Part 11
“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!”