Part 12
“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.