Part 3

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.