Part 5

I told this as best I could before the fire while my weary friend listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face. And when I stopped sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep. There are very few of us who would stand for a photograph taken while we were asleep, but this man’s face was free from care. An orator might not think it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience to sleep, but I am not an orator, and I would like to be able to give my friends what they consider the blessed things of life! And Peace, blissful Peace, had put her healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.

LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY

It brought the worst storm we have had this Winter. This season will pass on into history as about the roughest we have had in 20 years. There came a whirl of snow which filled the air and sifted in through every crack and hole. We let the storm alone, and got away from it. Merrill sorted out seed corn at the barn. Philip had some inside painting to do, the women folks kept at their household work, and the children got out into the storm. They came in now and then to stand by the fire—with faces the color of their hair. As for me, I cannot say that I hurt myself with hard labor. We piled the logs in the open fireplace and started a roaring fire. With a pile of books on one side and a pen and paper at the other, my big chair gave a very good foundation for a Lincoln celebration. I presume we all have our personal habits of reading. Some people read only one kind of books, and stick to the one in hand until it is finished. My plan is different. Right now I am reading Dante, “Rural Credits,” “Manufacture of Chemical Manure,” Whittier’s Poems and Lowell’s essay on Abraham Lincoln. A poor jumble of stuff for a human head you will say, but I turn from one to another, so that instead of a mixed-up jumble I try to have these different thoughts in layers through the mind. In this way one may get a blend which is better than a hash. It may seem absurd to think of putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless you can do something of the sort you can never get very far with them.

That was the great secret of Lincoln’s power. As judged by knowledge or training or what we call “education,” there were many abler men in the country at his time, but Lincoln knew how to appeal to the imagination of the plain, common people. Read his speeches and papers and see how he framed a fact with a mental picture which the common people could understand. There were some wonderful pictures at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Some were called masterpieces of fabulous value. People stood before them and went on with something of awe in their heart—not quite grasping the artist’s meaning. One less pretentious picture was named “The Breaking of Home Ties,” and day by day a great throng stood before it, silent and wet-eyed. It was a very simple home scene, picturing a boy leaving his country home. Men studied it, walked away and then turned and slowly came back that they might see it once more. As long as they live people will remember that picture, because the poetry of it appealed to them as the higher art could not do. I think Lincoln held the imagination of the plain people much as that picture did. He was one who had suffered and had been brought up with plain and simple family habits which were fixed.

The children have come running in to warm their hands. They are lined up in front of the big fire, rosy-faced and covered with snow. They stand looking at me as I write. Dinner is nearly ready, and there is no question about their readiness for it. Here comes Mother to look out at the storm, and she forgets to remember that this group of snowbirds by my fire have forgotten to stamp the snow off their feet. There will be a puddle of water when they move off—but it will soon dry up. As I watch them all it seems a good time to pick up Lowell’s essay on Lincoln:

“_He is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud.... He has always addressed the intelligence of men. Never their prejudices, their passion or their ignorance._”

Now I think that intelligence and power to speak as people think can only come out of good family relations. Do I mean to say that the family group is superior to the college, the school or the other great institutions for training human thought? I do, wherever the family group is bound together as it should be by love, good will, ambition and something of sacrifice!

This nation and every other is ruled by the family spirit. All public government is based on self-government, and the family is the training school for all. What could the college or the school do with a great crowd or mob of students who have never known the restraints of good family life? Ask any teacher to tell you the difference between children reared in a clean, careful family and those reared where the family relations are much like a cross-cut saw. Line up the adults you know, make a fair estimate of their character and see whether you can select those who in their childhood had a fair chance in family life. There are, of course, exceptions to all rules, but generally the boy or girl will carry through life the habits and the human policies which are given him in the family. As a rule these will be carried into the new family which the boy or girl may start, and thus be handed on like those qualities which are transmitted through blood lines. No use talking—the family unit is the most important element in human society. A nation’s fame rests upon the nation’s family.

I think a man may fairly be judged by the way he treats his parents, his children and his wife. I do not care how he gets out and shows himself off as a great man and a good citizen. He might get an overwhelming vote for Congress or Governor, but God will judge him more by the votes of father, mother, son, daughter, wife! To me there can be nothing more beautiful than the best relation between a man of middle years and his aged parents. Perhaps the latter are feeble and not well-to-do. When they can sit in their son’s home happy and comfortable, knowing that the entire family has been taught to put them first of all in family regard, you have struck about the finest test of a man’s character that good citizenship can offer. When the children chase their father about and, out of their own thought, run to anticipate his wants, you can make up your mind that in that family are being trained men and women who can go out and absorb education and financial power which will be used for the true benefit of humanity. Most of us can never hope to be great men or to handle large public affairs, but we can make our family a training school for good citizenship. I have no thought that in this group of bright-eyed youngsters lined up by my fire we are to have any great statesmen or authors or merchant princes or big folk generally. On the whole I hope not, as it would seem to me that the great man has a rather lonely life. I do expect, however, that these children will always remember Hope Farm, and that in future years when the world may turn a very cold side to them they will remember this stormy day and will feel the warmth of this kindly fire.

I have wandered away from what I wanted to say about Lincoln and his power over the people. It was this family feeling which made him strong, and if you want your boy or girl to be really worth while you must give them and their mother the best family surroundings you can possibly secure. The man who taps the spring or the well and sends the water running through his house does far more for his country than he who runs for Congress and taps the public pocket-book.

But here comes Mother again, with “Come now, dinner’s ready. Don’t let it get cold!” Get cold? The children are already at the table! I wish you could come right along with me. I would put two sausage cakes on your plate and fill it up with mealy potatoes and yellow turnips. Then you would have rice in another dish. There is a dish of thick, brown gravy and nothing would suit me better than to have you call for an egg—fried or boiled. The Reds are laying well now. There are two kinds of bread and plenty of butter, and we will take a family vote as to whether we shall take peaches, strawberries, Kieffer pears, cherries or raspberries off the pantry shelves. I vote for Crosby peaches, but you will have a free choice and all you can eat. Surely the table makes a very strong family tie. Come on!

UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY

Uncle Ed had his home in Florida, but spent the Summer working at Hope Farm. At the time I speak of we were hoeing corn at the top of our hill. We had just planted the apple orchard, and we both realized the long and weary years of toilsome waiting before there could be any fruit. It was a hot day, and at the end of the row we stopped to rest under the big cherry tree where the stone wall is broad and thick. It was a clear day, and far off across the rolling country to the East we could see the sparkle of the sun on some gilded-top building in New York. It gave one a curious feeling to stand in that shady retreat on $50 land in a lonely neighborhood, practically untouched by modern development, and glance across to the millions and the might crowded at the mouth of the Hudson. Most of us feel a sort of pride on viewing the evidence of wealth and power, even though we have no share in it, or even when we know it means blood money taken from our own lives. I felt something of this as I pointed it out to Uncle Ed, and told him how probably the overflow of that great city would some day make an acre of our orchard worth more than a farm in Florida.

This did not seem to impress him greatly. He ran his eye over the glowing prospect and then slowly filled his pipe for a smoke. I am no friend of tobacco, but I confess that sometimes I enjoy seeing a man like Uncle Ed slowly fill his pipe. I feel that some sort of homely philosophy is sure to be smoked out.

“The trouble with you folks up in this country,” said Uncle Ed, “is that you work too hard. You get so that there is nothing in you but work and save. And for what? How many of you ever get the benefit of your own work? Down where I live we don’t exist for the mere sake of working. I have known the time when I got up determined to do a good day’s work cultivating. I got the horse all harnessed, only to find that my neighbor on the south had borrowed the cultivator, and I couldn’t do that. Then I thought I’d hoe, but the boys lost the hoe in the brush and couldn’t find it. Then there was the woodpile to be cut up, but my neighbor on the north had borrowed the ax.

“Now up in this country if fate challenged a man like that he would start picking up stones and making a stone wall. Here is one now that we are resting against. I’ll bet some old owner of this farm piled up this heap of stones because he was determined that the boys never should play or go fishing. It is now the most useless thing you have on your farm. If, instead of picking up stones and building this useless wall, that old-timer had quit when fate gave him the sign, taken a day off and let the boys go fishing or play ball, this farm would be worth far more than it is today. Down in my country when the cultivator and the hoe and the ax all get away from us we accept it as a voice from some higher authority, and we _drop everything and go fishing_. After that I notice things straighten out and work goes right. You fellows work too hard, and don’t know it. But this won’t buy the woman a dress—we must hoe this corn out.”

The rows ran to the south, and as we hoed on I could see, far away, that bright sparkle on the gilding of the big city. And I answered with the old familiar argument:

“You have just told in a few words why there are more savings of the poor and middle-class people in that big city yonder than there are in the entire State of Florida.” That was 16 years ago and the statement was probably true at the time. Florida has gained since then.

“Up in this country we believe that the Lord gives every man of decent mind and reasonable body a chance to provide for himself and family before he is 45. If he doesn’t do it by that time, he isn’t likely to do it at all. We think that there are three ways of getting money. You can earn it through labor, steal it, or have it given to you. For most of us there is only one way—that is to dig it out by the hardest work, and then practice self-denial in order to hold it. Up in this country the men who quit and go fishing when conditions turn against them, spend their declining years without any bait. That money off there where you see that sparkle was produced by men who did not go fishing when conditions turned against them.”

As I look back upon it now that seems pretty cheap talk, but it was the way we looked at it in those days.

“I know,” said Uncle Ed, “but how much better off are they when you sum it all up? I claim that the man who goes fishing gets something that the man who built that stone wall never knew. Who piled up all that money in the big city? Some of mine is there. The interest I have paid on my mortgage has come into one of these big buildings for investment. The profit on many a box of oranges I shipped before the freeze never got away from New York. It stuck there and you can’t get it out. And that’s just what I mean. You fellows work your fingers stiff and make a little money, and then you put it into some bank or big company or into stocks or bonds. In the end it all gets away from you and runs down hill to that big city. The hired man took $25 to the county fair. Ten dollars of it went for beer and rum. The local saloonkeeper passed the $10 on to the wholesaler, he to the brewer and he sent part of it to Germany and the rest to Wall Street. The other $15 mostly went in chance games or petty gambling. He lost $5 betting that he could find the little red ball under the hat. The man who won his $5 lost it that night playing poker. The gambler who won it lost it a few nights later in a gambling house. The gambling house man bought bogus oil and mining stocks and lost it that way. The oil stock man had sense enough to salt it down in respectable securities, and there it is now under that bright sparkle in the big city. You and the rest of you do pretty much the same. This man who built your stone wall did it. The money he made was not invested here. If it had been you never could have bought this farm. It is off there under that bright sparkle—and the boys and girls run after it. _You fellows work too hard!_”

I undertook to come back with that text about the man who provideth not for his family—but I never was good at remembering texts. That is probably because I do not study them as I ought to. But at any rate I undertook to argue that it is a man’s first duty to provide for his family and also for his own “rainy day.” “_The night cometh, when no man can work._”

“Down where I live,” said Uncle Ed, “we don’t have such rainy days as you do up here. Life is simple and straight and old people are cared for. We want them to live with us—we are not waiting for them to pass off and leave their money. Off in that big city where your money is turning over and over, thousands of human lives get under it and are crushed out of all shape. Down there under that sparkle only the poor know what neighbors are. Many a man lives his life in some tenement or apartment house never knowing or caring what goes on in the room on the other side of the wall. There may be joy or sorrow, death or life, virtue or crime. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, because this never-ending grind of work has changed sympathy into selfishness. And in the end that is what all those dollars which you folks dump into the big city come to. If the habit is so strong that you’ve got to work and try to catch up with the man who has a little more than you have, why not invest your money at home and in the farm? Those fellows off under that sparkle will come chasing after your money if you invest it here, and you would be boss instead of servant! _Am I right?_”

That was 16 years ago, and many things have happened since then. Uncle Ed has passed away—after many troubles and misfortunes. The world has been shaken up by the war and by great discoveries, so that we hardly know it. Yet there is a brighter sparkle than ever on the gilded roofs of the big city—greater wealth and more blinding poverty crouching beneath it. The hill where we hoed corn is now covered with big apple trees. Where then Bob and Jerry toiled slowly along with half a ton of fruit the truck now flashes down the hard, smooth road with two tons. But sitting on the old stone wall of a Sunday afternoon in late August I look across the valley and wonder how much there really is in Uncle Ed’s philosophy after all. What do _you_ think?

A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE

James and William Hardy were twins—born and bred on a New Hampshire farm. The family dated far back to pioneer times, when John Hardy and Henry Graham, with their young wives, went into the wilderness as the advance guard of civilization. It came to be a common understanding that a Hardy should always marry a Graham, and through four generations at least this family law had been observed until there had been developed one of those fine, purebred New England families which represent just about the highest type of the American. As the father of these twins married a Graham girl you had a right to expect them to be as much alike as two peas in the family pod—both in appearance and in character. Here you surely might expect one of those cases where the twins are always being mixed up, when not even their mother could be sure which was Jim and which was Bill. In truth, however, the boys were distinctly different from the day they were born—different in size, in appearance and in character.

These twins innocently brought to the surface a sad spot of family history which both the Grahams and the Hardys hoped had been buried too far down ever to show itself. Far back in the French and Indian war a band of raiders from Canada burst out of the forest and carried off a dozen prisoners. Among them was the pride of the Graham family—a beautiful girl of 16. The settlers, hiding in their blockhouse, could only look on and see their relatives start on the long march to Canada. The next year some of these prisoners were ransomed, and came back to say that the girl had married a young Frenchman. She was happy, and sent word to her parents that she preferred to stay with her husband. Years went by, until one night there came to Henry Graham’s house a Canadian ranger and a young girl. It was their granddaughter and her father. The mother had died and had begged her husband to take her daughter back to the old folks as her offering of love. The father delivered his message, bade his daughter farewell and silently vanished into the forest. They never saw him again, but they realized that he had given full measure of devotion to his dead wife. The girl grew up to be a beautiful creature much like her mother, only darker, and at times there was a bright glitter in her eyes. She married a Hardy and settled down as a farmer’s wife. She was dutiful and kind, but sometimes her husband would see her standing at the door—looking off into the Northern forests with a look which made him shake his head. Years went by, and this spot on the family history had been forgotten until these twins uncovered it! Their mother knew in her heart that the spirit of the restless Frenchman was watching her from the cradle through the black shiny eyes of her strange baby. James, the light-haired, steady, purebred infant, slept calmly or acted just as a good Hardy should, but the wild spirit of the forest had jumped three generations right into the cradle, where this black-haired little changeling stared at her!

There never were two children more unlike than these twins. Jim was solid, sound, a little slow, but absolutely trustworthy—“a born Hardy” as they said. Bill was bright, quick, restless, full of plans and visions. He did not like to work, and had no respect for the family skeleton. This was a mortgage, which for many years had sunk its claws into the rocky little farm. The truth was that this farm never should have been cleared and settled. It was rocky and sandy; farther out of date than the old mill rotting unused by the old mill pond. The mortgage hung like a wolf at the back door, demanding its due, which came out of the little farm like blood money. Jim Hardy, like his father and grandfather, grew up to regard that mortgage as a fixed and sacred institution. It was a family heirloom or tradition—something like the old musket which an older Hardy carried at Bunker Hill, or like grandmother’s old spinning-wheel. As for the poor, rocky farm, Jim and his father would stay and grind themselves away in a hopeless struggle just because the Hardys who went before them had done so. It was different with Bill. He had no use for the mortgage or for the rocky pastures, for the dash of French blood had put rubber, or yeast, into the covering of the stern New England thought. His father never could understand him and one day, when Bill was 17, the blood of the “changeling” burst into open mutiny. The father knew of only one way to act. He ordered the boy around behind the barn and took the horsewhip to him. As a Hardy, Bill was expected to stand and take his punishment without a murmur. As the descendant of a wild forest ranger he could only resent the blows. What he did was to catch his father’s arms and hold them like a vice. Neither spoke a word. They just looked at each other. The older man struggled, but he was powerless—he knew that his son was the master. He dropped the whip from his hand and bowed his head. The boy released him, broke the whip in two, and threw it away. The father walked to the house, a dazed and broken man. Bill watched him and then walked out to the back lot where Jim, the steady and faithful, was building a fence.

“Good-bye, Jim,” he said. “I’m off. It had to come. I’m different, and yet the same, as you will see. You stay here and look after father and mother. I will help some day.” It was the Hardy in both the boys which made it impossible for them to come any closer in feeling. Bill walked on over the pasture hill; at the top he paused to wave his hand. Then he was gone.