Part 4
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.