Part 14

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.”