slowly grow, and, oh, think of what it means to have it come at
+Christmas!”
+
+But the donatee has little time for small talk. He always earns his
+donation, and whatever happened to it later, I earned it that night.
+They finally stopped me for supper. The minister alluded to it as “the
+bounteous repast which we are now asked to enjoy.” My friend the trustee
+stood by the door and shouted:
+
+“Hoe in—help yourself!”
+
+It was getting on toward Christmas Day when I stood up in the corner
+to end the entertainment. I had intended to end with Irwin Russell’s
+“Christmas Night in the Quarters,” with negro dialect, but as I was about
+to start my eye fell upon a group by that little table. The “old aunt”
+sat looking at me, and by her side stood the “homely” woman, her hand
+resting upon the older woman’s shoulder. I wonder if you have ever had a
+vision come to you at Christmas—or any other time! A great, mysterious,
+beautiful vision, in which you look forward into the years and are given
+to see some great thing which is hidden from most men until too late. It
+came to me as I watched those women that the finest test of character,
+the noblest part of the Christmas spirit, was not the glory of caring for
+helpless childhood, but the higher sacrifice of love and duty for the
+aged.
+
+And so, almost before I knew it, I found myself reciting Will Carleton’s
+poem, “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse!” What a sentiment to bring into a
+happy Christmas party—by the donatee at that—one who had been hired “to
+make them laugh”!
+
+I knew it all, yet my mind jumped across the long miles and I thought
+of my own mother growing old and waiting in silence that I might have
+opportunity!
+
+  “Over the hill to the poorhouse
+    I’m trudging my weary way.
+  I a woman of sixty,
+    Only a trifle gray,
+  I who am smart and chipper.
+    For all the years I’ve told,
+  As many another woman
+    Only one-half as old.
+
+  “Over the hill to the poorhouse!
+    I can’t quite make it clear;
+  Over the hill to the poorhouse,
+    It seems so horrid queer!
+  Many’s the journey I’ve taken,
+    Traveling to and fro,
+  But over the hill to the poorhouse
+    I never once thought I’d go!”
+
+It was a great 10 minutes. It is worth a good many years to have 600
+ticks of the clock pass by like that. Could all of us have lived, for 10
+years with that 10-minute feeling—what a neighborhood that would have
+been. I was looking at those two women by the table. I saw their hands
+come together. It is true that the trustee had not done great injustice
+to her appearance, but as she stood there by “the hired man’s old aunt”
+there came upon her face a beauty such as God alone can bring upon the
+face of those who are beloved by Him. A light from within illuminated
+her life story, and I could read it on her face. A love that endures
+after death—until life! And when I stopped I was _done_. The power had
+all gone from me. Not so with my manager, the trustee. He could sense
+a psychological moment even if he could not spell it, and he got his
+hat into action before the rich spirit of that crowd could get to the
+poorhouse. I saw him coming with the hat full—there were surely several
+bills there. Say, did you ever spend money before you got your fingers on
+it? I never have since that night. I know better. As I saw that money I
+figured on several Christmas presents, a new coat and at least one term
+at college. The trustee cleared his throat for a few remarks and I stood
+there pleasantly expectant, anticipating a few compliments—and the money.
+
+“Now, friends, we thank you one and all for your generous gift, and we
+thank our talented young friend here for the great assistance he has
+given us. He will rejoice when he learns the full amount, for, my dear
+friends, _this money belongs to the Sunday school_!”
+
+And he proceeded forthwith to gather up the money and stuff it into his
+pockets, leaving me with my mouth half open, and my hand half extended.
+
+What could you do? There was a roar of protest from several farmers who
+demanded their money back, though they never got it. Happily the humor of
+it struck me. The first thing that came into my mind was an old song I
+had often heard:
+
+“_Thou art so near and yet so far!_”
+
+There is nothing like being a good sport, and so I bowed and smiled and
+took my medicine, although I am sure the party would have ended in a
+fight if I had said the word. But the “old aunt” looked at me for a
+moment and then cut off that geranium bloom, tied two leaves on it and
+handed it to me without a word. And the woman with the shining face took
+my hand in both hers and said: “Do not get discouraged. I know you will
+win out.”
+
+I rode home with a farmer who, with his two big sons, roared profanely
+at what they called the “injustice of that miser.” They vowed to get up
+another donation, which they did later. They offered to go and “lick
+the trustee” and take the money from him. I think they were a little
+disappointed when I told them that he needed it more than I did.
+
+“Why, from the way you talk, anybody’d think you had fallen heir to a big
+thing!”
+
+I had. That little flower in my pocket carried a Christmas spirit and a
+Christmas lesson that the whole world could not buy. The thing paying the
+largest dividend, the finest companion that ever walked with one along
+the roadway of life—unselfish love, and sacrifice.
+
+
+
+
+“COLUMBUS DAY”
+
+
+I would like to know where you are tonight, and what you have been doing
+all through this “Liberty Day.” With us the day has been cloudy and
+wet, and just as the sun went down Nature took the liberty of sending a
+cold, penetrating rain. So here I am before my big fire with a copy of
+Washington Irving’s “Life of Christopher Columbus.” That seems the proper
+way to end Columbus Day, for in trying to tell the children about him I
+found that I did not really know much more than they do about the great
+discoverer. So here I am back some 400 years in history wondering if
+any of these pompous and bigoted ways of seeking for new worlds or new
+methods can be applied to modern life in New Jersey.
+
+My back aches, for I have been digging potatoes all day—and I thought I
+had graduated from that job some years ago. Perhaps you will say that we
+should have been out selling Liberty bonds or parading. Personally, I am
+a poor salesman, and we all subscribed for our bonds some days ago. There
+are eight bondholders in this family. The influenza has left us without
+labor except for the children while the school is closed. There are
+still over 100 barrels of apples to pick, potatoes to dig, plowing and
+seeding to be done, and a dozen other jobs all pressing. So I decided to
+celebrate Liberty Day by digging those Bible School potatoes. We planted
+a patch of potatoes between rows of young peach trees and promised the
+crop to the Bible Teachers’ Training School. Last year we tried this, and
+I put in a few of the latest scientific touches which the experts told
+us about. The plant lice came in a swarm and ruined the patch. We had a
+few potatoes about the size of marbles. This year we avoided scientific
+advice, and just planted potatoes in the old-fashioned way. They were not
+cultivated in the best possible manner, but they made a good crop. So
+when Liberty Day dawned with a thick, gray mist over the land I decided
+to get those potatoes out instead of going on the march or singing “The
+Star Spangled Banner.” From what I read of Columbus I imagine he would
+have chosen the parade and left the digging to others. The world has
+taken on new ideas about labor since then.
+
+So, after breakfast, Cherry-top and I took our forks and started digging.
+The soil was damp and the air full of mist and meanness which made me
+sneeze and cough as we worked on. Happily, out on our hills we are not
+fined $20 for sneezing outside of a handkerchief, as is the case in New
+York. If anyone has discovered any poetry or philosophy in the job of
+digging potatoes he may have the floor. I call it about the most menial
+job on the farm, and therefore fine discipline for “Liberty Day.” While
+we were working Philip and the larger boy went by with the team to seed
+rye. They have thrashed out enough grain by hand, and this is not only
+ideal weather, but about the last limit for seeding. The land was plowed
+some two weeks ago, a big crop of ragweed and grass being turned under.
+If we only had the labor this ground would have been disked twice and
+then harrowed. As it is, we can only work it once with the spring-tooth.
+Then Philip goes ahead seeding in the rye by hand, while the boy follows
+with the Acme harrow to cover the grain. It is rough seeding and would
+not answer for wheat, but rye is tough and enduring, and it will imitate
+Columbus and discover a new world in that decaying mass of ragweed. So
+I watch the seed sowers travel slowly along the hillside as I dig, and
+wonder what was doing on this farm 427 years ago, and what will be doing
+here 100 years hence! Such reflections were the most cheerful mental
+accompaniment I could find for digging potatoes. They are impractical,
+while digging is the most practical thing on earth!
+
+As we dug on a man and woman came up the lane. They came after apples,
+having engaged them before. The boy went down to attend to them, while I
+kept on digging. Then the boy came back with two more apple customers.
+The trouble with us is that we have more customers than apples this
+year, but these were old patrons, and they were served. The boy finally
+came back with $41.80 as a result of his trading, and we went at our
+job with new vigor. As we dug along we noticed a curious thing about
+those potatoes. Here and there was a vine large and strong, and still
+perfectly green. The great majority of the hills were dead, but those
+green ones were as vigorous as they were in June. The variety was Green
+Mountain, and we soon found that on the average these big green vines
+were producing twice as much as the dead hills. Some of these living
+vines carried three or four big potatoes. Others had a dozen, with seven
+or eight of market size, while others had about 16 tubers, mostly small.
+Just why these vines should act in this way I do not know. There are so
+many possible reasons that I should have to guess at it, as Columbus
+did when, as his ship sailed on and on into the west, the compass began
+to vary. The boy and I decided that here was where we might discover a
+good strain of Green Mountain on Columbus Day. So we have selected 15
+of the best hills. They will be planted, hill by hill, next year and
+still further selection made. We discarded the hills with only a few big
+potatoes and also those with many small ones, and selected those with a
+good number of medium-sized tubers. It may come to nothing, but we will
+try it. Experience and careful figures show that an ordinary crop of
+potatoes in this country does not pay. The same is true of a flock of
+ordinary poultry, or a drove of scrub pigs. There is no profit except
+in well-bred, selected stock. That’s what we think we have in pigs and
+poultry—perhaps we may get something of the same thing in potatoes.
+
+But there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you work up a great
+appetite. At noon there came a most welcome parade up the lane. It was
+not a woman suffrage procession, but Mother, Aunt Eleanor, Rose and the
+little girls bringing the picnic dinner in baskets and pails. The boy had
+built a fire up above the Spring and piled stones up around it. By the
+time I had washed my hands and face in the brook Mother had a frying pan
+over this fire with slices of bacon sizzling and giving up their fat.
+When this bacon was brown the slices were taken out and the fat kept on
+bubbling and dancing. Then Aunt Eleanor cut up slices of Baldwin apples
+and dropped them into this fat. They tell me Ben Davis is best for this
+fried-apple performance, but I found no fault with Baldwin as it jumped
+out of that fat. The chemist will no doubt explain how the bacon fat
+combined with the acid of the apple, etc., etc., etc. Let him talk; it
+does him good—but have another fried apple! Men may come and men may go,
+but they will seldom find more appetizing food or a more perfect balanced
+ration than the Hope Farmers discovered around that fire. There were
+bread and butter, fried bacon, fried apple, pot cheese and several of our
+choice Red hen’s eggs boiled hard and chopped fine with a little onion.
+Of course, eggs are worth good and great money just now, but nothing
+is too good for an occasion like this. And so, on that cheerless day,
+sitting around our fire, we all concluded that Columbus did a great thing
+when he discovered America.
+
+But our job was not to be ended by eating fried apples and bacon,
+pleasant as that occupation is, and when I put out my hand I was obliged
+to admit that the first faint evidence of rain was beginning. The larger
+boy went back to his rye seeding, and very soon Tom and Broker could be
+seen on the lower farm pounding back and forth over the field like gray
+giants hauling up the guns. All hands went to picking up potatoes. Mother
+picked two bushels and then had to go back to her housework. Little Rose
+claimed that she picked up 20 potatoes. Her chief job was to hold on to
+her throat and ask if it was not time to eat one more of those sweet
+throat tablets I had in my pocket. The rain slowly developed from mist to
+good-sized drops. I know what it means to get wet, and in any other cause
+I would have left the job, but we were there to finish those potatoes,
+and we stayed by it until they were all picked up. The last barrel or two
+came up out of the mud, and our hands and feet were surely plastered with
+common clay—but we finished our job. Then came the boys with Broker and
+the fruit wagon to carry the crop to the barn. One of these boys had on
+a rubber coat—the other a sack over his shoulders. They went on up the
+hill to get a load of apples and on their way back brought down the Bible
+potatoes, where they will dry out and be ready for delivery. When we got
+to the barn there was another party after apples.
+
+We finished it all at last, dried off before the fire and found ourselves
+none the worse for the day. In the present condition of my back I would
+not from choice go to a dance tonight, but that will limber out in time.
+The fire roars away, the rain taps at the window, and we are safe and
+warm. We have had our supper, and I suppose I could tell where Aunt
+Eleanor has hidden a pan of those famous ginger cookies. I will make it a
+one to five chance that I can also find a pan of baked apples. I think I
+will not reveal the secret publicly at this time. The Food Administrator
+might accuse her of using too much ginger or sweetening! School has been
+closed on account of the influenza, but the children are still working
+their “examples,” and I give them a few original sums to work out. Little
+Rose listens to all this, and finally proposes this one of her own:
+
+“If a woman paid three cents at a hospital for a baby, how much would a
+horse cost?”
+
+Personally, I will give that up, and go back to the “Life of Columbus.”
+The most interesting thing to me is the account of the council of wise
+men to whom Columbus tried to explain his theories. They told him that
+since the old philosophers and wise men had not discovered any new world,
+it was great presumption for an ordinary man to claim that there remained
+any great discovery for him to make. Seems to me I have heard that same
+argument ever since I was able to read and understand. Perhaps it is well
+that all who come, like Columbus, with a theory and vision of new worlds
+must fight and endure and suffer before the slow and prejudiced public
+will give them a chance. But here comes a message for me to come upstairs
+and see a strange thing. Little Rose cannot have her own way, and she has
+gone into a passion altogether too big for her little frame. She will not
+even let me come near her, and back I come a little sadly to my book and
+my fire. They are not quite so satisfying as before. But who comes here?
+It is Mother carrying a very pink and repentant morsel of humanity—little
+Rose. She hunts up my electric hearing device and with the ear piece at
+my ear I hear a trembly little voice saying:
+
+“_I’s awful sorry!_”
+
+And that is a fine ending for Liberty Day. Perhaps, like Columbus on that
+fateful night at the end of his voyage, this little one sees the first
+faint light of a new world! Who knows?
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMENCEMENT
+
+
+You could hardly have crowded another human into the great hall. From
+the gowned and decorated dignitaries on the stage to the great orchestra
+in the upper gallery every square foot of floor space was packed, as the
+president of the great woman’s college arose to open the commencement
+exercises. This followed one of the most impressive scenes I have ever
+witnessed. The great audience had been waiting long beyond the appointed
+time for starting, when suddenly the orchestra started a slow and stately
+march and we all rose. A dignified woman in cap and gown, with soft gray
+hair, marched slowly up the aisle, and following her came long lines of
+“sweet girl graduates,” as Tennyson puts it. The woman walked to the
+steps which led to the stage, and standing there reviewed the long lines
+of girls as they filed silently in and occupied the seats reserved for
+them. In their black gowns and white bands they seemed, as they were,
+a trained and steadfast army. As they seated themselves and rose again
+it seemed like the swelling of a great ocean tide. And following them
+came men and women who had gained distinction in education or public
+life. They, too, were in cap and gown, with bands of red, purple, white,
+green or brown, to designate their college or their studies. The bright
+sunshine flooded in at the open windows. Outside, the beautiful green
+college campus stretched away in gently rolling mounds and little
+valleys. I noticed a robin perched on a tree with his head on one side,
+calmly viewing the great professor who with the bright red band across
+his breast was delivering the address. Very likely this wise bird was
+saying, “You should not be too proud of that dash of red on your gown.
+There are others! Your red badge is man made. It will not appear on your
+children, and it may even be taken from you. The red on my breast is a
+finger-print of Nature, and cannot be removed.”
+
+I know that there are those who would call this impressive service
+mere pomp and vain parade, yet, to the plain man and woman sitting in
+the front row of the balcony, it all seemed a noble part of a great
+proceeding, and a great pride for them. Just where the balcony curved
+around like a horseshoe this gray-haired couple sat—just like hundreds of
+other men and women who, in other places, with strange thought in mind,
+were watching their boys and girls pass out of training into the race of
+life. The Hope Farm man is supposed to be a farmer, and “as the husband
+so the wife is.” He worked out as hired man for some years and otherwise
+qualified for the position, while Mother probably never saw a working
+farm before she was married. But at any rate there they were—like the
+hundreds of other plain men and women, while down below them the best
+work of their lives was coming to fruition. For the daughter was part of
+that army in cap and gown and was about to receive her certificate of
+education!
+
+To me one of the most interesting characters in the universe is “the
+hen with one chicken”! These women with one child of their own! Having
+added just one volume to the book of life it is their duty and privilege
+to regard it as a masterpiece. When you come to think of it, what a day,
+what a moment, that must have been for a woman like Mother. Here was her
+only child, a girl who, from the cradle, had never given her a moment’s
+uneasiness or a single lapse of confidence, now standing up big and
+straight and fine to take her college degree. It had been the dream of
+Mother’s girlhood to go through this same great college, but that had
+been denied her. Yet the years had swung around in their relentless march
+and here was her daughter, big, trained, fine and unspoiled, making noble
+use of the opportunity which failed to knock at her mother’s door! Many
+of you women who read this will know that there can be no prouder moment
+in a woman’s life. Is it any wonder that there was a very suspicious
+moisture on Mother’s glasses as the minister read the 25th chapter of St.
+Matthew?
+
+“_And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth._”
+
+Would you not, as she did, have sung with all your power when that great
+audience rose like a mighty wave to sing “The Star Spangled Banner”? The
+members of the orchestra stood up to play the tune. As you know, a group
+of musicians will usually show a large proportion of European faces, but
+all these markings of foreign blood faded away as they played, and there
+came upon each countenance the light of what we call _Americanism_.
+
+But what about “father” at such a time and place? Where does _he_
+come in? At a woman’s college he stays out—he is a mere incident, and
+properly so. If he is wise he will accept the situation. For this big
+girl marching in line has his shoulders and head; she walks as he does,
+and people are kind enough to remark, “How much your daughter looks like
+you!” Now this is no fly in the ointment of Mother’s pride and joy,
+unless you refer to it too much. Far better take a back seat and let the
+good lady take full pride in her daughter. I confess that when those 200
+girls sat together at the front of the room, all in cap and gown, and
+most of them with their hair arranged alike, I could not be sure of my
+own girl until her name was called! My mind was back in the years busy
+with many memories. More than a full generation ago at an agricultural
+college I walked up to receive my “certificate.” I remember that I had on
+some clothes which had been discarded by two other men. I played the part
+of tailor to clean and press them into service. There were no be-gowned
+and decorated dignitaries on the platform—just a few farmers, several of
+them right out of the harvest field. I remember how two of these tired
+men fell asleep through our class “orations.” I had in my pocket just
+enough money to get me to a farm where I had agreed to cut corn. And
+this proud and happy lady beside me! At just about the same time she was
+graduating from a normal college at the South. She was then a mere slip
+of a pretty girl, not out of her ’teens, with a plain white dress and a
+bright ribbon, and no “graduation present” but the bare price of a ticket
+home. And within a few weeks she was off, giving the acid test to her
+certificate of education by teaching school in Texas! What a world it all
+is anyway! The years had ironed out the rather poor scientific farmer and
+the smart girl teacher into the parents of this young woman who, as we
+fondly hope, has adopted the good qualities of both sides of the house
+and cast out the poor ones. A great world, certainly a good world, and
+probably a wise one!
+
+The orator of the day made an impressive speech. He made a powerful
+comparison between Crœsus, the rich Persian king, and Leonidas, the
+Greek hero. Then he compared the life of the Emperor Tiberius with that
+of Jesus. It was a powerful plea for a life of service—for making full
+use of training and culture. I saw my old friend the robin on his perch
+outside regarding the orator critically. I take him to be one of these
+exponents of a “practical” education. Very likely he was saying:
+
+“Very fine! Very fine! ‘Words, my lord, words.’ But if I had a daughter
+I would want more of housekeeping and practical homemaking in her
+education. With all your culture and literature you cannot build a house
+as my daughter can. You cannot tell when it is time to go South, as we
+can, nor can you defend yourself against enemies as we are able to do.
+All very fine, no doubt, for human beings, but if birds were educated
+with any such ideas the race would be extinct in three generations.
+Reading, writing and housekeeping are the only things that women need to
+know.”
+
+I have heard human robins talk in just exactly that way, and for many
+years the world listened to them and believed what they said. Their talk
+was about like the song of the robin, only not 10 per cent as musical.
+They were opposed to the “educated” woman, and most of all to the woman’s
+college. There are still some of these pessimists left. I thought of
+one in particular as one by one those girls stood up to receive their
+diplomas—and the robin flew away in disgust. Woman can never again be set
+aside as a slave or underling or inferior partner of man. She has a right
+to the best there is in life. Some of those who read this will say, “What
+will become of farming if our country women get the idea that they are
+entitled to education and culture, as others are?” Farming will be better
+off than ever before, because when our women get this idea firmly in mind
+we shall all proceed to demand the things which will enable us to give
+opportunity to every country girl.
+
+Of all the wonderful changes in the past 25 years, few have been so
+remarkable as the growth of opportunity for women. The full ballot is now
+to be given them, and the war opened many a door of industry. Those doors
+cannot be shut. They have lost their hinges. A new element is coming into
+business and political life. I do not think we need new development of
+science or mechanical skill half as much as we need vision, poetry and
+the finer imagination. It must be said that while man alone has done
+wonders in developing material power he has failed to combine it with
+spiritual power. That is what we need today more than anything else, and
+I think the finely educated women are to bring it. I was thinking about
+this all through that great day. Suppose my daughter and the 200 other
+graduates had all been trained as lawyers, doctors, business women, etc.;
+would they really benefit the world more than they will now do with
+broad, strong culture and with minds stored with the best that literature
+can give them? I doubt it. No matter what they may do hereafter, their
+lives and their influence will be strong for this sort of training. I can
+hardly think of any better missionary to go into a country neighborhood
+to live than one of these hopeful, trained and useful young women. Mother
+selected the college for her daughter before that young person was out
+of her cradle. I thought some more practical training would be better,
+but I never had a chance to argue. I now conclude that Mother was right.
+She knew what she was doing, and evidently sized up the spirit of her own
+flesh and blood. If you ask me what I think is the finest thing about a
+college education I can quickly tell you. It is having a son or daughter
+go through a great college with credit and come out wholly unspoiled by
+the process. It seems to me that most people use the college as a trading
+place in life. They bring away from it knowledge and culture, but they
+leave behind too much of youth, too much of the plain home life, too much
+of the simple, homely, kindly things which the world needs and longs for.
+So that we may all pardon Mother her pride and satisfaction as she looks
+down upon this big girl in cap and gown and knows that her daughter has
+mastered the course at a great college and still remains _her daughter_,
+with a sane and fine understanding of her relations to the home and to
+society.
+
+Ideals are what count. One of the most beautiful ceremonies of this
+commencement was the placing of the laurel chain. The senior class,
+dressed in white, marched to the grave where lies the founder of the
+college, carrying a great chain or wreath of laurel. While the students
+sang, these seniors draped the laurel around the little fence which
+enclosed the grave. It was as if the youngest daughter of the college had
+come to pay reverence to the founder. A beautiful ceremony, and after it
+was over I went back and copied the inscription on one side of the little
+monument. I have seen nothing finer as a message to educated youth.
+
+“_There is nothing in the universe that I fear but that I shall not know
+all my duty or shall fail to do it._”
+
+
+
+
+“ORGANIZATION”
+
+
+The other day a city man came to the farm after apples. He loaded up
+his car and, rendered good-natured by eating three mellow Baldwins,
+he proceeded to tell us where farmers were behind the times. It
+is a pleasure for many city men to do this and the average farmer
+good-naturedly listens, always glad to have his customers enjoy
+themselves. This man said he wondered why farmers have never organized
+properly so as to defend and control their business. It is quite easy for
+a man of large affairs to see what could be done if all the farmers could
+get together in a great business organization.
+
+“The trouble with you folks is that you don’t know how to do team work,”
+said my city friend. “Suppose there are twelve million farmers in the
+country. Suppose they all joined and organized and pledged by all they
+hold sacred to each put up $5.00 every month as a working fund. Suppose
+they hired the greatest organizing brain in the country and instructed
+its owner and carrier to go to it. It would simply mean world control by
+the most patient and deserving class on earth. Why don’t you do it?”
+
+That’s the way your city business man talks, and he cannot understand
+why our farmers do not promptly carry out the plan. Of course that word
+“suppose” takes the bottom out of most facts, but it is hard for the
+business man to realize why farmers have not been able to do full team
+work. This man said that large business enterprises in the city were
+controlled by boards of directors. There might be men on the board who
+personally hated each other with all the intensity of business hatred.
+Yet when it came to a matter of business policy for the company they all
+got together and put the proposition through. He said it was different
+with a farmer, who if he had trouble with his neighbor over a line fence
+would not under any circumstances vote for him even if he stood for a
+sound business proposition.
+
+That is the way many of these city men feel. It is largely a matter of
+ignorance through not understanding country conditions. Those of us who
+spend our lives among the hills can readily understand why it is hard for
+a farmer to surrender a large share of his individuality and put it into
+the contribution box of society. Many of us, I fear, would dodge or cheat
+the contribution box in church unless we felt we were under the watchful
+eye of our wives. Possibly we shall contribute more freely to society now
+that our wives and daughters have the privilege of voting. When a man
+has lived his life among brick and stone with ancestors who have been
+constantly warned to “keep off the grass” he comes to be incapable of
+understanding what is probably the greatest problem of American society.
+That is the effort to keep our country people contented and feeling
+that they are getting a fair share of life, so that they will continue
+cheerfully to feed and clothe the world. You cannot convince a man unless
+you can understand his language or read his thought. One of the worst
+misfortunes of the present day is the fact that city and country have
+grown apart, so that they have no common language.
+
+Those of us who live close to Nature realize that in order to know the
+truth we must find
+
+  “Tongues in trees, Books in running Brooks,
+  Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
+
+The trouble with the city man is that he has been denied the blessed
+privilege of studying that way. Therefore, if you would make him know why
+in the past it has been so difficult for farmers to organize thoroughly
+you must go to the primary motives of life and not to the high school.
+
+When our first brood of children were small, I thought it well to give
+them an early lesson in organization. There were four children, and as
+Spring came upon us there was a great desire to start a garden. So we
+proceeded in the most orderly manner to organize the Hope Farm Garden
+Association. We had a constitution and full set of rules and by-laws.
+These stated the full duties of all the officers, but somehow we forgot
+to provide for the plain laborers. The largest boy was President and the
+smaller boy was Vice-President. My little girl was Secretary, and the
+other girl Treasurer. It was an ideal arrangement, for each one held an
+important office, and all were directors. I had a piece of land plowed
+and harrowed. I bought seeds and tools and the Association voted to start
+the garden at once. They started under directions of the President and I
+went up the hill to work in the orchard. It proved to be a case where the
+controlling director should have remained on the job. Halfway up the hill
+I glanced back and saw the Hope Farm Garden Association headed for the
+rocks. The President and Vice-President were fighting and the Treasurer
+and Secretary were crying. No one was working except the black hen, and
+she was industriously eating up the seeds.
+
+I came back to save the Association if possible and the Secretary ran
+to meet me with the minutes of the meeting on her cheeks. Her hands had
+been in the soil and she had succeeded in transferring a portion of it
+to her face. Through this deposit the tears had forced their way in a
+track as crooked as the course of the Delaware River, in its effort to
+carve the outline of a human face on the western coast of New Jersey. The
+poor little Secretary came up the lane with the old industrial cry which
+has come down to us out of the ages, tearing apart the efforts of men to
+combine and improve their condition.
+
+“_Oh! Father, don’t the President have to work?_”
+
+The minutes of the meeting clearly revealed the trouble. It seemed
+that the President of the Association made the broad claim that his
+duty consisted simply in being President. There was nothing in the
+constitution about his working. Of course, a dignified President could
+not perform manual labor. The Secretary followed with the claim that her
+duty was to write in a book; how could she do that if she worked? Then
+came the Treasurer proving by the by-laws that her duty was to hold the
+money; if she tried to work at the same time she might lose the cash. So
+naturally she could not work. Thus it happened that there was no laborer
+left except the Vice-President. He had resigned and the President was
+trying to accept his resignation in italics.
+
+These were the same children who had settled a debate on the previous
+Sunday afternoon. The question was whether they would rather have the
+minister read his sermon or talk off-hand. The vote was 3 to 1 in favor
+of having him read it. The prevailing argument was that when the minister
+read his sermon he knew when he got through. The one negative vote was
+passed on the hope that when he talked off-hand he might be a little
+off-head, forget one or two pages and thus get through sooner. You may
+learn from that one reason why it has been so hard in the past for
+certain farmers to organize.
+
+And one reason why there has grown up an industrial advantage in the town
+and city may perhaps be learned from another sermon in stones. Some years
+ago we had two boys on the farm. Largely in order to keep them busy their
+mother made a bargain with them to wash windows. They were to be paid so
+much for each window properly cleaned. Of course their mother supposed
+that the work would be done in the good old-fashioned way of scrubbing
+the glass by hand with a wet cloth. The object was more to keep them busy
+than to have any skilled work performed. One boy was a patient plodding
+character who did not object seriously to hand labor. He took a cloth
+and a pail of hot water and slowly and carefully rubbed off the glass in
+the old-fashioned way. The other boy never did like to work and after
+some thought he went to the neighbor’s and borrowed a small hand-pump
+with a hose and fine nozzle. He filled this with hot water with the soap
+dissolved in it and sprayed his windows with the hot mixture. He got them
+just as clean as the other boy did, but he did three windows while his
+companion was doing one. Then there arose an argument as to whether this
+boy with the pump should be paid the same price per window as the other
+boy who did the work by hand. These boys both went to the Sunday school
+and the boy with the pump was able to refer to the parable of the man
+who hired the workmen at different hours during the day. When they came
+to settle up the men who had worked all day grumbled because they got
+no more than the men who had worked half a day. The answer of the boss
+applied to this window washing. “Did I not agree with thee for a penny?”
+
+Now in a way the city man with his advantage in labor is not unlike the
+boy with the pump. The city workman has been able to take advantage of
+many industrial developments of much machinery which has not yet reached
+the country. Some day there will be an adjustment and then the countryman
+will have his inning.
+
+Some years ago I spent the night with a farmer far back in a country
+neighborhood. After supper he described in great detail a plan he had
+evolved for organizing all American farmers in one great and powerful
+body. His plan was complete and he had worked out every detail except
+one which he did not seem to think essential. I looked out of the window
+through the dark night and saw a light far down the road. Some neighbor
+was at home. I thought it a good time for action.
+
+“There,” I said, “is a chance to start this big scheme of yours. Down the
+road I see the light from your neighbor’s window. Put on your hat, take
+the hired man and your boys and we will go right down there and organize
+the first chapter of this organization. No time like the present.”
+
+The farmer’s face clouded. “Why, I haven’t spoken, to that man for three
+years. He would not keep up the line fence and I had to go to law and
+make him do it.”
+
+I looked out of the window once more and saw another light to the north
+of us dimly visible in the darkness. “Well, then let us go to this other
+neighbor. I saw several men there as I came by.”
+
+“That man! I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents, and he would be sure to
+elect himself Treasurer.”
+
+“Well, far across the pasture I see still another light. Shall we go
+there?”
+
+“No, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the house when it rains.”
+
+The farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to speak, but the man
+answered for her.
+
+“Oh, the women meet at the sewing circle and church, and while they talk
+about each other they keep together and do things for the neighborhood,
+but somehow the men folks don’t get on.”
+
+Yet here was a man who planned to bring all the farmers of the country
+together and yet could not organize his own neighborhood, because men
+were kept apart by little prejudices and fancied wrongs. The women
+combined because they knew enough to realize that these petty things were
+non-essential, while the great community things could only be remembered
+by forgetting the meanness of every-day life.
+
+Your city men will smile at this sermon in stones, and say that those
+farmers never can forget their differences and organize. Yet city life is
+worse yet. Many a man lives for years within a foot of his neighbor, yet
+never knows him. There may be only a brick wall between the two families,
+yet they might as well be 10 miles apart, so far as any community feeling
+is concerned. If dwellers on any block in the city could combine as a
+renting or buying association they would quickly settle the High Cost
+of Living burden, but while their interests are all in common they are
+unable to play the part of real neighbors. Farmers are coming to it
+largely through their women and children and the great National Farm
+Organization is by no means impossible for the future.
+
+
+
+
+THE FACE OF LIBERTY
+
+
+I suppose every person of middle age wears a mask. It is his face, and as
+the years go by it settles into an expression of the man’s chief aim in
+life, if he can be said to have one. That is why a shrewd observer can
+usually tell much of a man’s character by looking keenly in his face and
+observing him under excitement. One of the most observing dairymen I know
+of says he can tell the quality of a cow by looking at her face. I notice
+that the expert hen men who select birds for the poultry contest spend
+considerable time looking at the hen’s eye and face! There she seems to
+show whether she is a bad egg or a good one! Lady Macbeth put it well
+when she said to her terrified husband:
+
+    “Your face, my thane, is as a book
+  Where men may read strange matters.”
+
+We all go about wearing a mask, and those who care how they look may well
+ask how the mask is made.
+
+I once roomed with a young man who used to get before a mirror and
+practise a smile and a laugh. He was a commercial traveler, and thought
+it paid him to laugh at the jokes and smile as he talked. So he trained
+the muscles of his face and throat into a machine-made twist and noise
+which represented his stock in trade! He wore a mask. I have heard people
+say that the face powders and massage and tricks of rolling the eyes
+about gave them a mask of beauty. Not long ago I talked with a great
+business man who had simply given his life up to the accumulation of
+property. He had succeeded, but this success had stamped his face with a
+mask as hard and flinty as steel. This man sat and told me that a good
+share of his money had been made by his ability to read character in the
+face. When he found a man showing indecision or fear in his features this
+man knew he could handle him as he saw fit. He claimed that thought or
+sentiment had little to do with it; it was simply what a man did or did
+not do which made the mask of life. As for this theory that character or
+sentiment “light a candle behind the face and illuminate it,” he said
+that was simply “poetic nonsense.” “If a woman wanted to be thought
+beautiful after she got to be forty she must rub the beauty in from the
+outside.”
+
+This seemed to me a mighty cynical theory, for the most beautiful women I
+know of are over fifty and never use anything but soap and water to “rub
+the beauty in.” They wear a mask which seems like concentrated sunshine,
+and it comes from within. Yet my friend sat there and spoke with all the
+conviction of a man who has only to write his name on a piece of paper
+to bring a million dollars to support his word. And he had come to think
+that is about the only support worth having. I asked him if he had ever
+read Hawthorne’s story of “The Old Stone Face.” No, he had never heard of
+it before—had no time for fiction or dreaming. So I told him the story
+briefly; of the boy who grew up among the hills, within sight of the
+“old stone face.” This was a great rock on the side of a high mountain.
+The wind and the storm had slowly eaten it away until, when viewed from
+a certain angle, it bore a rude resemblance to a human face. It was a
+stern, gloomy, thoughtful face, and it seemed to this boy to have been
+carved out of the rock by the very hand of God to show the world an ideal
+of power and majesty on the human countenance. To most of the neighbors
+it was merely “the old man of the mountain”—merely a common rock with an
+accidental shape. But this boy grew up to manhood believing in his heart
+that God had put on the lonely mountain his ideal of the mask of noble
+human character. And the boy went through life thinking that if he could
+only find a human being with a face like that on the mountain he would
+find a great man—one carrying in his life a great message to mankind.
+And so, whenever he heard of any great statesman or poet or preacher
+appearing anywhere within reach this man traveled to see him in the
+hope of finding the mask of the “stone face” upon the celebrity. He was
+always disappointed. These great men all showed on their faces the marks
+of dissipation or pride or some weakness of character, along with their
+power. He would come back and look up at the face on the mountain—always
+showing the same calm dignity and strength whether the happy June
+sunshine played over it, or whether the January storm bit at its rude
+features. So this man lived his simple life and died—disappointed because
+he had never been able to find God’s ideal character worked out in a
+human face! One by one men who were considered great came to the valley,
+only to disappoint him, but finally, after long years of waiting and
+searching, the neighbors suddenly found that their friend, who had
+carried the ideal so long in his heart, also carried on his face the
+nobility and grandeur of the figure on the mountain. Search for the ideal
+in others had brought it home to his own life.
+
+To my surprise, the rich and strong man who, I supposed, had no poetry or
+sentiment in his heart, listened attentively and nodded his head.
+
+“I have seen that stone face in the White Mountains. Your story of course
+is a mere fancy. There might have been some idle dreamer to whom that
+happened. I will not deny it, because I know of a case which is somewhat
+in the same line. I confess that I would not believe it had I not seen it
+myself.”
+
+So he told his story, and I give it as nearly as possible in his own
+words:
+
+“It must have been fifteen years ago that I was returning from a
+business trip to Europe. On the boat I met a college man from my city,
+an expert in modern languages. We were much together on the trip, and
+one day we went down into the steerage to look over the immigrants. My
+friend figured that this group of strange human beings talked with him
+in fifteen different languages or dialects. One family in particular
+interested me. They were from the south of Poland; a man and woman of
+perhaps thirty-five, with two little boys. They were of the dull, heavy,
+ox-like type—mere beasts of burden in their own country. The woman seemed
+to me just about the plainest, homeliest creature I had ever seen. Low
+forehead, flat features, small eyes and great mouth, with huge hands and
+feet, she seemed, beside the dainty women of our own party, like some
+inferior animal. I offered her a good-sized bill—they looked as if they
+needed it—but the woman just pulled her two black-eyed boys closer to her
+and refused to take it.
+
+“They passed out of my mind, until one fine, sunny morning old Sandy Hook
+seemed to rise up out of the water, and we headed straight for New York
+Harbor. I stood with my college friend in front, looking down upon the
+steerage passengers as they crowded forward to get their first view of
+America. Strangely enough that little Polish family that had interested
+me stood right below us, and my friend could hear what they were saying.
+The ship crawled up the harbor, past Staten Island, and then came to
+the Statue of Liberty. Most of us have become so familiar with this
+bronze beauty that we do not even glance at it. I think her strong, fine
+face and uplifted torch mean little more than old-time habit to many
+Americans. Not so with that flat-faced, plain Polish woman. As we came
+even with the ‘bronze goddess’ this woman tore off the little shawl she
+had tied around her head, reached out her hand and talked excitedly to
+her husband. My college friend listened to the conversation and laughed.
+
+“‘What is she saying?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Why, the poor, homely thing is telling her husband that it would be
+the pride and joy of her life if she could only be as beautiful as that
+statue—if her face were only like that.’
+
+“‘That is the limit. What is _he_ saying?’
+
+“‘Just like every other husband. He is telling her that to him she is
+handsomer than the old goddess, and for good measure he tells her that
+under freedom in America she will come to look like “Miss Liberty.”’
+
+“In all my life I had never heard anything so ridiculous, and I laughed
+aloud. The little family below us looked up at the sound and saw we were
+laughing at them. A great shadow fell over their day dream and they were
+silent until we docked, though I noticed that they stood hand in hand all
+the way. The story seemed so good that I told it everywhere, and it was
+called the standard joke of the season.
+
+“It faded out of mind and I never thought of it again until about ten
+years later one of the foremen in the factory died suddenly. I asked the
+manager who should be put in his place.
+
+“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a man out in the shop just fitted for it. I
+can’t pronounce his name, but I will bring him in.’
+
+“He did; a great black-haired man who looked me right in the eye as I
+like to have people do.
+
+“‘How long have you been in this country?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Ten years. You may not remember, but I came in the ship with you; in
+the steerage, with my wife and two boys.’
+
+“It flashed into my mind at once; this was what America had done for the
+man. I smiled as I thought of the flat-faced woman who wanted to look
+like the Goddess of Liberty, and the man whose faith in America was such
+that he told her this dream could come true.
+
+“The man more than made good. It is wonderful how things happen in this
+country. Those two black-eyed boys were at school with my boy and played
+on the football team with him. They were all three to go to college
+together.
+
+“Then you know how, before we entered the war, the women organized to do
+Red Cross work? One day my wife came home and told me how a Polish woman
+had made the most wonderful talk before her society. Before we knew it
+America had entered the war, and we were all at it. You couldn’t keep my
+boy here. He volunteered the first week after war was declared, and these
+two black-haired boys belonging to my foreman volunteered with him, and
+they all went over the sea to fight for America.
+
+“I had not seen their mother, and I was curious to see what she looked
+like after American competence and success had been rubbed in. We had a
+big parade in our town during one of the Liberty Loan drives, and there
+was one division of women who carried service flags. I stood in the
+window of my club watching the parade, and as it happened within six feet
+of me on the sidewalk stood John, my foreman. I did not laugh this time,
+nor was he shamed into silence for what he thought of his wife.
+
+“Oh, how that war did stir up and level the elements of American society!
+There passed before us in parade, side by side, my wife with a service
+flag of one star and John’s wife with two stars in her flag! And as they
+passed they turned and looked at us. My wife told me later that they had
+been talking as they marched. My wife had asked her comrade if she did
+not feel dreadfully to think of her two great boys far away in France.
+And the woman with the flat, homely face had answered:
+
+“‘No, I feel glorified to think that I, the poor immigrant woman, can
+offer my boys in part payment for what America has done for me and my
+people.’
+
+“And it was just then that I saw her face. I give you my word that at
+that moment it was the most beautiful face I ever saw. There was a calm
+beauty and dignity, a light of joy upon it which made me forget the flat
+nose, the narrow forehead and the great mouth. They passed on, and John,
+the foreman, looked up at me. We were both thinking the same thing,
+master and man though we were. I couldn’t reach him with my hand, but I
+did say:
+
+“‘John, she has had her life wish. She has come to look like the Goddess
+of Liberty. It was a miracle.’
+
+“And John answered in his slow, thoughtful way:
+
+“‘No, not a miracle—always she has had that great spirit in her heart;
+always that great love in her soul. She has kept that love and spirit
+pure all through these hard years, and now at the great sacrifice it
+shone out through her face. Said I not right that my wife would come to
+be the most beautiful woman on earth?’”
+
+My friend told the story in a matter-of-fact way, and then fell into a
+silence. I did not ask him how he reconciled this experience with his
+statement that beauty is rubbed in from the outside. It wasn’t worth
+while; we both knew better. The face of mature years is a mask. It is the
+candle behind it that gives it character and beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR
+
+
+Uncle Isaac Randall was the last Grand Army man in our town. All the
+other old comrades had passed on. As a boy I used to try to imagine what
+“the last Grand Army man” would be like. Poets and artists have tried to
+picture him, but when he actually appears you know how far the real must
+travel to reach the ideal. For poet and artist would have us look upon
+some calm, dignified man, carried by the wings of great achievement far
+above the mean and petty things of life which surround us like a thick
+fog in a narrow valley. For that, I fear, is what most of us find life
+to be unless the memory of some great sacrifice or some great devotion
+can lift our heads up into the perpetual sunshine. Those who knew Uncle
+Isaac saw little of the hero about him. He was just a little, thin,
+nervous man, very deaf, irritable and disappointed. No one can play the
+part of a deaf man with any approach to success unless he be a genuine
+philosopher, and Uncle Isaac was unfitted by nature for that. Sometimes
+in Summer, when the sun went down, you would see the old man standing in
+the barn looking off to the crimson West, over the purpling hills where
+the shadows came creeping up from the valley. A man with some poetry and
+philosophy would have seen in the darkening notch where the hills gave
+way, to let the road pass through, an approach to the beautiful gate
+through which wife and children and old comrades had passed on, to wait
+for him beyond the hills. But Uncle Isaac was cursed with that curiosity
+which is the torture of the deaf—he saw the hired man up on the hill
+talking to the neighbor’s boy, and his burning desire was to know what
+they were talking about as they stood in the twilight.
+
+The Great War came, and Uncle Isaac’s two grandsons volunteered. Before
+they shipped overseas they came back to the farm—very trim and natty
+in their brown uniforms. It irritated the old man to think that these
+boys—hardly more than babies—hardly to be trusted to milk a kicking
+cow—should be sent to fight America’s battles. And those little rifles!
+They were not much better than popguns, compared with his old army
+musket. The old man took the gun down from the nail where it had hung for
+years. He had kept it polished, and the lock with its percussion cap was
+still working. He would show these young sniffs what real warfare meant.
+So they went out in the pasture—the old soldier carrying his musket,
+carefully loaded with a round bullet—pushed in with the iron ramrod. In
+order to show these boy soldiers what real warfare might be, the old man
+sighted the musket over the fence and aimed at a board about 300 yards
+away. The bullet went at least five feet wide, while the old musket
+kicked back so hard that Uncle Isaac winced with the pain. Then one of
+the boys quietly raised his “popgun” and aimed at a bush at least half
+a mile away across the valley. In a fraction of a minute he fired half
+a dozen bullets which tore up the ground all around that bush. Then the
+boys hung one of their brown uniforms on the fence across the pasture,
+and put Grandpa’s old blue coat beside it. You could hardly distinguish
+the brown coat against the background, while the blue coat stood out
+like a target. It was hard for the old man to realize that both he and
+his musket belonged to a vanished past. The boys looked at the gun and
+at Grandpa marching home—trying to throw his old shoulders back into
+military form—and smiled knowingly at each other as youth has ever done
+in the pride of its power. They could not see—who of us ever can see?—the
+spiritual forces of patriotism which walked beside the old man, waiting
+for the time to show their power.
+
+The weeks went by, and day by day Grandpa read his paper with growing
+indignation. You remember how for months the army in France seemed to
+stand still before that great “Hindenburg line” which stretched out like
+an iron wall in front of Germany. It seemed to Uncle Isaac as if his boys
+and the rest of the army were cowards—afraid to march up to the line and
+fight. One day he threw down his paper and expressed himself fully, as
+only an old soldier can.
+
+“I told you those boys never would fight. At the Battle of the Wilderness
+Lee had a line of defense twice as strong as this Hindenburg ever had.
+Did General Grant sit still and wait for something to happen? Not much!
+
+“‘Forward by the left flank!’
+
+“That was the order, and we went forward. Don’t you know what he said
+at Fort Donelson? ‘I propose to move on your works at once.’ If General
+Grant was in France that’s what he’d say, and within an hour you’d
+see old Hindenburg coming out to surrender! My regiment fought all day
+against a regiment from North Carolina. I’ll tell you what! Let me have
+my old regiment and that North Carolina regiment alongside and I’ll
+guarantee that we will break right through that Hindenburg line, march
+right across the Rhine, hog-tie the Kaiser and bring him back with us.”
+
+“But, father,” said his daughter gently, “don’t you remember what Harry
+writes? They don’t fight that way now. The cannon must open a way first.
+Harry says they fire shells so large and powerful that when they strike
+the ground they make a hole so large you could put the barn into it.
+Suppose one of these big shells struck in the middle of your regiment?”
+
+“I don’t care,” said Uncle Isaac. “_We’d start, anyway! We’d move on
+those breastworks and take our chances!_”
+
+And mother wrote about it to her boys in the army over in France. The
+young fellows laughed at the thought of those old white-haired men,
+with their antiquated weapons, lined up before the death-dealing power
+of Germany. It seemed such a foolish thing to youth. The letter finally
+came to the grey-haired colonel of the regiment—an elderly man who had
+in some way held his army place in the ocean of youth which surrounded
+him. His eyes were moist as he read it, for he knew that if that group of
+wasted, white-haired men had lined up in front of the army they would not
+have been alone. Down the aisles of history would have come a throng of
+old heroes—the spirit of the past would have stood with them. They would
+have stilled the laughter, and if these old veterans had started forward
+the whole great army would have thrown off restraint, broken orders and
+followed them through the “Hindenburg line.”
+
+But Uncle Isaac, at home, humiliated and sad, went about the farm with
+something like a prayer in his old heart.
+
+“Why can’t _I_ do something to help? Don’t make me know my fighting days
+are over. What can _I_ do?”
+
+And Uncle Isaac finally had his chance. Perhaps you remember how at one
+time during the war things seemed dark enough. Our boys were swarming
+across the ocean, and submarines were watching for them. Food was
+scarce. Frost and storm had turned against us. Money was flowing out
+like water. Spies and German sympathizers were poisoning the public
+mind, and the Liberty Loan campaign was lagging. Uncle Isaac, reading
+it all day by day in his paper, felt like a man in prison galled to
+the soul by his inability to help. There came a big patriotic meeting
+at the county town. It was a factory town with many European laborers.
+They were restless and uneasy, opposed to the draft, tired of the war
+and not yet in full sympathy with America. Uncle Isaac determined to go
+to this meeting, though his daughter did all she could to dissuade him.
+There was no stopping him when he once made up his mind, so his daughter
+let him have his way, but she sent old John Zabriski along with him.
+Old John was a German Pole who came to this country as a young man out
+of the German army. He had lived on Uncle Isaac’s farm for years, and
+just as a cabbage or a tomato plant seems the stronger and better for
+transplanting, so this transplanted European in the soil of this country
+had grown into the noblest type of American. So the daughter, standing in
+the farmhouse door with eyes that were a little dimmed, watched these two
+old men drive away to the meeting.
+
+They had the speaker’s stand in front of the court house. The street
+was packed with a great crowd. Right in front was a group of sullen,
+defiant foreigners who had evidently come for trouble. The sheriff was
+afraid of them, and inside the court house out of sight, but ready for
+instant service, was a squad of soldiers. A young man who was running
+for the Legislature caught sight of Uncle Isaac and led him through the
+court house to the speaker’s platform, and John went, too, as bodyguard.
+The old veteran sat there in his blue coat and hat with the gold braid,
+unable to hear a word, but full of the spirit which had come down to him
+from the old days.
+
+Something was wrong. Even Uncle Isaac could see that, and John Zabriski
+beside him looked grave and anxious. That solid group of rough men in
+front began to sway back and forth like the movement of water when the
+high wind blows over it, and a sullen murmur, growing louder, came from
+the crowd. A small, effeminate-looking man was making a speech. Very
+likely his ancestors came originally to this country two centuries ago,
+but somewhere back in the years this man’s forebears had made a fortune.
+Instead of serving as a tool to spur the family on to finer things it had
+been spread out like a soft cushion to carry them through life without a
+bruise or bump. And these rough men, whose life had been all bruise and
+turmoil, knew that this soft little American was here talking platitudes
+when he should have been over in France. Perhaps you have never heard the
+angry murmur of a sullen crowd grow into a roar of rage, until the crowd
+becomes like a wild beast. The sheriff had heard this, and he was frankly
+frightened. He started a messenger back into the court house to notify
+the soldiers, but old John Zabriski stopped him.
+
+“Wait,” he said, “do not that. You lose those men by fighting. We gain
+them.”
+
+Then, before anyone could stop him, old John stepped up in front and
+barked out strange words which seemed like a command. Then a curious
+thing happened. The angry murmur stilled. The crowd stopped its movement,
+and then every man stood at attention! Almost every man there had in
+former years served in one of the European armies, and what old John
+had barked at them was the old army command which had been drilled into
+them years before. And through force of habit which had become instinct,
+that order, for the moment, changed that mob into an army of attentive
+soldiers. The bandmaster was a man of imagination, and as quickly as
+his men could catch up their instruments they began playing “The Star
+Spangled Banner.” Poor old Uncle Isaac heard nothing of this. He could
+only guess what it was all about until John Zabriski laboriously wrote on
+a piece of paper:
+
+“Dey blay der Shtar Banner!”
+
+Then there came into Uncle Isaac’s sad life the great, glorious joy of
+power and opportunity. He walked down to the front of the stage, took off
+his gold-braided hat and bowed his white head before them all. And old
+John Zabriski, the transplanted European, came and stood at his side. A
+young woman, dressed all in white, caught up a flag and came and stood
+beside the two old men. Then a wounded soldier with one empty sleeve
+pinned to his breast followed her. And there in that sunlit street a
+great, holy silence fell over that vast crowd. For there before them on
+that platform stood the glory, the pride, the precious legacy of American
+history. The last Grand Army man, the European peasant made over into
+an American, and the young people who represented the promise and hope
+shining in the legacy which men like Uncle Isaac and John Zabriski have
+given them.
+
+When the band stopped playing a mighty cheer went up from that great
+crowd, and one by one the men of that sullen group in front took off
+their hats and joined in the cheering. They made Uncle Isaac get up again
+and again to salute, and no less a person than Judge Bradley shook both
+hands and said:
+
+“We all thank you, Captain Randall. You have saved this great meeting and
+made this town solidly patriotic.” It was a proud old soldier who marched
+into the farmhouse kitchen that night, and in answer to his daughter’s
+questioning eyes he said:
+
+“Annie, I want you to write those boys all about it. Tell ’em they are
+not doing it all. Tell ’em Judge Bradley called me cap’n and said I saved
+the meeting. I only wish General Grant could have been there!”
+
+All of which goes to show that those of you who have come to white hair
+should not feel that you are out of the game yet. Material things may go
+by us, but the spirit of the good old days is still the last resort!
+
+
+
+
+“SNOW BOUND”
+
+
+This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow Bound.” Every man
+with New England blood in his veins should read Whittier’s poem at least
+once a year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked beans and
+fishballs. For two days now the storm has roared over our hills and shut
+us in. It must have been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:
+
+  “The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet
+  Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit
+  Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
+  In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
+
+Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone and the electric
+light and the steam-heated house were dreams too obscure even for his
+great mind to comprehend. So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong
+arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and while the
+telephone is slow, we can get our message through, after a fashion. But
+we are shut in. The car and the truck are useless tonight. The horses
+stamp contentedly in the barn—not troubling about the head-high drifts
+which are piled along the roadway. A bad night for a fire or for a hurry
+call for the doctor; but why worry about that as we sit here before the
+fire?
+
+I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I have read the poem at least
+once each year since, and I have carried it all over the country with
+me. It is a little shabby now, but somehow that is the way I like to see
+old friends:
+
+  “Shut in from all the world without
+  We sat the clean winged hearth about,
+  Content to let the north wind roar
+  In baffled rage at pane and door,
+  While the red logs before us beat
+  The frost-line back with tropic heat.
+
+  ...
+
+  “Between the andiron’s straddling feet
+  The mug of cider simmered low,
+  The apples sputtered in a row
+  And close at hand the basket stood
+  With nuts from brown October’s wood.
+
+  ...
+
+  “What matter how the night behaved?
+  What matter how the north wind raved?
+  Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
+  Could quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”
+
+  ...
+
+There is no finer picture of the old-time Northern farm home, and we
+Yankees are bound to think that with all her faults New England did in
+those days set the world an example of what a farm home ought to be. So I
+lay aside the book and look about me to see how close New Jersey can come
+on this fearful night to matching this old-time picture.
+
+Here we are before the fire. Great logs of apple wood are blazing up
+into the black chimney. In Whittier’s day the open fire produced all the
+light, but here we have our electric light blazing, and I think as I sit
+here how miles away the great engines are working to send the current
+far up among the lonely hills to our home. For supper we had a thick
+tomato soup, a big dish of cornmeal mush—the grain ground in our little
+grinder—pot cheese, entire wheat bread and butter, baked apples and
+all the milk we could drink. Just run that over and see if it does not
+furnish as fine a balanced ration and as good a lot of vitamines as any
+$2 dinner in New York—and nearly 80 per cent of it was produced on this
+farm. Now the girls have washed the dishes and planned breakfast, and
+here we are. Mother sits in the first choice of seats before the fire.
+That is where she belongs. She is mending a pair of stockings, and as
+her fingers fly, no doubt she is thinking of those warmer days back in
+Mississippi. My daughter has just put a new record into her Victrola. The
+music comes softly to us—“Juanita.”
+
+  “Soft o’er the fountain
+  Lingering falls the Southern moon.”
+
+I wonder what Whittier’s folks would have said to that! Two of the little
+girls are looking over some music, trying to get the air in “I dreamt
+that I dwelt in marble halls!” There is no “frost line” in this house for
+the fire to drive back, for there is a good hot-water radiator in the
+corner. The pipe from the spring seems to have frozen, but the faithful
+old windmill, standing over the well at the barn, has stretched out its
+arms to catch this roaring gale and make it carry the water up to the
+tank. Thomas and three of the boys are playing parchesi, while the rest
+of the company give them all advice about playing from time to time. I
+have a big chair by the corner of the fireplace—where grandfather is
+supposed to sit—and little Rose is curled up on my lap eating an apple. I
+wish you were here. We could easily make room for you right in front of
+the fire, and we would surely call on you for a new story.
+
+The wind is howling on the outside. As we sit here in comfort there comes
+an eager, pitiful face at the window pleading to be taken in. No, it is
+not the old story of the wayward child coming back to the lights of home.
+The nearest we can come to that at Hope Farm is the black cat with the
+dash of white at her face and throat. She and her tribe are expected to
+stay at the barn and catch rats, but there she is out in the cold looking
+in at the window. Mother is as stern as a Spartan mother when it comes to
+cats in the house. She _will not_ have them there. But, after all, they
+are Hope Farm folks, and the little girls plead so hard that the good
+lady looks the other way when the baby opens the door. In comes the black
+cat and, though they were not invited, three of her brothers and sisters
+run in with her! So now I shall sit with little Rose on my lap, while on
+her lap is a cushion on which the white-faced kitty purrs contentedly. In
+the original “Snow Bound” the mug of cider simmered between the andirons.
+No hot drinks for us. A little of that cold pasteurized apple juice goes
+well. We see no use in cooking apples before the fire. There is that
+big basket of Baldwins by the table. Help yourself—we like them cold.
+Cherry-top was ahead in the game, but Thomas has just taken his leading
+“man” and sent him back to the starting point. The boy is a good sport.
+He takes a big bite out of a fresh Baldwin and goes after them again.
+The nearest we can come to “nuts from brown October’s wood” is a big bag
+of roasted peanuts. We have all been eating them and throwing the hulls
+at the fire. They have accumulated so that Mother’s idea of neatness
+compels her to get up and brush them all into the blaze. I did not tell
+you that we are starting up our little Florida farm again. Jack will grow
+a crop of sugar cane and peanuts.
+
+And so, here in New Jersey, as well as in old-time New England, we care
+not how the wind blows or how the storm roars. This is home, and we are
+satisfied with it—all of us, from the white-faced kitty up to the Hope
+Farm man. We have all worked to make this home. It is a co-operative
+affair. None of us could be called rich or great, yet nothing could ever
+buy what we see in our big fire. Every now and then Mother looks up from
+her work and glances across the room at me with a smile. I know what she
+has in mind. Some of us rise to the power of animals in our ability to
+communicate thought without words. Life has been very much of a fight
+with us, but it seems worth while as we look at this big room full of
+eager young people, content and happy with the simple things of life.
+As little Rose snuggles up closer to me and pulls the kitty with her I
+begin to think of some of the complaining fault-finding people I know.
+I _do_ know some star performers at the job of pitying themselves and
+magnifying their own troubles. On a night like this I will wager an apple
+that they are pouring out the gloom and trouble like a man tipping over
+a barrel of cold water. It’s their rheumatism or their debts or the
+Administration or the Republican party, or something else that they hold
+responsible for their troubles. I wish I could have some of those fellows
+here tonight, and also some of you folks who know the joy of looking on
+the bright side. We would do our best to rub some of the gloom out of
+them. I will guarantee that any one of us could, if we wanted to, tell
+the truth about our own troubles so that these gloomy individuals would
+look like “pikers” in their poor little self-pity! I would like to read
+extracts from two new books to them. One is “A Labrador Doctor,” by W. T.
+Grenfell; the other, “The Great Hunger,” by John Bojer.
+
+I have just been reading these books, and I shall read them over again.
+Dr. Grenfell has given his life to service in the far North among the
+fishermen of Labrador. A man of his ability could easily have gained
+fame and wealth by practising his profession in some great city. He went
+where he was most needed—into the cold, lonely places where humanity
+hungers and suffers for help. It has always seemed to me just about the
+noblest thing in life for a man of great natural ability to gain what
+science and education can give him and carry that great gift out to those
+who need it most. Grenfell did that, and this modest story of his life
+is wonderful to anyone who can get the message. I have always thought
+that the greatest teachers and preachers and wise men generally are
+not so much needed in the big cities as in the lonely country places.
+The city owes all it has in men and money to the country, but it will
+seldom acknowledge the gift. The city itself is able to offer as a gift
+knowledge, science and training. Yet those who receive this gift desire
+for the most part to remain in the city, when they should carry their
+gift out into the lonely and hard places where the city must finally go
+for strength. The storm seems hard tonight, but it is a mere zephyr to
+the Winters which Dr. Grenfell’s people endure. I wish I could tell you
+some of the wonderful things which have happened in that lonely land. At
+one place the doctor found a girl dying of typhoid. There was no way of
+saving her, and as soon as she was buried it was necessary to burn the
+rude bunk and the straw in which she lay. They carried it to the top of
+a hill and built a fire. For several days one of the fishing boats had
+been lost at sea in the fog, and had been given up for lost with all on
+board. The despairing men in that boat—far out at sea—saw the light when
+that hideous bed was burned and were able to get to land! Some of you
+self-pitying people ought to read how Dr. Grenfell organized a little
+orphans’ home to care for the little waifs of this lonely place. In one
+case a little girl of four, while her father was away hunting, crawled
+out into the snow, so that both legs were badly frozen. Gangrene set in
+halfway to the knee, and the father actually chopped both legs off to
+save her life! Think of such a child in the frozen North. I think of
+her as little Rose hugs the kitty close. Dr. Grenfell took this child,
+operated on her, obtained artificial legs, and now she can run about like
+other children. I wish I could tell you more about this book. At one
+time two men came together after medicine. One took a bottle of cough
+mixture, the other a strong turpentine liniment for a sprained knee. By
+mistake they mixed up the medicine. One rubbed the cough medicine on
+his knee, the other drank the liniment. If I had some fellow who thinks
+the Lord has put a special curse on him before our fire tonight I would
+tell him what others have endured. The chances are we could make him
+contribute something to the cause before we were done with him.
+
+The other book I mentioned, “The Great Hunger,” is a story of Norwegian
+life and, as I think, very powerful. A boy born to poverty and disgrace
+grew up with a great hunger in his heart—he knew not what it was. He felt
+that power and material wealth would bring him the happiness he sought.
+He gained education, power, wealth and love, yet still the great hunger
+tortured him. Poverty, sickness, the deepest sorrow fell upon him, and
+at last the great hunger was satisfied by doing a needed service for the
+man who had done him the most hideous wrong! I wish I could tell you more
+about it. It is a powerful book; but it is time for little Rose to go to
+bed. Off she goes with a hug for all, and the children follow her one by
+one. I am not going to put more logs on that fire. Let it die down. The
+end of the day has come. Let the storm howl through the night like a pack
+of wolves at the door. They cannot get at us. Even if they did they can
+never destroy the memory of this night.
+
+
+
+
+“CLASS”
+
+
+The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress Eugénie.
+She lingered along, feeble and half-blind, until she was nearly 95 years
+old. She has been called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women have
+lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation knew or cared anything
+about her. I presume most of our young people skipped the details of her
+life as given in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before the
+war between France and Germany, the women of the world regarded this sad
+empress as the great model of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would
+be hard for women in these days to realize how this beautiful empress
+dictated to people in every land how they should arrange their hair and
+wear their dresses. At that time most women wore their hair in short nets
+bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of “hoopskirts”—most of
+them, as it seemed, four to five feet wide. Just how this woman managed
+to put her ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I never
+could understand. From the big city to the little backwoods hamlet women
+were studying to see what “Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often
+wondered if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman remembered
+those days of power.
+
+Her death brings to mind an incident that had long been forgotten. I
+had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some milk, since our
+cow was dry. In those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a
+pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The woman of the house,
+an immense, fat creature, with the shape of a barrel, a short, thick
+neck and a round moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the
+latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris. She wore an immense
+hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance of walking inside of a hogshead.
+Her hair was parted in the middle and brought down beside her wide face
+to be caught in a net just below her ears. I know so little and care so
+much less about style in clothes that I can remember in detail only two
+costumes that I have ever seen women wear. This outfit is one of them.
+
+“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat lady as she poured
+out the milk. “You can tell your aunt that you have seen one lady dressed
+just like Paris.”
+
+It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was glad to have the
+experience.
+
+“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman came here today and
+said I looked enough like Ugeeny to be her half-sister—dressed as I am
+now. He has been in Paris, too.”
+
+“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold her a book on the
+strength of that yarn. Say, Mary, you don’t look any more like Ugeeny
+than old Spot does—and you don’t need to.”
+
+“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have no idea of beauty.”
+
+“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got a stomach, and I know
+that you can make the best doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in
+Bristol County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can do. You are
+worth three of her for practical value to the world, and I think you a
+handsome woman—but you can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the
+shape, and I’m glad of it.”
+
+But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident
+truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old
+Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.
+
+“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look
+like Ugeeny?”
+
+Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.
+
+“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”
+
+“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are
+divided into two classes—strung together like beads on different strings.
+Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking
+or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized
+it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the
+finest men that ever lived on earth!”
+
+“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa
+started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”
+
+But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and
+new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the
+world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself
+carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean.
+Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse will have water and heat and light
+right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days
+farmers will be kings.”
+
+The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.
+
+“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the
+crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles
+Sumner on the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed them down
+and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of
+these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what
+the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions
+which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask
+is, _Ain’t I in their class?_”
+
+“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she
+shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes
+them discontented!”
+
+“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in
+Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has
+all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty
+good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and
+such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there will be _farm_
+colleges as big as any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or
+doctoring. Then people will see that farming is _agriculture_, and the
+difference between the two will change the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t
+amount to much as a woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will
+ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary _in her class_.
+These clothes look foolish to me, but every woman who follows Ugeeny in
+dress gets into her class, and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one
+grade to another, for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt and
+that bob net for their hair and rise up to better things, and it will
+be Ugeeny that started them. She may be only a painted doll, but she
+has given the women ideas of beauty and something better than common.
+Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle life. That’s
+why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s got the vision of beauty and
+something far ahead of you, John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s
+getting _class_. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they help to
+set her free.”
+
+“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I suppose, according to you,
+I ought to put on a swallow-tailed coat every time I milk.”
+
+“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved every day and put on your
+best clothes once a day for supper, you would get in the upper class,
+and carry your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, _ain’t I in their
+class_?”
+
+I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding far down the
+road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had grown tired of waiting for the milk,
+so he blew the horn to remind me that I was still in the class of errand
+boys.
+
+In August of that year I went up on Black Mount after huckleberries,
+and ran upon Grandpa once more. He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and
+three children were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle of
+berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks as sole inhabitants.
+Old Grandpa sat on the rock and waved his stick about.
+
+“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I have seen it all in
+wheat. Farmers let education and money get away, and, of course, the
+best boys chased out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or
+’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these coming days to
+raise huckleberries in this way. They will be raised in gardens like
+strawberries and raspberries. This hill will have to produce something
+that is worth more—peaches or apples.”
+
+“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour hill, Grandpa?” asked
+one of the boys. “There’s a seedling now—10 years old and not four feet
+high!”
+
+“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will coal in place of wood.
+I don’t know how it will be done, but some day or ’nuther they will use
+yeast in the soil as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll
+harness the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these farm colleges
+give us knowledge. And farmers, too. They won’t always stand back and
+fight each other and backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day
+or ’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what life ought to be.
+They will come together to live, instead of standing apart to die. I may
+not see it, and people laugh at me for saying what I know must come true.
+But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they try to kill Galileo?
+Wasn’t Morse voted a fool? Hasn’t it always been so with the men and
+women who looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead? And, tell
+me this: _Ain’t I in their class?_”
+
+That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it, and yet when I read
+the headlines announcing the death of Empress Eugénie I had to put the
+paper down, for there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer day
+on the New England hills. On the rock in that lonely pasture sat old
+Grandpa pointing with his stick far across the rolling valley, far to the
+shadow on the distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting
+him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith undimmed. I wish I
+could look across the valley to the distant hills with the sublime hope
+with which he asked his old question:
+
+“_Ain’t I in their class?_”
+
+A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah, but if Grandpa could
+see it now! The old house with its “beau” windows and new roof seemed
+to be dressed with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still
+Empress of France. There were power and light and heat all through it.
+Two boys and a girl were home from an agricultural college—one of the
+boys being manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount was a
+forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the old swamp was drained and
+lay a thick mat of clover. Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one
+thing. Education and power had brought material things, which would have
+seemed to be miracles to John and Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,”
+after all, as Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent
+and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what Grandpa said—“That’s
+what they’ve got to be, if the world is going ahead.”
+
+Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the noblest legacy of the
+ages.
+
+But in the churchyard back in one corner I came upon Grandpa’s grave. It
+was not very well cared for. It had not been trimmed. A bird had made
+her nest and reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It was
+a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining pasture put her
+head over the stone wall and tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected
+grave. And this was what they had carved on the stone:
+
+    “_The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!_”
+
+If I could have my way I would put up another stone with this inscription:
+
+    GRANDPA.
+
+    “_He has entered their class._”
+
+
+
+
+“I’LL TELL GOD”
+
+
+Just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call
+“the unseen world.” That means the state of existence after death. Many
+of our readers have written asking what I think or know about this. Most
+of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather
+hard conditions. They have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or
+some dear friend. Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to
+imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death,
+and I have had some curious experiences which you might or might not
+credit. When I was a boy, I was thrown much into the society of avowed
+spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many
+“séances.” The evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those
+things disgusted me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did
+possess a strange and peculiar power which I have never been able to
+understand.
+
+Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered
+greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble
+over which they constantly brooded. I have come to believe that the blind
+and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand things which most
+others do not. An afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary
+power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or
+faculty. The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears.
+The deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick judgment
+or instinct of decision. The man plunged into grief or despondency at
+the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some
+extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. Someone has
+said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do
+anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from
+the great “unseen world.” For example, I will ask you this question: Take
+a woman like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing. Take a man
+who is totally deaf and also blind—_how would they know physically when
+they are dead_? I think I can understand why it is that real advancement
+in true religion and Christian thought has for the most part been made by
+some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been
+forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!
+
+Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer. I do not know
+whether he is living now or not. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he
+has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little
+child had with the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf. Through
+long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark
+discouragement upon him. He owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do.
+A hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically,
+through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. He did not know what it
+was; a longing for human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman
+but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she
+could not understand. She made her husband comfortable and loved him
+in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get
+over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. They had
+no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. Sometimes at
+night you would see the deaf man standing in the barnyard at the gate,
+looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious
+in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him standing there with
+the empty milk pail on his arm. She could not understand the vision and
+glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul
+at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming
+husband by the arm and shout in his ear:
+
+“_Wake up and get that milking done._”
+
+She meant well, and her husband never complained. She meant to save his
+money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage
+off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”
+
+Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,”
+which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. One Saturday afternoon
+this man and his wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing
+her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. As he
+stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed
+by a little child. It was a little black-haired thing with great brown
+eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. A poor thin
+little thing with a shabby dress and tattered shoes. As she passed, the
+child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave
+her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. The
+woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little
+stone.
+
+“You awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take that,” and with her
+heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. Then something like the love
+of a lioness for her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many
+fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really
+nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded
+together forever. Under excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but
+they are strangely and forcibly emphatic. The woman quailed before the
+roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for
+protection. A crowd gathered and Lawyer Brown came running down from his
+office.
+
+“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know me; get her for me.”
+
+It was not very hard to do. The woman had married a man with this little
+girl. The man had run away and left her (I do not much blame him), and
+this “brat” had been left on her hands.
+
+“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “A good riddance to
+bad rubbish.”
+
+So Lawyer Brown fixed it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where
+his wagon stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.
+
+When the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband
+sitting on the wagon seat with the little girl sitting on his lap. She
+had found that she could not make him hear, so she just sat there
+looking into his face, and they both understood. But the good woman did
+not understand.
+
+“What do you mean by picking up a child like you would a stray kitten?
+Put her down and leave her here.”
+
+But that was as far as she got. Her husband looked at her with a fierce
+glare, and there was a sound in his throat which she did not like. I can
+tell you that when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally
+assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it that cannot be
+resisted. And when they got home and the little child sat up at the table
+between them, something of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. She
+actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled and ran
+to the farmer and climbed on his knee. The woman paused at her work to
+watch them as they sat before the fire, and something that was like the
+beginning of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came to her that
+this little one had seen at once something in her husband’s life and soul
+that _she_ had not been able to understand.
+
+There was something more than beautiful in the strange intimacy which
+sprang up between the deaf farmer and the little girl. In some way she
+made herself understood and she followed him about day by day at his work
+or on his lonely walk of a Sunday afternoon. You would see her riding
+on the wagon beside him, standing near as he milked, or holding his
+finger as he came down the lane at sunset. On a sunny Sunday afternoon,
+you might come upon them sitting at the top of a high hill with the
+old dog beside them, looking off across the pleasant country. And as
+the shadows grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying the
+little one, and the old dog walking ahead. I cannot tell you the peace
+and renewed hope which the little waif brought to that farmer’s heart
+through the gentle yet mighty force of love. And the farmer’s wife would
+look out of the window and see them coming. She could not walk with
+her husband through lonely places and make him understand, because she
+had never learned how. Yet the little one was drawing the older people
+closer together and was showing them more of the greatest mystery and the
+greatest meaning of life. But there came a Sunday when the little one
+could not walk over the hills. The day was bright and fair, the farmer
+stood looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and the old
+dog put his head on one side and regarded his master curiously. They
+could both hear the voice of the hills calling them away. And the voices
+came to the little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little
+bed upstairs. The doctor shook his head when they called him in. The
+child was done with earthly things,—surely called off into the Country
+Unseen just as love and home had come to her. The farmer went up into the
+sick-room where his wife sat by the little sufferer. This man had never
+regarded his wife as a handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as
+she bent over the child. For at last in the face of death and sacrifice,
+love had really come to that woman’s lonely heart, and the joy of it
+illuminated her face like a lamp within.
+
+The farmer was left alone with the child. She knew him and beckoned him
+to come near and moved her lips to speak. The man lay on the bed beside
+her and put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would, he
+could not hear her message. I suppose there can be no sadder picture in
+the book of time than this denial by fate of the right to hear the last
+message of love from one passing off into the long journey from which
+there comes no report. Hopeless and bitter with disappointment, the man
+found pencil and paper and a large book and gave them to the child.
+Sitting up in bed with a last painful effort the little one painfully
+wrote or printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her little
+face aflame with love. He hid the note in his pocket as his wife and the
+doctor came in—for the message from the unseen world seemed to him too
+sacred for other human eyes.
+
+The woman watched her husband closely and wondered why he felt so
+cheerful as the days passed by. The little one was no longer with him,
+yet he went about his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile.
+She could not understand, but now and then she would see him take from
+his pocket an envelope, open it and read what seemed to be a letter. He
+would sometimes sit before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful.
+As she went about her work, she would see him take out this mysterious
+letter and read it over and over, as one would read a message from a
+friend very dear of old and happy days. And she wondered what it could
+be that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and then there
+came the time when one evening in June the sun seemed to pass behind
+the western hill with royal splendor. It seemed as if there had never
+been such gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night, and the
+practical wife looked from her back-door and saw her husband standing in
+the barnyard gate like one in a glorious vision. The cows stood in the
+lane, the empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood gazing
+off to the west unheeding the call to his work. And as the woman waited
+she saw her dreaming husband take that mysterious letter from his pocket
+and read it once more. She could see the look of joy which spread over
+his face as he read it. And this plain, practical woman, moved by some
+sudden impulse, walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her
+husband’s shoulder. He started out of his dream and looked guiltily at
+the empty milk pail, but she only smiled and pointed to the paper he had
+in his hand. He hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it to
+her. It was just the scrawl which the little child had written after her
+failure to make him hear. It was the last message from one who stood on
+the threshold of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within.
+And this was what the woman read, written in straggling childish letters:
+
+“_I’ll tell God how good you are._”
+
+And the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved of love and sympathy
+through all these years, standing in the lonely silence of that golden
+sunset knew that God’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen
+country through the influence of that little child.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY’S WORK
+
+
+“Well, boys, I’m going to quit and call it a day!” As the Hope Farm man
+spoke he got up from his knees in the strawberry patch and proceeded to
+straighten out his back. It was half past four on Saturday, September 4.
+Our week’s work was done—all but the chores. Our folks had picked and
+packed and shipped four big truckloads of produce, with a surplus of
+nearly 100 bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for next
+week. This in addition to regular farm work—and one day off fishing for
+the boys. It does not seem possible that September has come upon us! I do
+not know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the clock’s calendar
+points to that date. When the foolish finger of “daylight saving” appears
+on the clock we can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on
+the calendar. That is like the finger of fate. Yet it seems out of date.
+We have not finished picking Gravenstein apples. In former years Labor
+Day found us clearing up the McIntosh. This year we have not even touched
+them! Last year the Mammoth sweet corn was about cleaned out in August.
+Now we are beginning to pick. The season and the calendar are fighting
+this year. Now if they will both turn in and hold Jack Frost up for a
+couple of weeks later than usual we will forgive the season.
+
+This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely no one
+else wanted it. Thomas had not come back from his night on the market.
+Philip cleaned up the chores, while the rest went to picking apples and
+tomatoes. My daughter goes across the lawn with 100 or more chickens
+at her heels. They are black Jersey Giants and R. I. Reds going to
+breakfast. Out on the cool back porch Mother is playing the part of
+family “Red.” That is, she is canning tomatoes. This porch is screened
+in, and there is an oil stove to put heat into the canning outfit. The
+lady is peeling a basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well
+smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes! This job of mine
+would make one of those model gardeners too disgusted for comment. We set
+out the strawberry plants in April, in rows three feet apart, the plants
+two feet in the row. The soil is strong, and we wanted to push it hard.
+So in part of the patch we planted early peas between the rows, and in
+the rest early potatoes. The theory of this plan is sound enough. You get
+a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them out in time for the berry
+plants to run out and cover the patch. In practice this does not always
+work. While the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the patch
+clean. Then came a time when these vines fell down and refused to get up.
+Then came the constant rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all
+over to seek shelter under these vines. Before we could interfere the
+patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the long rains kept it growing.
+The richness of the soil delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the
+time we got them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle.
+Here I am cleaning up this mess. Most of the work must be done with the
+fingers—a hoe would tear up too many runners. You have to get down on
+your knees and pull. As I crawl across the patch I leave a pile of weeds
+behind me like a windrow. I hold up my fingers and it seems surprising
+that they are not worn down at least half an inch. If I had kept those
+peas and potatoes out of here the berries would be far better, and I
+would not have this crawling job. I am not to be alone here after all.
+That big black chicken leaves his crowd on the lawn and comes over here
+to scratch beside me. The Jersey Giants are very tame and enterprising.
+This one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member of my family
+to take this job from choice. He will have all the worms I can dig out!
+
+There is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and the truck comes
+snorting into the barnyard. At the same time Tom and Broker, the big
+grays, come down the hill with a load of apples. Tom scents the gasoline
+and pricks back his ears with a snort. You can see him turn his head as
+if talking to sober old Broker:
+
+“That fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful breath he has! For years
+we went on the road like honest horses and did all the marketing on the
+farm. Why does this man keep such a great awkward thing around? It may
+have speed, but I’ll bet it eats him out of house and home!”
+
+“Well, now,” said old Broker, “every horse to his job. Working right on
+this farm is good enough for me. Let that truck do the road work, says I.
+No place like home for an honest horse like me.”
+
+“Not much. I like a little life now and then. I want to get out on the
+road among horses and see what is going on. That great, lazy, smelling
+thing has got us farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are
+doing. And look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and its keep—my
+stars!”
+
+“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself. A gallon of oats costs
+something, too. I’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for
+less than $200 a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work
+off our shoulders!”
+
+“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the
+lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and
+pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded
+like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was
+a very small matter.
+
+Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. The
+load sold for $106.95. It was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes.
+That looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding
+load of about the same class of goods brought $143. That is about the
+way they have gone this season. Our prices are certainly lower, and
+every item of cost is higher. There can be no question about that, yet
+our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But for
+the truck we would be worse off than we are now. We never could handle
+our crop with the horses. It is more and more necessary to get the goods
+right into market promptly and with no stop. While the truck has become a
+necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. Old Tom is right
+in saying that I have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year
+and putting it in shape for the season. That item alone will add quite
+a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. Some of the smaller
+farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. This is
+a hard life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that for some
+reason people are not buying such goods as they did. The retail trade is
+rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. I think the
+plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in
+the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.
+
+My back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. I must straighten
+them out by a change of occupation. I am going up on the hill to look at
+the apple picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded,
+dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. She eats two tomatoes
+on the way up, and then I find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt
+on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I think some
+of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh, well, these scientists will
+probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. We are picking
+Gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels
+or more. I planted a block of these trees as an experiment. Now I wish I
+had more of them. The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care
+much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. This year
+any big apple brings a fair price. For instance, that despised Wolf River
+has been our best seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce,
+which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top is going to
+Paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. I
+have told in past years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and
+how they have bought others. These trees have given surprising returns.
+The larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long
+way toward paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or selling
+at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” It
+would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it
+comes in bearing. The only chemical I know of for extracting character
+out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the day on the hills—here
+in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes
+purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would
+never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and I go down on a
+load of apples—big Tom and Broker creeping down the steep hillside as if
+they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.
+
+I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried several bushels to the
+geese, and these wise birds make much of them. The big sow, too, stands
+chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a grassy
+corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a very proud little cow,
+for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending
+to chew her small cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to
+complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste of real cream
+already. But here is a pull at my shoulder, and little Rose, her face
+washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14
+of us today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all on the table,
+so we can see what there is to start with. Have some of this soft hash.
+That means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it.
+You may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is a good time for
+working up the odds and ends. Then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled
+beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the
+milk you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that if I took my
+family to the restaurant in the city where I sometimes have my dinner,
+the bill would be about as follows:
+
+    Hash              $4.20
+    Potatoes           1.40
+    Beets              1.40
+    Sweet corn         3.60
+    Tomatoes           1.40
+    Milk                .90
+    Bread and butter   1.40
+    Baked apples       2.30
+                      -----
+                     $16.60
+
+That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. Now what
+would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30
+at the full limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was charged 30
+cents for it! But no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it
+is free here, and I hope you will have another baked apple. Try another
+glass of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream
+in when they drink it.
+
+That dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. I am back at those
+berries, and Philip has come to help me. Our folks have stopped picking
+apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have
+been picked off. That will have to be our “hay” this winter. The women
+folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little
+shopping. Philip and I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse,
+and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than
+I expected. A car has just rolled in with a family after apples. One
+well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is
+talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is _that_ the Hope
+Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen! Why does he do that very common
+work? He ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”
+
+This young man will never know what it will mean next Spring when the
+vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his
+own labor turned them from failure to success. He probably never will
+know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. This weed-pulling gets
+to be mechanical. It doesn’t require much thought and I have a chance to
+consider many things as we work. A short distance away is that patch of
+annual sweet clover. The plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches
+tall and still growing. The plants are seeding at different dates—some of
+them earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be for those of
+us who have the vision to make use of it.
+
+But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn. I am quite sure that I
+could have picked 50 bushels of Gravenstein apples from those low trees
+instead of working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day. What
+now? I’m going to make an application of hot water and get this soil off
+my hands and arms, shave, put on some clean clothes and take my book out
+on the front porch until the girls come home. What book? Well, I found in
+an old bookstore a copy of James G. Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress.”
+As I had just read Champ Clark’s book I wanted to read Blaine’s. I can
+well remember when about 40 per cent of the people of this country
+considered James G. Blaine a hero. The trouble was that about 60 per cent
+thought otherwise. His book is a sound and serious discussion of the
+legislation which covered the Civil War and 20 years after. As I worked
+here today I have been thinking of what Blaine says of Senator Matt
+Carpenter. This man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went blind.
+For three years he sat in darkness. Yet this affliction proved a great
+blessing, for he forced himself to review and analyze and prove what he
+had read, so that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers were
+remarkable. This book contains the best statement I have ever read of the
+reasons for trying to impeach President Andrew Johnson, and how and why
+the effort failed. What’s that got to do with farming? Well, I think the
+political events which clustered around that incident came about as near
+to smashing the Constitution and wrecking the Government as anything that
+has yet happened. But here comes Cherry-top on his new wheel. He actually
+got home ahead of the car. I must hurry, or our folks will not find that
+literary reception committee waiting for them. Better come along with
+me. I have some other books that will make you think, and I’ll guarantee
+that thinking will do you more good right now than a day’s work.
+
+
+
+
+PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY
+
+
+Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or rather a pair of
+geese. As you read this they will be browning and sizzling in the oven,
+with plenty of “sage and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They
+will come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and backed
+by several big pumpkin pies. I shall resign the position of carver,
+remembering my old experience with the roast duck and the minister. The
+duck got away from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending by
+upsetting the gravy in front of the minister’s plate. After the usual
+objections Mother will apply the carving knife to the geese, secretly
+proud of her skill as an anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted
+goose except provide white meat. Since Nature decided not to implant that
+delicacy in the breast of a goose, man cannot supply it. Therefore the
+lady must content herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most blind
+men eating the white breast of a turkey and then the brown breast of a
+goose would call for more of the latter. It is something like this rather
+foolish preference for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady and
+Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell! Anyway, a goose, well
+stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering well suited to the Hope Farm
+table.
+
+No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over Mother’s generous slices
+Mr. Gander will lead his family across the lawn and find something to
+be thankful for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great respect for
+Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature may have left the white
+meat out of the goose in order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put
+an extra quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems to me
+that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about the most successful
+teachers of youth I have ever known. To many a learned educator I would
+say, “Go to the goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young
+for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose meat is rapidly
+disappearing from the Thanksgiving altar. Mother has scraped the bones
+nearly clean. What little remains will be boiled out as soup. This bird
+has lived what I may call an eminently successful life. He ends his
+career in the highest place possible to be conceived of in the philosophy
+of a goose. He was trained and educated from the start, and as I look at
+Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of any human teachers who
+have had any greater success in training their charges into just what a
+man or woman ought to be.
+
+In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the old barn and laid 21
+eggs. We rather expected more, but the goose was master of ceremonies.
+She came back to the same place each day, and finally we found her there
+hissing like the steam escaping from a broken pipe. It was her signal
+that she was ready to serve as incubator. So we put 13 eggs under her
+and eight more under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure as
+a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a wonder. She had
+raised three broods of chicks with great success. Surely she ought to be
+a better guide and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first
+brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children would you not
+choose those who have had experience? In due time, and on the same day,
+the goose walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on her nest
+and compelled five to stay under her. The two broods kept apart. The
+hen was evidently disappointed with the way the goose handled children,
+and she punished her brood whenever they tried to mingle with their own
+brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after about eight weeks I
+noticed a strange thing. The hen’s brood, though eating the same food,
+would average at least 30 per cent lighter than the goslings which ran
+with the goose. There was no question about it—the hen’s charges were
+inferior in size and weight and in “common sense,” or the art of looking
+out for themselves.
+
+There being no chance for an argument about it, I concluded that it was
+very largely a matter of education, and we began to study the methods
+of teaching employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen. The first
+thing we noticed was the influence of the male side of the family. Roger
+Red, the big rooster, paid no attention to his wife’s family. All he did
+was to mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after worms or
+seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way he kicked it to one side and
+gave not even a suggestion to his busy wife. He was like one of those men
+who will not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife carry the
+child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was a true head of the family. He
+kept right with the goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off
+rats and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a hawk or a cat. In
+time of danger the rooster ran for shelter, but the gander stepped right
+out in front of his brood with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s
+arm, and that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the enemy.
+He taught his children to graze on weeds and grass. When anyone forgot to
+feed them the gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family right
+into the garden, where they picked up their share. He led the goslings
+through the wet grass and into the brook, where they cleaned out all the
+watercress and weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the barnyard
+and cried if breakfast did not come on time. She would not let her
+children wade through the wet grass or get into the water, and she did
+not know that a young goose can eat grass like a calf. The hen worried
+herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts of geese
+and headed for the brook.
+
+Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed to understand the
+first law of education—to train a child properly you must understand
+his natural instincts and tendencies and build upon them. For many
+generations the hen has feared water, and has been taught that all
+feathered young must be kept away from it. I have no doubt that a race
+of swimming hens could be developed, provided the fear of water could
+be taken from the mind of the hen. _For the hen must swim with her mind
+before she can swim with her feet!_ I have seen many cut-and-dried
+teachers as much afraid of the truth as this big Red hen was afraid of
+water. At any rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior
+to the other. One set had the benefit of father’s example and influence.
+Their teacher knew from long experience just what a young goose ought to
+know. The teacher knew that because she had been a goose herself, and
+could remember her youth. The hen’s brood knew nothing of their father’s
+example—no more than some little humans who only seem to know there is a
+man in the world who claims to be the detached head of the family. The
+hen’s goslings were brought up in one of these beheaded families. Their
+teacher ranked as a successful educator, but as she had never been a
+young goose herself she could not teach her children what they ought to
+know. It was not unlike trying to make a blacksmith out of a poet, or
+a drygoods salesman out of a natural farmer. These feathered children
+were fed and warmed and defended, but they could not make perfect geese
+because they were not trained to work out a goose job.
+
+The result was clearly evident. The young geese under the hen were
+undersized and fell into the hen character. After centuries of
+domestication or slavery the average hen loses the independence of the
+wild bird. Now and then a nobler specimen will feel some dormant brain
+cell thrill within her, remember the freedom of centuries ago and fly
+into the trees, but for the most part the modern hen is a selfish,
+fawning, tricky creature. She drives her family away as soon as the
+children become tiresome, and there is little or no real community
+life among hens. When their usual food is not forthcoming all but a few
+adventurous spirits stand slouching about waiting for help. Thus the
+goslings were taught to fawn upon man for their food and reject their
+brothers and sisters in the other brood. It was an unnatural life for a
+goose, and these little ones could not thrive under such training. On
+the other hand, Mr. Gander’s pupils were taught by an expert on goose
+training. They were taught to swim, to bathe in the wet grass, to eat
+grass or hay, to get out and find their own breakfast if man did not do
+his duty. As a result they grew up with strong independence of character.
+While the others might fawn and beg for food, the gander’s class were
+taught to scorn such subservient behavior. And they were taught family
+life and co-operation. While the hens separate and lead their selfish,
+separate lives, the geese live in a group. There they go now in a solid
+bunch across the lawn. Throw a stick into a flock of hens or let a dog
+run at them, and they will scatter in all directions. Try the same with a
+flock of young geese, and they will line up in solid array “all for each
+and each for all.” I do not know of anything finer in the education of
+geese or children than this thorough idea of co-operation. In the future
+those groups which are taught like the geese will rule the nation. Those
+which are taught to fear strange things or live the selfish life of a hen
+will always serve. In other words, the future of this country depends on
+its teachers and their wisdom? You are right!
+
+But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made with the
+carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates I think this one will
+pass a good examination. If I am not mistaken this was one of the hen’s
+goslings. When we saw that their teacher was a failure we put them into
+Mr. Gander’s class. He looked them over and knocked them down with his
+wing a few times. Then he put his wise head to one side as if to say:
+
+“I’ll do my best with them. They have been spoiled, and I must take
+some of the conceit out of them first. If the law forbidding corporal
+punishment holds in New Jersey I will resign the task, because no
+goose can ever live a successful life unless those foolish hen ideas
+are whipped out of him. And another thing: I won’t have that Red hen
+bothering around me. The influence of a foolish mother is the worst thing
+a teacher has to contend with. I’ll try to make geese out of them, but
+keep that hen away!”
+
+The Red hen put up a great cry for a time. She ran out and called for her
+“darling children” to leave those low companions. The goose took those
+“darling children” right by the tail feathers and pulled them back. The
+gander waddled up to the hen and took one nip which sent her squawking to
+the barnyard, where the big rooster was challenging the world.
+
+“I’ve been insulted!” she screamed, “and my dear children have been
+stolen from me. If you have the courage of a mouse you will defend your
+wife!”
+
+“Where is he?” roared the rooster, and he started on a run for the
+orchard. There was the goose with all her children at school, and right
+in front was the gander with his great beak open and that right wing all
+unslung for a blow. The rooster got within about six feet of him and
+then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that sharp beak.
+
+“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the next field, and I came
+to ask how the worms are running over there!”
+
+As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands generally,
+sought to pacify his wife.
+
+“After all, your children are in a good school, and you will now have
+more time for your neglected household duties. Nursing those children has
+been a hard strain on you. Now for a little recreation!”
+
+From my own experience I can testify that Professor Gander is right.
+No one can train a child properly if the mother is foolish naturally,
+and seeks to interfere with the child’s education. Those who undertake
+to “take a child” into their family may well take heed from Professor
+Gander. It were far better that such a child never saw his mother again.
+She may easily ruin the life which she brought into the world.
+
+But at any rate, this bird on the table was well educated to live the
+perfect life of a goose. Have another slice! I know you can eat another
+helping of this dressing. Pass back your plate. Of course I know Mother
+would like to hold that other goose back for a later meal, but that is
+not the true Thanksgiving spirit. Pass back for another slice and I will
+use my influence with the housekeeper to carve the second goose. Its
+education has been finished.
+
+
+
+
+COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL
+
+
+I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the
+world on fire. So we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand
+back to see it spread. For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay
+in a drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start it going. We
+find the world more like a soggy swamp. It does not flare up—our little
+blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the
+water it comes to an end. Missionaries who have been among the savage
+tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage
+is the simple act of striking a match. These men and their ancestors
+have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of
+two sticks together. Often many hours of this laborious friction were
+needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and
+then nurse it into flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced
+the effect of hours of hard toil! One savage stole a box of matches and
+undertook to “show off” before his friends. He could start the little
+flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big
+logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the little match
+flame could only spread _to things of its own size_. You cannot jump
+flame from a glimmer to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or
+gunpowder.
+
+Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry
+Barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver
+before some political society. When a man is well satisfied with his
+own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his
+admiration. When you come to be as old as I am, you will recognize the
+signs. I knew Henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those
+great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world
+on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or
+sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for
+an instant at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud voice and
+many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. When there was no
+blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in
+truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it
+sputtered for a moment and then flickered out. Youth cannot understand
+how long years of drudgery are required to split and splinter those big
+sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start
+the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets
+the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently
+splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry that when Lincoln
+delivered his speech at Gettysburg few people realized that it was to
+become a classic. A new generation with the power to look back through
+the mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full place in
+the American mind. Henry could not see it. When did youth ever know the
+back-looking vision of age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look
+ahead.
+
+I had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey
+to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant town lies west of the Mobile & Ohio
+Railroad—on a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years ago the
+track wound on through what seemed like a wilderness, with here and there
+a negro cabin. Now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages
+or blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of Starkville were
+just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons determined. I knew a man who
+came to town in November and bought an empty wagon. He could not haul it
+home until the following April, so deep was the mud. Now the main street
+was as smooth and solid as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out
+into the country in all directions. The streets were thickly lined with
+cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men riding on genuine saddle horses,
+which shuffled quickly along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs.
+It seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and
+it is no wonder that the years fell away and I went back in memory to
+those old days.
+
+It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural college and went
+down to “reform and uplift the South.” Since then I have heard the motive
+or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,”
+“nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives
+pinned to the latter! Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while
+perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential
+thing. I had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those
+days. I had a great abiding faith in the power of education to lift
+men up and set them free. A few years before I had given up the thought
+of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because I had had no
+training which fitted me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the
+agricultural college had given me almost the miraculous help which came
+to the man with the darkened mind. Who could blame youth for feeling that
+the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains
+of depression and trouble? I had been told that the chief assets of
+Mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a
+proud and well-bred race to train their hands to labor!” That was surely
+in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came to set the South
+on fire with ambition and vision.
+
+Well do I remember the day I walked into the little brick building where
+_The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was printed. Colonel O’Brien and
+Sergeant Hill looked me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every
+inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You would not think it,
+but he was with Forrest when they captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s
+remark was:
+
+“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”
+
+Colonel O’Brien was more practical.
+
+“Come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”
+
+And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting the South was on. I
+suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” I fed the press, set type,
+swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to
+sing in the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the
+town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials.
+At least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader.
+Those were the days when living was a joy. Some days there would be a
+little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement would come.
+Now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send
+them home in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright spots on
+the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright lexicon of youth to
+the great editorials I ground out at that battered and shaky table in the
+corner. Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town, alone and
+unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor
+thing beside the great editorial on “The South’s Future,” which I wrote
+on that stormy day in Christmas week.
+
+It comes back to me now as I write this. In those days everybody “knocked
+off” during Christmas week and we printed no paper. Yet we all seemed to
+come to the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.” It was
+cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips. Colonel O’Brien had started a
+fire in the fireplace, and he and Sergeant Hill stood before it smoking
+their pipes and telling war stories. Colonel O’Brien was telling how he
+heard the soldiers around their fires at night saying it was “a rich
+man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Sergeant Hill told about the Indian
+who went after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers, and
+how in consequence the Yankees captured the printing outfit. I must tell
+you that story some day. And while these two old vets kept down on the
+ground in thought I was up on the heights developing a glorious future
+for the “Sunny South.” And at the last flourish of the pen I cleared
+my throat and read it to these old soldiers. And, honestly, I did not
+get the humor of it. These two men had given all they had of youth,
+ambition, money and hope to their section. They must walk softly all
+their remaining days amid the ruins and the melancholy of defeat. And
+here was I without the least conception of what life must have meant to
+the Southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring out dreams of
+a future which seemed even beyond the vision of an Isaiah. Great is youth
+and glorious are its prophetic visions. At any rate, the old soldiers let
+their pipes go out as they listened.
+
+“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon you’ll have us all in
+Heaven 40 years hence?”
+
+“Fine,” said Colonel O’Brien. “Fine. I hope I’ll be here to see it; but
+today I saw that paper collector from New Orleans in town. We can’t pay
+his bill. He’ll have to leave on the night train. Better shut up the
+office.” And they tramped out into the mud, and I knew that as they
+plowed up the street they were looking at each other as men do when
+they feel a pity for some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in
+front of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called unorthodox.
+And I locked the door and sat before the fire polishing that editorial.
+Collectors might pound on the door, paper and ink might run short—what
+were these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts were to save
+the country? Surely, I had it all planned out that night, and went home,
+rising far up above the fog and rain, and bumping my head against the
+stars! Do I not know just how Henry Barkman felt about his great oration?
+Heaven give him the philosophy to endure with patience the day which
+finally came to me when I had to realize that I was not an uplifter,
+after all! And yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer, deny to youth
+the glorious foolishness with which he
+
+  “Longs to clutch the golden keys;
+  To mold the mighty state’s decrees
+  And shape the whisper of the throne!”
+
+And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all these dreams.
+Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have answered the last call.
+
+  “They know at last whose cause was right
+  In God the Father’s sight!”
+
+Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has passed on with them.
+Years ago _The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was absorbed by a stronger
+publication. It is doubtful if in all the town or country you could find
+an old copy of the paper. Those great editorials which I climbed into the
+clouds to write were evidently too thin and light for this world. They
+have all sailed away far from the mind of man. The little building where
+we started the candle flame which was to burn up all the prejudice and
+depression in the South seems to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding
+house. The little shop where (with Sol on the crank of the press and I
+feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt to be a mental feast,
+is now a kitchen where cow peas, bacon and greens and corn bread form a
+more substantial food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. It was no
+longer a molder of public opinion.
+
+“_To what base uses we may return, Horatio._”
+
+And yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the vision had come true. I
+wished that Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill might stand in front of the
+old building and look about them. No longer a sea of mud, but smooth,
+firm pavements. The sidewalks were lined with cars. Beautiful trees
+shaded the streets, until the town seemed like a New England Village with
+six generations behind it. Outside, stretching away in every direction,
+was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass and clover. Here and there
+was a young man in the uniform of the American Union. In the vaults of
+the banks were great bundles of Liberty bonds. And a gray-haired man on
+the street corner told me this:
+
+“_You will find that the very States which sixty years ago tried to break
+up the Union will, in the future, prove to be the very ones which must
+hold it together._”
+
+Yet let me tell Henry Barkman and the millions who felt as he did about
+his oration, that no one in all that town remembered my former editorials
+or the great work of the _Journal_. My literary work has been blown away
+as completely as the clouds among which it was composed. At the end of
+the great college commencement exercises a man came on the stage with a
+great bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. I am not much in the
+habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me, but I will confess that I
+thought: “Here is where my soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated.
+All things come round to him who will but wait.”
+
+But this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed that I ever tried
+to “uplift the South.” He said I entered into the young life of the town
+and was remembered with affection because I played baseball with skill
+and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!
+
+And let me say to the Henry Barkmans who read this that the lesson of all
+this is the truest thing I know. Many a man has gone out into life like
+a knight on a crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious weapons.
+In after years people cannot remember what his weapons were, but he got
+into their hearts with some simple, common thing which seemed foolish
+beside his great deeds. Nobody remembered my brain children, though they
+were embalmed in ink and cradled in a printing press. But I put a twist
+on a baseball, overcame the force of gravity and made the ball dodge
+around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40 years! Not one of my
+old subscribers spoke of the paper, but seven of the old baseball club,
+gray or bald, near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of
+youth, got together.
+
+I think you older people will get my point. For the benefit of Henry
+Barkman and his friends perhaps I can do no better than to quote the
+following:
+
+“_God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
+and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
+that are mighty._”
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
+
+
+“_Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that
+the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth._”
+
+That was written by François Rabelais over 500 years ago. It is so true
+that it has entered the language as a proverb, or “old saying.” We hear
+it again and again in all classes of society. It is true that the great
+majority of us has no idea of the life or the life ambitions of the great
+world outside of our own little valley of thought. I suppose this failure
+to understand the “other half” is one of the things which do most to keep
+people apart and prevent anything like fair co-operation. It is the basis
+of most of the bitter intolerance which has ever been used by the “ruling
+classes” to keep the great mass of the people in subjection. Years ago
+some old lord or baron would build a strong castle on a hill and make the
+farmers for miles around believe that he “protected” them. Therefore,
+they built his castle free, gave their sons for his soldiers, and toiled
+on the land that he might live in idleness. And what did he “protect”
+them from? Why, from another group of farmers a few miles away, who, in
+like manner, were supporting another idle gang of cutthroats in another
+strong castle. These two groups of farmers did not need to be “protected”
+from each other. They had the same needs, the same wrongs and the same
+desires. Left to understand each other and to work together, they would
+have had no trouble, but would have led happier and far more prosperous
+lives. As it was they did not understand “how the other half liveth,” and
+thus they fought when they should have fraternized.
+
+I find much of the same feeling between city people and farmers—consumers
+and producers. They do not understand how “the other half liveth,”
+and they find fault when they should from every point of economy work
+together. Your city man thinks the farmer has a soft job, and that with
+present high prices he is making a barrel of money. Either that or he
+is a slow-thinking drudge—a sort of inferior being, who doesn’t know
+any better than to carry the load which others strap on his back. He is
+“the backbone of the country” all right in a political campaign—but the
+backbone is merely a mechanical contrivance if you detach it from the
+brain. And the average farmer regards the city worker or commuter as a
+grafter—getting far more than he earns, and putting in short, easy days.
+It isn’t all graft and ease by a long way. Many of these city workers
+must travel miles to their jobs, and some of them put in longer hours
+than the average farmer. Many of them save little or nothing, and the
+wolf is always prowling around the door. Between these two classes it is
+a case of not knowing “how the other half liveth,” and this failure to
+understand has created a form of intolerance which separates two classes
+about as the old barons separated the groups of farmers years ago.
+
+And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding has separated
+classes of farmers. The grain farmers, live-stock men, dairymen,
+gardeners and fruit growers all think at times that they have the hardest
+lot. The labor question, the markets or the weather all seem to turn
+against them. For instance, the dairymen usually think their lot is
+harder than that of others. They must work day after day in all sorts of
+weather and under hard conditions. I know about this, for I have worked
+on a dairy farm where conditions were very hard. Yet I also know that at
+this season the average dairyman has a good job compared with the life of
+the market gardener or fruit grower. On our own farm it has rained each
+day and night for many days. Get into a sweet corn or tomato field and
+pick the crop in a pouring rain, or pick early apples while the foliage
+is like a great sponge. Then sort out and pack, load the truck and travel
+through the rain to market, stand out in the rain and sell the load out
+to peddlers and dealers, and then hurry back home for another round of
+the same work. The fruit and vegetables are nearly as perishable as milk,
+and must be rushed promptly away. The dairyman knows beforehand what
+his milk will bring. The price may not be what he thinks is right, but
+he knows for weeks or months in advance what he can surely expect. We
+never know when we start what our stuff will bring. We must take what we
+can get for perishable fruit. We know what we have already spent, and
+what each load must bring in order to get our money back. Thus far corn
+is about equal in price to last year, tomatoes are lower, apples are at
+least 30 per cent lower, and so on. The dairyman has his troubles, but
+let him follow this job for a month and he would realize that “there are
+others.” In much the same way I can show that the potato men, the hay and
+grain farmers, the sheep men and all the rest, have their troubles—and
+hard ones at that. If farmers could only understand these things better,
+and realize that there are thorns and tacks in every so-called “soft
+job,” there would be greater tolerance in the world, and that is the only
+thing that can ever lead to true co-operation and fair treatment.
+
+Pretty much the same thing is true of business. We ran upon a strange
+incident the other day. The city of Paterson, N. J., is a good market
+town. Work is well paid and the workmen are free spenders. It is a city
+of many breeds and races of men. On the market you will probably hear
+more languages and dialects than were used on the Tower of Babel. A large
+share of farm produce is distributed by peddlers—most of them of foreign
+blood. They are shrewd and tireless workers. I never can see when they
+sleep. Night after night they come on the market to buy produce, and day
+after day—through heat and cold, rain or shine—you see them driving their
+horses up and down the streets and lanes—always good-natured, always
+with a smile. Well, we sold Spot, our black cow, to one of these men—an
+Italian. Thomas had done business with him for some years. We had sold
+him many goods—he had always paid for them. He made part payment for the
+cow by giving about the most remarkable looking check I ever saw. It
+was on a first-class bank made out in a straggling hand, and signed by
+two names. We had passed several like it before through our bank, so I
+deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came back unpaid.
+
+Thomas and I went to Paterson that night to see what was wrong. I wish
+some of you whose lives have been spent entirely in the country could
+see how this “other half liveth.” This man lived on a side street. The
+lower part of his house had been fitted as a little store. In the small
+backyard were several milk goats, a small flock of chickens and a shed,
+in which were two horses. Under a small, rude shelter of boards was old
+Spot, chewing away at green cornstalks. The man was a big, pleasant-faced
+Italian. You would mark him for an honest man on his appearance. There
+was a brood of children—eight or nine, I should say—and a pleasant-faced
+little wife, who carried the latest arrival around at her work. When
+confronted with the protested check, this man merely smiled and waved his
+hands. He could not read it! Two small boys—the oldest perhaps 12 years
+of age—seemed to be the only members of the family who could read and
+write English. They read the protest paper to their father and made him
+understand. He only smiled and spread out his hands as people do who talk
+with their shoulders. These two little boys had made out the check and
+signed it for their parents. They either did not figure out their bank
+balance, or figured it wrong. There was no attempt at dishonesty, and the
+check would finally be honored. That seemed to be all there was to it.
+These little boys, through the public school, represented all that these
+older people know of the great business life of America.
+
+I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run back close to Plymouth
+Rock. If some of them had let that check go in this way I should have
+loaded old Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas knew
+this man and his reputation, and his way of doing business. He will pay,
+and in a few days of peddling he will pad out his bank account and then
+the check will go through. So we shook hands with him and came home. But
+that is the way “the other half liveth.” This man and woman came to a
+strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can
+work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business
+which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American
+business is what they learn at the public schools. I wish you could have
+seen the way that check was made out—yet any old piece of paper may be
+worth more than a gold-plated certificate if there is genuine character
+back of it. I am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good many
+accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion of the business
+is conducted in about that way. It is said that some of the smaller
+manufacturers do not keep any set of books which enable them to figure
+their income tax! There are some men who could not buy a cow or a cat
+from us on credit, while others could have what credit they need right on
+their face and reputation.
+
+There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen.
+We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of
+green cornstalks and a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents,
+at least. The cow can live in that little shed until the middle of
+December, or about 120 days. In that time she will give 1,500 quarts or
+more, which, at 18 cents, means $270, and she can then be sold for at
+least $90 for beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in four
+months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and stalks from vegetables
+and a small amount of grain. She will be well cared for, carded and
+brushed every day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows know “how
+the other half liveth.” Someone will take these figures, multiply them by
+25, and show what tremendous incomes our dairymen are making. The fact
+is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he kept two the extra
+cost of food would about eat up his profits. So we went whirling home
+through the dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of the
+life of the other half, and it made me feel something more of charity for
+my fellow men. When you come to think of what the American public school
+means to that family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes
+with education. We can hardly be too careful about what our schools teach
+and how they teach it. I wonder how many of us, if we were transplanted
+to some foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over to
+our children and let them conduct it as they learned to do it from the
+schools! I think we would all be more tolerant and reasonable if we would
+let our children bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of hope
+of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, the wind had
+dried the grass, and on the lawn in front of the house our great army
+of children were dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as
+tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these handicaps would
+have seemed much lighter if we could have gone out and danced with the
+kids. I wonder where, along the road, we gave up doing that.
+
+
+
+
+THE INDIANS WON
+
+
+Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the
+latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come
+as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these
+problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet
+on the concrete and my collar turned up.
+
+It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian weather as it turned out.
+It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of
+those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human
+eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a
+great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for
+all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted little band
+of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this
+great crowd sat cold-eyed and impartial. At one side of the field there
+was a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians sat wrapped in
+big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with
+green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a tangled
+mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of
+a football.
+
+Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part
+of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of
+course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,”
+but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying
+human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age.
+Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the
+1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these green-clad boys down to meet
+the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the
+game; it will be _a peach_.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all
+new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said
+that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a haughty
+spirit, wearing pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first
+high hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over two of the
+greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where
+the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and
+no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football
+team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very
+confident, and fully convinced of the great superiority of the white man!
+
+I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a
+game of tag than a human battering ram. Here, however, was a round of
+the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were
+representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the
+white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience
+is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment.
+All around me, however, there seemed standing up hundreds of swarthy,
+dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not
+realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test
+of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what
+a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a
+chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.
+
+It would have made a theme for a great historian as these young men lined
+up for the game. The whites trotted out confident and proud. Why not?
+The “betting” favored them, their record was superior, as their race was
+supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their places and shambled through
+their motions, silent and without great show of confidence. It came to me
+as not at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors of these
+boys had faced each other under very different circumstances. Francis
+Parkman, the historian, tells of a famous battle in the upper Connecticut
+Valley. The white settlers had built a stockade as protection against
+roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort was attacked by
+such a band, which had come down the valley capturing prisoners and
+booty. It was a savage fight, but the white men held their own, and
+finally a Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a parley. He
+actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they were out of food, and
+then to retreat. In that gray mist, with my feet on the concrete, I could
+shut my eyes and see the ancestors of these football players. Stern
+white men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent red men
+creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up their booty in sight—as
+price for the corn. The frost on the leaves told them that Winter with
+all its cold and peril was approaching. Here were the necessities of
+life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow of the woods were the
+captives—men, women and children—and the white settlers held out for
+_them_. For at that time, if not now, New England _knew the value of a
+man_ to the nation. He was far above the dollar, even though the women
+and children would be a care and a danger.
+
+In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old fighters lay in the
+hearts of these green-clad boys who had come down from these historic old
+hills. At that instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It
+was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers led by the
+writhing “cheer leaders”—the glory and fame of the good old college on
+the hill. You could not have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.
+
+On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned Indians seemed to have
+something of the same spirit in their hearts. Silent and impassive,
+they seemed for the moment to have cast off their college training and
+gone back to the free, wild life, only carrying the discipline which
+authority and college training had given them. I wonder if any of these
+red men thought as they lined up on that field that it was the lack of
+just this stern discipline which lost them this country and nearly wiped
+out their race? Men fitted to play this game of football never would
+have given away Manhattan Island, or permitted a handful of white men to
+drive them from the coast. Over 1,000 men, each with the burning drop
+of Indian or Negro blood in his veins, were hoping and praying that in
+this modern battle the red men would humble the pride of Manhattan, as
+their ancestors had lost the island. Out of the gray mist there seemed to
+stride ghosts of stout Dutchmen and thin Yankees and silent, noiseless
+Indians to watch this fairer combat.
+
+At the signal the ball was kicked far down the field by a white man whose
+ancestors may have come with Hendrik Hudson. It was caught by a red man,
+whose ancestors may have been kings or chiefs while the white man’s
+were European peasants. Back he came running with the ball to form the
+basement of a pile of 10 struggling fighters, and the game was on. You
+must get someone else to describe the game. I do not understand it well
+enough. The two groups of players lined up against each other, and one
+side tried to batter the other down, or send a man through with the ball.
+Again and again came this fierce shock, and a strange and unexpected
+thing was happening. The Indians had no band of singers or cheer leaders,
+no pretty girls were urging them on, no pride of superior dominating
+race, but silently and resolutely they were smashing the white men back.
+It was hard. These boys in green died well. There was one light man who
+took the ball and ran through the Indians as his ancestors may have run
+the gauntlet, but they pulled him down. Inch by inch the white men were
+battered back over the line. The air seemed full of red blankets, for
+those substitutes at the side lines were back into the centuries coming
+home from a season on the warpath. Yet the green singers yelled on and
+shouted their defiance. Then the white men made a great rally and forced
+the Indians back, grimly battling over the other line. At the end of the
+first half the score stood 10 to 7, in favor of the white men. “It’s all
+over,” said a man who sat next to me. “They will come back and trample
+all over the Indians, for white men always have the endurance.” A man
+nearby with a touch of bronze in his skin glared at us with a look in
+his eyes that was not quite good to see. Back came the players, at it
+again. There was great trampling, but of the unexpected kind. These
+slouching and shambling Indians suddenly turned into human tigers, and
+the plain truth is that they both outwitted and walked right over the
+green-clad whites. There was no stopping them. All the cheering and
+singing and sentiment and “race-superiority” went for nothing. For here
+was where pride and a haughty spirit ran up against destruction, and
+great was the fall thereof. Yet I was proud of the way these white boys
+met their fate. They had been too confident, and had lost what is called
+the “psychological drop” on the enemy. The Indians had them at the stake
+with a hot fire burning, for no one knows what a victory right there
+would have meant for the good old college far away among the hills. Yet,
+face to face with fate, cruel, silent and relentless, those boys never
+faltered, but fought on. I liked them better in defeat than in their airy
+confidence before the game. When it was all over they got up out of the
+mud of defeat and gave their college war cry. There may have been a few
+cracked and corner-clipped notes in it, but it was fine spirit and good
+losing. Nearby the Indians waved their blankets and gave another college
+yell. And the 1,000 or more men with that burning drop of blood in their
+veins went home with shining faces and gleaming eyes, with better dreams
+for the future of their race. For they had made the white man’s burden of
+superiority a hard burden to carry.
+
+My football days are over. No use for me to tell what great things I did
+30 years ago. This age demands a “show me,” and I cannot give it. If I
+had my way I would introduce football, baseball, basketball, pushball
+and all other clean and organized games into every country town. I would
+organize leagues and contests and get country children to play. Do you
+ever stop to think that work, long and continuous, for ourselves and our
+children, has not taught us how to organize or use our forces together
+as we should? It is true. _Organized_ play will do more to bring our
+children together for co-operative work than anything I can think of.
+It will give discipline, which is what we need. Two of these green-clad
+boys stood an Indian on his head and whirled him around like a top. It
+was part of the game. He got up good-naturedly and took his place in the
+line. Imagine what his grandfather would have done! One white boy was
+running with the ball and two Indians butted him, while another got him
+by the legs. The boy simply held on to the ball. It was discipline and
+training in self-control. Step on a city man’s foot in a crowded car
+and he would want to fight. Our country people need such discipline and
+spirit before they can compete with organized business. If I could have
+my way I would have our country children drilled in just such loyalty to
+the home town or district as these college boys displayed on the field.
+Tell me, if you will, how it can be gained now in any way except through
+organized and loyal play for our children. You know very well what I
+mean. Work is an essential of life, and it must be made the foundation
+of character. Organized and clean play is another essential, as I see it
+now, and I think its development and firm direction is to be one of the
+greatest forces in building up life in the country.
+
+
+
+
+IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL
+
+
+It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one of the
+children asked me a strange question:
+
+“_What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?_”
+
+Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days come and go, and every one
+of them has brought a dozen things to be thankful for. I sometimes think
+as the hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the day they are
+recording right now is about the best of all. I have passed Thanksgiving
+Day in the mud, in the snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded
+city, on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you can mention. I
+have given hearty thanks over baked beans, salt pork, bread and cheese,
+turkey and all the rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all
+burn away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.
+
+They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in a swamp in Northern
+Michigan. No one had dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the
+swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was a rich, middle-aged
+lumberman and his young wife. How this tough, hard pine knot of a man
+ever selected this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had
+come with him into the woods on one of his business trips, and the
+silence by day and the whispering of the pines at night had filled her
+with terror. The rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first
+wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a toy—a hothouse
+flower who could not live his life or help fight his battles. He had a
+great business deal on hand which required all his energies, but this
+girl could not understand or help him. She had begged and cried to go
+back to “civilization,” and they were on their way. And in this lonely
+place the axle of the carriage had snapped and left them in the mud.
+
+It had been one of those gray, melancholy days which seem to fit best
+into the idea of a New England Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming
+on and there were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had climbed out
+of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside. She had been crying in
+her disappointment, for she had expected to reach the railroad that
+night, and spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this lonely
+wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with an old farmer who finally
+agreed to haul the broken carriage back to the blacksmith shop for
+repairs.
+
+“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but not for man—so I can’t
+put you up. Quarter of a mile down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter
+hotel.”
+
+He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started back along the road.
+There was nothing for us to do but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen
+some strong, capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly
+flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is after all made of common
+clay, with little of that spirit or courage which we somehow think should
+belong to the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little woman
+and a sad and silent big man who walked through the mud and up the
+little sand hill in search of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful
+for, and, yet did they but know it, they were to find the most precious
+thing in life in this lonely wilderness.
+
+Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a long, rambling
+building, weatherbeaten and out of repair. Over the door was a faded
+sign, “Farmers’ Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a
+white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the house a little man
+with a bald head and a pair of great spectacles perched at the end of
+his nose was chasing a big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old
+people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to watch them. The
+old man finally cornered the rooster by the garden fence and carried
+him flapping and squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully,
+and evidently approved the choice, for the old man, still holding the
+rooster, pushed the wheel-chair into the house and then, picking up his
+ax, started for the chopping block just as we turned in from the road. We
+startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The gray bird did not stop
+to welcome us, but darted off into the shadows. He mounted the roost in
+the henhouse from which the old man easily pulled him a little later.
+
+You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers bowing and
+scraping as their guests arrive. Ike Sawyer could not play the part. He
+just peered at us over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.
+
+“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put you up.” Then he led
+the way into the rambling old house. It was dark now, and the old man
+lighted a lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman did not rise
+from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.
+
+“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband. “I play feet and she
+plays hands, and between us we make out fine.”
+
+The old man bustled about and started a fire in the big fireplace. The
+young woman had entered the poor old building with an angry snarl of
+discontent on her face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to
+stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed up and filled
+the room with warm light, I noticed that the snarl faded out and she sat
+watching the old lady with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a
+moment, but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch the sweet-faced
+old lady “play hands.” On the other side of the fireplace, silent and
+strong, her husband sat watching his wife with eyes half closed under his
+thick, bushy eyebrows.
+
+I have seen the cook in a quick lunch counter stand in his little box and
+toss food together, and I have seen a chef earning nearly as much as the
+President daintily working in his great kitchen, but nothing will ever
+seem to equal the way that meal was prepared when Annie played hands and
+Ike played feet. Ike pushed a little table up in front of his wife, and
+at her call brought flour and milk and all that she needed for making
+biscuits. He stood beside her chair as the thin fingers did their work.
+Now and then he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and once he touched her
+beautiful head. As though forgetting her guests Annie would smile back
+at him—a beautiful smile which brought a strange look to the face of the
+young woman who sat watching them. At first it seemed like an amused
+sneer. Then there came a puzzled, curious look—the first faint glimmering
+of the thought that this old man and woman _out of their trouble, out
+of their loneliness, had found and preserved that most precious of all
+earth’s blessings—love_!
+
+When a fellow has eaten more than 60,000 meals, as I have in my time, it
+must be a very good performance in that line to stand out like a bump or
+a peg in memory. Through all my days I can never forget that supper in
+the fire-lighted room where Ike played feet and Annie played hands and
+brains. Ike started a roaring fire in the kitchen stove. Then he brought
+in a basket of potatoes and Annie selected the best ones for baking.
+He came with a fragrant brown ham, and cut slices, under her eye, she
+measuring with her thin finger to make sure they were not too thick. She
+cut the bread herself, selected the eggs for frying, mixed the gravy
+and seemed to know by the sputter in the pan when the ham was done. Ike
+pushed her chair over to the table so she could spread the cloth and
+arrange the service. Then at a word he pushed her chair to the window
+where half a dozen plants were blooming. She cut two little nosegays and
+put them beside the plates of her guests. Ike brought in the ham and
+eggs, the great, mealy baked potatoes, the brown biscuits and the apple
+pie. In her city home a servant would have approached the lady and gently
+announced:
+
+“Dinner is served!”
+
+Ike Sawyer, when Annie nodded approval, simply invited:
+
+“_Sit by and eat!_”
+
+It was all so simple and human that it seemed a perfectly natural thing
+to do when the discontented and peevish young woman picked up the little
+nosegay at her husband’s plate and pinned it on his coat. She even patted
+his shoulder just as Ike had done with Annie. We were all ready to begin,
+when Ike, standing by Annie’s chair, took off his great spectacles and
+held up his hand.
+
+“I don’t know who you be or whether you’re church folks or not, but me
+an’ Annie always makes every day a season for Thanksgivin’.”
+
+Then in the deep silence with only the popping of the fire and the dim
+noises of the night, as accompaniment, the old man bowed his head and
+made his prayer. He prayed that the “stranger within our gates” might
+find peace and strength and go on his way thankful for all the blessings
+of life. Under those great bushy eyebrows the eyes of the strong, rich
+man glowed with a strange light. The young wife glanced at him, and the
+sneer faded away from her face. Then Ike became the landlord once more
+and he bustled about, tempting us to eat a little more of this or another
+piece of that, and at every word of praise falling back upon his stock
+explanation:
+
+“It’s her—Annie plays hands and I play feet. Everybody knows hands have
+more skill than feet.”
+
+After supper the big man and his wife stood at the window looking out
+into the wet, dismal night. After a little hesitation he put his arm
+gently around her. She did not throw it away as she did when he tried
+to comfort her in the swamp, but rather pulled it closer. After Ike had
+cleared up his dishes and caught and dressed the gray rooster we all sat
+before the fire and talked. With a few shrewd questions the lumberman
+drew out Ike’s story. Years before he and Annie had owned a good farm in
+New York. There they heard of the wonderful new town that was to be built
+in Northern Michigan. A city was to arise there, the railroad was coming,
+and fortune was to float on golden wings over the favored place. It is
+strange how people like Ike and Annie cannot see how much they need home
+and old friends and old scenes to make life satisfying. They are not made
+of the stuff used in building pioneers, but they cannot realize it and
+they listen to plausible dreams and go chasing after the impossible. So
+Ike and Annie sold the farm and came to start the great city. It never
+started. The railroad headed 20 miles west. Out among the scrub oaks you
+could find some of the rotting stakes marked “Broadway,” “Clay St.,” or
+“Lake Avenue.” The swamp and forest refused to be civilized. Ike built
+his hotel in anticipation of the human wave which would wash prosperity
+his way. It never came, and only a rough, rambling house remained as the
+weatherbeaten gravestone of Sawdust City. Of all the pioneers there were
+only Ike and Annie—last of them all—celebrating their happy Thanksgiving!
+
+“Why don’t you sell out and move to some town?” said the practical
+lumberman.
+
+“Well, sir—it would be too far from home! Me and Annie know this
+place—every corner of it. Every crick of a timber at night brings a
+memory. We are just part of the place. And the little girl is buried off
+there by the brook. We couldn’t go away from that, could we?”
+
+“But isn’t it so _awful_ lonesome?”
+
+It was the young woman who asked, and it was Annie who softly answered
+her.
+
+“No, for we have great company. I have Ike and he has me. All these long
+years have tried us out. We know each other, and we are satisfied. Each
+Thanksgiving finds us happier than before, because we know that our last
+years are to be our best years.”
+
+The rich man looked over to Ike and Annie with something of hopeless envy
+printed on his face. His wife nodded her head gently and then sat gazing
+into the fire until Ike gave us clearly to understand that 10 o’clock was
+the hour for retiring at the “Farmers’ Rest.”
+
+We stayed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the gray rooster, stuffed
+with chestnuts and bread-crumbs, might well have stood up in the platter
+to crow at the praises heaped upon him. The forenoon was gloomy and
+dull, but just as we came to the table the sun broke through the clouds.
+A long splinter of sunshine broke through the window—falling upon
+Annie’s snow-white hair. Ike hurried to move her chair out of the sun,
+but the rich man asked Ike to leave her there, for I think something
+in that sunny picture took him back to childhood—where most men go on
+Thanksgiving Day.
+
+And shortly after dinner the farmer came up the road with the carriage.
+The axle had been mended and the horses rested. We all shook hands with
+Ike and Annie. I was to go my way and the other guests were to pass out
+of our little world.
+
+Annie held the young girl’s hand for a moment.
+
+“My dear, I hope you will soon be back in the city among your friends,
+where you will not be so lonely. It must be hard for you here.”
+
+The girl hesitated a moment and then put her hand on her husband’s
+shoulder.
+
+“John, would it mean very much to you if we went right back to the camp
+so you could finish your business?”
+
+“Yes, it would—but I am afraid——”
+
+“Then we will _not_ go home yet, but we will go back until you are
+through. I have had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I would rather stay in the
+woods.”
+
+And so they turned in their tracks and went back through the swamp. The
+night before she said she should always hate the place where the accident
+had made Ike Sawyer’s hotel a necessity. Now as she passed it she smiled
+and gave her husband a pinch—a trick she must have learned from Annie.
+And so they went on through the sunny afternoon of the “thankfullest day
+of their lives.” They were thinking of the working force at the “Farmers’
+Rest”—the feet and the hands!
+
+And the thought in their minds framed itself over and over into words:
+
+“_Out of their poverty, out of their trouble and loneliness, this man and
+woman have found each other, and thus have found the most beautiful and
+precious thing in life—love!_”
+
+
+
+
+OLD-TIME POLITICS
+
+
+“What is the matter with this political campaign?”
+
+An old man who can remember public events far back of the Civil War and
+beyond asked that question the other day. He said this campaign reminded
+him more of a Sunday school convention. Nobody was fighting, and very
+few such epithets as “liar” or “thief” or “rascal” were being used. In
+these days no one seems to care who is to be elected. We are all too
+busy trying to pay our bills. The old man bewailed the loss of power and
+interest in this generation. He thought this quiet indifference meant
+that as a nation we have lost our political vigor. Having been through
+some of those old-time battles, I cannot fully agree with him. It is
+true that few people seem interested, yet they will vote this year, and
+I think the quiet and thoughtful study most of them are making will
+prove as effective as the big noise and excitement we used to have. We
+are merely doing things differently now. Whether the great excitement
+of those old political days made us better citizens is a question which
+has long puzzled me. I know that in those nervous and high-strung days
+we did many foolish things as a part of “politics.” On the other hand, I
+wish sometimes that our people could get as thoroughly worked up over the
+tribute we are paying to the profiteers as we did in those old days over
+the tariff and the slavery issue.
+
+I can well remember taking part in the campaign between Garfield and
+Hancock. The Democrats felt that they had been robbed of the Presidency
+in ’76, but as they failed to renominate Tilden the Republicans called
+them quitters. I had dropped out of college for awhile to work as hired
+man for a farmer in a Western State, and we certainly had a great time.
+This farmer was an old soldier; he was a good talker and thought well of
+his own exploits. When you found that combination 40 years ago you struck
+a red-hot partisan. The man’s wife was a Democrat, because her father had
+been. She was one of those small, black-eyed women who acquire the habit
+of dominating things in the schoolroom and then concentrate the habit
+when they take a school of one pupil in the home. Her brother lived on
+the next farm. He had turned Republican because he wanted to be elected
+county clerk. It was fully worth the price of admission to sit by the
+fire some stormy night and hear this woman put those two Republicans on
+the broiler of her tongue. They were big men, fully capable of holding
+their own in any ordinary argument, but this small woman cowed them as
+she formerly did her A B C pupils. It was enough to make any young man
+very thoughtful about marrying a successful teacher to see this small
+woman point a finger at her big husband and say:
+
+“Now John Crandall, don’t you dare to say it isn’t the truth!”
+
+And John didn’t dare, though from his political religion it might be a
+base fabrication. One day, after a particularly hard thrust, John and I
+were digging potatoes, and he unburdened his mind a little:
+
+“I’ll tell you one thing: any man who marries a good school-marm takes
+his life in his hands—his political life, anyway!” and he pushed his
+fork into the ground as though he was spearing a Democrat! “And yet,” he
+added, as he threw out a fine hill of potatoes, “sometimes I kinder think
+it’s worth the risk.”
+
+My great regret is that this lady did not live to celebrate the
+Nineteenth Amendment! With the ballot in her hand she would have stirred
+excitement even into this dull campaign!
+
+We worked all day, and went around arguing most of the night during that
+hot campaign. The names we had for the Democrats would not bear repeating
+here. The other side went around with pieces of chalk, making the figures
+“321” on every fence and building or on stones. That represented the sum
+of money which General Garfield was said to have stolen. The Republicans
+marched around in processions carrying a pair of overalls tied to a
+pole, representing one of the Democratic candidates. Oh, it was a
+“campaign of education” without doubt! And then Maine voted! John and his
+brother-in-law had been playing Maine as their trump card.
+
+“Wait till you hear from the old Pine Tree State. As Maine goes, so goes
+the Union!”
+
+John felt so sure of it that even his wife was a little fearful. The day
+after the Maine election John and I were seeding wheat on a hill back
+from the road. There were no telephones in those days, and news traveled
+slowly—we were eight miles from town. In the late afternoon we heard
+a noise from the distant road. There was Peleg Leonard driving his old
+white horse up the road at full speed and roaring out an old campaign
+song:
+
+  “Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon!
+    Democratic wagon, and we’ll all take a ride!”
+
+The demand for prohibition in those days was confined to a few “wild-eyed
+fanatics,” and Peleg was not one of them, especially on those rare
+occasions when the Democrats got a chance to yell. We saw him stop in
+front of the house and wave his arms as he told the news to Sarah.
+
+“Looks sorter bad. Can it be that Maine has gone back on us?” said John
+as he saw the celebrator go on his way.
+
+We usually had a cold supper on such days, but now we saw the smoke
+pouring from the kitchen chimney, and the horn blew half an hour earlier
+than usual. John and I put up the horses, washed our faces at the pump
+and walked into the kitchen as only two dejected Republicans can travel.
+You see, it wasn’t so bad for the Democrats. They were used to being
+defeated, and had made no great claims. I was young then, and youth is
+intensely partisan. Since that day I have voted on four different party
+tickets, and glory in the fact that I am not “hide-bound.”
+
+Sarah had on her best black silk and the white apron with lace edges.
+She had cooked some hot biscuit and dished up some of her famous plum
+preserve and actually skimmed a pan of milk to serve thick cream.
+
+“_Maine is gone Democratic!_” she cried. “_Hurrah for Hancock!_ Bread and
+water’s good enough for Republicans in this hour of triumph, but I know
+the fat of the land will taste like gall to both of you. Sit right down
+and feast, because the country’s safe!”
+
+Physically that supper was perfect. There never were finer hot biscuits
+or better plum preserve or finer cold chicken! Spiritually it was the
+saddest and most depressing meal on record. We made a full meal. I can go
+back into the years and see that big farmer gnawing half a chicken under
+command of his wife. You remember “King Robert of Sicily” in Longfellow’s
+poem:
+
+  “The world he loved so much
+  Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch.”
+
+And so with poor John. That fine chicken tasted exactly like crow as
+Sarah sat by and “rubbed it in.” Oh, politics, where are the charms we
+formerly saw in thy face?
+
+John and I surely dawdled over our chores that night. We had no great
+desire to go in and hear the news. Finally Sarah came to the door and
+called us.
+
+“Say,” said John to me as we started for the house, “you go to college.
+Have you ever studied logic or what they call psychology?”
+
+“While I am no expert at either subject, I know what they mean.”
+
+“Well, now, suppose your wife got after you like that, how would you use
+those studies to keep her quiet? What’s the use of an education if it
+don’t help you keep peace in the family?”
+
+So I unwisely told John that he ought to tell his wife that a woman by
+law obtained her citizenship from her husband. That citizenship was the
+essence of politics; therefore the wife should by law belong to her
+husband’s party. I am older now in years, and I know better than to give
+any man arguments in a debate with his wife. The Maine election, however,
+had made us desperate. So John marched in with a very confident step and
+elaborated my arguments. He was quite impressive when he assured her that
+the law declared that a woman acquired her political principles from her
+husband. It did not work, however.
+
+“Don’t you tell me! I didn’t marry any principles at all when I married
+you. How is a man going to give any principles to his wife when he never
+had any to give? My father was a Democrat, and I take my politics from
+him. He was the best man that ever lived, and you know it. I inherit my
+politics, I do—I didn’t marry them!”
+
+The truth is that Sarah’s father was an old war Democrat who came near
+being tarred and feathered by his neighbors, but one of the saving graces
+of modern civilization is the fact that a woman’s father is always an
+immortal—never needing any defense—his virtues being self-evident, while
+her husband is a de-mortal who can hardly hope to become a good citizen
+except through long years of patient service! His only hope lies in the
+future when he has a daughter of his own.
+
+And Henry Wilkins, Sarah’s brother, was running for county clerk. We held
+a caucus at the blacksmith shop, where John and I and two farmers were
+elected delegates to the county convention. We all went to the county
+seat one Saturday afternoon to nominate a ticket. The last we heard from
+Sarah was:
+
+“Now, Henry, if you get nominated on that renegade ticket, I know one man
+that won’t vote for you and that’s John Crandall. I won’t let him vote if
+he has to stay in bed all day!”
+
+Contrary to what some of the “antis” say woman has always exercised
+political power.
+
+When we got to town we found the “drug-store ring” in control. This was a
+little group of politicians led by Jacob Spaulding. It was the “Tammany
+Hall” of Oak County. This ring had decided to nominate an undertaker from
+the west side of the county for clerk. Most of the farmers were all ready
+to quit when Jake Spaulding said the word, for he usually handed out the
+little political jobs. I was young and inexperienced in politics and
+ready for a fight. It hurt me to see that great crowd of farmers ready
+to give up the fight when a big, fat brute like Jake Spaulding and a few
+of his creatures shook their heads. So I called our delegates together
+and proposed that we go right in where Jake was and “talk turkey” to him.
+Strange, but John Crandall was the only outspoken supporter I had. John
+was bossed at home until he was like a lamb, but get him out among men
+and the pent-up feelings in the lamb expanded that innocent animal into
+a lion. So we had our way, and about 25 of us marched down the street
+to the courthouse, where in the sheriff’s room the county committee was
+making up the ticket.
+
+You would have thought the destinies of the nation were at stake as we
+filed into that room. Half of our delegates were ready to quit when Jake
+Spaulding glared at us over his spectacles.
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+Dr. Walker was our spokesman, and Jake Spaulding had a mortgage on his
+house. You could see that mortgage peeking out from behind every sentence
+of the doctor’s speech. In effect he asked those politicians if they
+wouldn’t please nominate Henry Wilkins for county clerk. It didn’t take
+Jake long to put us where we belonged.
+
+“No; the delegates to this convention are going to nominate Hiram Green.
+Nothing doing here. Just fall in and work for the grand old Republican
+party! And now, boys, good day; we’re busy.”
+
+Several of our delegates started for the door. They were well-disciplined
+soldiers. I was not, and I did what most of them thought a very foolish
+thing. Before I well knew it I was up in front making a speech to Jake
+Spaulding. At that time no one had ever heard of the 35-cent dollar.
+The word “profiteer” was not in the language; but I think I did make it
+clear that these farmers were there to nominate Henry Wilkins or “bust”
+the convention. As I look back upon it now I think it was the most bold
+and palpable “bluff” ever attempted at a country convention. And John
+Crandall stood beside me and pounded his big hands together until the
+rest of the delegates forgot their fear and joined in. When I finished
+there was nothing to do for us but to file out of the courthouse.
+
+Then they turned on me in sorrow and anger. Everyone would now be a
+marked man. They never could get any office from Jake Spaulding. Even
+Henry, the candidate, felt I had injured his chances, for if he kept
+quiet perhaps he might make a deal to get to be deputy clerk. But John
+Crandall stood by me.
+
+“Good,” he said; “I’m a fighter. Get right up in convention and give ’em
+another. I’m going to vote for Henry till the last man is out.”
+
+But these faint hearts did not know what was going on inside the
+sheriff’s room. When our delegation marched out the county committee sat
+and looked at each other.
+
+“Boys,” said Jake Spaulding, “it looks like they mean business. We can’t
+let that spread. I guess we’ll have to take Henry on!”
+
+There was a big crowd in the courthouse, and the convention went off like
+a well-oiled machine. They nominated sheriff and probate judge and then
+the chairman asked:
+
+“Any nominations for county clerk?”
+
+I had my throat all cleared and stood up with: “Mr. Chairman,”—but no one
+paid much attention to me. The chairman turned to the platform and said:
+
+“I recognize Judge Spaulding,” and there was the big, fat boss on his
+feet.
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “today our glorious country lives or dies! The
+grand old Republican party is on trial. Every patriot is needed in this
+great crisis. Ho! Israel, every man to his tent! I therefore take great
+pleasure in nominating that splendid farmer, that incomparable patriot,
+that popular citizen, Henry Wilkins of Adams township. I ask you in the
+name of our glorious citizenship to put him through with bells on!”
+
+I stood there all through the speech too dazed to sit, until John
+Crandall pulled me down. Then I realized that for once a bluff had
+worked. And after the convention I met Jake Spaulding in front of the
+courthouse. “Young feller,” he said, “if you decide to settle down in
+this county, let me know. I’ll have a little job for you.”
+
+We all rode home in the candidate’s wagon. Sarah was waiting for us at
+the gate.
+
+“Well, how did you come out?”
+
+“Nominated by acclamation,” said Henry. “John and the young feller here
+did it. They made Jake Spaulding come up!”
+
+“John?”
+
+If some actress could put into a single word the scorn and surprise which
+Sarah packed into her husband’s name her fortune would be made. And John
+and I stood there like a couple of truant schoolboys waiting for the
+verdict.
+
+“That’s what I said. John was fine. Only for him I’d have been defeated.”
+And Henry drove on.
+
+“Now you two lazy Republicans, get out and milk those cows.”
+
+We went, but when we got back the kitchen stove was roaring, and Sarah
+was just taking out a pan of biscuits. There were ham and eggs on the
+stove.
+
+“Now you sit right down and eat. If I’ve got to be sister to a county
+clerk I want to know all about it. Now, John, you tell me just how it
+happened.”
+
+Ah, but those were the happy days of politics. Do you wonder that we
+old-timers consider the present campaign about like dishwater—in more
+ways than one?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Hope Farm Notes, by Herbert Winslow Collingwood
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Hope Farm Notes, by Herbert Winslow Collingwood
+
+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: Hope Farm Notes
+
+Author: Herbert Winslow Collingwood
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2020 [EBook #63243]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOPE FARM NOTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
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+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">HOPE FARM NOTES</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br />
+HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">REPRINTED FROM</span><br />
+THE RURAL NEW YORKER</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter titlepage" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/hb-co.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">NEW YORK</span><br />
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY<br />
+1921</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY<br />
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">THE QUINN &amp; BODEN COMPANY<br />
+RAHWAY, N. J.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="dedication"><span class="smcap">To<br />
+L. D. C. and A. F. C.<br />
+who represent</span><br />
+“<i>The Hen with one Chicken</i>”<br />
+<span class="smcap">and</span><br />
+<i>The Chicken</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Most of these notes were originally printed in the
+<i>Rural New-Yorker</i> from week to week and covering
+a period of about 20 years. Many readers of that magazine
+have expressed the desire to have a collection of
+them in permanent form. It has been no easy task
+to make a selection, and I wish to acknowledge here
+the great help which I have received from my daughter,
+Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has
+been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological
+order. “A Hope Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother”
+were originally printed in 1902. The others follow
+in the order of their original publication. The reader
+must understand that the children alluded to represent
+two distinct broods,—the second brood appearing just
+after the sketch entitled “Transplanting the Young
+Idea.” From the very first the object of these notes has
+been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter,
+cheerful side of Farm Life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Sunny Side of the Barn</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_SUNNY_SIDE_OF_THE_BARN">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Hope Farm Sermon</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_HOPE_FARM_SERMON">21</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Grandmother</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#GRANDMOTHER">26</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Laughter and Religion</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LAUGHTER_AND_RELIGION">33</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Day in Florida</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_DAY_IN_FLORIDA">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Baseball Game</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_BASEBALL_GAME">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Transplanting the Young Idea</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TRANSPLANTING_THE_YOUNG_IDEA">51</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Sleepless Man</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_SLEEPLESS_MAN">58</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Lincoln’s Birthday</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LINCOLNS_BIRTHDAY">63</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Uncle Ed’s Philosophy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#UNCLE_EDS_PHILOSOPHY">69</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A God-forsaken Place</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_GOD-FORSAKEN_PLACE">75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Louise</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LOUISE">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Christmas Every Day</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_EVERY_DAY">88</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“The Finest Lesson”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_FINEST_LESSON">94</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“Columbus Day”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#COLUMBUS_DAY">107</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Commencement</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_COMMENCEMENT">114</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“Organization”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ORGANIZATION">122</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Face of Liberty</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_FACE_OF_LIBERTY">130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Captain Randall’s Hour</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CAPTAIN_RANDALLS_HOUR">138</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“Snow Bound”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SNOW_BOUND">147</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“Class”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CLASS">155</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">“I’ll Tell God”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#ILL_TELL_GOD">163</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Day’s Work</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_DAYS_WORK">171</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Professor Gander’s Academy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#PROFESSOR_GANDERS_ACADEMY">181</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#COLONEL_OBRIEN_AND_SERGEANT_HILL">189</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">How the Other Half Lives</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#HOW_THE_OTHER_HALF_LIVES">198</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Indians Won</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_INDIANS_WON">206</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Ike Sawyer’s Hotel</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IKE_SAWYERS_HOTEL">214</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Old-time Politics</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#OLD-TIME_POLITICS">224</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>HOPE FARM NOTES</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SUNNY_SIDE_OF_THE_BARN">THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set
+out for me every day. During the Winter it was sawing
+and splitting wood. Our barn stood so that somehow
+on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road,
+and it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other
+was turned so it was always cold and frosty, with little
+if any sun. The hens, the cow and the sheep always
+made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented
+the comfortable and the bright side of life. The old
+gentleman who brought me up always put the woodpile
+on the frosty side of the barn. He argued that if
+the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would
+stop to look at the passers-by, feel something of the joy
+of living, and stop his work to absorb a little of it. We
+were brought up to believe that labor was a curse, put
+upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and
+never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side,
+he must move fast in order to keep warm. He would not
+stop to loaf in the sun, he could not throw stones or
+practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens
+on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was
+that the boy would accomplish more on the frosty side,
+and realize that labor represented the primal curse which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the
+farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed
+much of my life on the frosty side of the barn, silent
+and thoughtful, while the hens cackled and sang on the
+sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could
+not see that the thing which made the hens lay would
+surely make the boy work.</p>
+
+<p>There will always be a dispute as to whether a boy
+or a man does his best work under the spur of necessity,
+or out of a full bag of the oats of life. And
+they do it with greater or less cruelty as more or less
+of their life has been spent on the frosty side. I never
+yet saw a self-made man who did anything like a perfect
+job on himself. They usually spoil their own sons by
+giving them too easy a time, while work is a necessity
+in building character. Work without play of some sort
+is labor without soul, and that is one of the most cruel
+and dangerous things in the world. I have noticed that
+most men who pass their childhood on the frosty side
+of the barn have what I call a squint-eyed view of
+youth. They spend a large part of their time telling
+how they had to work as a boy, and how much inferior
+their own sons are since they do not have chores to
+do. That man’s boys will pay no attention except when
+his eye is upon them, and rightly so, I think. The
+man looks across the table at mother, with a shake of
+his head, for is not the Smith family responsible for
+the fact that these boys do not equal their wonderful
+sire? I have learned better than to expect much sympathy
+from my boys for what happened 50 years ago.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman would come now and then and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+look around the corner of the barn to see if I was
+at work. The frosty side of the barn in youth has one
+advantage. It forces the boy to think and reason out
+the justice of life. Uncle Daniel had not read enough
+of history to know that Guizot, the great French historian,
+says that the only thing which those who represent
+tyranny, injustice or evil are afraid of <i>is the human
+mind</i>. What he means is that whenever you can get
+the plain, common people to think clearly and with
+their own brains, they will sooner or later wipe off the
+slate of history and write freedom in big letters. On
+the sunny side I think I should have talked and so
+rid myself of my thought before it could print itself
+upon my little brain, but there on the frosty side of
+the barn I know that I said little, but reasoned it
+out with the clear wisdom of childhood. If Uncle
+Daniel had been a student of Shakespeare, he would
+have gone straight to that famous passage in Julius
+Cæsar which probably expresses the thought of 90 per
+cent of the humans capable of thinking, who have ever
+lived to maturity:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Let me have men about me that are fat,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I was thinking out my problem, and I want to tell
+you younger men that the questions which started at the
+teeth of my saw on the frosty side of that old barn have
+cut their way through the years, and chased and haunted
+me all through life. The injustice of labor and social<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+conditions—that is the foundation of the trouble in the
+world. Upon it all helpful education should be based.
+Youth’s ideals will always chase you like that, if you
+give them half a chance, and you never can have better
+mental companions. I was trying to reason out one of
+two resolutions. Off in that dim future of manhood
+when I should grow up, my time would come, and I
+might have power over some other boy, or maybe a
+man. I could put him on the frosty or on the
+sunny side of the barn, as I saw fit. What would I
+do to him to pay for my session on the frosty side?
+Somehow I think it is natural for human beings to seek
+reparation and promise themselves to take their misfortunes
+out of someone else when their power comes.
+I think I should have grown up with something of
+that determination in mind had it not been for the poet
+Longfellow.</p>
+
+<p>Now you will smile, you successful farmers, you
+dry old analyzers and solemn teachers and you budding
+young hopes. What has poetry to do with farming
+or agricultural education? What did the poet Longfellow
+ever do for farming? Did he ever have a hen
+in an egg-laying contest that laid 300 eggs in a year?
+Did he ever raise a prize pumpkin, or a prize crop of
+potatoes? Did he even originate the Longfellow variety
+of flint corn? Do not men need solid pith rather than
+flabby poetry in their thought? It is true that Longfellow
+would have starved to death on a good farm.
+Yet his poetry and the thought that went with it were
+one of the things that made New England dominate this
+country in thought. My childhood was passed at a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>
+time when we had no science to study. Bacteria were
+swimming all about us in the air, the food and the
+water. I had, no doubt, swallowed millions of them at
+every mouthful, and we grew fat on them. We had
+no books on science or bulletins, but every farmhouse
+had its copy of Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson
+and Holmes. The best duck-raiser in our town was a
+man who could recite Bryant’s poem, “To a Water
+Fowl,” with his eyes shut. I think I could safely challenge
+many famous poultrymen to recite even one verse
+of that poem, yet who would say that he would not be
+a better poultryman and a better man if he could carry
+in his heart a few verses of that poem?</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“There is a Power whose care</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.”</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse center">...</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“He who from zone to zone,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In the long way which I must tread alone,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Will lead my steps aright.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I had recited Longfellow’s “Resignation” in school.
+I gave it about as a parrot would, but on the frosty side
+of the old barn one verse shoved itself into my little
+brain:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Let us be patient;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">These severe afflictions</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Not from the ground arise;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But oftentimes celestial benedictions</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Assume this dark disguise.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it
+was a great thing for a boy to think about. I looked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+both words up in the dictionary and got, perhaps, half
+of their meaning. In all our town there seemed to be
+no one except our old minister to come around on the
+frosty side of the barn with comfort or promise, but
+this celestial benediction which the poet told about got
+right to you. It might even live under that awful
+pile of wood which I was to saw, and it would be worth
+the job of sawing it if I could find such a thing under
+the pile. I heard people speak of a “nigger in the
+woodpile” in terms of reproach, but a celestial benediction
+down under the wood was certainly entitled to all
+respect. I did not fully understand it, or what it meant,
+but it got into me and stayed there, where the multiplication
+table or the rule of square root never would
+remain. My belief is that if I had committed to memory
+in place of that poem some excellent classroom lecture
+at college I should have become a little anarchist,
+and gone through life pushing such people as I could
+reach toward the frosty side of the barn. As it was,
+that poem, repeated over and over, made me vow as
+a child that if I ever could influence or direct the lives
+of farmers I would do my best to see that they lived and
+did their work on the sunny side of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>In my day children were brought up on “the Scriptures
+and a stick,” both well applied, and yet all these
+“lectures and lickings” never stuck in my life as did
+the noble poetry we read in school, and the few pictures
+which hung on the walls of the home. There is a curious
+thing about some of these pictures. I am told of a
+case where two boys in the Tennessee mountains volunteered
+for the navy. Their mountain home was as far<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+removed from the ocean as it well could be. They had
+never seen even a large pond. For three generations
+not one of their ancestors had ever seen the salt water.
+Yet these boys would not listen to any call for the army,
+but they demanded a place in the navy. The story
+came to an officer in a nearby camp, and he became interested
+and visited that home. Both father and mother
+were puzzled over the action of their boys, and they
+could not understand why Henry and William had demanded
+the ocean. As the officer turned away he noticed
+hanging on the wall in the living-room of that
+house the crude picture of a ship under full sail and on
+an impossible blue ocean. It had come into that family
+years before, wrapped around a package of goods, and
+mother had hung it on the wall. From their youth those
+boys had grown up with that picture before them, and
+it had decided their lives. It was stronger than the
+influence of father and mother—they could not overcome
+it. I speak of that in order that you men and
+women with children of your own may understand how
+the dreams, the poetry, the visions of youth may prove
+stronger influences than any of the science, the wisdom,
+or the fine examples you may put before your
+little ones.</p>
+
+<p>On the wall of our old living-room at home was a
+chromo entitled “Joseph and His Brethren.” It was
+an awful work of art. It showed a group of men putting
+a boy down into a hole in the ground. It would have
+made the head of an art department weep in misery,
+and yet it affected me deeply. I used to stand and
+study it, with the result that at least one chapter of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+Bible gave me great joy, and that was the story of
+Joseph and his brothers. That story helped to keep me
+sweet and hopeful on the frosty side of the barn, for
+I reasoned it all out as I worked. Here, I thought, was
+a farm boy. He did rather more than his share of living
+on the frosty side, and see what he came to. I
+used to picture Joseph in mind as he came walking
+over the desert carrying his father’s instructions about
+the sheep and the management of the farm. His
+brothers saw him coming, and they said among themselves,
+“Behold, this dreamer cometh.” You see, even
+in those days, practical men could not understand the
+value of a dreamer, a poet or a thinker as the first aid to
+practical agriculture. I have no doubt that Joseph the
+dreamer often forgot to water the sheep. I have no
+doubt but that they got away from him when he was
+herding them, and so his brothers quickly got rid of
+him, and they sent him off to the place where they
+thought dreams never came true. And that is where
+they made their mistake, and the same mistake is often
+made in these days by other practical farmers, for
+dreams that are based on faith and pure ambition always
+come true. If Joseph had not been a dreamer,
+carrying the ideals of his childhood into Egypt, we can
+readily understand which side of the barn his brothers
+would have gone to when they appeared before him
+later. But Joseph was a man who remembered the
+dreams and the hopes of his childhood kindly; he gave
+those brothers the sunniest side of the barn, and by doing
+so he made himself one of the great men in history.</p>
+
+<p>You may surely take it from me that at some time in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+your life, if you prove worth the salt you have eaten,
+your State or your country will call you up before the
+judgment seat, and will say to you:</p>
+
+<p>“I demand your life. In your youth you had ideals
+of manhood and of service. I have trained you and
+given you knowledge. I now demand your life as proof
+that your old ideals were true.”</p>
+
+<p>That comes to all men not only on the battlefield, but
+in all the humble walks of life—the farm, the factory,
+the shop, wherever men are put at labor, and it means a
+life given to service, the use of power and knowledge,
+in order that men less fortunate may live on the sunny
+side of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>We had something of an illustration of this when
+America entered the great war. Many of us felt honestly
+that our boys were not quite up to the standard.
+We thought they were a little lazy, inefficient or
+spoiled, because they did not think as we did about
+labor and the necessity for work. We did not realize
+what the trouble was, and so we generally charged it to
+the influence of mother’s side of the family. We could
+not understand that by education, training and example,
+we had simply taught those boys only the material and
+selfish side of life. They demanded unconsciously more
+of its poetry and romance and thus the war swept
+them away in a blaze of glory. We suddenly woke up
+to find that under the inspiration of an unselfish desire,
+our lazy and careless boys had become the finest soldiers
+this world has ever seen. They were made so through
+the power of poetry and imagination, for “making the
+world safe for democracy” is only another name for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+making the great life offering in order that helpless
+men and women may know the comfort and glory of
+living on the “sunny side of the barn.”</p>
+
+<p>I think I have lived long enough and under conditions
+which fit me to know human nature better than
+most men know books. Our present improved man
+came from a savage. Originally man was a confirmed
+dweller on the frosty side of the barn. As human
+life has developed, the tendency has been for this
+man to run for a warm place on the sunny side. In
+order to get there, his natural tendency has been to
+crowd some weaker brother back into the frost. We may
+not like to admit it, but as we have crowded poetry
+and imagination and love out of agricultural education,
+we have lost track of the thought that there is one
+great duty we owe to society for the great educational
+machine she has given us. That one great life duty
+is to try to carry some more unfortunate brother out of
+the frost into the comfort of the sunny side of the barn.
+We are too much in the habit of trying to leave this
+practical betterment to the Legislature or to the Federal
+Government, when it never can be done unless we do it
+ourselves, as a part of human sacrifice. You must remember
+that in spite of all our scientific work, the world
+is still largely fed and clothed by the plain farmers,
+whose stock in trade is largely human nature and instinct.
+The shadow which undoubtedly lies over farming
+today is due to the fact that too many of these
+men and women feel that they are booked hopelessly to
+spend their lives on the frosty side of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+resentment, such as in a very much smaller way came
+to me as a little boy, for you will see how real and true
+are the ideals of childhood. The great aim of all education
+should be to find some way of putting poetry
+and imagination into the hearts of the men and women
+who are now on the frosty side of the barn. There is
+more in this than any mere increase of food production,
+or increase of land values. A great industrial revolution
+is facing this nation. Such things have come before
+again and again. They were always threatening, and
+every time they appeared strong men and women feared
+for the future of their country. Yet in times past these
+dark storms have always broken themselves against a
+solid wall of contented and prosperous freeholders.
+They always disappear and turn into a gentle, reviving
+rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That
+is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken
+apart and remade, better than ever before, by skilled
+and happy workmen. It is on the frosty side of the
+barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down
+and destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can
+be no human progress except that which is finally built
+upon contentment and faith. Men and women must be
+brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to
+remain the land of opportunity, and such men and
+women as we have here must do the work.</p>
+
+<p>If you ask me how this is to be done, I can only go
+back to childhood once more for an illustration. I know
+all the characters of the following little drama. We
+will call the children John, Mary and Bert. John and
+Mary were relatives of the old gentleman who owned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+the farm, and they came for a long visit. Bert was
+the farm boy, put out to work on that farm for his
+board and clothes, one of the thousands of war orphans
+who represented a great legacy which the Civil War
+had left to this country. John and Mary were bright
+and petted and pampered. You know how such smart
+city children can usually outshine and outbluff a farm
+boy. The woman of the house, a thrifty New England
+soul, decided that this was her chance to get the woodshed
+filled with dry wood, and so she put the three children
+at it. Before Bert knew what was going on, those
+city children had it all “organized.” Bert was to
+work on the frosty side of the barn where the woodpile
+was, and he was to saw and split all the wood. John
+played until Bert had split an armful, then John carried
+it about two rods to the shed, where Mary took it
+out of his arms and piled it inside. I have lived some
+years since that time, and I have seen many enterprises
+come and go, and if that arrangement is not typical of
+thousands of cases which show the relation between the
+farmer and middleman and handler, I have simply lived
+and observed in vain, <i>and Bert represented the
+farmer</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange
+for that combination was still more typical.
+Now and then the woman would think the woodshed was
+not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery to
+labor was necessary. She would then come out with
+half a pie, or a few cookies, to stimulate the work.
+Strange to say, the distribution of this prize was always
+given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely useless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span>
+work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies
+were handed to her for distribution. For a great many
+centuries, it must be said that the farmer never had
+much of a chance with the town man when it came to
+receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution
+of that pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths
+of it, and handed the balance to Bert, for even
+then those city children had formed the idea that a
+silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast
+of burden, fit for the frosty side of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>And just as happens in other and larger forms of
+business, there were, in that toy performance of a great
+drama, forms of legislative bribery for middlemen and
+farmers. Those children were told that if they would
+hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive
+pleasure and a present. John and Mary, as middlemen,
+might go to the circus, while the boy on the saw would
+receive a fine present. This would be a book which
+told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood
+in two weeks, and then asked his mother if he couldn’t
+please go down the road and saw five cords more for a
+poor widow woman during his play time. Ever since
+the world began, that seems to have been the idea of
+agricultural legislation. The real direct pleasure and
+profit have gone to John and Mary, while to Bert has
+gone the promise of an education which will teach him
+how to work a little harder. Looking back over the
+world’s history, the most astonishing thing to me is that
+society has failed to see that the best investment of
+public money and power is that made closest up to the
+ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+received it, largely because they have been able to organize
+and make a stronger appeal to the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Of course in every drama of human life there has to
+be a crisis where the actors come to blows, and it happened
+so in this case. There came one day particularly
+cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty wood
+to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for
+play, and put an extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just
+how the battle started; it may have been caused by
+Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world
+the relations between two boys and a girl have upset
+all calculations and changed the course of history. Or
+it may be that the spirit of injustice boiled up in
+the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away his
+peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found
+fault because he did not work faster, Bert dropped his
+saw and tackled the tormentor. If I am to tell the
+truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science
+at all about the battle which that boy put up for the
+rights of farm labor. He should, I suppose, have imitated
+some of the old heroes described by Homer and
+Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most
+effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and
+I regret to say that he lowered his head, and, without
+regard for science, butted John in the stomach and
+knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took
+hold of his hair with both hands, and proceeded to
+pound his head on the frosty ground, while Mary danced
+about, not caring to interfere, but evidently waiting to
+bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John
+was getting ready to call “enough” the kitchen door<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+opened and out came the woman of the house with the
+old minister.</p>
+
+<p>She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice
+as she peered over her spectacles at the boys on the
+ground, and the three children were arraigned before
+her. “What shall I do with these children? I shall
+never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on
+these children already, and see how little they have
+piled, and here they are fighting over it. I think the
+best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the saw.”</p>
+
+<p>I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister
+as he rolled up his wrinkles and prepared to answer.
+It was worth a good deal to see how he looked out of the
+corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.</p>
+
+<p>“My good friend,” said he, “this is not a case for
+prayer or for punishment, or for investigation, or for
+education. It is a case for an adjustment of labor and
+pie. That boy on the saw has been doing practically all
+of the work, and getting almost nothing of the reward.
+He is discouraged, and I don’t blame him. You cannot
+crowd more work out of him with a stick. Move him
+out into the sun, give him the pie, and let him eat his
+share and distribute the rest. Make the other boy split
+and carry and pile all that wood, and put that girl at
+washing windows. <i>The closer you put the pie up to
+the sawbuck, the more wood you will have cut.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that
+does not tell the whole story. It is the pie of life, or the
+fair distribution of that pie, which leads men and
+women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need
+most of all in this country is some power like that of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+the old minister, who can drive that thought home to
+human society, and it will not be driven home until our
+leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more of
+the poetry and the imagination which lead men and
+women to attempt the impossible and work it out. You
+will not agree with me when I say that in a majority of
+the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle,
+humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the
+harder and sterner influence of science and sharp business
+practice. As the years go on you will come to see
+that I am right.</p>
+
+<p>I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for
+some of us to understand, for modern education has led
+us away from the thought. In our grasp for knowledge
+we have tried to substitute science entirely for sentiment,
+forgetting that the really essential things of life
+cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together
+by faith. In reaching out after power we have
+tried too hard to imitate the shrewd scheming of the
+politician and the big interests. We have failed thus
+far because we have neglected too many of our natural
+weapons. Over 200 years ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:</p>
+
+<p>“I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man
+were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care
+who should make the laws of a nation.”</p>
+
+<p>Andrew Fletcher’s wise man knew what he was talking
+about. Very likely some of you older people can
+remember the famous Hutchinson family in the days
+before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire
+farmhouse where they were raised. It was just a group
+of plain farmers who traveled about the country singing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span>
+simple little songs about freedom. That plain farm
+family did more to make the American people see the
+sin of slavery than all the statesmen New England
+could muster or all the laws she could make. There
+was little science and less art about their singing, but
+it was in the language of the common people and they
+understood it.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The ox bit his master;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">How came that to pass?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ox heard his master say</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">‘All flesh is grass!’”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There came a crisis in the Civil War when soldier
+and statesman stood still wondering what to do next,
+for they were powerless without the spirit of the people.
+Then William Cullen Bryant wrote the great song in
+which he poured out the burning thought of the people:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent8">“We’re coming, Father Abraham,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent10">Three hundred thousand more,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent8">From Mississippi’s winding stream</div>
+    <div class="verse indent10">And from New England’s shore.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent8">We leave our plows and workshops,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent10">Our wives and children dear,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent8">With hearts too full for utterance,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent10">But with a silent tear.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“We’re coming, we’re coming, the Union to restore;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Had it not been for such songs and the spirit they
+aroused the Civil War never could have been won. We
+now understand that during the great war the French<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+army was at the point of mutiny, and was saved not
+by stern discipline but by a renewal of its spiritual
+power. I think it will be as hard as for a man to try
+and lift himself by his boot straps to try to put farming
+into its proper place through science and material prosperity
+alone. We need poets to give us songs and playwrights
+to put our story in such pictures that the world
+must listen to it and understand. The one great thing
+which impels us to work on and fight is the hope that
+the property which we may leave behind us will be safe
+and put to reasonable use. Some of us may leave cash
+and lands; others can give the world only a family of
+children, but at heart our struggle is to see that this
+heritage may be made safe.</p>
+
+<p>For most of us make a great mistake in locating
+a storage place for the heritage which we hope to leave
+to the future. We work and we toil; we struggle to
+improve conditions; we strive to capitalize our worry
+and our work into money and into land in order that
+our children may carry on our work. Have you ever
+stopped to think who holds the future of all this? Many
+of you no doubt will say that the future of this great
+nation lies in the banks and vaults of the cities where
+money is piled up mountains high. We have all acted
+upon that principle too long, digging wealth from the
+soil and then sending it into the town for investment,
+until we have come to think that our future lies there.
+We are wrong; it is a mistake. The future of this land,
+and all it means to us, lies in the hands of little children,
+who are playing on the city streets or in the open
+fields of the country, and it is not so much in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+hands as in the pictures which are being printed on their
+little minds and souls. And this future will be safer
+with poetry and imagination than with the multiplication
+table alone.</p>
+
+<p>I know about this from my own start in life. I was
+expected to be satisfied with work until I was 21, and
+then have a suit of clothes and a yoke of oxen. One
+trouble with the farmers of New England was that
+they thought this a sufficient outfit for their boys. I
+think I might have fallen in with that plan and contented
+my life with it had it not been for a crude picture
+which hung in the shop where we pegged shoes. It was
+a poor color scheme, a perfect daub of art, in which
+some amateur artist had tried to express a thought
+which was too large for his soul. A bare oak tree, with
+most of its branches gone, was framed against the Winter
+sky. It was evening; a few stars had appeared, and
+the sky was full of color. The artist had tried to arrange
+the stars and the sky colors so that they represented
+a crude American flag, with the oak tree serving
+as the staff. His great unexpressed thought was that
+at the close of the Civil War God had painted His
+promise of freedom on the sky in the coloring of that
+flag. As a child, that crude picture became a part of
+my life. I have never been able to forget the glory of
+it, as I have forgotten the meanness, the poverty, the
+narrow blindness of our daily lives, so that all through
+the long and stormy years, wherever I have walked, I
+have seen that flag upon the sky, and I have waited
+hopefully for the coming of the sunrise of that day
+when, through the work of real education, when with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>
+help of such men and such women as are here today,
+every hopeless man, every lonely woman, every melancholy
+child upon a sad and desolate hill farm, may feel
+the thrill of opportunity, and the joy and the glory of
+living upon the sunny side of the barn.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_HOPE_FARM_SERMON">A HOPE FARM SERMON</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">No use talking, the best part of a vacation is getting
+home. We were all sorry to leave Cape Cod. To tell
+you the truth duty seemed to be stuck full of thorns a
+foot long as we looked back at it from the easy bed of a
+loafer on his vacation. No wonder the poor little Bud
+cried when our good host kissed her good-bye. We
+looked at her with much the same expression as that on
+the face of the woman who missed an important train
+by half a minute and listened to the forcible remark
+of a man who was also left! We got over that, however.
+The harness was put on our shoulders so gently
+that we hardly felt it, and here we are again with a soft
+pad of gentle and happy memories to put where the rub
+comes hardest. Everything was all O. K. at home.
+Grandmother was in good spirits, the Chunk reported
+good sales, and the weather had been fair for farm work.
+The boys had the corn all cleaned up and the weeds
+mostly cut. The strawberries have been transplanted;
+the alfalfa clipped off; the squashes have grown into a
+perfect tangle of vines, the sweet potatoes look well,
+and there is no blight in the late white ones! The children
+found nine new little pigs and 30 new chickens
+waiting them. Yes! Yes! It was a happy homecoming.
+I climbed the hill on Sunday and looked off
+over the old familiar valley. There were the same
+glorious old hills with the shadows chasing along them,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+the little streams stealing down through their fringes
+of grass and bushes, the cultivated fields, and the homes
+of neighbors peeping out through the orchards! Surely
+home is a goodly place after all. Other places are good
+to come away from, but home is the place to go to!</p>
+
+<p>Now, I know that many of my readers are in trouble.
+I am, and every mail brings news from people who are
+carrying crosses and facing hard duties with more or
+less bravery. There are women left alone on the farm,
+striving to drag a heavy heart through life. Men have
+seen wife and child pass away. Others have seen hopes
+and ambitions crushed out. This season has been hard
+for many. I will quote from a letter just at hand from
+central New York, where flood and storm have scarred
+the hillsides and ruined crops:</p>
+
+<p>“One neighbor hung himself; one says he shall have
+an auction and go to the old ladies’ home; another had
+the blues until he cried.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, in spite of all the talk we have of the Nation’s
+great prosperity, I know that there are thousands of
+sad hearts in country homes, sad because they have seen
+the cherished things of life and the work of self-denying
+years swept out of their grasp by a power which they
+could neither master nor comprehend. The picture of
+a strong man dropping his head upon the table and crying
+like a child is the saddest vision that can rise before
+our eyes. Farm life has its tragic side, and the sadness
+of it would crush us down at times if we would
+permit it to do so. No wonder men and women grow
+despondent when with each year comes a little more
+of the living blight which slowly destroys hope and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+faith in one’s physical ability to master the secret of
+happiness. I do not blame men and women who give
+way to despondency under pressure of griefs which
+have staggered me. I only regret that they cannot
+realize that for most of the afflicted of middle years
+the only true help is a moral one.</p>
+
+<p>I feel like repeating that last sentence, though it
+may come like the application of a liniment I knew as
+a boy. The old man who brought me up invented a certain
+“lotion.” Whenever I cut or burned my flesh that
+lotion bottle was hauled out, a hen’s feather inserted
+and a liberal allowance smeared over the wound. It
+was like rubbing liquid fire on the flesh, but it <i>did</i> pull
+the smart out and carry it far away. I used to imagine
+that the “lotion” gathered the pain all into a lump
+and pulled it out by the roots with one quick twitch.
+One of the most helpful books I have ever read is a little
+volume entitled “Deafness and Cheerfulness.” I read
+it over and over, and I wish that every deaf man or
+friend of a deaf man could have it. I find in this little
+book the following message which I commend to all
+who feel their courage giving way:</p>
+
+<p>“The noblest dealing with misfortune is in manly
+silence to bear it; the next to the meanest is in feebleness
+to weep over it; the wholly unpardonable is to
+ask others to weep also.”</p>
+
+<p>With the first and third of these propositions I fully
+agree. It is not always a sign of weakness for a man
+to get off into solitude somewhere and find relief in
+tears. When the tear glands are completely dried up
+the man loses an element of character which all the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+iron in his will cannot replace. But “manly silence”
+<i>is</i> the “noblest dealing with misfortune”—and also
+the hardest. It is human to cry out and complain at
+the pain of what we call injustice, but if the child is
+human should not the grown man be something more?
+What are years and the burning balm of experience
+given us for if not to enable us to rise up nearer to
+divine strength? As I look about me it occurs that most
+of us who have reached middle life or beyond have
+grown unconsciously away from childhood and youthful
+strength. We somehow feel that people ought to regard
+us as others did 25 years ago. The fat man of
+45 is no longer the young sprout of 20, though he may
+think so. If I am not mistaken, one great trouble with
+many of us is the fact that we crave and beg for the
+things that go with youth when in reality we are grown-up
+men and women! It is our duty now to face life
+and its problems, not with the careless hope of youth,
+but with the sober and abiding faith that should come
+with mature years. Run over a child’s ambitions and,
+after his short grief, his spirits rise again for the next
+opportunity. The man’s hopes are shaken by repeated
+defeat, and hope of physical victory finds itself caged
+at every turn by former defeat. We may grieve or
+despond over this and play the child; or we may act
+the man, raise our hopes and ideals above the range
+of former defeat, and find comfort and courage in doing
+the things which shame infirmity and affliction. I
+know some of you will say that this complacent man
+may moralize—but give him a touch of trouble, and how
+he would whine! I hope not! Trouble has taken many<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+a mouthful out of us but, if I thought any honest friend
+really meant that, it would be the greatest trouble of
+all. I repeat that the greatest comfort to the despondent
+must be a moral one, yet the riding of some harmless
+hobby helps one to walk with fortitude. Let a man say
+to himself that he will study and work to breed the
+finest pigs or raise the finest strawberries or master
+some science or public question, and he will find strength
+and comfort in his work! I’ll promise not to attempt
+any more preaching for a good while if you will let me
+end this little sermon with a quotation from Whittier:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="GRANDMOTHER">GRANDMOTHER</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The last celebration of Thanksgiving was about the most
+startling that any of the Hope Farmers remember. I
+have passed this holiday under quite varied conditions.
+“Boy” on a New England farm and in a boarding-house,
+cattle herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a
+lumber camp, teacher in a country school district, hired
+man and book agent on a Michigan farm, “elocutionist”
+in a dramatic company, “professor of modern languages”
+(with a slim grip on English alone) in a young
+ladies’ seminary, printer’s devil in a Southern newspaper
+office, ditcher in a swamp, and other capacities
+too numerous to mention. A man may perhaps lay
+claim to a bit of helpful philosophy if he can find some
+fun in all such days and carry along in his mental pocket
+“much to be thankful for.” He is sure to come to a
+time in life when these “treasures of memory” will be
+very useful. I would not refer to family matters that
+might well be marked “private” and locked away
+with the skeleton in the closet if I did not know that
+the plain, simple matters of family record are things
+that all the world have in common.</p>
+
+<p>A pirate or a man trying to hide himself might have
+seen virtues in the dull, misty fog that settled upon the
+city the night before Thanksgiving. Grandmother had
+been slowly failing through the day. The night brought
+her greater pain than ever. All through these long<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+months we had been able to keep from her the real
+nature of her disease. I took it upon myself to keep the
+children happy. If we grown-ups found it hard to be
+thankful we would see that the little folks put out
+enough thanks for the whole family. I took them down
+to the market to pick out a turkey! We had a great
+time, and finally found a turkey fat enough. The
+market man gave each of the children a handful of
+nuts—and they now want Mother to give him all her
+trade. They went home fairly radiant with happiness.
+Was it not better for them to go to sleep with the
+pleasant side of the day in their hearts rather than the
+shadow which the rest of us could feel near us?</p>
+
+<p>The morning came dark and dismal. It didn’t seem
+like Thanksgiving as the Bud and I went after the doctor.
+The clerks and professional people seemed to be
+taking a holiday, but the drivers, the diggers and heavy
+workmen were at their jobs as usual. The streets were
+filled with children dressed up in ridiculous costumes,
+wearing masks or with faces blackened. These urchins
+went about begging money from passers-by. Our little
+folks were rather shocked at this way of celebrating
+Thanksgiving. Where this ridiculous mummery came
+from or how it crept into a Thanksgiving celebration is
+more than I can say. It may be as close as a city child
+can come to thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest!
+Charlie and his family came in from the farm, and
+Jack came from his school. Grandmother made a
+desperate struggle and was finally able to sit up so
+that her children and grandchildren might be about her.
+As the children grew restless in the house I took them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+out and we walked along the river. My mind was busy
+with other matters relating to other days, but the little
+folks, happily, saw only the great bright side of the
+future. Their past was too small to cast any shadow.
+We went as far as Grant’s Tomb and passed through
+the room where the great general’s remains are lying.
+As we passed in, the Graft and Scion saw the men take
+off their hats and they did the same.</p>
+
+<p>“Why do they make you take off your hat?” asked
+the Graft, when we came out.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to explain to him that this was one of the
+things that people should not be <i>made</i> to do. They
+should do it because they wanted to show their respect
+or reverence. I doubt if I made him understand it,
+for when a boy is hungry and other boys are playing
+football in a nearby vacant lot even the gentlest sermon
+loses its point. Our dinner was such a success
+that we did not have chairs enough to go around. The
+children had to sit on boxes and baskets. A taste of
+everything from turkey down went in to Grandmother,
+but she could eat little. The plates came back again
+and again until the Hope Farm man was obliged to
+say:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over
+after all.”</p>
+
+<p>He had not only to turn it over but scrape many of
+the bones clean. The farm folks finally went home
+and Jack too was obliged to go. Happily the little folks
+were tired out and they were asleep early. About two
+o’clock Mother woke me. She did not do it before,
+because it might have alarmed Grandmother, who did<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+not, I think, clearly understand her true condition.
+There was apparently no pain or struggle at the end.
+We noticed that her face lighted up with a strange,
+puzzled look, of surprise and wonder—and well it might
+when one is called upon to lay down the troubles and
+toil of such a life as hers in the dim, mysterious country
+which one must die to enter.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to tell the
+children about it. They must have known that some
+strange thing was happening. They woke up early and
+saw the undertaker passing through the room. Then
+Mother got them together and told them that poor
+Grandmother had suffered so long that God pitied her
+and had taken her to Him. The little folks sat with
+thoughtful faces for a while and then one of them said
+with wide-open eyes:</p>
+
+<p>“Is Grandmother <i>dead</i> then?”</p>
+
+<p>And so the body of poor Grandmother passed away
+from us while her spirit and memory passed deeper
+than ever into the lives of the Hope Farm folks. Life
+with her had ceased to be comfortable. It was merely
+a steady, hopeless struggle against pain and depression.
+Mother was able to go through these long months calmly
+and hopefully because she knows that her mother had
+every service that love could render. It is with that
+thought in mind that I feel like saying a solemn word
+to those whom I have never met, yet who seem to be as
+close as personal friends can be. Do not for an instant
+begrudge the money, the time or toil which you may
+spend upon those of your loved ones who need your help.
+That is a part of the cross which you must carry cheerfully<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>
+or reject. Do not let those whom you serve see
+that it is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. It
+is not merely a part of hard, cold duty, but the vital
+force in the development of character. It may be that
+I am now talking to someone who is putting personal
+comfort above the self-denial which goes with the sacred
+trust which God has put into our lives. Where will the
+flag of “comfort” lead them when the discomforting
+days come? A conscience is a troublesome thing at best,
+but one that has been gently and truly developed through
+self-sacrifice is a better companion than the barbed finger
+of trouble thrust into the very soul at last by the relentless
+hand of fate!</p>
+
+<p>A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the
+plain life record of this typical American woman. She
+was born in Massachusetts—coming from the best stock
+this country has ever produced. This is not the narrow-eyed,
+cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the
+hillside farms who went to the valleys and at the little
+water-powers laid the foundations of New England’s
+manufacturing. These sturdy people saw clearly into
+the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power
+of the valley streams they cultivated and restrained
+their own powers until the man as well as the machine
+became a tremendous force. Honorable misfortune befell
+this manufacturing family, but could not crush it.
+In those days the boys, under such circumstances,
+dropped all their own ambitions and took the first job
+that presented itself, without a murmur and with joy
+that they could do it. The girls did the same, though
+there were few openings for women then outside of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>
+housework and the schoolroom. Grandmother had a
+taste for music, and became a music teacher. She
+finally secured a position as teacher in a little town in
+Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm
+man was born she went into what was then a strange
+country for the daughter of a Massachusetts Abolitionist!
+What a journey that must have been, before the
+Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother
+was then. The South was in a blaze of excitement, yet
+this quiet, gentle Northern girl won the love and respect
+of all. There she met the man who was to be her husband—a
+young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted
+down by family cares, political convictions and ill
+health. He was a Union man whose family had made
+their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last.
+Grandmother was married and went to the South just
+before the storm broke. What a life that was in the
+dreary little town during those years of fighting! Her
+husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate
+service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon
+declare him too feeble and sick for even that desperate
+service. He cobbled shoes, leached the soil in old smokehouses
+for salt, and “lived” as best he could. Once
+he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of
+cotton which he sold to pay passage money to the North.
+After the war he was State Senator and Judge under
+the patched-up government which followed. Carpetbaggers
+and rascals from the North lined their pockets
+with gold and brought shame upon their party and torture
+and death to the ignorant black men who followed
+them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and thieving<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>
+Grandmother’s husband never touched a dishonest
+dollar and did his best to give character to a despised
+and degraded race. Of course he failed, for the race
+did not have strength enough to see that what he tried
+to offer them was better than the hatred of their old
+masters and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held
+out. It was not all lost, for when he was buried I am
+told that around his grave there was a thick fringe of
+white people and back—at a respectful distance—acres
+of black, shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward
+stirring of manhood in hearts untrained yet appreciating
+true service to country.</p>
+
+<p>I speak of these things to make my point clear that
+Grandmother was a woman capable of supporting her
+husband through these trials and still capable of holding
+the love of those who opposed him. In the face of
+an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it
+this quiet, unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected
+and trusted by all. She took up her burdens without
+complaint, hid her troubles in her heart, and walked
+bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she
+found a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere
+Christian woman she lived and acted out her faith
+and did her life’s duty with dignity and cheerfulness.
+The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope
+Farm and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed
+memories of her.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LAUGHTER_AND_RELIGION">LAUGHTER AND RELIGION</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who
+cannot laugh. He may have great learning or power or
+skill or wealth, but if fate has denied him a keen sense
+of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious
+flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we
+may call “the healing balm of tears.” Unless there
+chance to be some volcanic eruption of the heart they
+must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet,
+if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf
+see more of the ludicrous side of life than do those who
+have full hearing. It comes to be amusing to notice
+how men and women strive and worry over the poor non-essential
+things of conversation, and waste time and
+strength trying to make others understand simple things
+which the deaf man comes to know at a glance. Those
+who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear all
+the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may
+wonder why the inability to hear may act as a torture
+to the tender heart. They do not know how closely
+sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand
+without losing many of the finer things of life.
+Yet, as between the tearless man and the unfortunate
+soul who is denied the joy of laughter, the latter is more
+deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity
+but the other is nearer the gallows.</p>
+
+<p>One great reason why the negro race has come through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+its troubles with reasonable success is because fate has
+given the black man the blessed privilege of laughter.
+Many a time when other races would have gone out to
+rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or
+laugh his troubles away. So, as between the man who
+cannot weep or lash himself into a rage and he who cannot
+laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and
+far more to be pitied.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject,
+as some years ago I was in the business of trying to
+inoculate some very serious and sad-minded people with
+the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so
+tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter
+to start them. I was stranded in a farm neighborhood
+in a Western State working as hired man through a very
+dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads
+when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a
+gloom and social stagnation which the modern town man
+can hardly realize. I did my work by day and at night
+went about to churches and schoolhouses “speaking
+pieces.” We called those gloomy and discouraged people
+together and tried to make them laugh.</p>
+
+<p>I remember one such entertainment held in a country
+schoolhouse far back in the mud of a January thaw.
+The dimly lighted room was crowded with sad-faced, discouraged
+men and women to whom life had become a
+tragedy through dwelling constantly upon their own
+troubles. At intervals during my entertainment two
+sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have
+made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful
+songs about beautiful women who died young or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>
+children who proved early in life that they were too
+good for this world. During one of these intervals
+a farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern
+artist can command a salary which enables him to
+ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood the financial
+manager was the boss.</p>
+
+<p>“See here now,” said the farmer, “we hired you to
+come here and make us laugh. Why don’t you do it?
+I’ve got my hired man in there. He’s all ready to go on
+a spree and he will do it if you don’t make him laugh.
+We have paid you $2.50 to come here and speak. That
+means $1.25 an hour or $12.50 for a 10-hour day. No
+other man in this neighborhood gets such wages. It’s
+big money, now go back and earn it. <i>Make that man
+laugh!</i> It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”</p>
+
+<p>There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity
+feeling that he would be a hero, the champion of the
+neighborhood, if he could hold humor at bay. When I
+went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by
+the stove and said it was the unanimous request of the
+audience that I should read or recite the “Raven,” by
+Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in my line, but
+who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years
+before I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the
+poem, and with the noble courage of youth I started the
+best imitation I could muster. No one, not even the
+author, ever considered the “Raven” as a humorous
+poem, but it struck the hired man that way. I had
+cracked jokes in and out of dialect. I had “made
+faces” and played the clown generally without affecting
+the hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+“Quoth the Raven—Nevermore!” the hired man exploded
+with a roar that shook the building, and the rest
+of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The
+rest of the audience joined with him, and long after the
+meeting closed and the lanterns twinkled down the dark
+and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter from
+the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there
+was about the “Raven” to explode that man I have
+never known. It changed his life. It broke a spring
+somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of
+laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood.
+The minister told me in the Spring that his
+people had received a great spiritual uplifting during
+the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the
+hired man.</p>
+
+<p>That same Winter I went to a church for another
+entertainment. I sat in the pulpit beside the minister
+and every time I stopped for breath he would lean over
+and whisper:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Make them laugh! Give them something humorous!
+Make them laugh!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It
+was a gloomy night. The people were sad and discouraged.
+Their religion was a torment to them at the
+time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I
+did my best with discouraging results. I will confess
+that I lost faith for once in my life and quit trying.
+There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer in the
+front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed
+my efforts straight to him. It came to be the one desire
+of my life to make that solemn-faced man laugh, and he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>
+would not do it. It seemed to me as if he sat there
+with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some
+wise old horse listening to the chatter of a young colt.
+I could not stir him and I confess that I quit ingloriously
+and “took up the collection.”</p>
+
+<p>But, when we all went out on the church steps while
+lanterns were being lighted and the boys brought up the
+horses I saw my solemn-faced friend talking with another
+farmer.</p>
+
+<p>“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the
+globe of his lantern, “how did you like the show?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am
+so sore around my ribs that I’m going home to rub
+liniment on my sides.”</p>
+
+<p>“How’s that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that
+<i>I never come so nigh to laughing in the House of God
+as I done tonight</i>. When I get home out of sight of the
+elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and
+holler.”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_DAY_IN_FLORIDA">A DAY IN FLORIDA</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for
+him. He would rust out. There was “more life and
+human nature on Broadway, New York, in 15 minutes
+than in a week of Florida.” So I thought I would see
+how much “real human nature” the sun could observe
+as Putnam County revolved beneath his eye.</p>
+
+<p>As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly
+a cloud in the sky. The mercury stood at about 65
+degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen from the orange
+trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the
+new leaves showed their light green against the darker
+old leaves. On the tree by the gate, there were peaches
+as large as walnuts. A drove of half-wild hogs from the
+woods went slowly along the village street, with one
+eye open for food and the other watching for a possible
+hole in a fence through which they might crawl into a
+grove or garden. For while no one seems to think it
+worth while to bolt or even shut a house door at night
+except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around
+every growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red
+hens with their broods of chickens ran about under the
+orange trees. In front of the house I found a group of
+“redheads and towheads” gathered around a fisherman
+who carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three
+young alligators and the children were buying them.
+They finally got the three for a dollar, and they intend<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>
+taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to “raise”
+them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope
+Farm alligator. Finally the school bell rang and the
+older children scattered while the little ones played on.
+I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product
+in this locality. I understand there are but four white
+children of school age—not enough to maintain a school!
+There is a broken and abandoned schoolhouse here, but
+it has not been occupied for some years. There is a
+school for colored children. Our people opened a school
+here, but in this locality the State actually does more
+for educating colored children than for whites. Think
+over what that means and see if Broadway can match
+the “human nature” which comes out of such a situation.
+Our own children are rosy as flowers. They
+ought to be, for they have played out in the sun every
+day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot
+nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms—for
+that dread disease gets into the system
+through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter paradise
+for children and elderly people. As these children pen
+up their alligators and separate for school and play, an
+old man walks with firm and active steps down the
+shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old and is still
+planting a garden—very likely for the seventieth time!
+On the platform of the store he will meet a group of
+men who will sit for hours discussing the weather or
+looking off through the pines toward the blue lake. On
+Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set,
+anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce
+struggle for food, clothing, amusement and shelter.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+There is quite as much “human nature” about these
+slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun.
+In this little place where our folks have wintered there
+are nine different men who live alone. There are perhaps
+30 voters in this district, and strange as it may
+seem they are about evenly divided between the two
+great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers
+have moved in here. They draw their pensions, work
+their gardens or groves and live in peace in this carefree
+land. “Human nature?” Ask these old soldiers
+with “warfare over,” as the sun goes down and they
+look out over the lake, why they ever came to Florida,
+and if they are disappointed. If you started a contest
+with a prize for the man who can take the longest time
+to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet
+it was in Florida that the world’s record for speed with a
+motor car was recently made. While some of our neighbors
+might consume two hours in going a mile, it was in
+Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27⅓
+seconds. This contest in speed is a very good illustration
+of the contrary character of Florida climate and
+conditions. Many people fail here because they try to
+fit Broadway “human nature” to this balmy gentle
+land. You cannot use the same brand!</p>
+
+<p>The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man
+was working a mule on a cultivator—tearing up the
+surface of an old orange grove. The only auto in the
+town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough
+of the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing
+in the soft air. Charlie went by followed by a big
+colored man. They carry spades and axes for Charlie<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when a
+grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought
+home to be buried.</p>
+
+<p>Mother and I had planned to take the train at noon
+and go south for a few miles to do some shopping and
+look up a “colony” or land boom scheme. So we got
+ready and went to the station in ample time. And
+there we waited, as everyone else does in this land of
+tomorrow. An hour crawled by, and still there was
+nothing in sight up the track except the distant pines
+and the heat rising from the sands. No one quarrels
+with fate in Florida—what is the use? Under similar
+circumstances in New Jersey I should have been held in
+some way responsible for the delay, but here it did not
+matter—if the train did not come, another day would
+do. We waited about 100 long minutes and then the
+good lady announced that she was going home, as there
+would not be time to get around, and home she went,
+good-natured and smiling as the Florida sun.</p>
+
+<p>Let me add that the next day we waited nearly two
+hours again and then went home once more, but who
+cares whether he goes today or some future “tomorrow”?</p>
+
+<p>Having been cut out of our trip I became interested
+in the funeral. A little group of wagons was drawn up
+under the pines waiting for the train. I have said that
+an old resident was coming “home”—to be buried by
+the side of husband and relatives—in the rough little
+cemetery behind the pines. At last, a puff of thick
+smoke up the track showed where the dawdling train
+was showing the true speed of a hearse. Down the grade<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+it came, halting with many a wheeze and groan in
+front of the little station where the fated box was taken
+off. Our little funeral procession was quickly made up.
+Uncle Ed drove old Frank ahead with the minister and
+the Hope Farm Man as passengers. Then came the
+dead in a farm wagon, and half a dozen one-horse teams
+straggling on behind. Your funeral on Broadway with
+its gilded hearse, black horses and nodding plumes
+might be far more inspiring. Who can say, however, that
+there was less of “human nature” in this little weatherbeaten
+string crawling over the Florida sand? I was
+thinking as we went how this dead woman had seen
+what seemed like the death of hope in this land. For
+right where we were passing, on these dead fields, she
+had seen orange groves in full fruitage, and had seen
+them all wiped out in a day of frost!</p>
+
+<p>You would have said that Charlie stood leaning on
+his spade beside two great heaps of snow. The soil was
+pure white sand, and as they threw it from the grave it
+had drifted in over the sides until no dark color showed.
+On Broadway there would have been an imposing
+procession, the organ pouring out tones that seemed to
+carry a message far beyond the comprehension of the
+living. Here in this lonely little clearing, my friend
+the minister led the way, the little group of mourners
+followed, and Charlie and Uncle Ed with a few neighbors
+carried the dead. I wish I could have had you
+there with me—you who say that life and human nature
+crowd into the “lively” places. I wish I could paint
+the picture as I saw it.</p>
+
+<p>The minister and the station agent’s wife began to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>
+sing. One of the men who helped carry the coffin laid
+down his load and joined the singers. They wanted me
+to make a quartette, but I am no musician and I could
+not have made a sound. It was better for me to stand
+in the background against a tree, by the side of the
+colored man who leaned on his shining spade and bowed
+his gray head. For does not the color line fade out at
+the grave? I wish you could have seen it, the trio of
+singers, the sad group under the pines, the earth piled
+up like snowdrifts, the pine tops quivering and moaning,
+and the Florida sun streaming over all. I felt the pine
+tree against which I leaned tremble as the wind blew
+through it. In a tree over us a gray squirrel turned his
+ear as if to listen. For gathered around those piles of
+glistening sand were men and women who carried all
+the world holds of “human nature”—tragedy, despair,
+hope, sorrow and peace. Not 100 feet from where I
+stood was a row of six little white stones where six old
+army comrades were buried. I studied their names,
+six men of the army and navy from New York, Maine,
+New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont and Ohio.
+There they lie in the sand, sleeping “the sleep that
+knows no waking.” And this woman wanted to be
+brought back to this lonely place that she might rest
+with her people. “Human nature?” I made a dull
+companion as old Frank toiled back with us to the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>Our folks had left the house and I followed them
+along the shady path to the lake. The younger people
+had been in bathing. They were sitting on the lake
+shore, the children were shouting and playing as they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+ran about the beach. I am glad they were not at the
+funeral. As Mother and I walked slowly back, the little
+ones came trailing on, waving branches of palm and
+singing. And there over the fence was our famous
+gallon-and-a-half cow—easily the most energetic citizen
+in the place.</p>
+
+<p>Night comes quickly in Florida and brings a chill
+with it. The sun seems to tumble directly into the west
+and to leave little warmth behind. Before we ended
+our slow walk home, darkness had fallen and Uncle Ed
+had started a grateful fire of logs. As if to demonstrate
+the Florida axiom that there are only two absolutely sure
+things—death and taxes—we found the county assessor
+before the fire. He had reached us on his rounds and
+was ready to tell us how much we owed the State. You
+will see therefore that the human life in Florida is
+much the same as anywhere else only “more so” for
+here there is no artifice or straining after effect. Men
+and women are naturally human—as they were meant
+to be.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_BASEBALL_GAME">THE BASEBALL GAME</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“<i>Two strikes, three balls!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>A silence so intense that you could feel it fell upon
+60,000 people who saw the umpire put up his hand to
+announce the second strike. It was the crisis of the first
+baseball game for the world’s championship between
+New York and Philadelphia. The great stands were
+black with people, and thousands more were perched
+upon the rocks which rose above the level in which the
+ball grounds are laid out. The boy and I sat on the
+bleachers. It was the only place we could get; we sat
+there three hours before the game began—and we were
+among the last to get in. Of course you will say we
+should have been at home picking apples—but without
+discussing that I will admit that we were packed away
+in that “bleacher” crowd.</p>
+
+<p>There were some 25,000 of us crowded on those
+wooden benches with our feet hanging down. Here
+and there in this black mass of hats a spot of lighter
+color showed where a woman had crowded in with the
+rest. There may have been 100 women in this crowd.
+The “stands” where the reserved seats are placed were
+bright with women’s gay colors. Our seats were not
+reserved, but well “deserved” after our struggle for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span>
+you have no doubt read that description in “Ben Hur”
+of the motley crowd which surged out to the Crucifixion.
+Gibbon describes the masses of humans who attended the
+Roman games. The world as known at that time gathered
+at these spectacles, yet I doubt if those old-time
+hordes could produce the variety of blood or color which
+showed within 1,000 feet of where we sat. Within four
+feet sat two colored men showing traces of two distinct
+African races. The young man on my right was certainly
+an Irishman. The fat man, who was wide
+enough to fill two seats, was a German. In front an
+Italian, behind a Swede, off there a Frenchman, a Spaniard
+and even a Chinaman. There was an Arab whose
+father ate dates in the desert. The son looked forward
+to this date as an oasis in the desert of hard work.
+Here were Indians, Japanese, Mexicans, Russians,
+Turks—the entire world had poured the blood of its
+races into that vast crowd. I do not believe the great
+Coliseum at Rome ever held a larger company. Yet this
+crowd was different. In the savage hordes of centuries
+ago the air was filled with a babel of sound—each race
+shrieking in its own language. This vast army of
+“fans” thought and spoke in the common languages of
+English and baseball. For there is a true language of
+baseball. Nothing can be popular unless it acquires a
+language of its own. It was an orderly crowd too.
+Somehow these waiting men seemed to feel that they had
+come to the hush and dignity of a great occasion. You
+may laugh at us—you poor unfortunate people who do
+not know a home run from a fly catch, but you have
+missed a lot of the thrill and joy of life. We feel sorry<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+for you. To the true baseball crank this game represented
+the climax of the year, for here were the best 18
+players in the world ready for the supreme struggle.
+So these thousands sat silent and watchful. As you
+know, when stirred by passion 60,000 people can give
+vent to the most hideous and awesome sound. Yet when
+stilled by the thought of what is to come the silence of
+this great army is most profound. Now, of course, you
+and I may say—what a pity that all these people and
+all the energy and money they represent could not be
+used for some more useful purpose. I could name half a
+dozen things which this country needs. If it were possible
+to gather 60,000 people in behalf of any of these
+things with the claws of elemental savagery barely covered
+with thin cotton gloves no Legislature in the land
+would dare refuse the demanded law. That is true, but
+it is also true that human nature has not yet evolved
+from the point where at the last analysis the physical
+power and what it stands for appeals first to the young
+and strong. You cannot get away from that, and it
+must be considered in all our regrets about the “younger
+generation.” We can have anything we want in legislation
+and reform whenever we can work up a spirit and
+a demand for it which is akin to this baseball feeling!
+For in this silent, orderly crowd there was nothing but
+cotton over the claws. There was a dignified-looking citizen
+not far from us who looked like a fair representative
+of the “City of Brotherly Love.” You would choose
+him as one of a thousand to take charge of a Sunday
+school. Yet when a Philadelphia player raced home
+with the first run there came a hoarse cry that might<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+have startled even a listless Cæsar 2,000 years ago.
+There was our Philadelphia friend on one foot waving
+his hat and shrieking defiance and taunts at the crowd
+of New York “fans.” Why, the germ of that man’s
+mind was back in the centuries, clad in hairy flesh and
+skins shouting a war cry at what were then its enemies!
+And when New York tied the score the entire bleachers
+seemed to rise like a great black wave of humanity with
+shrieks and cries and waving hats. For the moment
+these were hardly human beings—as we like to consider
+the race. They were crazy barbarians lapsed for
+the moment back to elemental motives. And as I came
+back to find myself standing up with the rest I was not
+sure but that the brief trip back to barbarism had after
+all been a profitable one!</p>
+
+<p>But we left the umpire standing with his hand up
+calling <i>two strikes</i>! It was the fifth inning, with the
+score one to one. There were two out and New York
+had worked a man around to third base. One more
+pitched ball would tell the story. Consider the mix-up of
+the races in this “American game.” The man on third
+base straining like a greyhound to get home was an
+Indian. The man at bat was of French blood, while
+the next batter was an Irishman with a Jew close behind
+him. The catcher was an Englishman and the pitcher
+a pure Indian. This Indian stood there like a silent
+representative of fate with the ball in his hand, eyeing
+that Frenchman, who shook his bat defiantly. I presume
+neither of them thought for the instant how 200
+years ago it would have been tomahawk against musket
+in place of ball and bat. Yet the race traits were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+evident—the light and airy nerve of the Gaul and the
+crafty silence of the red man! Oh, how that ball did go
+in! “Ball!” shouted the umpire and the batter took his
+base. Then it seemed as if bedlam had broken loose.
+Men and women shouted and cheered and laughed and
+cried, for they thought that the Indian was “rattled” at
+last. But his ancestors went through too much fire for
+that. He stood in the center as cool as a cake of ice.
+The play for the man on first was to run to second
+when the ball was pitched, and run he did. I noticed
+that the catcher jumped six feet to the right as that
+Indian threw the ball. It went like lightning right into
+the catcher’s hands. The second baseman had run up
+behind the pitcher and took the throw from the catcher.
+Of course the runner on third tried to run in on this
+throw, but back came the ball ahead of him and he was
+out! Then in an instant the mighty crowd saw that
+New York had been ambushed. It was a great trick,
+and played so accurately and quickly and with such
+daring that even the Philadelphia “fans” were mind-paralyzed
+and forgot to cheer. The silence which followed
+the Indian to the players’ bench was the most
+eloquent tribute of the day. And it happened, as every
+“sport” already knows, that New York finally won
+two to one. The needed runs were made on mighty hits
+by an Indian and an Irishman, and the great crowd
+filed out and home to talk it over. I wish I could tell my
+children how some Cape Cod Yankee had a hand in it,
+but too many of these are occupied in telling what they
+or their ancestors used to do. I think the game was
+invented and developed by Yankees, and that they have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span>
+made the most money out of it. Probably Cape Cod is
+willing to rest content with this and let the others
+handle the ball. I am ready to admit we ought to have
+been home picking apples, but we saw the game, and
+the apple harvest will go better to pay for it.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRANSPLANTING_THE_YOUNG_IDEA">TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Of all the planting that a farmer finds it necessary to
+do there is nothing quite equal to transplanting home-grown
+plants in the garden of education. Some homes
+might be called hotbeds, others are very cold frames,
+and there are grades running all between. Children
+grow up away from childhood and show that they are
+ready for transplanting—with evidences around the
+head to be compared with those on a tomato plant.
+You cut off their roots, and try to trim their heads
+and plant them in the hard field of practical life or in
+the sheltered garden of education. It is a large undertaking,
+for here is the best crop of your farm put out
+at a hazard. You may not have grown or trimmed it
+right, and the soil in which you plant it may not prove
+congenial, or some wild old strain from a remote ancestor
+may “come back” when it should “stay out.”
+You cannot tell about these things except by experiment,
+therefore there is nothing quite equal to this sort of
+transplanting. That is the way Mother and I felt as we
+took the two older children off to college. My experience
+has taught me both the power and the weakness of
+an education. He who can grasp the true spirit of it
+acquires a trained mind, and that means mastery. He
+who simply “goes to college” and drifts along with
+the crowd without real mental training is worse off than
+if he never had entered. He cannot live up to his reputation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+as a college man, and when a man must go
+through life always dragging behind his reputation he is
+only a tin can tied to the tail of what was once his ambition.
+I can imagine an intelligent parrot going
+through college, and perhaps passing the examinations,
+but all his life he would be a parrot, unable to apply
+what he had learned to practical things. I made up
+my mind long ago to give each one of the children
+opportunity. That means a chance to study through a
+good college. Each and every one must pay back to me
+later the money which this costs. My backing continues
+just as long as they show desire, through their
+labor, to think and work out the real worth of education.
+Should they become mentally and morally lazy
+and assume that “going to college” is like having the
+measles or raising a beard—out they come at once, for
+if I know anything at all it is the fact that the so-called
+student who goes through college just because his
+parents think it is the thing to do makes about as poor
+a drone as the human hive can produce.</p>
+
+<p>Where should the children go? The case of the girl
+was quickly settled by her mother. Years ago this good
+lady had her own dreams of a college education and
+knew just where she wanted to go. Denied the privilege
+of going herself, she nominated her daughter as
+her substitute. That settled it—there was no primary
+or referendum or special election. There seemed to me
+something of poetic realization in this setting of the
+only bud into the long-desired and long impossible tree
+of knowledge. As for the boy—the case was different.
+I would like to send at least one child back to my old<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+college, and I think a couple of the smaller ones will
+go later. I know better than to try to crowd boys into
+associations which are not congenial. If your boy has
+intelligence enough to justify his going to college let
+him use his intelligence to decide something of what he
+wants. I advised the boy to select one of the smaller
+colleges of high reputation and keep away from the
+great universities. He made what I call a good choice—an
+institution of high character, lonely location and
+with one great statesman graduate who stands up in history
+like a great lighthouse, to show the glory of public
+life and the dangerous rock of his own private habits.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mother and I traveled close to 900 miles up
+and down through New England on this trip of planning
+in the garden of education. I could write a book
+on the memories and anticipations which filled the minds
+of this Hope Farm quartette. As the train rushed up
+the country, winding through villages and climbing hills,
+we took on groups of bright-faced boys on their way to
+college. Before we reached the end of our journey
+the train was crowded with them. There was one sour-faced
+old fellow on the train who viewed those boys with
+no benevolent eye.</p>
+
+<p>“A lazy, careless lot. I’d put them all at work!”</p>
+
+<p>The old man was wrong—he was sour. Even the
+evidence of hope and faith in the future which those
+bright-eyed boys brought could not sweeten him. Here
+were the thinkers and dreamers and workers of the future.
+Underneath their fun and careless hope they
+carried the prayers of their mothers and the poorly expressed
+dreams of fathers who saw in those boys the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+one chance to carry on a life work. While the old man
+scowled on I found myself quoting from “Snow Bound,”
+Whittier’s picture of the college boy who taught the
+winter school:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The responsibility of acting as “young apostles”
+would have wearied these boys, but unconsciously they
+were absorbing part of the spirit which will fit them
+for the work. Finally the train stopped and poured
+us out into a dusty road. There were not teams enough
+to carry 10 per cent of the crowd, and the rest of us
+cheerfully took up our burdens, crossed the river and
+mounted a steep and dusty hill. It took me back 30
+years and more, to my first three-mile dusty walk to
+college. At the hilltop, as the glory of the college
+campus stood revealed in the shimmering light of the
+setting sun, it must have seemed to the freshmen that
+they had surely been “walking up Zion’s hill.” To me
+it was like old times patched up and painted with perhaps
+a few ornaments added. Two boys went by bending
+under the weight of mattresses. When I first hit
+college I bought a bedtick, carried it to the barn and
+stuffed it with straw. It was all the same, only there
+was the difference which the years naturally bring in
+comfort and convenience. But finally the darkness came
+and the moon seemed to climb up over the college buildings,
+flooding the campus with long bright splinters of
+light. As we walked back under the trees there came
+back to me the one, unchangeable, holy thing of college<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>
+life—the undying, gentle, kindly spirit of the
+college which a man must carry as long as he lives.</p>
+
+<p>We got up before five o’clock and traveled far down
+the Connecticut Valley to plant the family flower.
+Those of you who have read “The Princess” and have
+fairly active imaginations may realize how the Hope
+Farm man felt at this institution. Here men did not
+even reach a back seat. There was absolutely nothing for
+me to do except stand about, hat in hand, and pay the
+bills. At the railroad station three good-looking girls
+of the Y. W. C. A. met us and told us just where to go.
+At the college another girl took a suitcase and walked
+off with it to show my daughter’s room. The express
+business and the trunks were all handled by a fine-looking
+woman who gave points on good-nature to any
+express agent I ever saw. The sale of furniture, the
+bureau of information, the handling of money—the complete
+organization was conducted by women and girls.
+It was all well done, in a thoroughly business-like manner
+and with rare courtesy. True, the girls who conducted
+the information bureau stopped now and then
+to eat popcorn or candy. College boys of equal rank
+would probably have smoked cigarettes. There was
+just one other man in the hall, who, like me, had brought
+his daughter there to plant her in the garden of education.
+I caught his eye, and knew that our thoughts
+were twins. I fully expected at any time to see “two
+stalwart daughters of the plow” approaching to do their
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of this college seemed excellent. It may
+be a debatable question with some as to whether a school<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+taught, organized and conducted entirely by women is
+more desirable than one taught by men or where co-education
+is permitted. There is no debate in our family,
+since the ruling spirit, whose instincts are usually right,
+has decided the question. It seemed to me that the
+training at this school is sure to give these girls responsibility
+and dignity. My two girls went into a store to
+buy furniture for the room, and I stayed outside until
+the time came for my part of the deal—paying for it.
+Across the campus and up the street came a beautiful
+woman walking slowly and thoughtfully on. Tall and
+shapely, but for her years she might have represented
+Tennyson’s Princess. Every movement of her body gave
+the impression of power. Her face seemed like a mask
+of patient suffering with an electric light of knowledge
+and faith behind it. I remember years ago to have
+seen another such woman walking across the village
+green in a country town. A rough man a stranger to
+me, took off his hat and said:</p>
+
+<p>“Some woman—that!”</p>
+
+<p>Yes, indeed—“some woman!” It is possible that
+some of these “daughters of the plow” had an eye on
+the Hope Farm man for watching ladies walking across
+the campus, but had they arrested me I should have
+told them the story of Billy Hendricks. Billy was
+apprentice in a printer’s shop in England. The boss
+offered a prize and a raise in wages to the apprentice
+who could set up a certain advertisement in the best
+form. Billy needed the money. He went to the foreman
+and asked:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span></p>
+
+<p>“How can I make this ‘ad’ so it will show true
+proportions?”</p>
+
+<p>“Look at me!” said the foreman.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood, big and broad-shouldered, a true
+figure of a man, and as Billy studied him he found
+the words of that “ad” shaping themselves in his
+mind. The others were mechanical. Billy had vision
+and won. Some of us who must admit that we have
+neither beauty nor shape are glad to have before our
+children an example of what the coming woman ought
+to be.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SLEEPLESS_MAN">THE SLEEPLESS MAN</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Some of our people are telling us about the best or the
+most satisfying meal they ever ate. This question of
+food seems to depend on habit, hunger and personal
+taste. I saw a man once in a lumber camp eat plate
+after plate of a stew made of meat, potatoes and carrots—cooked
+in a big iron kettle over an open fire. At
+home, this man would have growled at turkey or terrapin,
+but here he was pushing back his plate again and
+again asking the cook to put more carrots in. “Why,”
+he said, “I thought carrots were made for horses to
+eat. I didn’t know human beings ate them!” He
+never had been a real human before—not until hunger
+caught him and pulled him right up to that iron pot.
+At his club in the city he could not have eaten three
+mouthfuls of that stew.</p>
+
+<p>It is different with sleep. The man with no appetite
+can get on after a fashion, but if he cannot sleep he is a
+pitiable object. I met one once—a rich man who had
+worked too hard—starved himself for sleep in order
+to get hold of rather more than his share of money and
+power. He had passed the limit of nerves and was
+denied the power of sleeping. A few snatches of rest
+were all he could get, but through the long still nights
+he lay awake, thinking, thinking with the constant terror
+that this would end in a disordered mind.</p>
+
+<p>We sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>
+told me all about it. To you sleep seems like a very
+common and simple thing. The night finds you tired and
+you shut your eyes and before you know it you are sailing
+off into a peaceful, unknown country. Here was a
+man who could not sleep. He must remain chained to
+the cares and terrors of his daily life, and the bitterness
+of it was that all the money he had slaved so hard
+to obtain could not buy him what comes to you and me
+with the mere closing of the eyes. It seemed to me the
+most despairing mockery for this man to repeat Sir
+Philip Sidney’s “Ode to Sleep”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Come sleep; O Sleep! the certain hour of peace,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The indifferent judge between the high and low;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O make in me these civil wars to cease</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A rosy garland and a weary head.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“That’s it,” said my friend, “<i>A weary head, a
+weary head</i>. Mine is weary, but sleep will not come.”
+He sat looking at the fire for a long time, and then
+he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you would tell me about the <i>best sleep</i> you
+ever had. Men may tell of their best meal, but I want
+to know about rest—the best sleep.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange request, but as I sat there, my mind
+went back to a hillside near the New England coast
+where the valley slopes away to a salt marsh with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>
+sluggish stream running through it. A low, weatherbeaten
+farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept
+hill. It is a lonely place. Few come that way
+in daylight, and at night there are no household lights
+to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>It had rained through the night, and the morning
+brought a thick heavy fog. It was too wet to hoe corn,
+and Uncle Charles said we could all go gunning. He
+was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot.
+So we tramped off along the marsh following the creek
+until it reached the ocean. What a glorious day that
+was for a boy! I carried an old army musket that
+kicked my shoulder black and blue. We tramped along
+the shore and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers
+and other sea fowl. Now and then a flock of
+birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and Uncle Charles
+would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. It
+all comes back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the
+sea fowl and dull roar of the ocean as it pounded upon
+the beach. Late in the afternoon we tramped home wet
+and tired, but with a long string of birds. The ocean
+roared on behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.</p>
+
+<p>It was not good New England thrift to eat those
+birds—the guests at the Parker House in Boston would
+pay good money for them. While we had been hunting,
+Aunt Eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse
+had been busy with a “New England Dinner.” There
+was a big plate of salt codfish, first boiled and then
+fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed
+with it. There were boiled potatoes which split open
+in a rich dry flour, boiled onions and carrots and great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>
+slices of brown bread and butter. Then the odor from
+the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous
+pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! Ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy
+in a New England kitchen as a wet dreary night
+is coming on after a tiresome day? No? I am both
+sorry and glad for you. You have missed one of the
+greatest joys of life, but you have much to look forward
+to. When Uncle Charles began to cut that pan-dowdy,
+we boys realized that we could not do it full
+justice, so we went out and ran around the house half
+a dozen times to make more room for the top of the
+feast.</p>
+
+<p>After supper the dishes were washed, the house
+cleaned up, and we washed out our guns. The old
+musket had kicked my shoulder so that I could hardly
+raise the arm, but no human being could have made me
+admit it. We got Uncle Charles to tell us about the
+time he shot at the officer at Port Hudson during the
+war, and about the humpbacked man who carried the
+powder from Plymouth to Boston during the Revolution.
+Then through the gloom and fog came two young
+men to call on the girls. In those days it seemed to
+me very poor taste for one to listen to the conversation
+of girls rather than war stories. True, the war stories
+were time-worn, but the girl conversation was older yet.
+Soon the little melodeon was talking up and a quartette
+was singing the old songs of half a century ago. It
+may have been the day’s tramping, the old musket, the
+last plate of pan-dowdy or the tap of the rain on the
+windows, but sitting there by the warm kitchen stove, I
+felt a delicious drowsiness stealing over me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span></p>
+
+<p>Bed is the place for sleep, and we boys climbed the
+stairs past the great center chimney, and quickly tumbled
+into bed. In the room below that quartette had
+started an old favorite:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Along the aisles of the dim old forest</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I strayed in the dewy dawn</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And heard far away in their silent branches</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The echoes of the morn.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“They stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Like chimes from a holier land,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">As though far away in those haunted arches</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Were happy—an angel band.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was one great booming bass voice which had
+unconsciously fallen into the key of the dull roar which
+the distant ocean was making. The rain was gently
+tapping on the roof, and all the joys and pleasant memories
+of youth were whispering happy things in our ears
+as we sailed off on the most beautiful voyage to dreamland.</p>
+
+<p>I told this as best I could before the fire while my
+weary friend listened, leaning back in his easy-chair
+with his hand shading his face. And when I stopped
+sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep.
+There are very few of us who would stand for a
+photograph taken while we were asleep, but this man’s
+face was free from care. An orator might not think
+it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience
+to sleep, but I am not an orator, and I would like to be
+able to give my friends what they consider the blessed
+things of life! And Peace, blissful Peace, had put her
+healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LINCOLNS_BIRTHDAY">LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It brought the worst storm we have had this Winter.
+This season will pass on into history as about the roughest
+we have had in 20 years. There came a whirl of
+snow which filled the air and sifted in through every
+crack and hole. We let the storm alone, and got away
+from it. Merrill sorted out seed corn at the barn.
+Philip had some inside painting to do, the women folks
+kept at their household work, and the children got out
+into the storm. They came in now and then to stand by
+the fire—with faces the color of their hair. As for
+me, I cannot say that I hurt myself with hard labor.
+We piled the logs in the open fireplace and started a
+roaring fire. With a pile of books on one side and a
+pen and paper at the other, my big chair gave a very
+good foundation for a Lincoln celebration. I presume
+we all have our personal habits of reading. Some people
+read only one kind of books, and stick to the one
+in hand until it is finished. My plan is different.
+Right now I am reading Dante, “Rural Credits,”
+“Manufacture of Chemical Manure,” Whittier’s Poems
+and Lowell’s essay on Abraham Lincoln. A poor jumble
+of stuff for a human head you will say, but I turn from
+one to another, so that instead of a mixed-up jumble I
+try to have these different thoughts in layers through
+the mind. In this way one may get a blend which is
+better than a hash. It may seem absurd to think of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>
+putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless
+you can do something of the sort you can never get
+very far with them.</p>
+
+<p>That was the great secret of Lincoln’s power. As
+judged by knowledge or training or what we call “education,”
+there were many abler men in the country at
+his time, but Lincoln knew how to appeal to the imagination
+of the plain, common people. Read his speeches
+and papers and see how he framed a fact with a mental
+picture which the common people could understand.
+There were some wonderful pictures at the World’s
+Fair in Chicago. Some were called masterpieces of
+fabulous value. People stood before them and went on
+with something of awe in their heart—not quite grasping
+the artist’s meaning. One less pretentious picture
+was named “The Breaking of Home Ties,” and day
+by day a great throng stood before it, silent and wet-eyed.
+It was a very simple home scene, picturing a
+boy leaving his country home. Men studied it, walked
+away and then turned and slowly came back that they
+might see it once more. As long as they live people
+will remember that picture, because the poetry of it appealed
+to them as the higher art could not do. I think
+Lincoln held the imagination of the plain people much
+as that picture did. He was one who had suffered and
+had been brought up with plain and simple family habits
+which were fixed.</p>
+
+<p>The children have come running in to warm their
+hands. They are lined up in front of the big fire, rosy-faced
+and covered with snow. They stand looking at
+me as I write. Dinner is nearly ready, and there is no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+question about their readiness for it. Here comes
+Mother to look out at the storm, and she forgets to remember
+that this group of snowbirds by my fire have
+forgotten to stamp the snow off their feet. There will
+be a puddle of water when they move off—but it will
+soon dry up. As I watch them all it seems a good time
+to pick up Lowell’s essay on Lincoln:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>He is so eminently our representative man, that,
+when he speaks, it seems as if the people were listening
+to their own thinking aloud.... He has always addressed
+the intelligence of men. Never their prejudices,
+their passion or their ignorance.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Now I think that intelligence and power to speak as
+people think can only come out of good family relations.
+Do I mean to say that the family group is superior to
+the college, the school or the other great institutions for
+training human thought? I do, wherever the family
+group is bound together as it should be by love, good
+will, ambition and something of sacrifice!</p>
+
+<p>This nation and every other is ruled by the family
+spirit. All public government is based on self-government,
+and the family is the training school for all.
+What could the college or the school do with a great
+crowd or mob of students who have never known the
+restraints of good family life? Ask any teacher to tell
+you the difference between children reared in a clean,
+careful family and those reared where the family relations
+are much like a cross-cut saw. Line up the adults
+you know, make a fair estimate of their character and
+see whether you can select those who in their childhood
+had a fair chance in family life. There are, of course,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+exceptions to all rules, but generally the boy or girl will
+carry through life the habits and the human policies
+which are given him in the family. As a rule these will
+be carried into the new family which the boy or girl
+may start, and thus be handed on like those qualities
+which are transmitted through blood lines. No use talking—the
+family unit is the most important element in
+human society. A nation’s fame rests upon the nation’s
+family.</p>
+
+<p>I think a man may fairly be judged by the way he
+treats his parents, his children and his wife. I do
+not care how he gets out and shows himself off as a
+great man and a good citizen. He might get an overwhelming
+vote for Congress or Governor, but God will
+judge him more by the votes of father, mother, son,
+daughter, wife! To me there can be nothing more
+beautiful than the best relation between a man of middle
+years and his aged parents. Perhaps the latter are
+feeble and not well-to-do. When they can sit in their
+son’s home happy and comfortable, knowing that the
+entire family has been taught to put them first of all
+in family regard, you have struck about the finest test
+of a man’s character that good citizenship can offer.
+When the children chase their father about and, out
+of their own thought, run to anticipate his wants, you
+can make up your mind that in that family are being
+trained men and women who can go out and absorb
+education and financial power which will be used for the
+true benefit of humanity. Most of us can never hope to
+be great men or to handle large public affairs, but we
+can make our family a training school for good citizenship.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+I have no thought that in this group of bright-eyed
+youngsters lined up by my fire we are to have
+any great statesmen or authors or merchant princes or
+big folk generally. On the whole I hope not, as it would
+seem to me that the great man has a rather lonely life.
+I do expect, however, that these children will always
+remember Hope Farm, and that in future years when
+the world may turn a very cold side to them they will
+remember this stormy day and will feel the warmth of
+this kindly fire.</p>
+
+<p>I have wandered away from what I wanted to say
+about Lincoln and his power over the people. It was
+this family feeling which made him strong, and if you
+want your boy or girl to be really worth while you
+must give them and their mother the best family surroundings
+you can possibly secure. The man who taps
+the spring or the well and sends the water running
+through his house does far more for his country than
+he who runs for Congress and taps the public pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>But here comes Mother again, with “Come now,
+dinner’s ready. Don’t let it get cold!” Get cold? The
+children are already at the table! I wish you could
+come right along with me. I would put two sausage
+cakes on your plate and fill it up with mealy potatoes
+and yellow turnips. Then you would have rice in another
+dish. There is a dish of thick, brown gravy and
+nothing would suit me better than to have you call for
+an egg—fried or boiled. The Reds are laying well now.
+There are two kinds of bread and plenty of butter, and
+we will take a family vote as to whether we shall take<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>
+peaches, strawberries, Kieffer pears, cherries or raspberries
+off the pantry shelves. I vote for Crosby
+peaches, but you will have a free choice and all you can
+eat. Surely the table makes a very strong family tie.
+Come on!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="UNCLE_EDS_PHILOSOPHY">UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Uncle Ed had his home in Florida, but spent the Summer
+working at Hope Farm. At the time I speak of
+we were hoeing corn at the top of our hill. We had
+just planted the apple orchard, and we both realized
+the long and weary years of toilsome waiting before
+there could be any fruit. It was a hot day, and at the
+end of the row we stopped to rest under the big cherry
+tree where the stone wall is broad and thick. It was
+a clear day, and far off across the rolling country to the
+East we could see the sparkle of the sun on some gilded-top
+building in New York. It gave one a curious feeling
+to stand in that shady retreat on $50 land in a
+lonely neighborhood, practically untouched by modern
+development, and glance across to the millions and the
+might crowded at the mouth of the Hudson. Most of us
+feel a sort of pride on viewing the evidence of wealth
+and power, even though we have no share in it, or even
+when we know it means blood money taken from our
+own lives. I felt something of this as I pointed it out
+to Uncle Ed, and told him how probably the overflow
+of that great city would some day make an acre of our
+orchard worth more than a farm in Florida.</p>
+
+<p>This did not seem to impress him greatly. He ran
+his eye over the glowing prospect and then slowly filled
+his pipe for a smoke. I am no friend of tobacco, but I
+confess that sometimes I enjoy seeing a man like Uncle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+Ed slowly fill his pipe. I feel that some sort of homely
+philosophy is sure to be smoked out.</p>
+
+<p>“The trouble with you folks up in this country,”
+said Uncle Ed, “is that you work too hard. You get so
+that there is nothing in you but work and save. And for
+what? How many of you ever get the benefit of your
+own work? Down where I live we don’t exist for the
+mere sake of working. I have known the time when
+I got up determined to do a good day’s work cultivating.
+I got the horse all harnessed, only to find that my neighbor
+on the south had borrowed the cultivator, and I
+couldn’t do that. Then I thought I’d hoe, but the boys
+lost the hoe in the brush and couldn’t find it. Then
+there was the woodpile to be cut up, but my neighbor on
+the north had borrowed the ax.</p>
+
+<p>“Now up in this country if fate challenged a man
+like that he would start picking up stones and making
+a stone wall. Here is one now that we are resting
+against. I’ll bet some old owner of this farm piled up
+this heap of stones because he was determined that the
+boys never should play or go fishing. It is now the
+most useless thing you have on your farm. If, instead
+of picking up stones and building this useless wall, that
+old-timer had quit when fate gave him the sign, taken
+a day off and let the boys go fishing or play ball, this
+farm would be worth far more than it is today. Down
+in my country when the cultivator and the hoe and the
+ax all get away from us we accept it as a voice from
+some higher authority, and we <i>drop everything and go
+fishing</i>. After that I notice things straighten out and
+work goes right. You fellows work too hard, and don’t<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+know it. But this won’t buy the woman a dress—we
+must hoe this corn out.”</p>
+
+<p>The rows ran to the south, and as we hoed on I could
+see, far away, that bright sparkle on the gilding of
+the big city. And I answered with the old familiar
+argument:</p>
+
+<p>“You have just told in a few words why there are
+more savings of the poor and middle-class people in
+that big city yonder than there are in the entire State
+of Florida.” That was 16 years ago and the statement
+was probably true at the time. Florida has gained since
+then.</p>
+
+<p>“Up in this country we believe that the Lord gives
+every man of decent mind and reasonable body a chance
+to provide for himself and family before he is 45. If
+he doesn’t do it by that time, he isn’t likely to do it at
+all. We think that there are three ways of getting
+money. You can earn it through labor, steal it, or have
+it given to you. For most of us there is only one way—that
+is to dig it out by the hardest work, and then practice
+self-denial in order to hold it. Up in this country
+the men who quit and go fishing when conditions turn
+against them, spend their declining years without any
+bait. That money off there where you see that sparkle
+was produced by men who did not go fishing when conditions
+turned against them.”</p>
+
+<p>As I look back upon it now that seems pretty cheap
+talk, but it was the way we looked at it in those days.</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” said Uncle Ed, “but how much better
+off are they when you sum it all up? I claim that the
+man who goes fishing gets something that the man who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+built that stone wall never knew. Who piled up all
+that money in the big city? Some of mine is there.
+The interest I have paid on my mortgage has come into
+one of these big buildings for investment. The profit
+on many a box of oranges I shipped before the freeze
+never got away from New York. It stuck there and you
+can’t get it out. And that’s just what I mean. You
+fellows work your fingers stiff and make a little money,
+and then you put it into some bank or big company or
+into stocks or bonds. In the end it all gets away from
+you and runs down hill to that big city. The hired man
+took $25 to the county fair. Ten dollars of it went
+for beer and rum. The local saloonkeeper passed the
+$10 on to the wholesaler, he to the brewer and he sent
+part of it to Germany and the rest to Wall Street. The
+other $15 mostly went in chance games or petty gambling.
+He lost $5 betting that he could find the little
+red ball under the hat. The man who won his $5 lost
+it that night playing poker. The gambler who won it
+lost it a few nights later in a gambling house. The
+gambling house man bought bogus oil and mining stocks
+and lost it that way. The oil stock man had sense
+enough to salt it down in respectable securities, and
+there it is now under that bright sparkle in the big city.
+You and the rest of you do pretty much the same. This
+man who built your stone wall did it. The money he
+made was not invested here. If it had been you never
+could have bought this farm. It is off there under
+that bright sparkle—and the boys and girls run after it.
+<i>You fellows work too hard!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>I undertook to come back with that text about the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+man who provideth not for his family—but I never was
+good at remembering texts. That is probably because
+I do not study them as I ought to. But at any rate I
+undertook to argue that it is a man’s first duty to provide
+for his family and also for his own “rainy day.” “<i>The
+night cometh, when no man can work.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Down where I live,” said Uncle Ed, “we don’t
+have such rainy days as you do up here. Life is simple
+and straight and old people are cared for. We want
+them to live with us—we are not waiting for them to
+pass off and leave their money. Off in that big city
+where your money is turning over and over, thousands
+of human lives get under it and are crushed out of all
+shape. Down there under that sparkle only the poor
+know what neighbors are. Many a man lives his life in
+some tenement or apartment house never knowing or
+caring what goes on in the room on the other side of the
+wall. There may be joy or sorrow, death or life, virtue
+or crime. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, because
+this never-ending grind of work has changed sympathy
+into selfishness. And in the end that is what all those
+dollars which you folks dump into the big city come to.
+If the habit is so strong that you’ve got to work and try
+to catch up with the man who has a little more than you
+have, why not invest your money at home and in the
+farm? Those fellows off under that sparkle will come
+chasing after your money if you invest it here, and you
+would be boss instead of servant! <i>Am I right?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>That was 16 years ago, and many things have happened
+since then. Uncle Ed has passed away—after
+many troubles and misfortunes. The world has been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>
+shaken up by the war and by great discoveries, so that
+we hardly know it. Yet there is a brighter sparkle
+than ever on the gilded roofs of the big city—greater
+wealth and more blinding poverty crouching beneath it.
+The hill where we hoed corn is now covered with big
+apple trees. Where then Bob and Jerry toiled slowly
+along with half a ton of fruit the truck now flashes down
+the hard, smooth road with two tons. But sitting on the
+old stone wall of a Sunday afternoon in late August
+I look across the valley and wonder how much there
+really is in Uncle Ed’s philosophy after all. What do
+<i>you</i> think?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_GOD-FORSAKEN_PLACE">A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">James and William Hardy were twins—born and bred
+on a New Hampshire farm. The family dated far back
+to pioneer times, when John Hardy and Henry Graham,
+with their young wives, went into the wilderness as
+the advance guard of civilization. It came to be a common
+understanding that a Hardy should always marry
+a Graham, and through four generations at least this
+family law had been observed until there had been developed
+one of those fine, purebred New England
+families which represent just about the highest type of
+the American. As the father of these twins married
+a Graham girl you had a right to expect them to be as
+much alike as two peas in the family pod—both in
+appearance and in character. Here you surely might
+expect one of those cases where the twins are always
+being mixed up, when not even their mother could be
+sure which was Jim and which was Bill. In truth,
+however, the boys were distinctly different from the
+day they were born—different in size, in appearance
+and in character.</p>
+
+<p>These twins innocently brought to the surface a sad
+spot of family history which both the Grahams and the
+Hardys hoped had been buried too far down ever to
+show itself. Far back in the French and Indian war
+a band of raiders from Canada burst out of the forest
+and carried off a dozen prisoners. Among them was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span>
+the pride of the Graham family—a beautiful girl of 16.
+The settlers, hiding in their blockhouse, could only
+look on and see their relatives start on the long march to
+Canada. The next year some of these prisoners were
+ransomed, and came back to say that the girl had married
+a young Frenchman. She was happy, and sent
+word to her parents that she preferred to stay with
+her husband. Years went by, until one night there
+came to Henry Graham’s house a Canadian ranger and
+a young girl. It was their granddaughter and her
+father. The mother had died and had begged her husband
+to take her daughter back to the old folks as her
+offering of love. The father delivered his message,
+bade his daughter farewell and silently vanished into
+the forest. They never saw him again, but they realized
+that he had given full measure of devotion to his
+dead wife. The girl grew up to be a beautiful creature
+much like her mother, only darker, and at times there
+was a bright glitter in her eyes. She married a Hardy
+and settled down as a farmer’s wife. She was dutiful
+and kind, but sometimes her husband would see her
+standing at the door—looking off into the Northern
+forests with a look which made him shake his head.
+Years went by, and this spot on the family history had
+been forgotten until these twins uncovered it! Their
+mother knew in her heart that the spirit of the restless
+Frenchman was watching her from the cradle through
+the black shiny eyes of her strange baby. James, the
+light-haired, steady, purebred infant, slept calmly or
+acted just as a good Hardy should, but the wild spirit
+of the forest had jumped three generations right into<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span>
+the cradle, where this black-haired little changeling
+stared at her!</p>
+
+<p>There never were two children more unlike than
+these twins. Jim was solid, sound, a little slow, but
+absolutely trustworthy—“a born Hardy” as they said.
+Bill was bright, quick, restless, full of plans and visions.
+He did not like to work, and had no respect for the
+family skeleton. This was a mortgage, which for many
+years had sunk its claws into the rocky little farm.
+The truth was that this farm never should have been
+cleared and settled. It was rocky and sandy; farther
+out of date than the old mill rotting unused by the old
+mill pond. The mortgage hung like a wolf at the back
+door, demanding its due, which came out of the little
+farm like blood money. Jim Hardy, like his father
+and grandfather, grew up to regard that mortgage as a
+fixed and sacred institution. It was a family heirloom
+or tradition—something like the old musket which an
+older Hardy carried at Bunker Hill, or like grandmother’s
+old spinning-wheel. As for the poor, rocky
+farm, Jim and his father would stay and grind themselves
+away in a hopeless struggle just because the
+Hardys who went before them had done so. It was
+different with Bill. He had no use for the mortgage
+or for the rocky pastures, for the dash of French blood
+had put rubber, or yeast, into the covering of the stern
+New England thought. His father never could understand
+him and one day, when Bill was 17, the blood
+of the “changeling” burst into open mutiny. The
+father knew of only one way to act. He ordered the
+boy around behind the barn and took the horsewhip to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+him. As a Hardy, Bill was expected to stand and take
+his punishment without a murmur. As the descendant
+of a wild forest ranger he could only resent the blows.
+What he did was to catch his father’s arms and hold
+them like a vice. Neither spoke a word. They just
+looked at each other. The older man struggled, but he
+was powerless—he knew that his son was the master.
+He dropped the whip from his hand and bowed his head.
+The boy released him, broke the whip in two, and threw
+it away. The father walked to the house, a dazed and
+broken man. Bill watched him and then walked out to
+the back lot where Jim, the steady and faithful, was
+building a fence.</p>
+
+<p>“Good-bye, Jim,” he said. “I’m off. It had to
+come. I’m different, and yet the same, as you will see.
+You stay here and look after father and mother. I will
+help some day.” It was the Hardy in both the boys
+which made it impossible for them to come any closer in
+feeling. Bill walked on over the pasture hill; at the
+top he paused to wave his hand. Then he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Bill was clean and sound at heart, and the French
+blood had given him a quick active brain. Instead of
+striking for the wilderness he headed for New York
+and he prospered. The old French ancestor drove him
+on with tireless energy, and the long line of clean farm
+breeding kept him true to his purpose to go back some
+day and show the old folks that he was still a Hardy.
+Years passed, until one day there came to Bill an uncontrollable
+longing to go home. Just a few brief, unresponsive
+letters had passed between him and Jim, but
+the time came when Bill longed with a great longing to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+see the old farm once more. And so, the next day, a
+well-dressed, prosperous man walked into the old yard
+and looked about him. There was Jim, the same old
+Jim, walking in from the barn with the night’s milk.
+Father was cutting wood at the wood pile and mother
+stood at the kitchen door—just the same home picture
+which Bill knew so well. Bill did great things during
+his short stay. He paid that mortgage, ordered a new
+barn built and left capital for Jim to improve the farm.
+He did everything that a Hardy ought to do—and
+more—and yet he could not satisfy himself. It all
+seemed so small and narrow. He had hoped to find
+great music in the wind among the pines, but it filled
+him with a great loneliness, which he could not overcome.
+He had hoped to find peace and rest, but these
+were for the untried farm boy—not for the restless and
+worried business man. It broke out of him at night on
+the second day, when he and Jim were on the pasture
+hill looking for the sheep. The loneliness of the early
+Fall day fairly entered his heart.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Jim</i>,” he said, “<i>old fellow, I don’t see how you
+live in such a God-forsaken place</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Bill,” said Jim, “New York must be like
+Paradise to beat the old homestead.”</p>
+
+<p>“Better a week on Broadway than a lifetime on these
+lonely hills.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d like to try it and see!” said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>So Jim Hardy, the plain farmer, went to New
+York to visit Brother Bill. He had everything he could
+call for. Bill lived in a beautiful apartment, and he
+gave Jim a white card to see and do what he wanted.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+Bill was too busy to go around much, but Jim made his
+way. For a couple of days it was fine—then somehow
+Jim, just like Bill at the old farm, began to grow lonesome
+and oppressed. Right through the wall of Bill’s
+apartment house was a family with one child. The janitor
+told him the child was sick, so Jim knocked at the
+door to sympathize with the neighbors. They froze him
+with a few words and got rid of him. He saw a man
+on the street and stopped to converse with him. “Get
+out!” said the stranger. “You can’t bunco me.” Day
+after day Jim Hardy, the farmer, saw the fierce, selfish
+struggle for life in the big city. The great buildings,
+the theaters, Broadway at night—they were all splendid,
+but behind and under them lay the meanness, the selfish
+spirit, the lack of neighborly feeling, which galled the
+farmer to the heart. On the third night Bill took his
+brother to a great reception. Just as they walked into
+the brilliant room Jim glanced from the window and
+saw a policeman throw a weak and sickly man out of a
+public room where he was trying to get warm.</p>
+
+<p>“What did I tell you, Jim?” said Bill. “Isn’t this
+worth a year on your old hills?” And Jim could only
+think of one thing to say:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Bill, old fellow, I don’t see how you can live in such
+a God-forsaken place!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>What do you make of it? One brother thinks God
+has forsaken the country, while the other says He has
+forsaken the city! To me they prove that God is everywhere.
+Some may not find Him, since they look for
+Him only in things which are agreeable to them, and
+those are rarely the places in which to look. I think,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span>
+too, that, like Jim and Bill, all children come into the
+world with natural tendencies and inclinations which, if
+worthy, should be encouraged rather than repressed.
+Both Jim and Bill are needed in American life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LOUISE">LOUISE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“<i>How is Louise now?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>She seems a little better!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>That message came over the ’phone on Friday evening,
+just as the members of the Hope Farm family were
+separating for the night. Early in the year we had a
+letter from a woman in the West who came back to
+the paper after 15 years’ absence. As a girl she
+lived in New York State. Father took the paper and
+she remembered the talks about the Bud, Scion and
+Graft. “What has become of those children?” she
+asked. “Since I left home I have lost track of them.
+Now that I have a home and children of my own I
+would like to know what they came to.”</p>
+
+<p>These were the names given to the four children of
+our first brood. We had one little girl of our own
+whom I called the Bud. Her mother did not want her
+brought up alone, so we took in a small boy—a little
+fellow of an uncertain age. We did not adopt him, but
+he was treated just like our own child, and “grew up”
+in our home. I called him the Seedling! A noted
+botanist argued with me to prove that these names should
+have been transposed—but I let them go, for we tried to
+graft good things upon the Seedling. Then came two
+other little ones—Mother’s niece and nephew, needing
+home and protection. We took them in, and I called<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>
+them Graft and Scion. These names may not have betrayed
+any great knowledge of botany, but they seemed
+to fit the children, although as the little ones grew up
+we were glad to let those names drop.</p>
+
+<p>This quartette of little ones grew and thrived. It was
+at times rather hard sledding for the Hope Farmers in
+those early years, but youth greases the runners with
+hope, and kids never know the true taste of tough mutton.
+They grew on through sickness, the wilfulness of
+childhood, powers of heredity and all the things which
+confront common children. For they always seemed to
+me just kids of very common clay, though Mother
+would at times come back from places where other children
+“behaved” and say: “You must understand that
+we have some very superior youngsters!” Of course I
+realized that the “Bud” would most likely be pretty
+much what her parents were, and it was a long-time
+hope that she would throw out our many undesirable
+qualities and concentrate upon the few good ones. Now
+comes our friend asking what has become of them—and
+I will try to answer for all! The Bud is a senior
+at one of the great Women’s Colleges; the Graft is with
+an engineering party running a new railroad through
+the Arizona wilderness; the Seedling is a captain in the
+Salvation Army—the Scion! ah! That is why I am
+writing this!</p>
+
+<p>Louise grew up a small, rather delicate young woman,
+ambitious, clear-brained and with a quick, active mind.
+There came a time when greater family responsibilities
+came upon us all. Her father died, and her mother
+became hopelessly ill, and four younger brothers and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+sisters came to us to form what we call our second brood.
+Even as a young girl Louise began to realize the stern
+responsibilities of life for those little ones. When she
+finished high school her ambition to be of service to this
+family group became fixed. She wanted to become self-supporting
+and to have a hand in helping with these
+younger children. Teaching is the great resource of
+educated women who are naturally fitted for the work,
+and Louise saw in the schoolroom her best chance for
+useful service. I think this was one of the rare cases
+where women are willing to work and prepare themselves
+for true unselfish service. Louise was timid
+and naturally nervous—not strong or with great dominating
+power. I do not think any of us understood
+how much it really meant to her to face direct responsibility
+and force her way through.</p>
+
+<p>Mother and I have always felt that if any of our
+children show real, self-sacrificing desire for an education
+we will practise any form of needed self-denial that
+the child may be college-trained. For an education
+worked out in that way will become a glory and an
+honor to all who have to do with it. So we felt it no
+burden, but rather a privilege, to send Louise to the
+Normal School. How well and faithfully she worked
+no one can ever realize. I often think that most reputations
+for bravery in this world are not fairly earned.
+Some strong, well-bred, naturally optimistic character,
+with health and heritage from a long line of dominating
+ancestors pushes and smashes his way through obstacles
+and acquires a great reputation for courage. I
+think such are far less deserving than women like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+Louise, small and delicate and nervous, who conquer
+natural timidity and force themselves to endure the
+battle. It is even harder to win confidence in yourself—to
+conquer the inside forces—than to fight the outside
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>Louise did this. She did it well, without boasting or
+great complaint and without flinching. At times she
+was depressed, for the task seemed too much for her,
+but she rose above it and won. She won honors at her
+school, and long before she expected it, on her own
+little, honest record in the schoolroom, she was employed
+to teach at a good salary. It was to be only
+four miles from home—amid the best surroundings—and
+there was no happier woman on earth than was
+Louise when she wrote us the first news about it. It
+came just before Christmas. There are many women
+who could not see any cause for Christmas joy in the
+thought of long years of monotonous and wearying service,
+but Louise saw in this something of the joy of
+achievement, for through honest, trained labor, the outcome
+of her own patience and determination, she was to
+become self-supporting and a genuine help to the children.
+I presume no one but a conscientious and ambitious
+woman can realize what that means. I know
+women who would look upon such power of self-support
+simply as selfish freedom. Louise saw in it the power
+of greater service. We have tried our best to train our
+children for that view of a life work.</p>
+
+<p>You may therefore imagine that the holidays at Hope
+Farm seemed like holy days indeed. They were all
+there except the Seedling and the Graft, and <i>they</i> sent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+messages which left no regret, no sadness to creep in
+out of the past. Somehow I hope all you older people
+may know before you pass on something of what
+Mother and I did about our two broods as the old year
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there it comes again—the old question. I came
+home a little later than usual on Friday night. The
+night was wet and foggy, and Mother met me at the
+train. One of the little boys who usually comes for
+me had gone to meet Louise. Her first week of school
+was over, and she was coming home—a teacher! As
+we drove into the yard the family ran out to meet us—“Something
+has happened—they want you on the
+’phone at once!” Ah! but these country tragedies may
+flash upon us without warning. Halfway home Louise
+had been stricken desperately ill, and she now lay at
+the parsonage—three miles away—helpless. Just as
+quickly as fingers could put the harness on our fastest
+horse, Mother and “Cherry-top” were driving off into
+the fog and rain. We waited until they reached the
+parsonage and then we kept the ’phone busy. The poor
+girl, riding home after her first fine week in the schoolroom,
+had been stricken with an internal hemorrhage—and
+it was doubtful if she could rally! At nine o’clock
+came the message: “She seems to be better.” The
+little boys were coming home—and they soon appeared,
+white and troubled. Mother was to stay all night and
+she sent a hopeful message about coming in the morning
+with Louise. We went to bed to get strength and nerve
+for any emergency. In the early morning Mother
+walked into my room and turned up the light. We<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+looked at each other for a moment. Then there were
+six words:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>How is Louise?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>She is gone!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>We said nothing more, but we were both thinking the
+same thing!</p>
+
+<p>“<i>The first break in our big family has come. How
+is Louise now?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>There was no way of saving her. Human skill and
+human love had failed. She was dead!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">It was a beautiful service. There were only our
+own family and perhaps a dozen friends. We all
+wanted it so. We do not like the wild grief and public
+curiosity so often displayed at large funerals. There
+was just a great bank of flowers, a white casket and a
+simple service over this brave and loyal girl. I do not
+say “poor” girl, nor do I dwell upon the sadness of it.
+I thought that all out as Mother and I sat at the head
+of the casket. She died gloriously—like a soldier at his
+duty. She died when life was young. She had just
+won her little battle in the great world of affairs. She
+died in the joy of victory and in the faith that all
+things are possible. The wine of life was full. She
+never knew the sting of defeat, the shame and meanness
+of false friendships and ambitions, which has come
+to those of us who linger on the way. And so at the end
+of it all I ask the old question once more:</p>
+
+<p>“How is Louise now?”</p>
+
+<p>“She is better! Thank God! She is better!”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHRISTMAS_EVERY_DAY">CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is well enough to keep the Christmas tree standing
+until Spring cleaning at least. There may be those
+who open the closet door once a year and let the Christmas
+spirit out—somewhat like the family skeleton, to
+food and water—and then lock it up again. That does
+not suit me, for I would like to keep the door open so
+that Christmas may be with us every day in the year.
+The celebration just closed is about the best our family
+and community ever had, and it will do us permanent
+good.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday evening the children had their celebration
+at the church. It was a cold clear night, with good
+sleighing, so we hitched the two big grays to the bob
+sled and filled the box with straw, and the children cuddled
+down into this nest and pulled blankets over them.
+The Hope Farm man drove, with Mother on the seat
+beside him to direct the job and tell him when and
+where to turn out. Tom and Broker seemed to feel that
+they were, in their way, playing the part of reindeer,
+for they trotted off in great shape—a little clumsy on
+their feet, perhaps, but with strength enough to pull
+down a house. Broker is inclined to be lazy, and Tom
+did most of the pulling unless we stirred his partner up
+with the stick. Through the clear starlight we went
+crunching and jingling on over the hills and through<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>
+the narrow level valleys, for our country has a badly
+wrinkled face.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the way lies through the woods, and then
+a stretch along the banks of a little river. There was
+just enough wind to make a little humming in the
+trees. Now and then a rabbit jumped out of the
+shadow and went hopping off across the snow. There
+was no danger—it was Christmas, and we do not carry
+firearms. I think I can tell you much about a person’s
+character and circumstances if you will tell me what
+comes into mind on a lonely road, when the wind is
+playing its wild tunes among the trees.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Over the chimney the night wind sang,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Chanting a melody no one knew.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To some this melody brings sad memories or fear of
+trouble, but the happy group in our big sled heard nothing
+of these in the sound. As Tom and Broker pulled
+their load on beneath the trees I think each one of us
+heard in the wind’s singing something of the song which
+the angels sang when the shepherds listened long years
+ago. This may be but a fancy of mine, yet I think our
+little group came nearer to understanding what Christmas
+means—on that lonely road—than we had before.</p>
+
+<p>You know how pleasant it is to come trotting along
+a country road on a cold starry night and see the lights
+of the church burst into view far ahead. Our church is
+an old stone structure, full of years and honorable history.
+It was here, at least part of it, during the Revolution,
+and at one time Hessian prisoners were confined
+in it. There were no prisoners except those of hope<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+inside the church that night. The boys and I made Tom
+and Broker comfortable and then we went inside to find
+a big Christmas tree and a crowd of happy children.
+Surely Christmas is children’s day, and they owned the
+church that night. Mother marshaled her big primary
+class for one chorus, and it seemed as if the entire end
+of the church was made of children. A couple of our
+Cherry-tops lent a little color to it. The Hope Farm man
+was escorted up to a front seat, where he was expected
+to look the part of prominent citizen. They ran him
+into the programme too for a Christmas story, so he
+got up and told the company about “Pete Shivershee’s
+Miracle”—a little Christmas memory of life in a lumber
+camp many years ago. Finally the simple presents
+were distributed, the sleepy little ones aroused, good
+wishes spoken and we all piled in once more for the
+home trip. Broker takes life as it comes, but Tom
+was chilly and disposed to be a trifle gay over the
+prospect of barn and cornstalks once more. He proceeded
+to pull the entire load, Broker trotting on with
+dangling traces! It was a sleepy and happy crowd that
+finally turned off the road into Hope Farm. “<i>We had
+a big time!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>In two of the villages near us the people organized
+community Christmas trees. These trees were placed in
+the public square or some prominent spot, the electric
+wires were connected, and colored bulbs hung all over
+to take the place of candles. These were lighted on
+Christmas Eve and kept going all through the holiday
+week. It was a great success, for it brought people
+together, made a better community spirit, and helped us<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+all. In addition to this community tree arrangements
+were made to have singers go about the town singing
+the old Christmas carols. This revival of the old English
+custom was a beautiful thing and a great success.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after three on Christmas morning our folks
+were awakened by music. I think the Cherry-tops
+thought it was Santa Claus, as it probably was. Out in
+front of our house a motor car carrying six young men
+had turned in from the road. There in the frosty
+morning they were singing:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“O come, all ye faithful,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Joyful and triumphant,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O come ye! O come ye</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To Bethlehem.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Come and behold Him</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Born the King of angels,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O come let us adore Him,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Christ the Lord.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>They were beautiful singers and our folks will never
+forget that Christmas morning.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Silent night! Holy night,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">All is calm. All is light.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">’Round young Virgin mother and child</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Holy infant so tender and mild,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sleep in heavenly peace.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Finally the car started off, moving slowly down the
+road with the music creeping back to us through the
+clear air:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Hark, the Herald angels sing.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span></p>
+
+<p>Our folks heard them at the next neighbor’s, far
+down the road. I have no doubt many a weary and
+troubled soul waking in the night at the sound went
+back to happier dreams of a better tomorrow. It was
+a beautiful thing to do, and never before did Christmas
+morning come to us so happily as this year.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of these things all day, and the conviction
+has grown upon me that what we people who live in
+the country need more than anything else is something
+of this spirit which binds people together and holds
+them. We need it in our work, our play and in our
+battles. It is another name for patriotism, which means
+the unselfish love of country. The Duke of Wellington
+said the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds
+of England, where boys were trained in manly sports.
+He told only half of it, for the spirit which turned
+that play into war came from the singers who in English
+villages sang Christmas carols or English folk
+songs. In like manner the wonderful national spirit
+which the German nation has shown has been developed
+largely through the singing societies which have expressed
+German feeling in song. In 1792 a band of
+Frenchmen marched from the south of France to Paris
+dragging cannon through a cloud of dust and singing the
+Marseillaise hymn, and even to this day the loyal spirit
+of France traces down from those dusty singers. Do
+I mean to say that farmers can come together and sing
+their troubles away? No, for some of the troubles have
+grown so strong and penetrated so deep that they must
+be pulled out by the roots. What I do say is that before
+we can hope to remove these troubles and make our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+conditions what they should be we must feel toward our
+friends and neighbors the sentiments which are expressed
+in these beautiful old songs. The time has
+gone by when we can hope to obtain what we should
+have from society as individuals playing a cold, selfish
+game of personal interest. We have tried that for
+many years and steadily lost out on it. The only
+hope for us now is in a true community spirit of loyalty
+and sacrifice, instead of the effort to get all we can for
+ourselves. That is why I say that there should be something
+of Christmas in every day of the year, and why
+I give these holiday memories.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FINEST_LESSON">“THE FINEST LESSON”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is the privilege of youth and old age to make comparisons.
+One has little or nothing of experience to
+use as a yardstick—the other has everything life can
+offer him. One compares with imagination, the other
+with fact, and youth, having a wider pasture for
+thought, usually finds pleasanter places for feeding.
+My children have spent nearly every Christmas thus
+far before this open fire, while I have ranged far and
+wide, from Florida to the Great Lakes, and from Cape
+Cod to Colorado. As we sit in silence before our fire
+the boys can imagine themselves in some hunter’s camp,
+or with the soldiers in France, while the girls can drop
+themselves down from the wings of fancy in Cuba or
+Brazil. I might try that, but stern fact drags me down
+to other days, and old-time companions come creeping
+out of the past to say “Merry Christmas” and stand
+here, a little sorrowful that they cannot give the children
+something of their story. So I must be their spokesman,
+it seems, and the children give me a chance when
+after dreaming a while they come and ask me to tell
+about the real Christmas. “What was the finest
+Christmas lesson you ever had?” They do not put it
+in quite these words, but that is the sense of it. So
+there comes to me a great desire to live up to the highest
+test of story-telling—that is, so to interest your audience
+that they will forget to eat their apples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span></p>
+
+<p>The room seems full of the shadowy forms of men and
+women who have stepped out of the past to bring back
+a Christmas memory. Which of these old life teachers
+ever gave me the best lesson? They were all good—even
+that big fellow who tried to kick me out of a lumber
+camp—and failed—or that slimy little fraud who beat
+me out of a week’s wages! I think, however, that those
+two women over by the window lead all the rest. One
+is an old woman—evidently a cripple; the other
+younger—you cannot see her face in the dim light, but
+she stands by the older woman’s chair. Yes, they represent
+the best Christmas lesson I have had. So come up
+to the fire, forget the wind roaring outside, and listen to
+it. I was a hired man that Winter in a Western State.
+Some of the farmers who read this will remember me—not
+for any great skill I showed at farm work, but because
+I spent my spare time (that meant nights) going
+around “speaking pieces.” I am greatly afraid that as
+an agriculturist I did better work at keeping air hot
+than I ever did at heating plowshares through labor.</p>
+
+<p>You see, it was this way. I was a freshman at an
+agricultural college, at a time when these institutions
+were struggling hard to live. The average freshman
+thinks he is the salt of the earth, forgetting that he is
+salt which has not gained its savor through losing its
+freshness. A man gets very little salt in his character
+until he goes out and assaults the world! At any rate,
+I had no money salted down and no fresh supplies coming
+in. I had to get out during the Winter and earn
+the price of another term at college. I tried canvassing
+for a book. We will draw the curtain down over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span>
+that act. Some men tell me of making small fortunes as
+book agents. From my experience I judge these men
+to be supermen or superior prevaricators, to put it
+mildly. I worked the job for all I was worth in spite
+of all obstacles, such as the wrath of farmers who had
+been cheated through signing papers, the laughter of
+pretty girls and the teeth of dogs, and sold four books
+in two weeks! At last I struck a farmer who offered
+me a job digging a ditch. I made him a present of my
+“sample copy” and went to work.</p>
+
+<p>A dollar makes an interrogation point with a barb
+on it. About all a farm produced in Winter, those
+days, was enough to eat and drink and something to
+sell for the taxes. The farmer I worked for had a
+red colt that was to settle with the tax man, but just
+before the taxes were due the colt ran away and broke
+his neck. I cannot say that my labor was worth much,
+but education is not one of the few things which come to
+us without money or price. Then I suddenly made the
+discovery that I was “a talented young elocutionist.”
+At least that is what the local paper stated, and do we
+not know that all we see in print must be true? I suppose
+I could tell you of one Christmas long ago that I
+spent as “supe” in a big theater and what befell us behind
+the scenes. At any rate, I could “speak pieces,”
+and I had a long string of them in mind. So what was
+a rather poor mimic in a city became a “talented elocutionist”
+far back over muddy roads. You want to
+remember that this was a long time before the bicycle
+had grown away from the clumsy “velocipede.” There
+were few, if any “good roads.” No one dreamed of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+gasoline engines or automobiles. During an open Winter
+the mud was 10 to 20 inches deep, and every mile
+of travel was to be multiplied by the number of inches
+of mud. Amid such surroundings it is not so hard
+to be known as a “talented elocutionist” when your
+voice is strong, your tongue limber, your memory good,
+and you have had a chance to see and hear some of the
+great actors from behind the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>I made what they called “a big hit” at night, with
+audiences all the way from four or five up to 200. When
+life was dull and blue a neighbor would come with his
+family to our farmhouse and I would sit by the kitchen
+fire and entertain them. Once a farmer had a little
+trouble with his mother-in-law, who seemed to hold the
+mortgage. On his invitation I dropped in one night and
+a few of my “funny pieces” made this good lady laugh
+so that she forgave her son-in-law. Then I was called
+into the chamber of a very sick man to recite several
+“religious pieces.” I shall not soon forget that scene.
+The poor sick man lying there with eyes closed, the
+entire family and some of the neighbors grouped around
+like a company of mourners, and the “talented elocutionist”
+standing by the head of the bed in the gray
+light of the dying day. Yes, sir, the man recovered!
+They have a famous saying here in New York. “It’s
+a great life if you don’t weaken!” I found it so that
+Winter, and as life was young and full ambition had not
+been severely wounded, I did not weaken.</p>
+
+<p>But all this, of course, was mere practice for larger
+occasions. Whenever I could work up a crowd I would
+go about to schoolhouses and churches, entertain as best<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+I could and then “pass the hat”! What evenings they
+were! They were usually in old-fashioned schoolhouses
+with the big iron stove in the center of the room.
+Such houses were rarely used at night, and there would
+be no light except as some of the audience brought
+lamps or candles. The room was usually crowded and
+the stove red-hot. In most cases the meeting would be
+opened with prayer and some local politician might
+make a speech. Then the “talented elocutionist” would
+stand up near the stove. He never was an “impressive
+figure” at his best. In those old days the best he
+could afford was a pair of thick cowhide boots, a second-hand
+coat which came from a long, thin man, and trousers
+evidently made originally for a fat man. Still,
+the light was dim and the speaker remembered hearing
+James E. Murdock say that if you could only put yourself
+into the <i>spirit</i> of your talk the audience would follow
+you there and forget how you looked. I had seen
+a great actor play the part of Fagin in “Oliver Twist,”
+and at these entertainments I tried giving an imitation
+of him, until a big husky farmer tried to whip me. I
+had a job to explain to my friends that he was trying to
+punch Fagin—not me. The audiences knew no middle
+ground. They wanted some burlesque or some tragedy of
+their own lives which would tear at their heartstrings.
+Now and then as I recited in those hot, dim schoolhouses
+the keen humor of the thing would come to me,
+or like a flash the poverty and pathos of my own struggle
+would sweep over me with overwhelming force.
+Then I could feel that audience moving with me and
+for a brief moment I got out of the ditch of life and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+knew the supreme joy of the complete mastery of
+one who can separate the human imagination from
+the flesh and compel it to walk with him where he
+wills.</p>
+
+<p>These moments were all too brief. Back we came
+finally to the dim, stifling room, and the rather ignoble
+and commonplace job of trying to measure the value of
+a thrill by a voluntary contribution. I have had many
+a high hope and many a dream of a new suit of clothes
+blackballed on “passing the hat.” At first, when a man
+got up and said: “Gents, this show is worth a dollar,
+and I will pass the hat,” I took him at his word and expected
+a hat full of bills. Yet even when I shook out
+the lining I could find nothing larger than a dime.
+During that Winter I made a fine collection of buttons.
+It may be that most men want to keep the left hand
+from knowing what the right hand is up to, but evidently
+you must have one hand or the other under public observation
+if you expect much out of the owner. I have
+learned to have no quarrel with human nature, and I
+imagine after all that the hire fitted the value of the
+laborer’s efforts fairly well.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas came to us in that valley with the same
+beautiful message which was carried to all. It was a
+cold Christmas, and as we went about our chores before
+day and at night the stars were brilliant. The
+crinkle of the ice and snow and the hum of the wind
+over the fences and through the trees came to me like the
+murmur of a faraway song. It touched us all. We
+saw each other in something of a new light of glory.
+The woman of the house, I think, regarded me as a sort<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>
+of awkward hired man. Now she seemed to see a boy,
+far from home, struggling with rather feeble hands
+against the flood which swept him away from the ambition
+to earn an education. I am sure that it came to
+her that the Christmas spirit must be capitalized to help
+me on my way. So she organized a big gathering for
+Christmas Eve at which I was to “speak” and accept a
+donation. It was to be over in the next district, and
+that good woman took the sleigh and drove all over that
+county drumming up an “audience.” I am sure that
+there never was a “star” before or since who had such
+an advance or advertising agent as I did on that occasion.
+She was a good trainer, too. The day before
+Christmas I husked corn in the cold barn, and this
+delicate woman ran through the snow with two hot
+biscuits and a piece of meat. There I worked through
+the day husking corn with my hands while I “rehearsed”
+a few new ones with my brain and sent my
+heart way back to New England, where I knew the folks
+were thinking of me.</p>
+
+<p>In these times there would have been a fleet of automobiles
+moored near the farmhouse, but in those days
+no engine had yet coughed out the gasoline in its throat.
+We came in sleighs and big farm “pungs.” Standing
+by the barn in the clear moonlight you could see the
+lanterns gleaming along the road, and hear the tinkle of
+the sleighbells and the songs which the young people
+were singing. Far down the road came a big farm sled
+loaded with young people who were singing “Seeing
+Nellie Home.” Sweet and clear came their fresh young
+voices through the crisp, frosty air:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Her little hand was resting</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">On my arm as light as foam</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">When from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“I was seeing Nellie. I was seeing Nellie.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">’Twas from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I was seeing Nellie home.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The old farmer on the front seat sat nodding his head
+to the music, and his wife beside him took her hand out
+of the muff and slid it under his arm. These were the
+fine old days of simple pleasures, when the country
+entertained itself and was satisfied. The other night
+my young folks took me off to a moving picture theater
+where we saw a great actress portraying human emotion
+in a way to make you shudder. My mind went
+back to my own feeble efforts as a star performer, and
+I was forced to admit that the usual Sunday school
+entertainment could have but a small chance in competition
+with this powerful exhibition. The thing to do is to
+carry this strong attraction to the country and not force
+our young people to travel to the city after it.</p>
+
+<p>Each sleigh brought not only its load of human
+freight, but a big basket of food, for there was to be a
+feast of the body with food as well as of the spirit with
+oratory. As the guest of honor I rode over with one of
+the school trustees, and he proved a good local historian.</p>
+
+<p>“This farm we visit tonight is owned by the Widder
+Fairchild. A nice woman, but homely enough to stop
+a clock. Her father left her the farm, and she got to be
+quite an old maid. We all thought she had settled down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+for such when she up and married the hired man, a nice
+man, but no farmer, and no property except a cough
+and an old aunt mighty nigh bed-ridden. Then the husband
+died and left the old lady on her hands. She
+might have sent the old thing to the poorhouse—ain’t
+no kin of hers—but just because her husband promised
+to keep her, Mrs. Fairchild has kept the old lady on.
+There the two women live on one of the best farms in
+the county.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s the best because the Lord has blessed it.” That
+came from the wife on the back seat. She had tried to
+get in a word before.</p>
+
+<p>“No, no! Farms are made good by hard work and
+judgment. The minister went and talked to her about
+it, but all he got out of her was ‘And Ruth said, Entreat
+me not to leave thee or to return from following
+after thee: for whither thou goest I will go.’”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Henry, ain’t you ’shamed to call her homely?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, because it’s the truth. It wouldn’t be about
+you, now, but I told the minister that once. He has to
+be diplomatic and he hemmed and hawed and finally
+said, ‘She has a strong face.’ He’s right! Mighty
+strong!”</p>
+
+<p>If you ever acted in the capacity of <i>donatee</i> at such a
+party you know the feeling. The big house was filled.
+Out in the kitchen the women sorted out the food
+and arranged it for supper. In the front room, beside
+a little table, sat “the hired man’s old aunt,” a beautiful
+old lady with white hair and a sweet, patient face. On
+the table stood a few house plants in pots. One geranium
+had opened a flower.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The only one in the neighborhood for Christmas,”
+said the old lady. “You don’t know how proud I am
+of it. It has been such a joy to me to see it slowly
+grow, and, oh, think of what it means to have it come at
+Christmas!”</p>
+
+<p>But the donatee has little time for small talk. He
+always earns his donation, and whatever happened to it
+later, I earned it that night. They finally stopped me
+for supper. The minister alluded to it as “the bounteous
+repast which we are now asked to enjoy.” My
+friend the trustee stood by the door and shouted:</p>
+
+<p>“Hoe in—help yourself!”</p>
+
+<p>It was getting on toward Christmas Day when I stood
+up in the corner to end the entertainment. I had intended
+to end with Irwin Russell’s “Christmas Night
+in the Quarters,” with negro dialect, but as I was about
+to start my eye fell upon a group by that little table.
+The “old aunt” sat looking at me, and by her side
+stood the “homely” woman, her hand resting upon the
+older woman’s shoulder. I wonder if you have ever
+had a vision come to you at Christmas—or any other
+time! A great, mysterious, beautiful vision, in which
+you look forward into the years and are given to see
+some great thing which is hidden from most men until
+too late. It came to me as I watched those women that
+the finest test of character, the noblest part of the Christmas
+spirit, was not the glory of caring for helpless childhood,
+but the higher sacrifice of love and duty for the
+aged.</p>
+
+<p>And so, almost before I knew it, I found myself reciting
+Will Carleton’s poem, “Over the Hill to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+Poorhouse!” What a sentiment to bring into a happy
+Christmas party—by the donatee at that—one who had
+been hired “to make them laugh”!</p>
+
+<p>I knew it all, yet my mind jumped across the long
+miles and I thought of my own mother growing old and
+waiting in silence that I might have opportunity!</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Over the hill to the poorhouse</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I’m trudging my weary way.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I a woman of sixty,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Only a trifle gray,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I who am smart and chipper.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">For all the years I’ve told,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">As many another woman</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Only one-half as old.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Over the hill to the poorhouse!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I can’t quite make it clear;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Over the hill to the poorhouse,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">It seems so horrid queer!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Many’s the journey I’ve taken,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Traveling to and fro,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But over the hill to the poorhouse</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">I never once thought I’d go!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was a great 10 minutes. It is worth a good many
+years to have 600 ticks of the clock pass by like that.
+Could all of us have lived, for 10 years with that 10-minute
+feeling—what a neighborhood that would have
+been. I was looking at those two women by the table.
+I saw their hands come together. It is true that the
+trustee had not done great injustice to her appearance,
+but as she stood there by “the hired man’s old aunt”
+there came upon her face a beauty such as God alone
+can bring upon the face of those who are beloved by
+Him. A light from within illuminated her life story,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>
+and I could read it on her face. A love that endures
+after death—until life! And when I stopped I was
+<i>done</i>. The power had all gone from me. Not so with
+my manager, the trustee. He could sense a psychological
+moment even if he could not spell it, and he got his
+hat into action before the rich spirit of that crowd could
+get to the poorhouse. I saw him coming with the hat
+full—there were surely several bills there. Say, did
+you ever spend money before you got your fingers on it?
+I never have since that night. I know better. As I saw
+that money I figured on several Christmas presents, a
+new coat and at least one term at college. The trustee
+cleared his throat for a few remarks and I stood there
+pleasantly expectant, anticipating a few compliments—and
+the money.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, friends, we thank you one and all for your
+generous gift, and we thank our talented young friend
+here for the great assistance he has given us. He will
+rejoice when he learns the full amount, for, my dear
+friends, <i>this money belongs to the Sunday school</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>And he proceeded forthwith to gather up the money
+and stuff it into his pockets, leaving me with my mouth
+half open, and my hand half extended.</p>
+
+<p>What could you do? There was a roar of protest
+from several farmers who demanded their money back,
+though they never got it. Happily the humor of it
+struck me. The first thing that came into my mind was
+an old song I had often heard:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Thou art so near and yet so far!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing like being a good sport, and so I
+bowed and smiled and took my medicine, although I am<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+sure the party would have ended in a fight if I had said
+the word. But the “old aunt” looked at me for a moment
+and then cut off that geranium bloom, tied two
+leaves on it and handed it to me without a word. And
+the woman with the shining face took my hand in both
+hers and said: “Do not get discouraged. I know you
+will win out.”</p>
+
+<p>I rode home with a farmer who, with his two big
+sons, roared profanely at what they called the “injustice
+of that miser.” They vowed to get up another donation,
+which they did later. They offered to go and
+“lick the trustee” and take the money from him. I
+think they were a little disappointed when I told them
+that he needed it more than I did.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, from the way you talk, anybody’d think you
+had fallen heir to a big thing!”</p>
+
+<p>I had. That little flower in my pocket carried a
+Christmas spirit and a Christmas lesson that the whole
+world could not buy. The thing paying the largest
+dividend, the finest companion that ever walked with
+one along the roadway of life—unselfish love, and sacrifice.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="COLUMBUS_DAY">“COLUMBUS DAY”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I would like to know where you are tonight, and what
+you have been doing all through this “Liberty Day.”
+With us the day has been cloudy and wet, and just as
+the sun went down Nature took the liberty of sending a
+cold, penetrating rain. So here I am before my big fire
+with a copy of Washington Irving’s “Life of Christopher
+Columbus.” That seems the proper way to end
+Columbus Day, for in trying to tell the children about
+him I found that I did not really know much more than
+they do about the great discoverer. So here I am back
+some 400 years in history wondering if any of these
+pompous and bigoted ways of seeking for new worlds or
+new methods can be applied to modern life in New
+Jersey.</p>
+
+<p>My back aches, for I have been digging potatoes all
+day—and I thought I had graduated from that job some
+years ago. Perhaps you will say that we should have
+been out selling Liberty bonds or parading. Personally,
+I am a poor salesman, and we all subscribed for our
+bonds some days ago. There are eight bondholders in
+this family. The influenza has left us without labor
+except for the children while the school is closed. There
+are still over 100 barrels of apples to pick, potatoes to
+dig, plowing and seeding to be done, and a dozen other
+jobs all pressing. So I decided to celebrate Liberty Day
+by digging those Bible School potatoes. We planted a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+patch of potatoes between rows of young peach trees
+and promised the crop to the Bible Teachers’ Training
+School. Last year we tried this, and I put in a few of
+the latest scientific touches which the experts told us
+about. The plant lice came in a swarm and ruined the
+patch. We had a few potatoes about the size of marbles.
+This year we avoided scientific advice, and just planted
+potatoes in the old-fashioned way. They were not cultivated
+in the best possible manner, but they made a
+good crop. So when Liberty Day dawned with a thick,
+gray mist over the land I decided to get those potatoes
+out instead of going on the march or singing “The Star
+Spangled Banner.” From what I read of Columbus I
+imagine he would have chosen the parade and left the
+digging to others. The world has taken on new ideas
+about labor since then.</p>
+
+<p>So, after breakfast, Cherry-top and I took our forks
+and started digging. The soil was damp and the air
+full of mist and meanness which made me sneeze and
+cough as we worked on. Happily, out on our hills we
+are not fined $20 for sneezing outside of a handkerchief,
+as is the case in New York. If anyone has discovered
+any poetry or philosophy in the job of digging potatoes
+he may have the floor. I call it about the most menial
+job on the farm, and therefore fine discipline for “Liberty
+Day.” While we were working Philip and the
+larger boy went by with the team to seed rye. They
+have thrashed out enough grain by hand, and this is not
+only ideal weather, but about the last limit for seeding.
+The land was plowed some two weeks ago, a big crop
+of ragweed and grass being turned under. If we only<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>
+had the labor this ground would have been disked twice
+and then harrowed. As it is, we can only work it once
+with the spring-tooth. Then Philip goes ahead seeding
+in the rye by hand, while the boy follows with the Acme
+harrow to cover the grain. It is rough seeding and
+would not answer for wheat, but rye is tough and enduring,
+and it will imitate Columbus and discover a
+new world in that decaying mass of ragweed. So I
+watch the seed sowers travel slowly along the hillside as
+I dig, and wonder what was doing on this farm 427
+years ago, and what will be doing here 100 years hence!
+Such reflections were the most cheerful mental accompaniment
+I could find for digging potatoes. They are
+impractical, while digging is the most practical thing on
+earth!</p>
+
+<p>As we dug on a man and woman came up the lane.
+They came after apples, having engaged them before.
+The boy went down to attend to them, while I kept on
+digging. Then the boy came back with two more apple
+customers. The trouble with us is that we have more
+customers than apples this year, but these were old
+patrons, and they were served. The boy finally came
+back with $41.80 as a result of his trading, and we went
+at our job with new vigor. As we dug along we noticed
+a curious thing about those potatoes. Here and there
+was a vine large and strong, and still perfectly green.
+The great majority of the hills were dead, but those
+green ones were as vigorous as they were in June. The
+variety was Green Mountain, and we soon found that
+on the average these big green vines were producing
+twice as much as the dead hills. Some of these living<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>
+vines carried three or four big potatoes. Others had a
+dozen, with seven or eight of market size, while others
+had about 16 tubers, mostly small. Just why these
+vines should act in this way I do not know. There are
+so many possible reasons that I should have to guess
+at it, as Columbus did when, as his ship sailed on and
+on into the west, the compass began to vary. The boy
+and I decided that here was where we might discover a
+good strain of Green Mountain on Columbus Day. So
+we have selected 15 of the best hills. They will be
+planted, hill by hill, next year and still further selection
+made. We discarded the hills with only a few big
+potatoes and also those with many small ones, and
+selected those with a good number of medium-sized
+tubers. It may come to nothing, but we will try it.
+Experience and careful figures show that an ordinary
+crop of potatoes in this country does not pay. The
+same is true of a flock of ordinary poultry, or a drove
+of scrub pigs. There is no profit except in well-bred,
+selected stock. That’s what we think we have in pigs
+and poultry—perhaps we may get something of the
+same thing in potatoes.</p>
+
+<p>But there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you
+work up a great appetite. At noon there came a
+most welcome parade up the lane. It was not a woman
+suffrage procession, but Mother, Aunt Eleanor, Rose
+and the little girls bringing the picnic dinner in baskets
+and pails. The boy had built a fire up above the Spring
+and piled stones up around it. By the time I had
+washed my hands and face in the brook Mother had a
+frying pan over this fire with slices of bacon sizzling and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+giving up their fat. When this bacon was brown the
+slices were taken out and the fat kept on bubbling and
+dancing. Then Aunt Eleanor cut up slices of Baldwin
+apples and dropped them into this fat. They tell me
+Ben Davis is best for this fried-apple performance, but
+I found no fault with Baldwin as it jumped out of that
+fat. The chemist will no doubt explain how the bacon
+fat combined with the acid of the apple, etc., etc., etc.
+Let him talk; it does him good—but have another fried
+apple! Men may come and men may go, but they will
+seldom find more appetizing food or a more perfect balanced
+ration than the Hope Farmers discovered around
+that fire. There were bread and butter, fried bacon,
+fried apple, pot cheese and several of our choice Red
+hen’s eggs boiled hard and chopped fine with a little
+onion. Of course, eggs are worth good and great money
+just now, but nothing is too good for an occasion like
+this. And so, on that cheerless day, sitting around our
+fire, we all concluded that Columbus did a great thing
+when he discovered America.</p>
+
+<p>But our job was not to be ended by eating fried
+apples and bacon, pleasant as that occupation is, and
+when I put out my hand I was obliged to admit that the
+first faint evidence of rain was beginning. The larger
+boy went back to his rye seeding, and very soon Tom and
+Broker could be seen on the lower farm pounding back
+and forth over the field like gray giants hauling up
+the guns. All hands went to picking up potatoes.
+Mother picked two bushels and then had to go back to
+her housework. Little Rose claimed that she picked up
+20 potatoes. Her chief job was to hold on to her throat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>
+and ask if it was not time to eat one more of those
+sweet throat tablets I had in my pocket. The rain
+slowly developed from mist to good-sized drops. I know
+what it means to get wet, and in any other cause I
+would have left the job, but we were there to finish those
+potatoes, and we stayed by it until they were all picked
+up. The last barrel or two came up out of the mud, and
+our hands and feet were surely plastered with common
+clay—but we finished our job. Then came the boys
+with Broker and the fruit wagon to carry the crop to
+the barn. One of these boys had on a rubber coat—the
+other a sack over his shoulders. They went on up
+the hill to get a load of apples and on their way back
+brought down the Bible potatoes, where they will dry
+out and be ready for delivery. When we got to the
+barn there was another party after apples.</p>
+
+<p>We finished it all at last, dried off before the fire and
+found ourselves none the worse for the day. In the
+present condition of my back I would not from choice
+go to a dance tonight, but that will limber out in time.
+The fire roars away, the rain taps at the window, and
+we are safe and warm. We have had our supper, and
+I suppose I could tell where Aunt Eleanor has hidden
+a pan of those famous ginger cookies. I will make it a
+one to five chance that I can also find a pan of baked
+apples. I think I will not reveal the secret publicly
+at this time. The Food Administrator might accuse her
+of using too much ginger or sweetening! School has
+been closed on account of the influenza, but the children
+are still working their “examples,” and I give them a
+few original sums to work out. Little Rose listens<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+to all this, and finally proposes this one of her own:</p>
+
+<p>“If a woman paid three cents at a hospital for a
+baby, how much would a horse cost?”</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I will give that up, and go back to the
+“Life of Columbus.” The most interesting thing to
+me is the account of the council of wise men to whom
+Columbus tried to explain his theories. They told him
+that since the old philosophers and wise men had not
+discovered any new world, it was great presumption for
+an ordinary man to claim that there remained any great
+discovery for him to make. Seems to me I have heard
+that same argument ever since I was able to read and
+understand. Perhaps it is well that all who come, like
+Columbus, with a theory and vision of new worlds must
+fight and endure and suffer before the slow and prejudiced
+public will give them a chance. But here comes
+a message for me to come upstairs and see a strange
+thing. Little Rose cannot have her own way, and she
+has gone into a passion altogether too big for her little
+frame. She will not even let me come near her, and
+back I come a little sadly to my book and my fire. They
+are not quite so satisfying as before. But who comes
+here? It is Mother carrying a very pink and repentant
+morsel of humanity—little Rose. She hunts up my electric
+hearing device and with the ear piece at my ear I
+hear a trembly little voice saying:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>I’s awful sorry!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And that is a fine ending for Liberty Day. Perhaps,
+like Columbus on that fateful night at the end of his
+voyage, this little one sees the first faint light of a new
+world! Who knows?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_COMMENCEMENT">THE COMMENCEMENT</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">You could hardly have crowded another human into
+the great hall. From the gowned and decorated dignitaries
+on the stage to the great orchestra in the upper
+gallery every square foot of floor space was packed, as
+the president of the great woman’s college arose to open
+the commencement exercises. This followed one of the
+most impressive scenes I have ever witnessed. The
+great audience had been waiting long beyond the appointed
+time for starting, when suddenly the orchestra
+started a slow and stately march and we all rose. A
+dignified woman in cap and gown, with soft gray hair,
+marched slowly up the aisle, and following her came
+long lines of “sweet girl graduates,” as Tennyson puts
+it. The woman walked to the steps which led to the
+stage, and standing there reviewed the long lines of girls
+as they filed silently in and occupied the seats reserved
+for them. In their black gowns and white bands they
+seemed, as they were, a trained and steadfast army. As
+they seated themselves and rose again it seemed like the
+swelling of a great ocean tide. And following them
+came men and women who had gained distinction in education
+or public life. They, too, were in cap and gown,
+with bands of red, purple, white, green or brown, to
+designate their college or their studies. The bright sunshine
+flooded in at the open windows. Outside, the
+beautiful green college campus stretched away in gently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+rolling mounds and little valleys. I noticed a robin
+perched on a tree with his head on one side, calmly
+viewing the great professor who with the bright red
+band across his breast was delivering the address. Very
+likely this wise bird was saying, “You should not be
+too proud of that dash of red on your gown. There are
+others! Your red badge is man made. It will not
+appear on your children, and it may even be taken from
+you. The red on my breast is a finger-print of Nature,
+and cannot be removed.”</p>
+
+<p>I know that there are those who would call this impressive
+service mere pomp and vain parade, yet, to the
+plain man and woman sitting in the front row of the
+balcony, it all seemed a noble part of a great proceeding,
+and a great pride for them. Just where the balcony
+curved around like a horseshoe this gray-haired couple
+sat—just like hundreds of other men and women who, in
+other places, with strange thought in mind, were watching
+their boys and girls pass out of training into the race
+of life. The Hope Farm man is supposed to be a
+farmer, and “as the husband so the wife is.” He
+worked out as hired man for some years and otherwise
+qualified for the position, while Mother probably never
+saw a working farm before she was married. But at
+any rate there they were—like the hundreds of other
+plain men and women, while down below them the best
+work of their lives was coming to fruition. For the
+daughter was part of that army in cap and gown and
+was about to receive her certificate of education!</p>
+
+<p>To me one of the most interesting characters in the
+universe is “the hen with one chicken”! These women<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+with one child of their own! Having added just one
+volume to the book of life it is their duty and privilege
+to regard it as a masterpiece. When you come to
+think of it, what a day, what a moment, that must have
+been for a woman like Mother. Here was her only
+child, a girl who, from the cradle, had never given her
+a moment’s uneasiness or a single lapse of confidence,
+now standing up big and straight and fine to take her
+college degree. It had been the dream of Mother’s girlhood
+to go through this same great college, but that
+had been denied her. Yet the years had swung around
+in their relentless march and here was her daughter,
+big, trained, fine and unspoiled, making noble use of the
+opportunity which failed to knock at her mother’s door!
+Many of you women who read this will know that there
+can be no prouder moment in a woman’s life. Is it
+any wonder that there was a very suspicious moisture
+on Mother’s glasses as the minister read the 25th chapter
+of St. Matthew?</p>
+
+<p>“<i>And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in
+the earth.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Would you not, as she did, have sung with all your
+power when that great audience rose like a mighty wave
+to sing “The Star Spangled Banner”? The members
+of the orchestra stood up to play the tune. As you
+know, a group of musicians will usually show a large
+proportion of European faces, but all these markings of
+foreign blood faded away as they played, and there came
+upon each countenance the light of what we call
+<i>Americanism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But what about “father” at such a time and place?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span>
+Where does <i>he</i> come in? At a woman’s college he stays
+out—he is a mere incident, and properly so. If he is
+wise he will accept the situation. For this big girl
+marching in line has his shoulders and head; she walks
+as he does, and people are kind enough to remark, “How
+much your daughter looks like you!” Now this is no
+fly in the ointment of Mother’s pride and joy, unless
+you refer to it too much. Far better take a back seat
+and let the good lady take full pride in her daughter.
+I confess that when those 200 girls sat together at the
+front of the room, all in cap and gown, and most of
+them with their hair arranged alike, I could not be sure
+of my own girl until her name was called! My mind
+was back in the years busy with many memories. More
+than a full generation ago at an agricultural college I
+walked up to receive my “certificate.” I remember
+that I had on some clothes which had been discarded
+by two other men. I played the part of tailor to clean
+and press them into service. There were no be-gowned
+and decorated dignitaries on the platform—just a few
+farmers, several of them right out of the harvest field.
+I remember how two of these tired men fell asleep
+through our class “orations.” I had in my pocket just
+enough money to get me to a farm where I had agreed
+to cut corn. And this proud and happy lady beside me!
+At just about the same time she was graduating from a
+normal college at the South. She was then a mere
+slip of a pretty girl, not out of her ’teens, with a plain
+white dress and a bright ribbon, and no “graduation
+present” but the bare price of a ticket home. And
+within a few weeks she was off, giving the acid test to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+her certificate of education by teaching school in Texas!
+What a world it all is anyway! The years had ironed
+out the rather poor scientific farmer and the smart
+girl teacher into the parents of this young woman who,
+as we fondly hope, has adopted the good qualities of
+both sides of the house and cast out the poor ones. A
+great world, certainly a good world, and probably a wise
+one!</p>
+
+<p>The orator of the day made an impressive speech. He
+made a powerful comparison between Crœsus, the rich
+Persian king, and Leonidas, the Greek hero. Then he
+compared the life of the Emperor Tiberius with that
+of Jesus. It was a powerful plea for a life of service—for
+making full use of training and culture. I saw
+my old friend the robin on his perch outside regarding
+the orator critically. I take him to be one of these exponents
+of a “practical” education. Very likely he
+was saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Very fine! Very fine! ‘Words, my lord, words.’
+But if I had a daughter I would want more of housekeeping
+and practical homemaking in her education.
+With all your culture and literature you cannot build a
+house as my daughter can. You cannot tell when it is
+time to go South, as we can, nor can you defend yourself
+against enemies as we are able to do. All very fine,
+no doubt, for human beings, but if birds were educated
+with any such ideas the race would be extinct in three
+generations. Reading, writing and housekeeping are
+the only things that women need to know.”</p>
+
+<p>I have heard human robins talk in just exactly that
+way, and for many years the world listened to them and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>
+believed what they said. Their talk was about like the
+song of the robin, only not 10 per cent as musical.
+They were opposed to the “educated” woman, and most
+of all to the woman’s college. There are still some of
+these pessimists left. I thought of one in particular
+as one by one those girls stood up to receive their
+diplomas—and the robin flew away in disgust. Woman
+can never again be set aside as a slave or underling or
+inferior partner of man. She has a right to the best
+there is in life. Some of those who read this will say,
+“What will become of farming if our country women
+get the idea that they are entitled to education and culture,
+as others are?” Farming will be better off than
+ever before, because when our women get this idea firmly
+in mind we shall all proceed to demand the things which
+will enable us to give opportunity to every country girl.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the wonderful changes in the past 25 years,
+few have been so remarkable as the growth of opportunity
+for women. The full ballot is now to be given
+them, and the war opened many a door of industry.
+Those doors cannot be shut. They have lost their hinges.
+A new element is coming into business and political
+life. I do not think we need new development of science
+or mechanical skill half as much as we need vision,
+poetry and the finer imagination. It must be said that
+while man alone has done wonders in developing material
+power he has failed to combine it with spiritual
+power. That is what we need today more than anything
+else, and I think the finely educated women are
+to bring it. I was thinking about this all through that
+great day. Suppose my daughter and the 200 other<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>
+graduates had all been trained as lawyers, doctors, business
+women, etc.; would they really benefit the world
+more than they will now do with broad, strong culture
+and with minds stored with the best that literature can
+give them? I doubt it. No matter what they may do
+hereafter, their lives and their influence will be strong
+for this sort of training. I can hardly think of any
+better missionary to go into a country neighborhood to
+live than one of these hopeful, trained and useful young
+women. Mother selected the college for her daughter
+before that young person was out of her cradle. I
+thought some more practical training would be better,
+but I never had a chance to argue. I now conclude that
+Mother was right. She knew what she was doing, and
+evidently sized up the spirit of her own flesh and blood.
+If you ask me what I think is the finest thing about a
+college education I can quickly tell you. It is having a
+son or daughter go through a great college with credit
+and come out wholly unspoiled by the process. It seems
+to me that most people use the college as a trading place
+in life. They bring away from it knowledge and culture,
+but they leave behind too much of youth, too much
+of the plain home life, too much of the simple, homely,
+kindly things which the world needs and longs for. So
+that we may all pardon Mother her pride and satisfaction
+as she looks down upon this big girl in cap and
+gown and knows that her daughter has mastered the
+course at a great college and still remains <i>her daughter</i>,
+with a sane and fine understanding of her relations to
+the home and to society.</p>
+
+<p>Ideals are what count. One of the most beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span>
+ceremonies of this commencement was the placing of
+the laurel chain. The senior class, dressed in white,
+marched to the grave where lies the founder of the
+college, carrying a great chain or wreath of laurel.
+While the students sang, these seniors draped the laurel
+around the little fence which enclosed the grave. It
+was as if the youngest daughter of the college had come
+to pay reverence to the founder. A beautiful ceremony,
+and after it was over I went back and copied the inscription
+on one side of the little monument. I have
+seen nothing finer as a message to educated youth.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>There is nothing in the universe that I fear but
+that I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do it.</i>”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ORGANIZATION">“ORGANIZATION”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The other day a city man came to the farm after apples.
+He loaded up his car and, rendered good-natured by
+eating three mellow Baldwins, he proceeded to tell us
+where farmers were behind the times. It is a pleasure
+for many city men to do this and the average farmer
+good-naturedly listens, always glad to have his customers
+enjoy themselves. This man said he wondered why
+farmers have never organized properly so as to defend
+and control their business. It is quite easy for a man
+of large affairs to see what could be done if all the
+farmers could get together in a great business organization.</p>
+
+<p>“The trouble with you folks is that you don’t know
+how to do team work,” said my city friend. “Suppose
+there are twelve million farmers in the country. Suppose
+they all joined and organized and pledged by all
+they hold sacred to each put up $5.00 every month as a
+working fund. Suppose they hired the greatest organizing
+brain in the country and instructed its owner and
+carrier to go to it. It would simply mean world control
+by the most patient and deserving class on earth.
+Why don’t you do it?”</p>
+
+<p>That’s the way your city business man talks, and he
+cannot understand why our farmers do not promptly
+carry out the plan. Of course that word “suppose”
+takes the bottom out of most facts, but it is hard for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+the business man to realize why farmers have not been
+able to do full team work. This man said that large
+business enterprises in the city were controlled by
+boards of directors. There might be men on the board
+who personally hated each other with all the intensity
+of business hatred. Yet when it came to a matter of
+business policy for the company they all got together
+and put the proposition through. He said it was different
+with a farmer, who if he had trouble with his neighbor
+over a line fence would not under any circumstances
+vote for him even if he stood for a sound business
+proposition.</p>
+
+<p>That is the way many of these city men feel. It is
+largely a matter of ignorance through not understanding
+country conditions. Those of us who spend our lives
+among the hills can readily understand why it is hard
+for a farmer to surrender a large share of his individuality
+and put it into the contribution box of society.
+Many of us, I fear, would dodge or cheat the contribution
+box in church unless we felt we were under the watchful
+eye of our wives. Possibly we shall contribute more
+freely to society now that our wives and daughters have
+the privilege of voting. When a man has lived his life
+among brick and stone with ancestors who have been
+constantly warned to “keep off the grass” he comes to
+be incapable of understanding what is probably the
+greatest problem of American society. That is the
+effort to keep our country people contented and feeling
+that they are getting a fair share of life, so that they
+will continue cheerfully to feed and clothe the world.
+You cannot convince a man unless you can understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+his language or read his thought. One of the worst misfortunes
+of the present day is the fact that city and
+country have grown apart, so that they have no common
+language.</p>
+
+<p>Those of us who live close to Nature realize that in
+order to know the truth we must find</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Tongues in trees, Books in running Brooks,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The trouble with the city man is that he has been
+denied the blessed privilege of studying that way.
+Therefore, if you would make him know why in the
+past it has been so difficult for farmers to organize
+thoroughly you must go to the primary motives of life
+and not to the high school.</p>
+
+<p>When our first brood of children were small, I
+thought it well to give them an early lesson in organization.
+There were four children, and as Spring came
+upon us there was a great desire to start a garden. So
+we proceeded in the most orderly manner to organize the
+Hope Farm Garden Association. We had a constitution
+and full set of rules and by-laws. These stated the
+full duties of all the officers, but somehow we forgot to
+provide for the plain laborers. The largest boy was
+President and the smaller boy was Vice-President. My
+little girl was Secretary, and the other girl Treasurer.
+It was an ideal arrangement, for each one held an important
+office, and all were directors. I had a piece of
+land plowed and harrowed. I bought seeds and tools
+and the Association voted to start the garden at once.
+They started under directions of the President and I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>
+went up the hill to work in the orchard. It proved
+to be a case where the controlling director should have
+remained on the job. Halfway up the hill I glanced
+back and saw the Hope Farm Garden Association headed
+for the rocks. The President and Vice-President were
+fighting and the Treasurer and Secretary were crying.
+No one was working except the black hen, and she was
+industriously eating up the seeds.</p>
+
+<p>I came back to save the Association if possible and
+the Secretary ran to meet me with the minutes of the
+meeting on her cheeks. Her hands had been in the soil
+and she had succeeded in transferring a portion of it
+to her face. Through this deposit the tears had forced
+their way in a track as crooked as the course of the
+Delaware River, in its effort to carve the outline of
+a human face on the western coast of New Jersey.
+The poor little Secretary came up the lane with the
+old industrial cry which has come down to us out of the
+ages, tearing apart the efforts of men to combine and
+improve their condition.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Oh! Father, don’t the President have to work?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The minutes of the meeting clearly revealed the trouble.
+It seemed that the President of the Association
+made the broad claim that his duty consisted simply in
+being President. There was nothing in the constitution
+about his working. Of course, a dignified President
+could not perform manual labor. The Secretary
+followed with the claim that her duty was to write in
+a book; how could she do that if she worked? Then
+came the Treasurer proving by the by-laws that her duty
+was to hold the money; if she tried to work at the same<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>
+time she might lose the cash. So naturally she could not
+work. Thus it happened that there was no laborer left
+except the Vice-President. He had resigned and the
+President was trying to accept his resignation in italics.</p>
+
+<p>These were the same children who had settled a debate
+on the previous Sunday afternoon. The question
+was whether they would rather have the minister read
+his sermon or talk off-hand. The vote was 3 to 1 in
+favor of having him read it. The prevailing argument
+was that when the minister read his sermon he knew
+when he got through. The one negative vote was passed
+on the hope that when he talked off-hand he might
+be a little off-head, forget one or two pages and thus
+get through sooner. You may learn from that one
+reason why it has been so hard in the past for certain
+farmers to organize.</p>
+
+<p>And one reason why there has grown up an industrial
+advantage in the town and city may perhaps be
+learned from another sermon in stones. Some years ago
+we had two boys on the farm. Largely in order to
+keep them busy their mother made a bargain with
+them to wash windows. They were to be paid so much
+for each window properly cleaned. Of course their
+mother supposed that the work would be done in the
+good old-fashioned way of scrubbing the glass by hand
+with a wet cloth. The object was more to keep them
+busy than to have any skilled work performed. One
+boy was a patient plodding character who did not object
+seriously to hand labor. He took a cloth and a pail of
+hot water and slowly and carefully rubbed off the glass
+in the old-fashioned way. The other boy never did like<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>
+to work and after some thought he went to the neighbor’s
+and borrowed a small hand-pump with a hose and fine
+nozzle. He filled this with hot water with the soap dissolved
+in it and sprayed his windows with the hot mixture.
+He got them just as clean as the other boy did,
+but he did three windows while his companion was doing
+one. Then there arose an argument as to whether this
+boy with the pump should be paid the same price per
+window as the other boy who did the work by hand.
+These boys both went to the Sunday school and the
+boy with the pump was able to refer to the parable of
+the man who hired the workmen at different hours
+during the day. When they came to settle up the men
+who had worked all day grumbled because they got no
+more than the men who had worked half a day. The
+answer of the boss applied to this window washing.
+“Did I not agree with thee for a penny?”</p>
+
+<p>Now in a way the city man with his advantage in
+labor is not unlike the boy with the pump. The city
+workman has been able to take advantage of many industrial
+developments of much machinery which has
+not yet reached the country. Some day there will be
+an adjustment and then the countryman will have his
+inning.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago I spent the night with a farmer far
+back in a country neighborhood. After supper he described
+in great detail a plan he had evolved for organizing
+all American farmers in one great and powerful
+body. His plan was complete and he had worked out
+every detail except one which he did not seem to think
+essential. I looked out of the window through the dark<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span>
+night and saw a light far down the road. Some neighbor
+was at home. I thought it a good time for action.</p>
+
+<p>“There,” I said, “is a chance to start this big
+scheme of yours. Down the road I see the light from
+your neighbor’s window. Put on your hat, take the
+hired man and your boys and we will go right down
+there and organize the first chapter of this organization.
+No time like the present.”</p>
+
+<p>The farmer’s face clouded. “Why, I haven’t spoken,
+to that man for three years. He would not keep up the
+line fence and I had to go to law and make him do it.”</p>
+
+<p>I looked out of the window once more and saw another
+light to the north of us dimly visible in the darkness.
+“Well, then let us go to this other neighbor. I saw
+several men there as I came by.”</p>
+
+<p>“That man! I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents,
+and he would be sure to elect himself Treasurer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, far across the pasture I see still another light.
+Shall we go there?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the
+house when it rains.”</p>
+
+<p>The farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to
+speak, but the man answered for her.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the women meet at the sewing circle and church,
+and while they talk about each other they keep together
+and do things for the neighborhood, but somehow the
+men folks don’t get on.”</p>
+
+<p>Yet here was a man who planned to bring all the
+farmers of the country together and yet could not
+organize his own neighborhood, because men were kept
+apart by little prejudices and fancied wrongs. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>
+women combined because they knew enough to realize
+that these petty things were non-essential, while the
+great community things could only be remembered by
+forgetting the meanness of every-day life.</p>
+
+<p>Your city men will smile at this sermon in stones,
+and say that those farmers never can forget their differences
+and organize. Yet city life is worse yet.
+Many a man lives for years within a foot of his neighbor,
+yet never knows him. There may be only a brick
+wall between the two families, yet they might as well
+be 10 miles apart, so far as any community feeling is
+concerned. If dwellers on any block in the city could
+combine as a renting or buying association they would
+quickly settle the High Cost of Living burden, but while
+their interests are all in common they are unable to play
+the part of real neighbors. Farmers are coming to it
+largely through their women and children and the great
+National Farm Organization is by no means impossible
+for the future.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FACE_OF_LIBERTY">THE FACE OF LIBERTY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I suppose every person of middle age wears a mask.
+It is his face, and as the years go by it settles into an
+expression of the man’s chief aim in life, if he can be
+said to have one. That is why a shrewd observer can
+usually tell much of a man’s character by looking keenly
+in his face and observing him under excitement. One
+of the most observing dairymen I know of says he can
+tell the quality of a cow by looking at her face. I notice
+that the expert hen men who select birds for the poultry
+contest spend considerable time looking at the hen’s
+eye and face! There she seems to show whether she is
+a bad egg or a good one! Lady Macbeth put it well
+when she said to her terrified husband:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent2">“Your face, my thane, is as a book</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where men may read strange matters.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We all go about wearing a mask, and those who care
+how they look may well ask how the mask is made.</p>
+
+<p>I once roomed with a young man who used to get
+before a mirror and practise a smile and a laugh. He
+was a commercial traveler, and thought it paid him to
+laugh at the jokes and smile as he talked. So he trained
+the muscles of his face and throat into a machine-made
+twist and noise which represented his stock in trade!
+He wore a mask. I have heard people say that the face
+powders and massage and tricks of rolling the eyes about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span>
+gave them a mask of beauty. Not long ago I talked
+with a great business man who had simply given his life
+up to the accumulation of property. He had succeeded,
+but this success had stamped his face with a mask as
+hard and flinty as steel. This man sat and told me that a
+good share of his money had been made by his ability to
+read character in the face. When he found a man showing
+indecision or fear in his features this man knew he
+could handle him as he saw fit. He claimed that thought
+or sentiment had little to do with it; it was simply what
+a man did or did not do which made the mask of life.
+As for this theory that character or sentiment “light a
+candle behind the face and illuminate it,” he said that
+was simply “poetic nonsense.” “If a woman wanted to
+be thought beautiful after she got to be forty she must
+rub the beauty in from the outside.”</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to me a mighty cynical theory, for the
+most beautiful women I know of are over fifty and never
+use anything but soap and water to “rub the beauty
+in.” They wear a mask which seems like concentrated
+sunshine, and it comes from within. Yet my friend
+sat there and spoke with all the conviction of a man who
+has only to write his name on a piece of paper to bring
+a million dollars to support his word. And he had come
+to think that is about the only support worth having.
+I asked him if he had ever read Hawthorne’s story
+of “The Old Stone Face.” No, he had never heard of
+it before—had no time for fiction or dreaming. So I
+told him the story briefly; of the boy who grew up
+among the hills, within sight of the “old stone face.”
+This was a great rock on the side of a high mountain.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span>
+The wind and the storm had slowly eaten it away until,
+when viewed from a certain angle, it bore a rude resemblance
+to a human face. It was a stern, gloomy,
+thoughtful face, and it seemed to this boy to have been
+carved out of the rock by the very hand of God to show
+the world an ideal of power and majesty on the human
+countenance. To most of the neighbors it was merely
+“the old man of the mountain”—merely a common
+rock with an accidental shape. But this boy grew up to
+manhood believing in his heart that God had put on the
+lonely mountain his ideal of the mask of noble human
+character. And the boy went through life thinking that
+if he could only find a human being with a face like
+that on the mountain he would find a great man—one
+carrying in his life a great message to mankind. And
+so, whenever he heard of any great statesman or poet or
+preacher appearing anywhere within reach this man
+traveled to see him in the hope of finding the mask of
+the “stone face” upon the celebrity. He was always
+disappointed. These great men all showed on their faces
+the marks of dissipation or pride or some weakness of
+character, along with their power. He would come
+back and look up at the face on the mountain—always
+showing the same calm dignity and strength whether
+the happy June sunshine played over it, or whether the
+January storm bit at its rude features. So this man
+lived his simple life and died—disappointed because he
+had never been able to find God’s ideal character worked
+out in a human face! One by one men who were considered
+great came to the valley, only to disappoint him,
+but finally, after long years of waiting and searching,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>
+the neighbors suddenly found that their friend, who had
+carried the ideal so long in his heart, also carried on his
+face the nobility and grandeur of the figure on the mountain.
+Search for the ideal in others had brought it home
+to his own life.</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise, the rich and strong man who, I
+supposed, had no poetry or sentiment in his heart,
+listened attentively and nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>“I have seen that stone face in the White Mountains.
+Your story of course is a mere fancy. There
+might have been some idle dreamer to whom that happened.
+I will not deny it, because I know of a case
+which is somewhat in the same line. I confess that I
+would not believe it had I not seen it myself.”</p>
+
+<p>So he told his story, and I give it as nearly as possible
+in his own words:</p>
+
+<p>“It must have been fifteen years ago that I was returning
+from a business trip to Europe. On the boat I
+met a college man from my city, an expert in modern
+languages. We were much together on the trip, and
+one day we went down into the steerage to look over the
+immigrants. My friend figured that this group of
+strange human beings talked with him in fifteen different
+languages or dialects. One family in particular
+interested me. They were from the south of Poland;
+a man and woman of perhaps thirty-five, with two little
+boys. They were of the dull, heavy, ox-like type—mere
+beasts of burden in their own country. The woman
+seemed to me just about the plainest, homeliest creature
+I had ever seen. Low forehead, flat features, small eyes
+and great mouth, with huge hands and feet, she seemed,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+beside the dainty women of our own party, like some
+inferior animal. I offered her a good-sized bill—they
+looked as if they needed it—but the woman just pulled
+her two black-eyed boys closer to her and refused to
+take it.</p>
+
+<p>“They passed out of my mind, until one fine, sunny
+morning old Sandy Hook seemed to rise up out of the
+water, and we headed straight for New York Harbor.
+I stood with my college friend in front, looking down
+upon the steerage passengers as they crowded forward
+to get their first view of America. Strangely enough
+that little Polish family that had interested me stood
+right below us, and my friend could hear what they
+were saying. The ship crawled up the harbor, past
+Staten Island, and then came to the Statue of Liberty.
+Most of us have become so familiar with this bronze
+beauty that we do not even glance at it. I think her
+strong, fine face and uplifted torch mean little more than
+old-time habit to many Americans. Not so with that
+flat-faced, plain Polish woman. As we came even with
+the ‘bronze goddess’ this woman tore off the little shawl
+she had tied around her head, reached out her hand
+and talked excitedly to her husband. My college friend
+listened to the conversation and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What is she saying?’ I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Why, the poor, homely thing is telling her husband
+that it would be the pride and joy of her life if
+she could only be as beautiful as that statue—if her
+face were only like that.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘That is the limit. What is <i>he</i> saying?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Just like every other husband. He is telling her<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+that to him she is handsomer than the old goddess, and
+for good measure he tells her that under freedom in
+America she will come to look like “Miss Liberty.”’</p>
+
+<p>“In all my life I had never heard anything so ridiculous,
+and I laughed aloud. The little family below us
+looked up at the sound and saw we were laughing at
+them. A great shadow fell over their day dream and
+they were silent until we docked, though I noticed
+that they stood hand in hand all the way. The story
+seemed so good that I told it everywhere, and it was
+called the standard joke of the season.</p>
+
+<p>“It faded out of mind and I never thought of it
+again until about ten years later one of the foremen in
+the factory died suddenly. I asked the manager who
+should be put in his place.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a man out in the shop
+just fitted for it. I can’t pronounce his name, but I
+will bring him in.’</p>
+
+<p>“He did; a great black-haired man who looked me
+right in the eye as I like to have people do.</p>
+
+<p>“‘How long have you been in this country?’ I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Ten years. You may not remember, but I came
+in the ship with you; in the steerage, with my wife
+and two boys.’</p>
+
+<p>“It flashed into my mind at once; this was what
+America had done for the man. I smiled as I thought
+of the flat-faced woman who wanted to look like the
+Goddess of Liberty, and the man whose faith in America
+was such that he told her this dream could come true.</p>
+
+<p>“The man more than made good. It is wonderful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span>
+how things happen in this country. Those two black-eyed
+boys were at school with my boy and played on
+the football team with him. They were all three to go
+to college together.</p>
+
+<p>“Then you know how, before we entered the war,
+the women organized to do Red Cross work? One day
+my wife came home and told me how a Polish woman
+had made the most wonderful talk before her society.
+Before we knew it America had entered the war, and
+we were all at it. You couldn’t keep my boy here. He
+volunteered the first week after war was declared, and
+these two black-haired boys belonging to my foreman
+volunteered with him, and they all went over the sea
+to fight for America.</p>
+
+<p>“I had not seen their mother, and I was curious to
+see what she looked like after American competence
+and success had been rubbed in. We had a big
+parade in our town during one of the Liberty Loan
+drives, and there was one division of women who carried
+service flags. I stood in the window of my club watching
+the parade, and as it happened within six feet of
+me on the sidewalk stood John, my foreman. I did
+not laugh this time, nor was he shamed into silence for
+what he thought of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, how that war did stir up and level the elements
+of American society! There passed before us
+in parade, side by side, my wife with a service flag
+of one star and John’s wife with two stars in her
+flag! And as they passed they turned and looked at
+us. My wife told me later that they had been talking
+as they marched. My wife had asked her comrade if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span>
+she did not feel dreadfully to think of her two great
+boys far away in France. And the woman with the
+flat, homely face had answered:</p>
+
+<p>“‘No, I feel glorified to think that I, the poor immigrant
+woman, can offer my boys in part payment for
+what America has done for me and my people.’</p>
+
+<p>“And it was just then that I saw her face. I give
+you my word that at that moment it was the most beautiful
+face I ever saw. There was a calm beauty and
+dignity, a light of joy upon it which made me forget
+the flat nose, the narrow forehead and the great mouth.
+They passed on, and John, the foreman, looked up at
+me. We were both thinking the same thing, master and
+man though we were. I couldn’t reach him with my
+hand, but I did say:</p>
+
+<p>“‘John, she has had her life wish. She has come
+to look like the Goddess of Liberty. It was a miracle.’</p>
+
+<p>“And John answered in his slow, thoughtful way:</p>
+
+<p>“‘No, not a miracle—always she has had that great
+spirit in her heart; always that great love in her soul.
+She has kept that love and spirit pure all through these
+hard years, and now at the great sacrifice it shone out
+through her face. Said I not right that my wife would
+come to be the most beautiful woman on earth?’”</p>
+
+<p>My friend told the story in a matter-of-fact way, and
+then fell into a silence. I did not ask him how he reconciled
+this experience with his statement that beauty is
+rubbed in from the outside. It wasn’t worth while; we
+both knew better. The face of mature years is a mask.
+It is the candle behind it that gives it character and
+beauty.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CAPTAIN_RANDALLS_HOUR">CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Uncle Isaac Randall was the last Grand Army man
+in our town. All the other old comrades had passed on.
+As a boy I used to try to imagine what “the last Grand
+Army man” would be like. Poets and artists have
+tried to picture him, but when he actually appears you
+know how far the real must travel to reach the ideal.
+For poet and artist would have us look upon some calm,
+dignified man, carried by the wings of great achievement
+far above the mean and petty things of life which
+surround us like a thick fog in a narrow valley. For
+that, I fear, is what most of us find life to be unless the
+memory of some great sacrifice or some great devotion
+can lift our heads up into the perpetual sunshine. Those
+who knew Uncle Isaac saw little of the hero about him.
+He was just a little, thin, nervous man, very deaf, irritable
+and disappointed. No one can play the part of
+a deaf man with any approach to success unless he be a
+genuine philosopher, and Uncle Isaac was unfitted by
+nature for that. Sometimes in Summer, when the sun
+went down, you would see the old man standing in the
+barn looking off to the crimson West, over the purpling
+hills where the shadows came creeping up from the valley.
+A man with some poetry and philosophy would
+have seen in the darkening notch where the hills gave
+way, to let the road pass through, an approach to the
+beautiful gate through which wife and children and old<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span>
+comrades had passed on, to wait for him beyond the
+hills. But Uncle Isaac was cursed with that curiosity
+which is the torture of the deaf—he saw the hired man
+up on the hill talking to the neighbor’s boy, and his
+burning desire was to know what they were talking
+about as they stood in the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>The Great War came, and Uncle Isaac’s two grandsons
+volunteered. Before they shipped overseas they
+came back to the farm—very trim and natty in their
+brown uniforms. It irritated the old man to think that
+these boys—hardly more than babies—hardly to be
+trusted to milk a kicking cow—should be sent to fight
+America’s battles. And those little rifles! They were
+not much better than popguns, compared with his old
+army musket. The old man took the gun down from
+the nail where it had hung for years. He had kept it
+polished, and the lock with its percussion cap was still
+working. He would show these young sniffs what real
+warfare meant. So they went out in the pasture—the
+old soldier carrying his musket, carefully loaded with a
+round bullet—pushed in with the iron ramrod. In
+order to show these boy soldiers what real warfare
+might be, the old man sighted the musket over the fence
+and aimed at a board about 300 yards away. The bullet
+went at least five feet wide, while the old musket
+kicked back so hard that Uncle Isaac winced with the
+pain. Then one of the boys quietly raised his “popgun”
+and aimed at a bush at least half a mile away across the
+valley. In a fraction of a minute he fired half a dozen
+bullets which tore up the ground all around that bush.
+Then the boys hung one of their brown uniforms on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>
+fence across the pasture, and put Grandpa’s old blue
+coat beside it. You could hardly distinguish the brown
+coat against the background, while the blue coat stood
+out like a target. It was hard for the old man to
+realize that both he and his musket belonged to a vanished
+past. The boys looked at the gun and at Grandpa
+marching home—trying to throw his old shoulders back
+into military form—and smiled knowingly at each other
+as youth has ever done in the pride of its power. They
+could not see—who of us ever can see?—the spiritual
+forces of patriotism which walked beside the old man,
+waiting for the time to show their power.</p>
+
+<p>The weeks went by, and day by day Grandpa read
+his paper with growing indignation. You remember
+how for months the army in France seemed to stand
+still before that great “Hindenburg line” which
+stretched out like an iron wall in front of Germany. It
+seemed to Uncle Isaac as if his boys and the rest of
+the army were cowards—afraid to march up to the line
+and fight. One day he threw down his paper and expressed
+himself fully, as only an old soldier can.</p>
+
+<p>“I told you those boys never would fight. At the
+Battle of the Wilderness Lee had a line of defense
+twice as strong as this Hindenburg ever had. Did General
+Grant sit still and wait for something to happen?
+Not much!</p>
+
+<p>“‘Forward by the left flank!’</p>
+
+<p>“That was the order, and we went forward. Don’t
+you know what he said at Fort Donelson? ‘I propose
+to move on your works at once.’ If General Grant was
+in France that’s what he’d say, and within an hour<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+you’d see old Hindenburg coming out to surrender!
+My regiment fought all day against a regiment from
+North Carolina. I’ll tell you what! Let me have my
+old regiment and that North Carolina regiment alongside
+and I’ll guarantee that we will break right through
+that Hindenburg line, march right across the Rhine,
+hog-tie the Kaiser and bring him back with us.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, father,” said his daughter gently, “don’t you
+remember what Harry writes? They don’t fight that
+way now. The cannon must open a way first. Harry
+says they fire shells so large and powerful that when
+they strike the ground they make a hole so large you
+could put the barn into it. Suppose one of these big
+shells struck in the middle of your regiment?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care,” said Uncle Isaac. “<i>We’d start, anyway!
+We’d move on those breastworks and take our
+chances!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And mother wrote about it to her boys in the army
+over in France. The young fellows laughed at the
+thought of those old white-haired men, with their antiquated
+weapons, lined up before the death-dealing power
+of Germany. It seemed such a foolish thing to youth.
+The letter finally came to the grey-haired colonel of
+the regiment—an elderly man who had in some way
+held his army place in the ocean of youth which surrounded
+him. His eyes were moist as he read it, for he
+knew that if that group of wasted, white-haired men had
+lined up in front of the army they would not have been
+alone. Down the aisles of history would have come a
+throng of old heroes—the spirit of the past would have
+stood with them. They would have stilled the laughter,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>
+and if these old veterans had started forward the whole
+great army would have thrown off restraint, broken
+orders and followed them through the “Hindenburg
+line.”</p>
+
+<p>But Uncle Isaac, at home, humiliated and sad, went
+about the farm with something like a prayer in his old
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>“Why can’t <i>I</i> do something to help? Don’t make me
+know my fighting days are over. What can <i>I</i> do?”</p>
+
+<p>And Uncle Isaac finally had his chance. Perhaps
+you remember how at one time during the war things
+seemed dark enough. Our boys were swarming across
+the ocean, and submarines were watching for them.
+Food was scarce. Frost and storm had turned against
+us. Money was flowing out like water. Spies and
+German sympathizers were poisoning the public mind,
+and the Liberty Loan campaign was lagging. Uncle
+Isaac, reading it all day by day in his paper, felt like
+a man in prison galled to the soul by his inability to
+help. There came a big patriotic meeting at the county
+town. It was a factory town with many European
+laborers. They were restless and uneasy, opposed to the
+draft, tired of the war and not yet in full sympathy
+with America. Uncle Isaac determined to go to this
+meeting, though his daughter did all she could to dissuade
+him. There was no stopping him when he once
+made up his mind, so his daughter let him have his way,
+but she sent old John Zabriski along with him. Old
+John was a German Pole who came to this country
+as a young man out of the German army. He had lived
+on Uncle Isaac’s farm for years, and just as a cabbage<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+or a tomato plant seems the stronger and better for
+transplanting, so this transplanted European in the soil
+of this country had grown into the noblest type of
+American. So the daughter, standing in the farmhouse
+door with eyes that were a little dimmed, watched these
+two old men drive away to the meeting.</p>
+
+<p>They had the speaker’s stand in front of the court
+house. The street was packed with a great crowd.
+Right in front was a group of sullen, defiant foreigners
+who had evidently come for trouble. The sheriff was
+afraid of them, and inside the court house out of sight,
+but ready for instant service, was a squad of soldiers.
+A young man who was running for the Legislature
+caught sight of Uncle Isaac and led him through the
+court house to the speaker’s platform, and John went,
+too, as bodyguard. The old veteran sat there in his
+blue coat and hat with the gold braid, unable to hear a
+word, but full of the spirit which had come down to him
+from the old days.</p>
+
+<p>Something was wrong. Even Uncle Isaac could see
+that, and John Zabriski beside him looked grave and
+anxious. That solid group of rough men in front began
+to sway back and forth like the movement of water
+when the high wind blows over it, and a sullen murmur,
+growing louder, came from the crowd. A small, effeminate-looking
+man was making a speech. Very likely
+his ancestors came originally to this country two centuries ago,
+but somewhere back in the years this man’s
+forebears had made a fortune. Instead of serving as
+a tool to spur the family on to finer things it had been
+spread out like a soft cushion to carry them through life<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span>
+without a bruise or bump. And these rough men, whose
+life had been all bruise and turmoil, knew that this
+soft little American was here talking platitudes when he
+should have been over in France. Perhaps you have
+never heard the angry murmur of a sullen crowd grow
+into a roar of rage, until the crowd becomes like a wild
+beast. The sheriff had heard this, and he was frankly
+frightened. He started a messenger back into the court
+house to notify the soldiers, but old John Zabriski
+stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait,” he said, “do not that. You lose those
+men by fighting. We gain them.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, before anyone could stop him, old John stepped
+up in front and barked out strange words which seemed
+like a command. Then a curious thing happened. The
+angry murmur stilled. The crowd stopped its movement,
+and then every man stood at attention! Almost
+every man there had in former years served in one of
+the European armies, and what old John had barked at
+them was the old army command which had been drilled
+into them years before. And through force of habit
+which had become instinct, that order, for the moment,
+changed that mob into an army of attentive soldiers.
+The bandmaster was a man of imagination, and as
+quickly as his men could catch up their instruments they
+began playing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Poor old
+Uncle Isaac heard nothing of this. He could only guess
+what it was all about until John Zabriski laboriously
+wrote on a piece of paper:</p>
+
+<p>“Dey blay der Shtar Banner!”</p>
+
+<p>Then there came into Uncle Isaac’s sad life the great,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span>
+glorious joy of power and opportunity. He walked
+down to the front of the stage, took off his gold-braided
+hat and bowed his white head before them all. And old
+John Zabriski, the transplanted European, came and
+stood at his side. A young woman, dressed all in white,
+caught up a flag and came and stood beside the two old
+men. Then a wounded soldier with one empty sleeve
+pinned to his breast followed her. And there in that
+sunlit street a great, holy silence fell over that vast
+crowd. For there before them on that platform stood
+the glory, the pride, the precious legacy of American
+history. The last Grand Army man, the European
+peasant made over into an American, and the young
+people who represented the promise and hope shining in
+the legacy which men like Uncle Isaac and John Zabriski
+have given them.</p>
+
+<p>When the band stopped playing a mighty cheer went
+up from that great crowd, and one by one the men of
+that sullen group in front took off their hats and joined
+in the cheering. They made Uncle Isaac get up again
+and again to salute, and no less a person than Judge
+Bradley shook both hands and said:</p>
+
+<p>“We all thank you, Captain Randall. You have
+saved this great meeting and made this town solidly
+patriotic.” It was a proud old soldier who marched
+into the farmhouse kitchen that night, and in answer to
+his daughter’s questioning eyes he said:</p>
+
+<p>“Annie, I want you to write those boys all about it.
+Tell ’em they are not doing it all. Tell ’em Judge
+Bradley called me cap’n and said I saved the meeting.
+I only wish General Grant could have been there!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span></p>
+
+<p>All of which goes to show that those of you who have
+come to white hair should not feel that you are out of the
+game yet. Material things may go by us, but the spirit
+of the good old days is still the last resort!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="SNOW_BOUND">“SNOW BOUND”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow
+Bound.” Every man with New England blood in
+his veins should read Whittier’s poem at least once a
+year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked
+beans and fishballs. For two days now the storm has
+roared over our hills and shut us in. It must have
+been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Around the radiant fireplace enclosed</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone
+and the electric light and the steam-heated house
+were dreams too obscure even for his great mind to comprehend.
+So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong
+arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and
+while the telephone is slow, we can get our message
+through, after a fashion. But we are shut in. The car
+and the truck are useless tonight. The horses stamp
+contentedly in the barn—not troubling about the head-high
+drifts which are piled along the roadway. A bad
+night for a fire or for a hurry call for the doctor; but
+why worry about that as we sit here before the fire?</p>
+
+<p>I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I
+have read the poem at least once each year since, and I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span>
+have carried it all over the country with me. It is a
+little shabby now, but somehow that is the way I like to
+see old friends:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Shut in from all the world without</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">We sat the clean winged hearth about,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Content to let the north wind roar</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In baffled rage at pane and door,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">While the red logs before us beat</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The frost-line back with tropic heat.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse center">...</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Between the andiron’s straddling feet</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The mug of cider simmered low,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The apples sputtered in a row</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And close at hand the basket stood</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">With nuts from brown October’s wood.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse center">...</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“What matter how the night behaved?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">What matter how the north wind raved?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Blow high, blow low, not all its snow</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Could quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse center">...</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is no finer picture of the old-time Northern
+farm home, and we Yankees are bound to think that
+with all her faults New England did in those days set
+the world an example of what a farm home ought to be.
+So I lay aside the book and look about me to see how
+close New Jersey can come on this fearful night to
+matching this old-time picture.</p>
+
+<p>Here we are before the fire. Great logs of apple
+wood are blazing up into the black chimney. In Whittier’s
+day the open fire produced all the light, but here
+we have our electric light blazing, and I think as I sit
+here how miles away the great engines are working to
+send the current far up among the lonely hills to our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>
+home. For supper we had a thick tomato soup, a big
+dish of cornmeal mush—the grain ground in our little
+grinder—pot cheese, entire wheat bread and butter,
+baked apples and all the milk we could drink. Just run
+that over and see if it does not furnish as fine a balanced
+ration and as good a lot of vitamines as any $2 dinner
+in New York—and nearly 80 per cent of it was produced
+on this farm. Now the girls have washed the
+dishes and planned breakfast, and here we are. Mother
+sits in the first choice of seats before the fire. That is
+where she belongs. She is mending a pair of stockings,
+and as her fingers fly, no doubt she is thinking of those
+warmer days back in Mississippi. My daughter has
+just put a new record into her Victrola. The music
+comes softly to us—“Juanita.”</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Soft o’er the fountain</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Lingering falls the Southern moon.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I wonder what Whittier’s folks would have said to
+that! Two of the little girls are looking over some
+music, trying to get the air in “I dreamt that I dwelt
+in marble halls!” There is no “frost line” in this
+house for the fire to drive back, for there is a good hot-water
+radiator in the corner. The pipe from the spring
+seems to have frozen, but the faithful old windmill,
+standing over the well at the barn, has stretched out
+its arms to catch this roaring gale and make it carry
+the water up to the tank. Thomas and three of the boys
+are playing parchesi, while the rest of the company
+give them all advice about playing from time to time.
+I have a big chair by the corner of the fireplace—where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span>
+grandfather is supposed to sit—and little Rose is curled
+up on my lap eating an apple. I wish you were here.
+We could easily make room for you right in front of
+the fire, and we would surely call on you for a new
+story.</p>
+
+<p>The wind is howling on the outside. As we sit here
+in comfort there comes an eager, pitiful face at the
+window pleading to be taken in. No, it is not the old
+story of the wayward child coming back to the lights of
+home. The nearest we can come to that at Hope Farm
+is the black cat with the dash of white at her face and
+throat. She and her tribe are expected to stay at the
+barn and catch rats, but there she is out in the cold
+looking in at the window. Mother is as stern as a
+Spartan mother when it comes to cats in the house. She
+<i>will not</i> have them there. But, after all, they are Hope
+Farm folks, and the little girls plead so hard that the
+good lady looks the other way when the baby opens the
+door. In comes the black cat and, though they were
+not invited, three of her brothers and sisters run in
+with her! So now I shall sit with little Rose on my
+lap, while on her lap is a cushion on which the white-faced
+kitty purrs contentedly. In the original “Snow
+Bound” the mug of cider simmered between the andirons.
+No hot drinks for us. A little of that cold
+pasteurized apple juice goes well. We see no use in
+cooking apples before the fire. There is that big basket
+of Baldwins by the table. Help yourself—we like them
+cold. Cherry-top was ahead in the game, but Thomas
+has just taken his leading “man” and sent him back
+to the starting point. The boy is a good sport. He takes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>
+a big bite out of a fresh Baldwin and goes after them
+again. The nearest we can come to “nuts from brown
+October’s wood” is a big bag of roasted peanuts. We
+have all been eating them and throwing the hulls at the
+fire. They have accumulated so that Mother’s idea of
+neatness compels her to get up and brush them all into
+the blaze. I did not tell you that we are starting up
+our little Florida farm again. Jack will grow a crop
+of sugar cane and peanuts.</p>
+
+<p>And so, here in New Jersey, as well as in old-time
+New England, we care not how the wind blows or how
+the storm roars. This is home, and we are satisfied
+with it—all of us, from the white-faced kitty up to the
+Hope Farm man. We have all worked to make this
+home. It is a co-operative affair. None of us could
+be called rich or great, yet nothing could ever buy what
+we see in our big fire. Every now and then Mother
+looks up from her work and glances across the room at
+me with a smile. I know what she has in mind. Some
+of us rise to the power of animals in our ability to
+communicate thought without words. Life has been
+very much of a fight with us, but it seems worth while
+as we look at this big room full of eager young people,
+content and happy with the simple things of life. As
+little Rose snuggles up closer to me and pulls the kitty
+with her I begin to think of some of the complaining
+fault-finding people I know. I <i>do</i> know some star performers
+at the job of pitying themselves and magnifying
+their own troubles. On a night like this I will
+wager an apple that they are pouring out the gloom
+and trouble like a man tipping over a barrel of cold<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+water. It’s their rheumatism or their debts or the
+Administration or the Republican party, or something
+else that they hold responsible for their troubles. I wish
+I could have some of those fellows here tonight, and
+also some of you folks who know the joy of looking
+on the bright side. We would do our best to rub some of
+the gloom out of them. I will guarantee that any one of
+us could, if we wanted to, tell the truth about our own
+troubles so that these gloomy individuals would look
+like “pikers” in their poor little self-pity! I would
+like to read extracts from two new books to them. One
+is “A Labrador Doctor,” by W. T. Grenfell; the other,
+“The Great Hunger,” by John Bojer.</p>
+
+<p>I have just been reading these books, and I shall read
+them over again. Dr. Grenfell has given his life to
+service in the far North among the fishermen of Labrador.
+A man of his ability could easily have gained
+fame and wealth by practising his profession in some
+great city. He went where he was most needed—into
+the cold, lonely places where humanity hungers and suffers
+for help. It has always seemed to me just about
+the noblest thing in life for a man of great natural
+ability to gain what science and education can give him
+and carry that great gift out to those who need it most.
+Grenfell did that, and this modest story of his life
+is wonderful to anyone who can get the message. I
+have always thought that the greatest teachers and
+preachers and wise men generally are not so much
+needed in the big cities as in the lonely country places.
+The city owes all it has in men and money to the country,
+but it will seldom acknowledge the gift. The city<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span>
+itself is able to offer as a gift knowledge, science and
+training. Yet those who receive this gift desire for the
+most part to remain in the city, when they should carry
+their gift out into the lonely and hard places where the
+city must finally go for strength. The storm seems hard
+tonight, but it is a mere zephyr to the Winters which
+Dr. Grenfell’s people endure. I wish I could tell you
+some of the wonderful things which have happened in
+that lonely land. At one place the doctor found a girl
+dying of typhoid. There was no way of saving her,
+and as soon as she was buried it was necessary to burn
+the rude bunk and the straw in which she lay. They
+carried it to the top of a hill and built a fire. For several
+days one of the fishing boats had been lost at sea
+in the fog, and had been given up for lost with all on
+board. The despairing men in that boat—far out at
+sea—saw the light when that hideous bed was burned
+and were able to get to land! Some of you self-pitying
+people ought to read how Dr. Grenfell organized a
+little orphans’ home to care for the little waifs of this
+lonely place. In one case a little girl of four, while her
+father was away hunting, crawled out into the snow,
+so that both legs were badly frozen. Gangrene set in
+halfway to the knee, and the father actually chopped
+both legs off to save her life! Think of such a child
+in the frozen North. I think of her as little Rose
+hugs the kitty close. Dr. Grenfell took this child,
+operated on her, obtained artificial legs, and now she
+can run about like other children. I wish I could tell
+you more about this book. At one time two men came
+together after medicine. One took a bottle of cough<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span>
+mixture, the other a strong turpentine liniment for a
+sprained knee. By mistake they mixed up the medicine.
+One rubbed the cough medicine on his knee, the
+other drank the liniment. If I had some fellow who
+thinks the Lord has put a special curse on him before
+our fire tonight I would tell him what others have endured.
+The chances are we could make him contribute
+something to the cause before we were done with him.</p>
+
+<p>The other book I mentioned, “The Great Hunger,”
+is a story of Norwegian life and, as I think, very powerful.
+A boy born to poverty and disgrace grew up with
+a great hunger in his heart—he knew not what it was.
+He felt that power and material wealth would bring him
+the happiness he sought. He gained education, power,
+wealth and love, yet still the great hunger tortured him.
+Poverty, sickness, the deepest sorrow fell upon him,
+and at last the great hunger was satisfied by doing a
+needed service for the man who had done him the most
+hideous wrong! I wish I could tell you more about it.
+It is a powerful book; but it is time for little Rose to
+go to bed. Off she goes with a hug for all, and the
+children follow her one by one. I am not going to
+put more logs on that fire. Let it die down. The end
+of the day has come. Let the storm howl through the
+night like a pack of wolves at the door. They cannot
+get at us. Even if they did they can never destroy the
+memory of this night.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CLASS">“CLASS”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress
+Eugénie. She lingered along, feeble and half-blind,
+until she was nearly 95 years old. She has been
+called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women
+have lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation
+knew or cared anything about her. I presume most of
+our young people skipped the details of her life as given
+in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before
+the war between France and Germany, the women of
+the world regarded this sad empress as the great model
+of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would be hard for
+women in these days to realize how this beautiful
+empress dictated to people in every land how they
+should arrange their hair and wear their dresses. At
+that time most women wore their hair in short nets
+bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of
+“hoopskirts”—most of them, as it seemed, four to five
+feet wide. Just how this woman managed to put her
+ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I
+never could understand. From the big city to the little
+backwoods hamlet women were studying to see what
+“Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often wondered
+if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman
+remembered those days of power.</p>
+
+<p>Her death brings to mind an incident that had long
+been forgotten. I had been sent to one of the neighbors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>
+to borrow some milk, since our cow was dry. In
+those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a
+pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The
+woman of the house, an immense, fat creature, with
+the shape of a barrel, a short, thick neck and a round
+moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the
+latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris.
+She wore an immense hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance
+of walking inside of a hogshead. Her hair
+was parted in the middle and brought down beside her
+wide face to be caught in a net just below her ears. I
+know so little and care so much less about style in
+clothes that I can remember in detail only two costumes
+that I have ever seen women wear. This outfit is
+one of them.</p>
+
+<p>“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat
+lady as she poured out the milk. “You can tell your
+aunt that you have seen one lady dressed just like
+Paris.”</p>
+
+<p>It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was
+glad to have the experience.</p>
+
+<p>“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman
+came here today and said I looked enough like Ugeeny to
+be her half-sister—dressed as I am now. He has been
+in Paris, too.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold
+her a book on the strength of that yarn. Say, Mary,
+you don’t look any more like Ugeeny than old Spot
+does—and you don’t need to.”</p>
+
+<p>“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have
+no idea of beauty.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got
+a stomach, and I know that you can make the best
+doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in Bristol
+County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can
+do. You are worth three of her for practical value to the
+world, and I think you a handsome woman—but you
+can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the shape,
+and I’m glad of it.”</p>
+
+<p>But where was there ever a woman who could be
+satisfied with such evident truth, and who did not reach
+out after the impossible? She turned to old Grandpa,
+who sat back in the corner, away from the light.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What
+do you say? Don’t I look like Ugeeny?”</p>
+
+<p>Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at
+her critically.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re
+in her class!”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The
+people in this world are divided into two classes—strung
+together like beads on different strings. Some
+strings are like character, others like looks or shape or
+thinking or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your
+class—for the Lord organized it and teaches it. You
+look at me; I’m in the class with some of the finest men
+that ever lived on earth!”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John
+Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa started on that class
+business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”</p>
+
+<p>But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class
+with the old and new prophets? Here I have for years<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+been telling what is coming to the world. Folks won’t
+always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself
+carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep
+the house clean. Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse
+will have water and heat and light right inside.
+There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those
+days farmers will be kings.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come.
+I’m out ahead of the crowd. So was Wendell Phillips
+and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner on
+the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed
+them down and did all they could to stop their ideas.
+But you can’t stop one of these ideas when there’s a man
+back of it. Those men lived to see what the world called
+fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions
+which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got
+now, and what I ask is, <i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,”
+said Mary, as she shook out that great hoopskirt.
+“That’s not good talk for boys; it makes them discontented!”</p>
+
+<p>“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is
+going ahead,” put in Grandpa. “What’s the matter
+with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has all gone
+to other things. Farmers think the common schools are
+plenty good enough for farmers, while the colleges are
+all for lawyers and such like. You mark what I say—some
+day or ’nuther there will be <i>farm</i> colleges as big as
+any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or
+doctoring. Then people will see that farming is <i>agriculture</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>
+and the difference between the two will change
+the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t amount to much as a
+woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will
+ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary
+<i>in her class</i>. These clothes look foolish to me, but every
+woman who follows Ugeeny in dress gets into her class,
+and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one grade to another,
+for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt
+and that bob net for their hair and rise up to better
+things, and it will be Ugeeny that started them. She
+may be only a painted doll, but she has given the women
+ideas of beauty and something better than common.
+Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle
+life. That’s why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s
+got the vision of beauty and something far ahead of you,
+John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s getting
+<i>class</i>. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they
+help to set her free.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I
+suppose, according to you, I ought to put on a swallow-tailed
+coat every time I milk.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved
+every day and put on your best clothes once a day for
+supper, you would get in the upper class, and carry
+your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, <i>ain’t I in
+their class</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding
+far down the road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had
+grown tired of waiting for the milk, so he blew the horn
+to remind me that I was still in the class of errand boys.</p>
+
+<p>In August of that year I went up on Black Mount<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+after huckleberries, and ran upon Grandpa once more.
+He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and three children
+were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle
+of berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks
+as sole inhabitants. Old Grandpa sat on the rock and
+waved his stick about.</p>
+
+<p>“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I
+have seen it all in wheat. Farmers let education and
+money get away, and, of course, the best boys chased
+out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or
+’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these
+coming days to raise huckleberries in this way. They
+will be raised in gardens like strawberries and raspberries.
+This hill will have to produce something that
+is worth more—peaches or apples.”</p>
+
+<p>“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour
+hill, Grandpa?” asked one of the boys. “There’s a
+seedling now—10 years old and not four feet high!”</p>
+
+<p>“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will
+coal in place of wood. I don’t know how it will be done,
+but some day or ’nuther they will use yeast in the soil
+as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll harness
+the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these
+farm colleges give us knowledge. And farmers, too.
+They won’t always stand back and fight each other and
+backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day or
+’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what
+life ought to be. They will come together to live, instead
+of standing apart to die. I may not see it, and
+people laugh at me for saying what I know must come
+true. But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span>
+try to kill Galileo? Wasn’t Morse voted a fool?
+Hasn’t it always been so with the men and women who
+looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead?
+And, tell me this: <i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it,
+and yet when I read the headlines announcing the death
+of Empress Eugénie I had to put the paper down, for
+there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer
+day on the New England hills. On the rock in that
+lonely pasture sat old Grandpa pointing with his stick
+far across the rolling valley, far to the shadow on the
+distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting
+him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith
+undimmed. I wish I could look across the valley to the
+distant hills with the sublime hope with which he asked
+his old question:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ain’t I in their class?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah,
+but if Grandpa could see it now! The old house with
+its “beau” windows and new roof seemed to be dressed
+with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still
+Empress of France. There were power and light and
+heat all through it. Two boys and a girl were home
+from an agricultural college—one of the boys being
+manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount
+was a forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the
+old swamp was drained and lay a thick mat of clover.
+Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one thing.
+Education and power had brought material things,
+which would have seemed to be miracles to John and
+Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,” after all, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span>
+Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent
+and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what
+Grandpa said—“That’s what they’ve got to be, if the
+world is going ahead.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the
+noblest legacy of the ages.</p>
+
+<p>But in the churchyard back in one corner I came
+upon Grandpa’s grave. It was not very well cared for.
+It had not been trimmed. A bird had made her nest and
+reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It
+was a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining
+pasture put her head over the stone wall and
+tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected grave. And
+this was what they had carved on the stone:</p>
+
+<p class="center">“<i>The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>If I could have my way I would put up another
+stone with this inscription:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Grandpa.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">“<i>He has entered their class.</i>”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILL_TELL_GOD">“I’LL TELL GOD”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Just at this time many people seem to be concerned
+about what they call “the unseen world.” That means
+the state of existence after death. Many of our readers
+have written asking what I think or know about this.
+Most of those who write me seem to be living in lonely
+places or under rather hard conditions. They have all
+lost wife or husband, parent, child, or some dear friend.
+Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to
+imagine what really happens to a human being after
+what we call death, and I have had some curious experiences
+which you might or might not credit. When I was
+a boy, I was thrown much into the society of avowed
+spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and
+attended many “séances.” The evident clumsy and
+vulgar “fakes” about most of those things disgusted
+me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did
+possess a strange and peculiar power which I have never
+been able to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people
+who had suffered greatly and had carried through
+life some great affliction or trouble over which they constantly
+brooded. I have come to believe that the blind
+and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand
+things which most others do not. An afflicted person is
+forced to develop extraordinary power in order to make
+up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or faculty.
+The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>
+his ears. The deaf man must hear with his eyes or
+develop a sort of quick judgment or instinct of decision.
+The man plunged into grief or despondency at the loss
+of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through
+some extraordinary development of faith and hope and
+will-power. Someone has said that the blind or deaf
+man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do anything
+like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow
+power from the great “unseen world.” For
+example, I will ask you this question: Take a woman
+like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing.
+Take a man who is totally deaf and also blind—<i>how
+would they know physically when they are dead</i>? I
+think I can understand why it is that real advancement
+in true religion and Christian thought has for the most
+part been made by some “man of sorrows,” or people
+who through great affliction have been forced to go to
+the “unseen world” for help!</p>
+
+<p>Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer.
+I do not know whether he is living now or not. Perhaps
+he will read this. Perhaps he has gone into the silent
+country to learn what influence the little child had with
+the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf.
+Through long years, his hearing had slowly failed and
+its going left a dark discouragement upon him. He
+owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do. A hard
+worker and honest man, he went about his work
+mechanically, through habit, with a great hunger in his
+heart. He did not know what it was; a longing for
+human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman
+but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>
+poetry and she could not understand. She made her
+husband comfortable and loved him in her strange, inexpressive
+way, but it is hard, after all, to get over the
+feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange.
+They had no children, their one little girl had died in
+babyhood. Sometimes at night you would see the deaf
+man standing in the barnyard at the gate, looking off
+over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious
+in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him
+standing there with the empty milk pail on his arm.
+She could not understand the vision and glory, the message
+from the unseen world which filled her husband’s
+soul at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard,
+shake her dreaming husband by the arm and
+shout in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Wake up and get that milking done.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>She meant well, and her husband never complained.
+She meant to save his money, but he knew in such
+moments that money never could pay his passage off
+through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”</p>
+
+<p>Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures
+in the silence,” which fall to the daily life of the
+deaf man. One Saturday afternoon this man and his
+wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing
+her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his
+old friends. As he stood on the street, a sharp-faced
+woman came out of the store followed by a little child.
+It was a little black-haired thing with great brown
+eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal.
+A poor thin little thing with a shabby dress and tattered
+shoes. As she passed, the child glanced up at the farmer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span>
+and saw something in his face that gave her confidence,
+for she smiled at him and held out her little hand.
+The woman turned sharply and the frightened child
+stumbled over a little stone.</p>
+
+<p>“You awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take
+that,” and with her heavy hand she slapped the thin
+little face. Then something like the love of a lioness for
+her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many
+fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,”
+but it is really nothing short of a divine message when
+two lives are suddenly welded together forever. Under
+excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but they are
+strangely and forcibly emphatic. The woman quailed
+before the roar of that farmer and the little girl ran
+to him and held his hand for protection. A crowd gathered
+and Lawyer Brown came running down from his
+office.</p>
+
+<p>“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know
+me; get her for me.”</p>
+
+<p>It was not very hard to do. The woman had married
+a man with this little girl. The man had run away
+and left her (I do not much blame him), and this
+“brat” had been left on her hands.</p>
+
+<p>“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced
+woman. “A good riddance to bad rubbish.”</p>
+
+<p>So Lawyer Brown fixed it up legally and the deaf
+man walked off to where his wagon stood, with the
+little girl hanging tight to his big finger.</p>
+
+<p>When the woman came with her load of packages, she
+found her husband sitting on the wagon seat with the
+little girl sitting on his lap. She had found that she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+could not make him hear, so she just sat there looking
+into his face, and they both understood. But the good
+woman did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean by picking up a child like you
+would a stray kitten? Put her down and leave her
+here.”</p>
+
+<p>But that was as far as she got. Her husband looked
+at her with a fierce glare, and there was a sound in
+his throat which she did not like. I can tell you that
+when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally
+assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it
+that cannot be resisted. And when they got home and
+the little child sat up at the table between them, something
+of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. She
+actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled
+and ran to the farmer and climbed on his knee.
+The woman paused at her work to watch them as they
+sat before the fire, and something that was like the beginning
+of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came
+to her that this little one had seen at once something in
+her husband’s life and soul that <i>she</i> had not been able to
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>There was something more than beautiful in the
+strange intimacy which sprang up between the deaf
+farmer and the little girl. In some way she made herself
+understood and she followed him about day by day
+at his work or on his lonely walk of a Sunday afternoon.
+You would see her riding on the wagon beside
+him, standing near as he milked, or holding his finger
+as he came down the lane at sunset. On a sunny Sunday
+afternoon, you might come upon them sitting at the top<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+of a high hill with the old dog beside them, looking
+off across the pleasant country. And as the shadows
+grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying
+the little one, and the old dog walking ahead. I cannot
+tell you the peace and renewed hope which the little waif
+brought to that farmer’s heart through the gentle yet
+mighty force of love. And the farmer’s wife would look
+out of the window and see them coming. She could not
+walk with her husband through lonely places and make
+him understand, because she had never learned how.
+Yet the little one was drawing the older people closer
+together and was showing them more of the greatest
+mystery and the greatest meaning of life. But there
+came a Sunday when the little one could not walk over
+the hills. The day was bright and fair, the farmer stood
+looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and
+the old dog put his head on one side and regarded his
+master curiously. They could both hear the voice of the
+hills calling them away. And the voices came to the
+little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little
+bed upstairs. The doctor shook his head when they
+called him in. The child was done with earthly
+things,—surely called off into the Country Unseen just
+as love and home had come to her. The farmer went
+up into the sick-room where his wife sat by the little
+sufferer. This man had never regarded his wife as a
+handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as she
+bent over the child. For at last in the face of death and
+sacrifice, love had really come to that woman’s lonely
+heart, and the joy of it illuminated her face like a lamp
+within.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p>
+
+<p>The farmer was left alone with the child. She knew
+him and beckoned him to come near and moved her
+lips to speak. The man lay on the bed beside her and
+put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would,
+he could not hear her message. I suppose there can be
+no sadder picture in the book of time than this denial
+by fate of the right to hear the last message of love from
+one passing off into the long journey from which there
+comes no report. Hopeless and bitter with disappointment,
+the man found pencil and paper and a large book
+and gave them to the child. Sitting up in bed with a
+last painful effort the little one painfully wrote or
+printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her
+little face aflame with love. He hid the note in his
+pocket as his wife and the doctor came in—for the message
+from the unseen world seemed to him too sacred for
+other human eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The woman watched her husband closely and wondered
+why he felt so cheerful as the days passed by.
+The little one was no longer with him, yet he went about
+his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile. She
+could not understand, but now and then she would see
+him take from his pocket an envelope, open it and read
+what seemed to be a letter. He would sometimes sit
+before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful. As she
+went about her work, she would see him take out this
+mysterious letter and read it over and over, as one would
+read a message from a friend very dear of old and
+happy days. And she wondered what it could be
+that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and
+then there came the time when one evening in June the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span>
+sun seemed to pass behind the western hill with royal
+splendor. It seemed as if there had never been such
+gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night,
+and the practical wife looked from her back-door and
+saw her husband standing in the barnyard gate like one
+in a glorious vision. The cows stood in the lane, the
+empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood
+gazing off to the west unheeding the call to his work.
+And as the woman waited she saw her dreaming husband
+take that mysterious letter from his pocket and
+read it once more. She could see the look of joy which
+spread over his face as he read it. And this plain,
+practical woman, moved by some sudden impulse,
+walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her
+husband’s shoulder. He started out of his dream and
+looked guiltily at the empty milk pail, but she only
+smiled and pointed to the paper he had in his hand.
+He hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it
+to her. It was just the scrawl which the little child
+had written after her failure to make him hear. It was
+the last message from one who stood on the threshold
+of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within.
+And this was what the woman read, written in straggling
+childish letters:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>I’ll tell God how good you are.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved
+of love and sympathy through all these years, standing
+in the lonely silence of that golden sunset knew that
+God’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen
+country through the influence of that little child.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_DAYS_WORK">A DAY’S WORK</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“Well, boys, I’m going to quit and call it a day!”
+As the Hope Farm man spoke he got up from his knees
+in the strawberry patch and proceeded to straighten out
+his back. It was half past four on Saturday, September
+4. Our week’s work was done—all but the chores. Our
+folks had picked and packed and shipped four big
+truckloads of produce, with a surplus of nearly 100
+bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for
+next week. This in addition to regular farm work—and
+one day off fishing for the boys. It does not seem
+possible that September has come upon us! I do not
+know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the
+clock’s calendar points to that date. When the foolish
+finger of “daylight saving” appears on the clock we
+can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on
+the calendar. That is like the finger of fate. Yet it
+seems out of date. We have not finished picking
+Gravenstein apples. In former years Labor Day found
+us clearing up the McIntosh. This year we have not
+even touched them! Last year the Mammoth sweet corn
+was about cleaned out in August. Now we are beginning
+to pick. The season and the calendar are fighting
+this year. Now if they will both turn in and hold Jack
+Frost up for a couple of weeks later than usual we will
+forgive the season.</p>
+
+<p>This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>
+no one else wanted it. Thomas had not come
+back from his night on the market. Philip cleaned up
+the chores, while the rest went to picking apples
+and tomatoes. My daughter goes across the lawn
+with 100 or more chickens at her heels. They are
+black Jersey Giants and R. I. Reds going to breakfast.
+Out on the cool back porch Mother is playing the part
+of family “Red.” That is, she is canning tomatoes.
+This porch is screened in, and there is an oil stove to
+put heat into the canning outfit. The lady is peeling a
+basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well
+smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes!
+This job of mine would make one of those model gardeners
+too disgusted for comment. We set out the
+strawberry plants in April, in rows three feet apart, the
+plants two feet in the row. The soil is strong, and we
+wanted to push it hard. So in part of the patch we
+planted early peas between the rows, and in the rest
+early potatoes. The theory of this plan is sound enough.
+You get a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them
+out in time for the berry plants to run out and cover the
+patch. In practice this does not always work. While
+the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the
+patch clean. Then came a time when these vines fell
+down and refused to get up. Then came the constant
+rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all over
+to seek shelter under these vines. Before we could interfere
+the patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the
+long rains kept it growing. The richness of the soil
+delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the time we got
+them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+Here I am cleaning up this mess. Most of the work
+must be done with the fingers—a hoe would tear up too
+many runners. You have to get down on your knees and
+pull. As I crawl across the patch I leave a pile of
+weeds behind me like a windrow. I hold up my fingers
+and it seems surprising that they are not worn down at
+least half an inch. If I had kept those peas and potatoes
+out of here the berries would be far better, and I
+would not have this crawling job. I am not to be alone
+here after all. That big black chicken leaves his crowd
+on the lawn and comes over here to scratch beside me.
+The Jersey Giants are very tame and enterprising. This
+one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member
+of my family to take this job from choice. He will
+have all the worms I can dig out!</p>
+
+<p>There is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and
+the truck comes snorting into the barnyard. At the
+same time Tom and Broker, the big grays, come down
+the hill with a load of apples. Tom scents the gasoline
+and pricks back his ears with a snort. You can see him
+turn his head as if talking to sober old Broker:</p>
+
+<p>“That fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful
+breath he has! For years we went on the road like honest
+horses and did all the marketing on the farm. Why
+does this man keep such a great awkward thing around?
+It may have speed, but I’ll bet it eats him out of house
+and home!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now,” said old Broker, “every horse to his
+job. Working right on this farm is good enough for
+me. Let that truck do the road work, says I. No place
+like home for an honest horse like me.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Not much. I like a little life now and then. I
+want to get out on the road among horses and see what is
+going on. That great, lazy, smelling thing has got us
+farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are
+doing. And look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and
+its keep—my stars!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself.
+A gallon of oats costs something, too. I’ll bet this man
+can’t feed and shoe and harness you for less than $200
+a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work
+off our shoulders!”</p>
+
+<p>“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there
+came a jerk on the lines and “Get up!” and Tom put
+his mighty shoulders into the collar and pulled the load
+up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded
+like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair
+bill for $273 was a very small matter.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night
+on the market. The load sold for $106.95. It was a
+mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes. That looks right
+at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding load
+of about the same class of goods brought $143. That
+is about the way they have gone this season. Our prices
+are certainly lower, and every item of cost is higher.
+There can be no question about that, yet our friends who
+buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But
+for the truck we would be worse off than we are now.
+We never could handle our crop with the horses. It is
+more and more necessary to get the goods right into
+market promptly and with no stop. While the truck
+has become a necessity, let no man think that it works<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>
+for nothing. Old Tom is right in saying that I have
+a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year and putting
+it in shape for the season. That item alone will
+add quite a few cents to the cost of carrying each package.
+Some of the smaller farmers on well-traveled
+roads are selling at roadside markets. This is a hard
+life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that
+for some reason people are not buying such goods as
+they did. The retail trade is rarely satisfactory when
+one produces a fairly large crop. I think the plan for
+the future will mean a combination of farmers to open
+a store in the market town and retail and deliver their
+own goods co-operatively.</p>
+
+<p>My back feels as if there were three hard knots in
+it. I must straighten them out by a change of occupation.
+I am going up on the hill to look at the apple
+picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded,
+dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with
+me. She eats two tomatoes on the way up, and then I
+find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt on the
+tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I
+think some of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh,
+well, these scientists will probably find vitamines in dirt
+before they are done. We are picking Gravensteins today—big rosy
+fellows—some of the trees running 15
+bushels or more. I planted a block of these trees as
+an experiment. Now I wish I had more of them.
+The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care
+much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell
+well. This year any big apple brings a fair price. For
+instance, that despised Wolf River has been our best<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span>
+seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce,
+which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top
+is going to Paterson this afternoon to put some of
+his apple money into a bicycle. I have told in past
+years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees
+and how they have bought others. These trees have
+given surprising returns. The larger boy is just starting
+for college, and his trees will go a long way toward
+paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or
+selling at a low price is that the boy finds the income
+very “easy money.” It would be better for him to plant
+the young tree and stay by it till it comes in bearing.
+The only chemical I know of for extracting character
+out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the
+day on the hills—here in the sunshine with the apples
+blushing on the trees and the grapes purpling on the
+walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would
+never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and
+I go down on a load of apples—big Tom and Broker
+creeping down the steep hillside as if they realized that
+here was a job which the truck could not copy.</p>
+
+<p>I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried
+several bushels to the geese, and these wise birds make
+much of them. The big sow, too, stands chewing a big
+red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a
+grassy corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a
+very proud little cow, for just inside the barn her yellow
+daughter lies in the straw—pretending to chew her small
+cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to
+complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste
+of real cream already. But here is a pull at my shoulder,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span>
+and little Rose, her face washed and hair brushed,
+comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14 of us
+today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all
+on the table, so we can see what there is to start with.
+Have some of this soft hash. That means a hash baked
+in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it. You
+may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is
+a good time for working up the odds and ends. Then
+you can have boiled potatoes, boiled beets, sweet corn, tomatoes,
+bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk
+you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that
+if I took my family to the restaurant in the city where
+I sometimes have my dinner, the bill would be about as
+follows:</p>
+
+<table summary="Bill for the restaurant meal">
+  <tr>
+    <td>Hash</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">$4.20</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Potatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Beets</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sweet corn</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">3.60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tomatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Milk</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">.90</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Bread and butter</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">1.40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Baked apples</td>
+    <td class="tdpg">2.30</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg total">$16.60</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would
+cost us. Now what would a farmer get at wholesale
+for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30 at the full
+limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was
+charged 30 cents for it! But no matter what this
+dinner would cost elsewhere, it is free here, and I hope
+you will have another baked apple. Try another glass
+of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that
+thick cream in when they drink it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span></p>
+
+<p>That dinner provided heart and substance to all of
+us. I am back at those berries, and Philip has come
+to help me. Our folks have stopped picking apples for
+the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears
+have been picked off. That will have to be our “hay”
+this winter. The women folks and a couple of the boys
+have started for town to do a little shopping. Philip and
+I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse, and
+the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look
+better than I expected. A car has just rolled in with a
+family after apples. One well-groomed young man is
+viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is talking
+to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is <i>that</i>
+the Hope Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen!
+Why does he do that very common work? He ought
+to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”</p>
+
+<p>This young man will never know what it will mean
+next Spring when the vines are full of big red berries
+to know that he saved them and with his own labor
+turned them from failure to success. He probably never
+will know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune.
+This weed-pulling gets to be mechanical. It doesn’t
+require much thought and I have a chance to consider
+many things as we work. A short distance away is that
+patch of annual sweet clover. The plant we have been
+measuring is now 60 inches tall and still growing. The
+plants are seeding at different dates—some of them
+earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be
+for those of us who have the vision to make use of it.</p>
+
+<p>But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn.
+I am quite sure that I could have picked 50 bushels of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>
+Gravenstein apples from those low trees instead of
+working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day.
+What now? I’m going to make an application of hot
+water and get this soil off my hands and arms, shave,
+put on some clean clothes and take my book out on the
+front porch until the girls come home. What book?
+Well, I found in an old bookstore a copy of James G.
+Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress.” As I had just
+read Champ Clark’s book I wanted to read Blaine’s.
+I can well remember when about 40 per cent of the
+people of this country considered James G. Blaine a
+hero. The trouble was that about 60 per cent thought
+otherwise. His book is a sound and serious discussion
+of the legislation which covered the Civil War and 20
+years after. As I worked here today I have been thinking
+of what Blaine says of Senator Matt Carpenter.
+This man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went
+blind. For three years he sat in darkness. Yet this
+affliction proved a great blessing, for he forced himself
+to review and analyze and prove what he had read, so
+that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers
+were remarkable. This book contains the best statement
+I have ever read of the reasons for trying to impeach
+President Andrew Johnson, and how and why the
+effort failed. What’s that got to do with farming?
+Well, I think the political events which clustered around
+that incident came about as near to smashing the Constitution
+and wrecking the Government as anything that
+has yet happened. But here comes Cherry-top on his
+new wheel. He actually got home ahead of the car.
+I must hurry, or our folks will not find that literary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span>
+reception committee waiting for them. Better come
+along with me. I have some other books that will make
+you think, and I’ll guarantee that thinking will do you
+more good right now than a day’s work.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROFESSOR_GANDERS_ACADEMY">PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or
+rather a pair of geese. As you read this they will be
+browning and sizzling in the oven, with plenty of “sage
+and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They will
+come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and
+backed by several big pumpkin pies. I shall resign the
+position of carver, remembering my old experience with
+the roast duck and the minister. The duck got away
+from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending
+by upsetting the gravy in front of the minister’s plate.
+After the usual objections Mother will apply the carving
+knife to the geese, secretly proud of her skill as an
+anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted goose
+except provide white meat. Since Nature decided not
+to implant that delicacy in the breast of a goose, man
+cannot supply it. Therefore the lady must content
+herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most
+blind men eating the white breast of a turkey and then
+the brown breast of a goose would call for more of the
+latter. It is something like this rather foolish preference
+for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady
+and Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell!
+Anyway, a goose, well stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering
+well suited to the Hope Farm table.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over
+Mother’s generous slices Mr. Gander will lead his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>
+family across the lawn and find something to be thankful
+for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great
+respect for Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature
+may have left the white meat out of the goose in
+order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put an extra
+quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems
+to me that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about
+the most successful teachers of youth I have ever known.
+To many a learned educator I would say, “Go to the
+goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young
+for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose
+meat is rapidly disappearing from the Thanksgiving
+altar. Mother has scraped the bones nearly clean.
+What little remains will be boiled out as soup. This
+bird has lived what I may call an eminently successful
+life. He ends his career in the highest place possible
+to be conceived of in the philosophy of a goose. He
+was trained and educated from the start, and as I look
+at Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of
+any human teachers who have had any greater success
+in training their charges into just what a man or woman
+ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the
+old barn and laid 21 eggs. We rather expected more,
+but the goose was master of ceremonies. She came back
+to the same place each day, and finally we found her
+there hissing like the steam escaping from a broken pipe.
+It was her signal that she was ready to serve as incubator.
+So we put 13 eggs under her and eight more
+under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure
+as a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>
+wonder. She had raised three broods of chicks with
+great success. Surely she ought to be a better guide
+and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first
+brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children
+would you not choose those who have had experience?
+In due time, and on the same day, the goose
+walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on
+her nest and compelled five to stay under her. The two
+broods kept apart. The hen was evidently disappointed
+with the way the goose handled children, and she punished
+her brood whenever they tried to mingle with
+their own brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after
+about eight weeks I noticed a strange thing. The hen’s
+brood, though eating the same food, would average at
+least 30 per cent lighter than the goslings which ran
+with the goose. There was no question about it—the
+hen’s charges were inferior in size and weight and in
+“common sense,” or the art of looking out for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There being no chance for an argument about it, I
+concluded that it was very largely a matter of education,
+and we began to study the methods of teaching
+employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen.
+The first thing we noticed was the influence of the male
+side of the family. Roger Red, the big rooster, paid
+no attention to his wife’s family. All he did was to
+mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after
+worms or seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way
+he kicked it to one side and gave not even a suggestion
+to his busy wife. He was like one of those men who will
+not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>
+carry the child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was
+a true head of the family. He kept right with the
+goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off rats
+and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a hawk
+or a cat. In time of danger the rooster ran for shelter,
+but the gander stepped right out in front of his brood
+with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s arm, and
+that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the
+enemy. He taught his children to graze on weeds
+and grass. When anyone forgot to feed them the
+gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family
+right into the garden, where they picked up their share.
+He led the goslings through the wet grass and into the
+brook, where they cleaned out all the watercress and
+weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the
+barnyard and cried if breakfast did not come on time.
+She would not let her children wade through the wet
+grass or get into the water, and she did not know that a
+young goose can eat grass like a calf. The hen worried
+herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts
+of geese and headed for the brook.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed
+to understand the first law of education—to train a child
+properly you must understand his natural instincts
+and tendencies and build upon them. For many generations
+the hen has feared water, and has been taught
+that all feathered young must be kept away from it. I
+have no doubt that a race of swimming hens could be
+developed, provided the fear of water could be taken
+from the mind of the hen. <i>For the hen must swim with
+her mind before she can swim with her feet!</i> I have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>
+seen many cut-and-dried teachers as much afraid of the
+truth as this big Red hen was afraid of water. At any
+rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior
+to the other. One set had the benefit of father’s example
+and influence. Their teacher knew from long
+experience just what a young goose ought to know. The
+teacher knew that because she had been a goose herself,
+and could remember her youth. The hen’s brood
+knew nothing of their father’s example—no more than
+some little humans who only seem to know there is a
+man in the world who claims to be the detached head of
+the family. The hen’s goslings were brought up in one
+of these beheaded families. Their teacher ranked as a
+successful educator, but as she had never been a young
+goose herself she could not teach her children what they
+ought to know. It was not unlike trying to make a
+blacksmith out of a poet, or a drygoods salesman out of
+a natural farmer. These feathered children were fed
+and warmed and defended, but they could not make
+perfect geese because they were not trained to work out
+a goose job.</p>
+
+<p>The result was clearly evident. The young geese
+under the hen were undersized and fell into the hen
+character. After centuries of domestication or slavery
+the average hen loses the independence of the wild bird.
+Now and then a nobler specimen will feel some dormant
+brain cell thrill within her, remember the freedom of
+centuries ago and fly into the trees, but for the most
+part the modern hen is a selfish, fawning, tricky creature.
+She drives her family away as soon as the children
+become tiresome, and there is little or no real<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>
+community life among hens. When their usual food is
+not forthcoming all but a few adventurous spirits stand
+slouching about waiting for help. Thus the goslings
+were taught to fawn upon man for their food and reject
+their brothers and sisters in the other brood. It was an
+unnatural life for a goose, and these little ones could
+not thrive under such training. On the other hand, Mr.
+Gander’s pupils were taught by an expert on goose
+training. They were taught to swim, to bathe in the wet
+grass, to eat grass or hay, to get out and find their own
+breakfast if man did not do his duty. As a result they
+grew up with strong independence of character. While
+the others might fawn and beg for food, the gander’s
+class were taught to scorn such subservient behavior.
+And they were taught family life and co-operation.
+While the hens separate and lead their selfish, separate
+lives, the geese live in a group. There they go now in
+a solid bunch across the lawn. Throw a stick into a flock
+of hens or let a dog run at them, and they will scatter
+in all directions. Try the same with a flock of young
+geese, and they will line up in solid array “all for each
+and each for all.” I do not know of anything finer in
+the education of geese or children than this thorough
+idea of co-operation. In the future those groups which
+are taught like the geese will rule the nation. Those
+which are taught to fear strange things or live the selfish
+life of a hen will always serve. In other words, the
+future of this country depends on its teachers and their
+wisdom? You are right!</p>
+
+<p>But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made
+with the carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>
+I think this one will pass a good examination. If I am
+not mistaken this was one of the hen’s goslings. When
+we saw that their teacher was a failure we put them into
+Mr. Gander’s class. He looked them over and knocked
+them down with his wing a few times. Then he put his
+wise head to one side as if to say:</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll do my best with them. They have been spoiled,
+and I must take some of the conceit out of them first.
+If the law forbidding corporal punishment holds in
+New Jersey I will resign the task, because no goose
+can ever live a successful life unless those foolish hen
+ideas are whipped out of him. And another thing: I
+won’t have that Red hen bothering around me. The
+influence of a foolish mother is the worst thing a teacher
+has to contend with. I’ll try to make geese out of them,
+but keep that hen away!”</p>
+
+<p>The Red hen put up a great cry for a time. She ran
+out and called for her “darling children” to leave
+those low companions. The goose took those “darling
+children” right by the tail feathers and pulled them
+back. The gander waddled up to the hen and took one
+nip which sent her squawking to the barnyard, where the
+big rooster was challenging the world.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been insulted!” she screamed, “and my dear
+children have been stolen from me. If you have the
+courage of a mouse you will defend your wife!”</p>
+
+<p>“Where is he?” roared the rooster, and he started
+on a run for the orchard. There was the goose with all
+her children at school, and right in front was the gander
+with his great beak open and that right wing all unslung
+for a blow. The rooster got within about six feet of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span>
+him and then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that
+sharp beak.</p>
+
+<p>“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the
+next field, and I came to ask how the worms are running
+over there!”</p>
+
+<p>As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands
+generally, sought to pacify his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“After all, your children are in a good school, and
+you will now have more time for your neglected household
+duties. Nursing those children has been a hard
+strain on you. Now for a little recreation!”</p>
+
+<p>From my own experience I can testify that Professor
+Gander is right. No one can train a child properly if
+the mother is foolish naturally, and seeks to interfere
+with the child’s education. Those who undertake to
+“take a child” into their family may well take heed
+from Professor Gander. It were far better that such
+a child never saw his mother again. She may easily
+ruin the life which she brought into the world.</p>
+
+<p>But at any rate, this bird on the table was well educated
+to live the perfect life of a goose. Have another
+slice! I know you can eat another helping of this
+dressing. Pass back your plate. Of course I know
+Mother would like to hold that other goose back for a
+later meal, but that is not the true Thanksgiving spirit.
+Pass back for another slice and I will use my influence
+with the housekeeper to carve the second goose. Its
+education has been finished.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="COLONEL_OBRIEN_AND_SERGEANT_HILL">COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect
+to set the world on fire. So we start what we consider
+a nice little blaze and stand back to see it spread.
+For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay in a
+drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start
+it going. We find the world more like a soggy swamp.
+It does not flare up—our little blaze strikes the wet
+spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the water
+it comes to an end. Missionaries who have been among
+the savage tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful
+thing to the average savage is the simple act of striking
+a match. These men and their ancestors have for centuries
+obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing
+of two sticks together. Often many hours of this
+laborious friction were needed before they could obtain
+even a glow at the end of a stick, and then nurse it into
+flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced
+the effect of hours of hard toil! One savage stole
+a box of matches and undertook to “show off” before
+his friends. He could start the little flame of the match
+well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big logs
+or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the
+little match flame could only spread <i>to things of its
+own size</i>. You cannot jump flame from a glimmer to a
+giant log unless the latter is full of oil or gunpowder.</p>
+
+<p>Two things have brought that to mind recently. My<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span>
+young friend, Henry Barkman, came the other day with
+an oration which he was to deliver before some political
+society. When a man is well satisfied with his own
+literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence
+of his admiration. When you come to be as old as
+I am, you will recognize the signs. I knew Henry
+felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those
+great bursts of mental flame which every now and then
+set the world on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps
+his mother or sister or sweetheart, would imagine
+that society would stumble or even pause for an instant
+at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud
+voice and many gestures, and then wait for the world to
+blaze up. When there was no blaze he would feel that
+he had been casting pearls before swine, when in truth
+he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large
+sticks, where it sputtered for a moment and then flickered
+out. Youth cannot understand how long years of
+drudgery are required to split and splinter those big
+sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the
+match can start the blaze, and then in after years the
+man who throws in the match gets the credit which
+belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently
+splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry
+that when Lincoln delivered his speech at Gettysburg
+few people realized that it was to become a classic. A
+new generation with the power to look back through the
+mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full
+place in the American mind. Henry could not see it.
+When did youth ever know the back-looking vision of
+age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look ahead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span></p>
+
+<p>I had all these things in mind as we came to the
+last lap of our journey to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant
+town lies west of the Mobile &amp; Ohio Railroad—on
+a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years
+ago the track wound on through what seemed like a
+wilderness, with here and there a negro cabin. Now it
+seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages or
+blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of
+Starkville were just ribbons of mud or dust, as the
+seasons determined. I knew a man who came to town in
+November and bought an empty wagon. He could not
+haul it home until the following April, so deep was the
+mud. Now the main street was as smooth and solid
+as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out into
+the country in all directions. The streets were thickly
+lined with cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men
+riding on genuine saddle horses, which shuffled quickly
+along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs. It
+seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some
+old fairy tale, and it is no wonder that the years fell
+away and I went back in memory to those old days.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural
+college and went down to “reform and uplift
+the South.” Since then I have heard the motive or
+spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called
+“cheek,” “gall,” “nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,”
+with various strong adjectives pinned to the latter!
+Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while
+perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not
+cover the essential thing. I had a smattering of such
+science as could be taught in those days. I had a great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span>
+abiding faith in the power of education to lift men up
+and set them free. A few years before I had given up
+the thought of ever being anything except an ordinary
+workman, because I had had no training which fitted
+me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the agricultural
+college had given me almost the miraculous
+help which came to the man with the darkened mind.
+Who could blame youth for feeling that the great joy
+and power of education could actually remove mountains
+of depression and trouble? I had been told that
+the chief assets of Mississippi were “soil, climate, character
+and the determination of a proud and well-bred
+race to train their hands to labor!” That was surely
+in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came
+to set the South on fire with ambition and vision.</p>
+
+<p>Well do I remember the day I walked into the little
+brick building where <i>The Southern Live Stock Journal</i>
+was printed. Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill looked
+me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every
+inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You
+would not think it, but he was with Forrest when they
+captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s remark was:</p>
+
+<p>“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”</p>
+
+<p>Colonel O’Brien was more practical.</p>
+
+<p>“Come out and feed the press and then fold these
+papers.”</p>
+
+<p>And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting
+the South was on. I suppose you might call me a “useful
+citizen.” I fed the press, set type, swept the office,
+did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to sing in
+the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span>
+on the town nine and filled columns of the paper with
+soul-stirring editorials. At least, they stirred me if they
+had no effect upon any other reader. Those were the
+days when living was a joy. Some days there would be
+a little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement
+would come. Now and then some ball club
+would come to town and our boys would send them home
+in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright
+spots on the calendar, but they were as nothing in the
+bright lexicon of youth to the great editorials I ground
+out at that battered and shaky table in the corner.
+Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town,
+alone and unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but
+to me it seemed a very poor thing beside the great editorial
+on “The South’s Future,” which I wrote on that
+stormy day in Christmas week.</p>
+
+<p>It comes back to me now as I write this. In those
+days everybody “knocked off” during Christmas week
+and we printed no paper. Yet we all seemed to come to
+the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.”
+It was cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips.
+Colonel O’Brien had started a fire in the fireplace, and
+he and Sergeant Hill stood before it smoking their
+pipes and telling war stories. Colonel O’Brien was telling
+how he heard the soldiers around their fires at night
+saying it was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s
+fight.” Sergeant Hill told about the Indian who went
+after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers,
+and how in consequence the Yankees captured the
+printing outfit. I must tell you that story some day.
+And while these two old vets kept down on the ground<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span>
+in thought I was up on the heights developing a glorious
+future for the “Sunny South.” And at the last flourish
+of the pen I cleared my throat and read it to these old
+soldiers. And, honestly, I did not get the humor of it.
+These two men had given all they had of youth, ambition,
+money and hope to their section. They must walk
+softly all their remaining days amid the ruins and the
+melancholy of defeat. And here was I without the
+least conception of what life must have meant to the
+Southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring
+out dreams of a future which seemed even beyond the
+vision of an Isaiah. Great is youth and glorious are its
+prophetic visions. At any rate, the old soldiers let their
+pipes go out as they listened.</p>
+
+<p>“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon
+you’ll have us all in Heaven 40 years hence?”</p>
+
+<p>“Fine,” said Colonel O’Brien. “Fine. I hope I’ll
+be here to see it; but today I saw that paper collector
+from New Orleans in town. We can’t pay his bill.
+He’ll have to leave on the night train. Better shut up
+the office.” And they tramped out into the mud, and I
+knew that as they plowed up the street they were looking
+at each other as men do when they feel a pity for
+some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in front
+of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called
+unorthodox. And I locked the door and sat before the
+fire polishing that editorial. Collectors might pound
+on the door, paper and ink might run short—what were
+these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts
+were to save the country? Surely, I had it all planned
+out that night, and went home, rising far up above the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span>
+fog and rain, and bumping my head against the stars!
+Do I not know just how Henry Barkman felt about
+his great oration? Heaven give him the philosophy to
+endure with patience the day which finally came to me
+when I had to realize that I was not an uplifter, after
+all! And yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer,
+deny to youth the glorious foolishness with which he</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Longs to clutch the golden keys;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To mold the mighty state’s decrees</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And shape the whisper of the throne!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all
+these dreams. Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have
+answered the last call.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“They know at last whose cause was right</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In God the Father’s sight!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has
+passed on with them. Years ago <i>The Southern Live
+Stock Journal</i> was absorbed by a stronger publication.
+It is doubtful if in all the town or country you could
+find an old copy of the paper. Those great editorials
+which I climbed into the clouds to write were evidently
+too thin and light for this world. They have all sailed
+away far from the mind of man. The little building
+where we started the candle flame which was to burn
+up all the prejudice and depression in the South seems
+to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding house. The
+little shop where (with Sol on the crank of the press and
+I feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt
+to be a mental feast, is now a kitchen where cow peas,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span>
+bacon and greens and corn bread form a more substantial
+food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. It
+was no longer a molder of public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>To what base uses we may return, Horatio.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the
+vision had come true. I wished that Colonel O’Brien
+and Sergeant Hill might stand in front of the old building
+and look about them. No longer a sea of mud, but
+smooth, firm pavements. The sidewalks were lined
+with cars. Beautiful trees shaded the streets, until the
+town seemed like a New England Village with six generations
+behind it. Outside, stretching away in every
+direction, was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass
+and clover. Here and there was a young man in the
+uniform of the American Union. In the vaults of the
+banks were great bundles of Liberty bonds. And a
+gray-haired man on the street corner told me this:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>You will find that the very States which sixty years
+ago tried to break up the Union will, in the future,
+prove to be the very ones which must hold it together.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Yet let me tell Henry Barkman and the millions who
+felt as he did about his oration, that no one in all that
+town remembered my former editorials or the great
+work of the <i>Journal</i>. My literary work has been blown
+away as completely as the clouds among which it was
+composed. At the end of the great college commencement
+exercises a man came on the stage with a great
+bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. I am not
+much in the habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me,
+but I will confess that I thought: “Here is where my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span>
+soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated. All things
+come round to him who will but wait.”</p>
+
+<p>But this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed
+that I ever tried to “uplift the South.” He said I
+entered into the young life of the town and was remembered
+with affection because I played baseball with skill
+and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!</p>
+
+<p>And let me say to the Henry Barkmans who read this
+that the lesson of all this is the truest thing I know.
+Many a man has gone out into life like a knight on a
+crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious
+weapons. In after years people cannot remember what
+his weapons were, but he got into their hearts with some
+simple, common thing which seemed foolish beside his
+great deeds. Nobody remembered my brain children,
+though they were embalmed in ink and cradled in a
+printing press. But I put a twist on a baseball, overcame
+the force of gravity and made the ball dodge
+around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40
+years! Not one of my old subscribers spoke of the
+paper, but seven of the old baseball club, gray or bald,
+near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of
+youth, got together.</p>
+
+<p>I think you older people will get my point. For the
+benefit of Henry Barkman and his friends perhaps I
+can do no better than to quote the following:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
+confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things
+of the world to confound the things that are mighty.</i>”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="HOW_THE_OTHER_HALF_LIVES">HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“<i>Then I began to think that it is very true which is
+commonly said, that the one-half of the world knoweth
+not how the other half liveth.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>That was written by François Rabelais over 500 years
+ago. It is so true that it has entered the language as a
+proverb, or “old saying.” We hear it again and again
+in all classes of society. It is true that the great majority
+of us has no idea of the life or the life ambitions
+of the great world outside of our own little valley of
+thought. I suppose this failure to understand the
+“other half” is one of the things which do most to
+keep people apart and prevent anything like fair co-operation.
+It is the basis of most of the bitter intolerance
+which has ever been used by the “ruling classes” to
+keep the great mass of the people in subjection. Years
+ago some old lord or baron would build a strong castle
+on a hill and make the farmers for miles around believe
+that he “protected” them. Therefore, they built
+his castle free, gave their sons for his soldiers, and toiled
+on the land that he might live in idleness. And what
+did he “protect” them from? Why, from another
+group of farmers a few miles away, who, in like manner,
+were supporting another idle gang of cutthroats in another
+strong castle. These two groups of farmers did
+not need to be “protected” from each other. They
+had the same needs, the same wrongs and the same desires.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span>
+Left to understand each other and to work together,
+they would have had no trouble, but would have
+led happier and far more prosperous lives. As it was
+they did not understand “how the other half liveth,”
+and thus they fought when they should have fraternized.</p>
+
+<p>I find much of the same feeling between city people
+and farmers—consumers and producers. They do not
+understand how “the other half liveth,” and they find
+fault when they should from every point of economy
+work together. Your city man thinks the farmer has a
+soft job, and that with present high prices he is making
+a barrel of money. Either that or he is a slow-thinking
+drudge—a sort of inferior being, who doesn’t know any
+better than to carry the load which others strap on his
+back. He is “the backbone of the country” all right
+in a political campaign—but the backbone is merely
+a mechanical contrivance if you detach it from the
+brain. And the average farmer regards the city worker
+or commuter as a grafter—getting far more than he
+earns, and putting in short, easy days. It isn’t all graft
+and ease by a long way. Many of these city workers
+must travel miles to their jobs, and some of them put
+in longer hours than the average farmer. Many of them
+save little or nothing, and the wolf is always prowling
+around the door. Between these two classes it is a case
+of not knowing “how the other half liveth,” and this
+failure to understand has created a form of intolerance
+which separates two classes about as the old barons separated
+the groups of farmers years ago.</p>
+
+<p>And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span>
+has separated classes of farmers. The grain
+farmers, live-stock men, dairymen, gardeners and fruit
+growers all think at times that they have the hardest
+lot. The labor question, the markets or the weather all
+seem to turn against them. For instance, the dairymen
+usually think their lot is harder than that of others.
+They must work day after day in all sorts of weather
+and under hard conditions. I know about this, for I
+have worked on a dairy farm where conditions were very
+hard. Yet I also know that at this season the average
+dairyman has a good job compared with the life of the
+market gardener or fruit grower. On our own farm
+it has rained each day and night for many days. Get
+into a sweet corn or tomato field and pick the crop in a
+pouring rain, or pick early apples while the foliage is
+like a great sponge. Then sort out and pack, load the
+truck and travel through the rain to market, stand out
+in the rain and sell the load out to peddlers and dealers,
+and then hurry back home for another round of the
+same work. The fruit and vegetables are nearly as perishable
+as milk, and must be rushed promptly away.
+The dairyman knows beforehand what his milk will
+bring. The price may not be what he thinks is right,
+but he knows for weeks or months in advance what he
+can surely expect. We never know when we start what
+our stuff will bring. We must take what we can get
+for perishable fruit. We know what we have already
+spent, and what each load must bring in order to get
+our money back. Thus far corn is about equal in price
+to last year, tomatoes are lower, apples are at least 30
+per cent lower, and so on. The dairyman has his troubles,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span>
+but let him follow this job for a month and he
+would realize that “there are others.” In much the
+same way I can show that the potato men, the hay and
+grain farmers, the sheep men and all the rest, have
+their troubles—and hard ones at that. If farmers could
+only understand these things better, and realize that
+there are thorns and tacks in every so-called “soft job,”
+there would be greater tolerance in the world, and that
+is the only thing that can ever lead to true co-operation
+and fair treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty much the same thing is true of business. We
+ran upon a strange incident the other day. The city of
+Paterson, N. J., is a good market town. Work is well
+paid and the workmen are free spenders. It is a city of
+many breeds and races of men. On the market you will
+probably hear more languages and dialects than were
+used on the Tower of Babel. A large share of farm
+produce is distributed by peddlers—most of them of
+foreign blood. They are shrewd and tireless workers.
+I never can see when they sleep. Night after night they
+come on the market to buy produce, and day after day—through
+heat and cold, rain or shine—you see them driving
+their horses up and down the streets and lanes—always
+good-natured, always with a smile. Well, we
+sold Spot, our black cow, to one of these men—an
+Italian. Thomas had done business with him for some
+years. We had sold him many goods—he had always
+paid for them. He made part payment for the cow by
+giving about the most remarkable looking check I ever
+saw. It was on a first-class bank made out in a
+straggling hand, and signed by two names. We had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span>
+passed several like it before through our bank, so
+I deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came
+back unpaid.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas and I went to Paterson that night to see what
+was wrong. I wish some of you whose lives have been
+spent entirely in the country could see how this “other
+half liveth.” This man lived on a side street. The
+lower part of his house had been fitted as a little store.
+In the small backyard were several milk goats, a small
+flock of chickens and a shed, in which were two horses.
+Under a small, rude shelter of boards was old Spot,
+chewing away at green cornstalks. The man was a big,
+pleasant-faced Italian. You would mark him for an
+honest man on his appearance. There was a brood of
+children—eight or nine, I should say—and a pleasant-faced
+little wife, who carried the latest arrival around
+at her work. When confronted with the protested check,
+this man merely smiled and waved his hands. He could
+not read it! Two small boys—the oldest perhaps 12
+years of age—seemed to be the only members of the
+family who could read and write English. They read
+the protest paper to their father and made him understand.
+He only smiled and spread out his hands as
+people do who talk with their shoulders. These two
+little boys had made out the check and signed it for
+their parents. They either did not figure out their
+bank balance, or figured it wrong. There was no attempt
+at dishonesty, and the check would finally be honored.
+That seemed to be all there was to it. These little boys,
+through the public school, represented all that these older
+people know of the great business life of America.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span></p>
+
+<p>I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run
+back close to Plymouth Rock. If some of them had
+let that check go in this way I should have loaded old
+Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas
+knew this man and his reputation, and his way of doing
+business. He will pay, and in a few days of peddling he
+will pad out his bank account and then the check will
+go through. So we shook hands with him and came
+home. But that is the way “the other half liveth.”
+This man and woman came to a strange land too late
+in life to acquire a business education. They can work
+and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to
+do business which requires bookkeeping or banking. All
+the boys know about American business is what they
+learn at the public schools. I wish you could have
+seen the way that check was made out—yet any old
+piece of paper may be worth more than a gold-plated
+certificate if there is genuine character back of it. I
+am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good
+many accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion
+of the business is conducted in about that way.
+It is said that some of the smaller manufacturers do not
+keep any set of books which enable them to figure their
+income tax! There are some men who could not buy
+a cow or a cat from us on credit, while others could
+have what credit they need right on their face and reputation.</p>
+
+<p>There is another thing about this trade that will
+interest dairymen. We found old Spot giving about 18
+quarts of milk per day, on a feed of green cornstalks and
+a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents, at least.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span>
+The cow can live in that little shed until the middle
+of December, or about 120 days. In that time she will
+give 1,500 quarts or more, which, at 18 cents, means
+$270, and she can then be sold for at least $90 for
+beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in
+four months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and
+stalks from vegetables and a small amount of grain.
+She will be well cared for, carded and brushed every
+day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows
+know “how the other half liveth.” Someone will take
+these figures, multiply them by 25, and show what tremendous
+incomes our dairymen are making. The fact
+is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he
+kept two the extra cost of food would about eat up
+his profits. So we went whirling home through the
+dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of
+the life of the other half, and it made me feel something
+more of charity for my fellow men. When you come to
+think of what the American public school means to that
+family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes
+with education. We can hardly be too careful about
+what our schools teach and how they teach it. I wonder
+how many of us, if we were transplanted to some
+foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over
+to our children and let them conduct it as they learned
+to do it from the schools! I think we would all be more
+tolerant and reasonable if we would let our children
+bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of
+hope of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had
+cleared, the wind had dried the grass, and on the lawn
+in front of the house our great army of children were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span>
+dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as
+tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these
+handicaps would have seemed much lighter if we could
+have gone out and danced with the kids. I wonder
+where, along the road, we gave up doing that.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_INDIANS_WON">THE INDIANS WON</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental
+fasting. By the latter I mean trying to think out
+some of the problems of life which come as a sort of
+shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of
+these problems came up to me through a cloud of memories
+as I sat with my feet on the concrete and my collar
+turned up.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian
+weather as it turned out. It seemed as if the sun had
+covered its face with a blanket in one of those fits of
+depression when the impulse is to hide the face from
+human eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled
+up tier above tier—around a great field marked out
+with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for all
+had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted
+little band of college boys screamed and sang their
+songs, but for the most part this great crowd sat cold-eyed
+and impartial. At one side of the field there was
+a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians
+sat wrapped in big red blankets. Just across from these
+was another group of men with green blankets. Between
+them in the center of the field was a tangled mass
+of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the
+possession of a football.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer
+doing, wasting part of the price of a barrel of apples<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span>
+when he ought to be at work? Of course it is my privilege
+to say, “That’s my business if I want to,” but I
+will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth
+and studying human nature. You can’t improve on
+either operation for a man of my age. Up some 250
+miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one
+of the 1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these
+green-clad boys down to meet the Indians. He could
+not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the game;
+it will be <i>a peach</i>.” As a peach grower, I am interested
+in all new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be
+one. It must be said that these green-clad boys came
+down out of their hills with a haughty spirit, wearing
+pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first high
+hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over
+two of the greatest colleges in the country. They represented
+the section where the purest-bred white Americans
+are to be found. One more victory and no one
+could deny their boast that they could stand any other
+football team on its head. So they came marching out
+on the field, very airy, very confident, and fully convinced
+of the great superiority of the white man!</p>
+
+<p>I know very little about football. When I played it
+was more like a game of tag than a human battering
+ram. Here, however, was a round of the great human
+game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were
+representatives of two races about to grapple. The great
+majority of the white thousands who watched them
+were unconcerned—for a New York audience is composed
+of so many races and tongues that it has little
+sentiment. All around me, however, there seemed standing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span>
+up hundreds of swarthy, dark men whose eyes glittered
+as they watched the game. You could not realize
+how many there were with Indian and Negro blood
+until such a test of the white and red races was presented.
+Then you began to realize what a race question
+really means when the so-called inferior race gets a
+chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.</p>
+
+<p>It would have made a theme for a great historian as
+these young men lined up for the game. The whites
+trotted out confident and proud. Why not? The “betting”
+favored them, their record was superior, as their
+race was supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their
+places and shambled through their motions, silent and
+without great show of confidence. It came to me as not
+at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors
+of these boys had faced each other under very different
+circumstances. Francis Parkman, the historian, tells of
+a famous battle in the upper Connecticut Valley. The
+white settlers had built a stockade as protection against
+roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort
+was attacked by such a band, which had come down
+the valley capturing prisoners and booty. It was a savage
+fight, but the white men held their own, and finally a
+Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a parley.
+He actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they
+were out of food, and then to retreat. In that gray mist,
+with my feet on the concrete, I could shut my eyes and
+see the ancestors of these football players. Stern white
+men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent
+red men creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up
+their booty in sight—as price for the corn. The frost<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span>
+on the leaves told them that Winter with all its cold
+and peril was approaching. Here were the necessities
+of life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow
+of the woods were the captives—men, women and
+children—and the white settlers held out for <i>them</i>.
+For at that time, if not now, New England <i>knew the
+value of a man</i> to the nation. He was far above the
+dollar, even though the women and children would be
+a care and a danger.</p>
+
+<p>In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old
+fighters lay in the hearts of these green-clad boys who
+had come down from these historic old hills. At that
+instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It
+was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers
+led by the writhing “cheer leaders”—the glory and
+fame of the good old college on the hill. You could not
+have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned
+Indians seemed to have something of the same spirit in
+their hearts. Silent and impassive, they seemed for the
+moment to have cast off their college training and gone
+back to the free, wild life, only carrying the discipline
+which authority and college training had given them.
+I wonder if any of these red men thought as they lined
+up on that field that it was the lack of just this stern
+discipline which lost them this country and nearly
+wiped out their race? Men fitted to play this game of
+football never would have given away Manhattan Island,
+or permitted a handful of white men to drive them from
+the coast. Over 1,000 men, each with the burning drop
+of Indian or Negro blood in his veins, were hoping and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span>
+praying that in this modern battle the red men would
+humble the pride of Manhattan, as their ancestors had
+lost the island. Out of the gray mist there seemed to
+stride ghosts of stout Dutchmen and thin Yankees and
+silent, noiseless Indians to watch this fairer combat.</p>
+
+<p>At the signal the ball was kicked far down the field
+by a white man whose ancestors may have come with
+Hendrik Hudson. It was caught by a red man, whose
+ancestors may have been kings or chiefs while the white
+man’s were European peasants. Back he came running
+with the ball to form the basement of a pile of 10 struggling
+fighters, and the game was on. You must get
+someone else to describe the game. I do not understand
+it well enough. The two groups of players lined up
+against each other, and one side tried to batter the other
+down, or send a man through with the ball. Again and
+again came this fierce shock, and a strange and unexpected
+thing was happening. The Indians had no band
+of singers or cheer leaders, no pretty girls were urging
+them on, no pride of superior dominating race, but
+silently and resolutely they were smashing the white
+men back. It was hard. These boys in green died well.
+There was one light man who took the ball and ran
+through the Indians as his ancestors may have run the
+gauntlet, but they pulled him down. Inch by inch the
+white men were battered back over the line. The air
+seemed full of red blankets, for those substitutes at the
+side lines were back into the centuries coming home
+from a season on the warpath. Yet the green singers
+yelled on and shouted their defiance. Then the white men
+made a great rally and forced the Indians back, grimly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span>
+battling over the other line. At the end of the first
+half the score stood 10 to 7, in favor of the white men.
+“It’s all over,” said a man who sat next to me. “They
+will come back and trample all over the Indians, for
+white men always have the endurance.” A man nearby
+with a touch of bronze in his skin glared at us with a
+look in his eyes that was not quite good to see. Back
+came the players, at it again. There was great trampling,
+but of the unexpected kind. These slouching and
+shambling Indians suddenly turned into human tigers,
+and the plain truth is that they both outwitted and
+walked right over the green-clad whites. There was no
+stopping them. All the cheering and singing and sentiment
+and “race-superiority” went for nothing. For
+here was where pride and a haughty spirit ran up
+against destruction, and great was the fall thereof. Yet
+I was proud of the way these white boys met their fate.
+They had been too confident, and had lost what is called
+the “psychological drop” on the enemy. The Indians
+had them at the stake with a hot fire burning, for no one
+knows what a victory right there would have meant for
+the good old college far away among the hills. Yet,
+face to face with fate, cruel, silent and relentless, those
+boys never faltered, but fought on. I liked them better
+in defeat than in their airy confidence before the game.
+When it was all over they got up out of the mud of defeat
+and gave their college war cry. There may have
+been a few cracked and corner-clipped notes in it, but
+it was fine spirit and good losing. Nearby the Indians
+waved their blankets and gave another college yell. And
+the 1,000 or more men with that burning drop of blood<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span>
+in their veins went home with shining faces and gleaming
+eyes, with better dreams for the future of their race.
+For they had made the white man’s burden of superiority
+a hard burden to carry.</p>
+
+<p>My football days are over. No use for me to tell
+what great things I did 30 years ago. This age demands
+a “show me,” and I cannot give it. If I had
+my way I would introduce football, baseball, basketball,
+pushball and all other clean and organized games
+into every country town. I would organize leagues and
+contests and get country children to play. Do you ever
+stop to think that work, long and continuous, for ourselves
+and our children, has not taught us how to organize
+or use our forces together as we should? It is
+true. <i>Organized</i> play will do more to bring our children
+together for co-operative work than anything I can
+think of. It will give discipline, which is what we
+need. Two of these green-clad boys stood an Indian
+on his head and whirled him around like a top. It
+was part of the game. He got up good-naturedly and
+took his place in the line. Imagine what his grandfather
+would have done! One white boy was running
+with the ball and two Indians butted him, while another
+got him by the legs. The boy simply held on to the ball.
+It was discipline and training in self-control. Step on
+a city man’s foot in a crowded car and he would want to
+fight. Our country people need such discipline and
+spirit before they can compete with organized business.
+If I could have my way I would have our country children
+drilled in just such loyalty to the home town or district
+as these college boys displayed on the field. Tell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span>
+me, if you will, how it can be gained now in any way
+except through organized and loyal play for our children.
+You know very well what I mean. Work is
+an essential of life, and it must be made the foundation
+of character. Organized and clean play is another
+essential, as I see it now, and I think its development
+and firm direction is to be one of the greatest forces in
+building up life in the country.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IKE_SAWYERS_HOTEL">IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one
+of the children asked me a strange question:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days
+come and go, and every one of them has brought a dozen
+things to be thankful for. I sometimes think as the
+hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the
+day they are recording right now is about the best of all.
+I have passed Thanksgiving Day in the mud, in the
+snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded city,
+on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you
+can mention. I have given hearty thanks over baked
+beans, salt pork, bread and cheese, turkey and all the
+rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all burn
+away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in
+a swamp in Northern Michigan. No one had
+dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the
+swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was
+a rich, middle-aged lumberman and his young wife.
+How this tough, hard pine knot of a man ever selected
+this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had
+come with him into the woods on one of his business
+trips, and the silence by day and the whispering of
+the pines at night had filled her with terror. The
+rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span>
+wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a
+toy—a hothouse flower who could not live his life or
+help fight his battles. He had a great business deal on
+hand which required all his energies, but this girl could
+not understand or help him. She had begged and cried
+to go back to “civilization,” and they were on their way.
+And in this lonely place the axle of the carriage had
+snapped and left them in the mud.</p>
+
+<p>It had been one of those gray, melancholy days
+which seem to fit best into the idea of a New England
+Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming on and there
+were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had
+climbed out of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside.
+She had been crying in her disappointment, for
+she had expected to reach the railroad that night, and
+spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this
+lonely wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with
+an old farmer who finally agreed to haul the broken
+carriage back to the blacksmith shop for repairs.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but
+not for man—so I can’t put you up. Quarter of a mile
+down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter hotel.”</p>
+
+<p>He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started
+back along the road. There was nothing for us to do
+but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen some strong,
+capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly
+flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is
+after all made of common clay, with little of that spirit
+or courage which we somehow think should belong to
+the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little
+woman and a sad and silent big man who walked<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span>
+through the mud and up the little sand hill in search
+of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful for, and,
+yet did they but know it, they were to find the most
+precious thing in life in this lonely wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a
+long, rambling building, weatherbeaten and out of repair.
+Over the door was a faded sign, “Farmers’
+Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a
+white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the
+house a little man with a bald head and a pair of great
+spectacles perched at the end of his nose was chasing a
+big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old
+people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to
+watch them. The old man finally cornered the rooster
+by the garden fence and carried him flapping and
+squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully,
+and evidently approved the choice, for the old
+man, still holding the rooster, pushed the wheel-chair
+into the house and then, picking up his ax, started for
+the chopping block just as we turned in from the road.
+We startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The
+gray bird did not stop to welcome us, but darted off
+into the shadows. He mounted the roost in the henhouse
+from which the old man easily pulled him a little
+later.</p>
+
+<p>You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers
+bowing and scraping as their guests arrive. Ike
+Sawyer could not play the part. He just peered at us
+over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.</p>
+
+<p>“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put
+you up.” Then he led the way into the rambling old<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span>
+house. It was dark now, and the old man lighted a
+lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman
+did not rise from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.</p>
+
+<p>“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband.
+“I play feet and she plays hands, and between us we
+make out fine.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man bustled about and started a fire in the
+big fireplace. The young woman had entered the poor
+old building with an angry snarl of discontent on her
+face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to
+stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed
+up and filled the room with warm light, I noticed that
+the snarl faded out and she sat watching the old lady
+with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a moment,
+but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch
+the sweet-faced old lady “play hands.” On the other
+side of the fireplace, silent and strong, her husband sat
+watching his wife with eyes half closed under his
+thick, bushy eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen the cook in a quick lunch counter stand
+in his little box and toss food together, and I have seen
+a chef earning nearly as much as the President daintily
+working in his great kitchen, but nothing will ever seem
+to equal the way that meal was prepared when Annie
+played hands and Ike played feet. Ike pushed a little
+table up in front of his wife, and at her call brought
+flour and milk and all that she needed for making biscuits.
+He stood beside her chair as the thin fingers did
+their work. Now and then he laid his hand upon her
+shoulder, and once he touched her beautiful head. As<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span>
+though forgetting her guests Annie would smile back at
+him—a beautiful smile which brought a strange look to
+the face of the young woman who sat watching them.
+At first it seemed like an amused sneer. Then there
+came a puzzled, curious look—the first faint glimmering
+of the thought that this old man and woman
+<i>out of their trouble, out of their loneliness, had found
+and preserved that most precious of all earth’s blessings—love</i>!</p>
+
+<p>When a fellow has eaten more than 60,000 meals, as
+I have in my time, it must be a very good performance
+in that line to stand out like a bump or a peg in memory.
+Through all my days I can never forget that
+supper in the fire-lighted room where Ike played feet
+and Annie played hands and brains. Ike started a roaring
+fire in the kitchen stove. Then he brought in a
+basket of potatoes and Annie selected the best ones for
+baking. He came with a fragrant brown ham, and cut
+slices, under her eye, she measuring with her thin finger
+to make sure they were not too thick. She cut the bread
+herself, selected the eggs for frying, mixed the gravy
+and seemed to know by the sputter in the pan when the
+ham was done. Ike pushed her chair over to the table
+so she could spread the cloth and arrange the service.
+Then at a word he pushed her chair to the window
+where half a dozen plants were blooming. She cut two
+little nosegays and put them beside the plates of her
+guests. Ike brought in the ham and eggs, the great,
+mealy baked potatoes, the brown biscuits and the apple
+pie. In her city home a servant would have approached
+the lady and gently announced:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Dinner is served!”</p>
+
+<p>Ike Sawyer, when Annie nodded approval, simply
+invited:</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sit by and eat!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>It was all so simple and human that it seemed a perfectly
+natural thing to do when the discontented and
+peevish young woman picked up the little nosegay at
+her husband’s plate and pinned it on his coat. She even
+patted his shoulder just as Ike had done with Annie.
+We were all ready to begin, when Ike, standing by
+Annie’s chair, took off his great spectacles and held up
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know who you be or whether you’re church
+folks or not, but me an’ Annie always makes every
+day a season for Thanksgivin’.”</p>
+
+<p>Then in the deep silence with only the popping of the
+fire and the dim noises of the night, as accompaniment,
+the old man bowed his head and made his prayer. He
+prayed that the “stranger within our gates” might find
+peace and strength and go on his way thankful for all
+the blessings of life. Under those great bushy eyebrows
+the eyes of the strong, rich man glowed with a
+strange light. The young wife glanced at him, and the
+sneer faded away from her face. Then Ike became the
+landlord once more and he bustled about, tempting us to
+eat a little more of this or another piece of that, and
+at every word of praise falling back upon his stock explanation:</p>
+
+<p>“It’s her—Annie plays hands and I play feet.
+Everybody knows hands have more skill than
+feet.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span></p>
+
+<p>After supper the big man and his wife stood at the
+window looking out into the wet, dismal night. After
+a little hesitation he put his arm gently around her.
+She did not throw it away as she did when he tried to
+comfort her in the swamp, but rather pulled it closer.
+After Ike had cleared up his dishes and caught and
+dressed the gray rooster we all sat before the fire and
+talked. With a few shrewd questions the lumberman
+drew out Ike’s story. Years before he and Annie had
+owned a good farm in New York. There they heard
+of the wonderful new town that was to be built in
+Northern Michigan. A city was to arise there, the railroad
+was coming, and fortune was to float on golden
+wings over the favored place. It is strange how people
+like Ike and Annie cannot see how much they need
+home and old friends and old scenes to make life satisfying.
+They are not made of the stuff used in building
+pioneers, but they cannot realize it and they listen to
+plausible dreams and go chasing after the impossible.
+So Ike and Annie sold the farm and came to start the
+great city. It never started. The railroad headed 20
+miles west. Out among the scrub oaks you could find
+some of the rotting stakes marked “Broadway,” “Clay
+St.,” or “Lake Avenue.” The swamp and forest refused
+to be civilized. Ike built his hotel in anticipation
+of the human wave which would wash prosperity his
+way. It never came, and only a rough, rambling house
+remained as the weatherbeaten gravestone of Sawdust
+City. Of all the pioneers there were only Ike and
+Annie—last of them all—celebrating their happy
+Thanksgiving!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you sell out and move to some town?”
+said the practical lumberman.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, sir—it would be too far from home! Me
+and Annie know this place—every corner of it. Every
+crick of a timber at night brings a memory. We are
+just part of the place. And the little girl is buried off
+there by the brook. We couldn’t go away from that,
+could we?”</p>
+
+<p>“But isn’t it so <i>awful</i> lonesome?”</p>
+
+<p>It was the young woman who asked, and it was Annie
+who softly answered her.</p>
+
+<p>“No, for we have great company. I have Ike and
+he has me. All these long years have tried us out. We
+know each other, and we are satisfied. Each Thanksgiving
+finds us happier than before, because we know
+that our last years are to be our best years.”</p>
+
+<p>The rich man looked over to Ike and Annie with
+something of hopeless envy printed on his face. His
+wife nodded her head gently and then sat gazing into
+the fire until Ike gave us clearly to understand that 10
+o’clock was the hour for retiring at the “Farmers’
+Rest.”</p>
+
+<p>We stayed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the gray
+rooster, stuffed with chestnuts and bread-crumbs, might
+well have stood up in the platter to crow at the praises
+heaped upon him. The forenoon was gloomy and dull,
+but just as we came to the table the sun broke through
+the clouds. A long splinter of sunshine broke through
+the window—falling upon Annie’s snow-white hair.
+Ike hurried to move her chair out of the sun, but the
+rich man asked Ike to leave her there, for I think something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span>
+in that sunny picture took him back to childhood—where
+most men go on Thanksgiving Day.</p>
+
+<p>And shortly after dinner the farmer came up the
+road with the carriage. The axle had been mended and
+the horses rested. We all shook hands with Ike and
+Annie. I was to go my way and the other guests were
+to pass out of our little world.</p>
+
+<p>Annie held the young girl’s hand for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear, I hope you will soon be back in the city
+among your friends, where you will not be so lonely.
+It must be hard for you here.”</p>
+
+<p>The girl hesitated a moment and then put her hand
+on her husband’s shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“John, would it mean very much to you if we went
+right back to the camp so you could finish your business?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it would—but I am afraid——”</p>
+
+<p>“Then we will <i>not</i> go home yet, but we will go back
+until you are through. I have had a beautiful Thanksgiving.
+I would rather stay in the woods.”</p>
+
+<p>And so they turned in their tracks and went back
+through the swamp. The night before she said she
+should always hate the place where the accident had
+made Ike Sawyer’s hotel a necessity. Now as she passed
+it she smiled and gave her husband a pinch—a trick
+she must have learned from Annie. And so they went
+on through the sunny afternoon of the “thankfullest day
+of their lives.” They were thinking of the working
+force at the “Farmers’ Rest”—the feet and the hands!</p>
+
+<p>And the thought in their minds framed itself over
+and over into words:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span></p>
+
+<p>“<i>Out of their poverty, out of their trouble and loneliness,
+this man and woman have found each other, and
+thus have found the most beautiful and precious thing
+in life—love!</i>”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="OLD-TIME_POLITICS">OLD-TIME POLITICS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“What is the matter with this political campaign?”</p>
+
+<p>An old man who can remember public events far
+back of the Civil War and beyond asked that question
+the other day. He said this campaign reminded him
+more of a Sunday school convention. Nobody was
+fighting, and very few such epithets as “liar” or
+“thief” or “rascal” were being used. In these days
+no one seems to care who is to be elected. We are all
+too busy trying to pay our bills. The old man bewailed
+the loss of power and interest in this generation. He
+thought this quiet indifference meant that as a nation
+we have lost our political vigor. Having been through
+some of those old-time battles, I cannot fully agree with
+him. It is true that few people seem interested, yet they
+will vote this year, and I think the quiet and thoughtful
+study most of them are making will prove as effective as
+the big noise and excitement we used to have. We are
+merely doing things differently now. Whether the great
+excitement of those old political days made us better
+citizens is a question which has long puzzled me. I
+know that in those nervous and high-strung days we
+did many foolish things as a part of “politics.” On
+the other hand, I wish sometimes that our people could
+get as thoroughly worked up over the tribute we are
+paying to the profiteers as we did in those old days over
+the tariff and the slavery issue.</p>
+
+<p>I can well remember taking part in the campaign between<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span>
+Garfield and Hancock. The Democrats felt that
+they had been robbed of the Presidency in ’76, but as
+they failed to renominate Tilden the Republicans called
+them quitters. I had dropped out of college for awhile
+to work as hired man for a farmer in a Western State,
+and we certainly had a great time. This farmer was
+an old soldier; he was a good talker and thought well
+of his own exploits. When you found that combination
+40 years ago you struck a red-hot partisan. The man’s
+wife was a Democrat, because her father had been.
+She was one of those small, black-eyed women who acquire
+the habit of dominating things in the schoolroom
+and then concentrate the habit when they take
+a school of one pupil in the home. Her brother lived on
+the next farm. He had turned Republican because he
+wanted to be elected county clerk. It was fully worth
+the price of admission to sit by the fire some stormy
+night and hear this woman put those two Republicans
+on the broiler of her tongue. They were big men, fully
+capable of holding their own in any ordinary argument,
+but this small woman cowed them as she formerly
+did her A B C pupils. It was enough to make any
+young man very thoughtful about marrying a successful
+teacher to see this small woman point a finger at her
+big husband and say:</p>
+
+<p>“Now John Crandall, don’t you dare to say it isn’t
+the truth!”</p>
+
+<p>And John didn’t dare, though from his political religion
+it might be a base fabrication. One day, after a
+particularly hard thrust, John and I were digging potatoes,
+and he unburdened his mind a little:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you one thing: any man who marries a
+good school-marm takes his life in his hands—his political
+life, anyway!” and he pushed his fork into the
+ground as though he was spearing a Democrat! “And
+yet,” he added, as he threw out a fine hill of
+potatoes, “sometimes I kinder think it’s worth the
+risk.”</p>
+
+<p>My great regret is that this lady did not live to celebrate
+the Nineteenth Amendment! With the ballot in
+her hand she would have stirred excitement even into
+this dull campaign!</p>
+
+<p>We worked all day, and went around arguing most
+of the night during that hot campaign. The names we
+had for the Democrats would not bear repeating here.
+The other side went around with pieces of chalk, making
+the figures “321” on every fence and building or
+on stones. That represented the sum of money which
+General Garfield was said to have stolen. The Republicans
+marched around in processions carrying a pair of
+overalls tied to a pole, representing one of the Democratic
+candidates. Oh, it was a “campaign of education”
+without doubt! And then Maine voted! John
+and his brother-in-law had been playing Maine as their
+trump card.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait till you hear from the old Pine Tree State.
+As Maine goes, so goes the Union!”</p>
+
+<p>John felt so sure of it that even his wife was a little
+fearful. The day after the Maine election John and I
+were seeding wheat on a hill back from the road. There
+were no telephones in those days, and news traveled
+slowly—we were eight miles from town. In the late<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span>
+afternoon we heard a noise from the distant road.
+There was Peleg Leonard driving his old white horse
+up the road at full speed and roaring out an old campaign
+song:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Democratic wagon, and we’ll all take a ride!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The demand for prohibition in those days was confined
+to a few “wild-eyed fanatics,” and Peleg was not
+one of them, especially on those rare occasions when the
+Democrats got a chance to yell. We saw him stop in
+front of the house and wave his arms as he told the news
+to Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>“Looks sorter bad. Can it be that Maine has gone
+back on us?” said John as he saw the celebrator go on
+his way.</p>
+
+<p>We usually had a cold supper on such days, but now
+we saw the smoke pouring from the kitchen chimney,
+and the horn blew half an hour earlier than usual. John
+and I put up the horses, washed our faces at the pump
+and walked into the kitchen as only two dejected Republicans
+can travel. You see, it wasn’t so bad for the
+Democrats. They were used to being defeated, and
+had made no great claims. I was young then, and
+youth is intensely partisan. Since that day I have voted
+on four different party tickets, and glory in the fact that
+I am not “hide-bound.”</p>
+
+<p>Sarah had on her best black silk and the white apron
+with lace edges. She had cooked some hot biscuit and
+dished up some of her famous plum preserve and actually
+skimmed a pan of milk to serve thick cream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span></p>
+
+<p>“<i>Maine is gone Democratic!</i>” she cried. “<i>Hurrah
+for Hancock!</i> Bread and water’s good enough for Republicans
+in this hour of triumph, but I know the fat of
+the land will taste like gall to both of you. Sit right
+down and feast, because the country’s safe!”</p>
+
+<p>Physically that supper was perfect. There never
+were finer hot biscuits or better plum preserve or finer
+cold chicken! Spiritually it was the saddest and most
+depressing meal on record. We made a full meal. I
+can go back into the years and see that big farmer gnawing
+half a chicken under command of his wife. You
+remember “King Robert of Sicily” in Longfellow’s
+poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The world he loved so much</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so with poor John. That fine chicken tasted
+exactly like crow as Sarah sat by and “rubbed it in.”
+Oh, politics, where are the charms we formerly saw in
+thy face?</p>
+
+<p>John and I surely dawdled over our chores that night.
+We had no great desire to go in and hear the news.
+Finally Sarah came to the door and called us.</p>
+
+<p>“Say,” said John to me as we started for the house,
+“you go to college. Have you ever studied logic or
+what they call psychology?”</p>
+
+<p>“While I am no expert at either subject, I know
+what they mean.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now, suppose your wife got after you like
+that, how would you use those studies to keep her quiet?
+What’s the use of an education if it don’t help you
+keep peace in the family?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span></p>
+
+<p>So I unwisely told John that he ought to tell his wife
+that a woman by law obtained her citizenship from her
+husband. That citizenship was the essence of politics;
+therefore the wife should by law belong to her husband’s
+party. I am older now in years, and I know better than
+to give any man arguments in a debate with his wife.
+The Maine election, however, had made us desperate.
+So John marched in with a very confident step and
+elaborated my arguments. He was quite impressive
+when he assured her that the law declared that a woman
+acquired her political principles from her husband. It
+did not work, however.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you tell me! I didn’t marry any principles
+at all when I married you. How is a man going to give
+any principles to his wife when he never had any to
+give? My father was a Democrat, and I take my politics
+from him. He was the best man that ever lived,
+and you know it. I inherit my politics, I do—I didn’t
+marry them!”</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that Sarah’s father was an old war Democrat
+who came near being tarred and feathered by his
+neighbors, but one of the saving graces of modern civilization
+is the fact that a woman’s father is always an
+immortal—never needing any defense—his virtues being
+self-evident, while her husband is a de-mortal who
+can hardly hope to become a good citizen except through
+long years of patient service! His only hope lies in
+the future when he has a daughter of his own.</p>
+
+<p>And Henry Wilkins, Sarah’s brother, was running for
+county clerk. We held a caucus at the blacksmith shop,
+where John and I and two farmers were elected delegates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span>
+to the county convention. We all went to the
+county seat one Saturday afternoon to nominate a ticket.
+The last we heard from Sarah was:</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Henry, if you get nominated on that renegade
+ticket, I know one man that won’t vote for you
+and that’s John Crandall. I won’t let him vote if he
+has to stay in bed all day!”</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to what some of the “antis” say woman
+has always exercised political power.</p>
+
+<p>When we got to town we found the “drug-store
+ring” in control. This was a little group of politicians
+led by Jacob Spaulding. It was the “Tammany
+Hall” of Oak County. This ring had decided to nominate
+an undertaker from the west side of the county for
+clerk. Most of the farmers were all ready to quit when
+Jake Spaulding said the word, for he usually handed out
+the little political jobs. I was young and inexperienced
+in politics and ready for a fight. It hurt me to
+see that great crowd of farmers ready to give up the
+fight when a big, fat brute like Jake Spaulding and a
+few of his creatures shook their heads. So I called our
+delegates together and proposed that we go right in
+where Jake was and “talk turkey” to him. Strange,
+but John Crandall was the only outspoken supporter
+I had. John was bossed at home until he was like a
+lamb, but get him out among men and the pent-up
+feelings in the lamb expanded that innocent animal into
+a lion. So we had our way, and about 25 of us marched
+down the street to the courthouse, where in the sheriff’s
+room the county committee was making up the ticket.</p>
+
+<p>You would have thought the destinies of the nation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>
+were at stake as we filed into that room. Half of our
+delegates were ready to quit when Jake Spaulding
+glared at us over his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you want?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Walker was our spokesman, and Jake Spaulding
+had a mortgage on his house. You could see that
+mortgage peeking out from behind every sentence of the
+doctor’s speech. In effect he asked those politicians if
+they wouldn’t please nominate Henry Wilkins for
+county clerk. It didn’t take Jake long to put us where
+we belonged.</p>
+
+<p>“No; the delegates to this convention are going to
+nominate Hiram Green. Nothing doing here. Just
+fall in and work for the grand old Republican party!
+And now, boys, good day; we’re busy.”</p>
+
+<p>Several of our delegates started for the door. They
+were well-disciplined soldiers. I was not, and I did
+what most of them thought a very foolish thing. Before
+I well knew it I was up in front making a speech to
+Jake Spaulding. At that time no one had ever heard
+of the 35-cent dollar. The word “profiteer” was not
+in the language; but I think I did make it clear that
+these farmers were there to nominate Henry Wilkins or
+“bust” the convention. As I look back upon it now I
+think it was the most bold and palpable “bluff” ever
+attempted at a country convention. And John Crandall
+stood beside me and pounded his big hands together
+until the rest of the delegates forgot their fear and
+joined in. When I finished there was nothing to do for
+us but to file out of the courthouse.</p>
+
+<p>Then they turned on me in sorrow and anger. Everyone<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span>
+would now be a marked man. They never could get
+any office from Jake Spaulding. Even Henry, the candidate,
+felt I had injured his chances, for if he kept
+quiet perhaps he might make a deal to get to be deputy
+clerk. But John Crandall stood by me.</p>
+
+<p>“Good,” he said; “I’m a fighter. Get right up in
+convention and give ’em another. I’m going to vote for
+Henry till the last man is out.”</p>
+
+<p>But these faint hearts did not know what was going
+on inside the sheriff’s room. When our delegation
+marched out the county committee sat and looked at
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Boys,” said Jake Spaulding, “it looks like they
+mean business. We can’t let that spread. I guess we’ll
+have to take Henry on!”</p>
+
+<p>There was a big crowd in the courthouse, and the
+convention went off like a well-oiled machine. They
+nominated sheriff and probate judge and then the chairman
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>“Any nominations for county clerk?”</p>
+
+<p>I had my throat all cleared and stood up with:
+“Mr. Chairman,”—but no one paid much attention
+to me. The chairman turned to the platform and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>“I recognize Judge Spaulding,” and there was the
+big, fat boss on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “today our glorious country
+lives or dies! The grand old Republican party is on
+trial. Every patriot is needed in this great crisis. Ho!
+Israel, every man to his tent! I therefore take great
+pleasure in nominating that splendid farmer, that incomparable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span>
+patriot, that popular citizen, Henry Wilkins
+of Adams township. I ask you in the name of our
+glorious citizenship to put him through with bells
+on!”</p>
+
+<p>I stood there all through the speech too dazed to sit,
+until John Crandall pulled me down. Then I realized
+that for once a bluff had worked. And after the convention
+I met Jake Spaulding in front of the courthouse.
+“Young feller,” he said, “if you decide to settle down
+in this county, let me know. I’ll have a little job for
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>We all rode home in the candidate’s wagon. Sarah
+was waiting for us at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, how did you come out?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nominated by acclamation,” said Henry. “John
+and the young feller here did it. They made Jake
+Spaulding come up!”</p>
+
+<p>“John?”</p>
+
+<p>If some actress could put into a single word the
+scorn and surprise which Sarah packed into her husband’s
+name her fortune would be made. And John
+and I stood there like a couple of truant schoolboys
+waiting for the verdict.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I said. John was fine. Only for
+him I’d have been defeated.” And Henry drove on.</p>
+
+<p>“Now you two lazy Republicans, get out and milk
+those cows.”</p>
+
+<p>We went, but when we got back the kitchen stove
+was roaring, and Sarah was just taking out a pan of
+biscuits. There were ham and eggs on the stove.</p>
+
+<p>“Now you sit right down and eat. If I’ve got to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span>
+be sister to a county clerk I want to know all about it.
+Now, John, you tell me just how it happened.”</p>
+
+<p>Ah, but those were the happy days of politics. Do
+you wonder that we old-timers consider the present
+campaign about like dishwater—in more ways than one?</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Hope Farm Notes, by Herbert Winslow Collingwood
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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