Part 9

And one reason why there has grown up an industrial advantage in the town and city may perhaps be learned from another sermon in stones. Some years ago we had two boys on the farm. Largely in order to keep them busy their mother made a bargain with them to wash windows. They were to be paid so much for each window properly cleaned. Of course their mother supposed that the work would be done in the good old-fashioned way of scrubbing the glass by hand with a wet cloth. The object was more to keep them busy than to have any skilled work performed. One boy was a patient plodding character who did not object seriously to hand labor. He took a cloth and a pail of hot water and slowly and carefully rubbed off the glass in the old-fashioned way. The other boy never did like to work and after some thought he went to the neighbor’s and borrowed a small hand-pump with a hose and fine nozzle. He filled this with hot water with the soap dissolved in it and sprayed his windows with the hot mixture. He got them just as clean as the other boy did, but he did three windows while his companion was doing one. Then there arose an argument as to whether this boy with the pump should be paid the same price per window as the other boy who did the work by hand. These boys both went to the Sunday school and the boy with the pump was able to refer to the parable of the man who hired the workmen at different hours during the day. When they came to settle up the men who had worked all day grumbled because they got no more than the men who had worked half a day. The answer of the boss applied to this window washing. “Did I not agree with thee for a penny?”

Now in a way the city man with his advantage in labor is not unlike the boy with the pump. The city workman has been able to take advantage of many industrial developments of much machinery which has not yet reached the country. Some day there will be an adjustment and then the countryman will have his inning.

Some years ago I spent the night with a farmer far back in a country neighborhood. After supper he described in great detail a plan he had evolved for organizing all American farmers in one great and powerful body. His plan was complete and he had worked out every detail except one which he did not seem to think essential. I looked out of the window through the dark night and saw a light far down the road. Some neighbor was at home. I thought it a good time for action.

“There,” I said, “is a chance to start this big scheme of yours. Down the road I see the light from your neighbor’s window. Put on your hat, take the hired man and your boys and we will go right down there and organize the first chapter of this organization. No time like the present.”

The farmer’s face clouded. “Why, I haven’t spoken, to that man for three years. He would not keep up the line fence and I had to go to law and make him do it.”

I looked out of the window once more and saw another light to the north of us dimly visible in the darkness. “Well, then let us go to this other neighbor. I saw several men there as I came by.”

“That man! I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents, and he would be sure to elect himself Treasurer.”

“Well, far across the pasture I see still another light. Shall we go there?”

“No, that man doesn’t know enough to go in the house when it rains.”

The farmer’s wife looked up from her sewing as if to speak, but the man answered for her.

“Oh, the women meet at the sewing circle and church, and while they talk about each other they keep together and do things for the neighborhood, but somehow the men folks don’t get on.”

Yet here was a man who planned to bring all the farmers of the country together and yet could not organize his own neighborhood, because men were kept apart by little prejudices and fancied wrongs. The women combined because they knew enough to realize that these petty things were non-essential, while the great community things could only be remembered by forgetting the meanness of every-day life.

Your city men will smile at this sermon in stones, and say that those farmers never can forget their differences and organize. Yet city life is worse yet. Many a man lives for years within a foot of his neighbor, yet never knows him. There may be only a brick wall between the two families, yet they might as well be 10 miles apart, so far as any community feeling is concerned. If dwellers on any block in the city could combine as a renting or buying association they would quickly settle the High Cost of Living burden, but while their interests are all in common they are unable to play the part of real neighbors. Farmers are coming to it largely through their women and children and the great National Farm Organization is by no means impossible for the future.

THE FACE OF LIBERTY

I suppose every person of middle age wears a mask. It is his face, and as the years go by it settles into an expression of the man’s chief aim in life, if he can be said to have one. That is why a shrewd observer can usually tell much of a man’s character by looking keenly in his face and observing him under excitement. One of the most observing dairymen I know of says he can tell the quality of a cow by looking at her face. I notice that the expert hen men who select birds for the poultry contest spend considerable time looking at the hen’s eye and face! There she seems to show whether she is a bad egg or a good one! Lady Macbeth put it well when she said to her terrified husband:

“Your face, my thane, is as a book Where men may read strange matters.”

We all go about wearing a mask, and those who care how they look may well ask how the mask is made.

I once roomed with a young man who used to get before a mirror and practise a smile and a laugh. He was a commercial traveler, and thought it paid him to laugh at the jokes and smile as he talked. So he trained the muscles of his face and throat into a machine-made twist and noise which represented his stock in trade! He wore a mask. I have heard people say that the face powders and massage and tricks of rolling the eyes about gave them a mask of beauty. Not long ago I talked with a great business man who had simply given his life up to the accumulation of property. He had succeeded, but this success had stamped his face with a mask as hard and flinty as steel. This man sat and told me that a good share of his money had been made by his ability to read character in the face. When he found a man showing indecision or fear in his features this man knew he could handle him as he saw fit. He claimed that thought or sentiment had little to do with it; it was simply what a man did or did not do which made the mask of life. As for this theory that character or sentiment “light a candle behind the face and illuminate it,” he said that was simply “poetic nonsense.” “If a woman wanted to be thought beautiful after she got to be forty she must rub the beauty in from the outside.”

This seemed to me a mighty cynical theory, for the most beautiful women I know of are over fifty and never use anything but soap and water to “rub the beauty in.” They wear a mask which seems like concentrated sunshine, and it comes from within. Yet my friend sat there and spoke with all the conviction of a man who has only to write his name on a piece of paper to bring a million dollars to support his word. And he had come to think that is about the only support worth having. I asked him if he had ever read Hawthorne’s story of “The Old Stone Face.” No, he had never heard of it before—had no time for fiction or dreaming. So I told him the story briefly; of the boy who grew up among the hills, within sight of the “old stone face.” This was a great rock on the side of a high mountain. The wind and the storm had slowly eaten it away until, when viewed from a certain angle, it bore a rude resemblance to a human face. It was a stern, gloomy, thoughtful face, and it seemed to this boy to have been carved out of the rock by the very hand of God to show the world an ideal of power and majesty on the human countenance. To most of the neighbors it was merely “the old man of the mountain”—merely a common rock with an accidental shape. But this boy grew up to manhood believing in his heart that God had put on the lonely mountain his ideal of the mask of noble human character. And the boy went through life thinking that if he could only find a human being with a face like that on the mountain he would find a great man—one carrying in his life a great message to mankind. And so, whenever he heard of any great statesman or poet or preacher appearing anywhere within reach this man traveled to see him in the hope of finding the mask of the “stone face” upon the celebrity. He was always disappointed. These great men all showed on their faces the marks of dissipation or pride or some weakness of character, along with their power. He would come back and look up at the face on the mountain—always showing the same calm dignity and strength whether the happy June sunshine played over it, or whether the January storm bit at its rude features. So this man lived his simple life and died—disappointed because he had never been able to find God’s ideal character worked out in a human face! One by one men who were considered great came to the valley, only to disappoint him, but finally, after long years of waiting and searching, the neighbors suddenly found that their friend, who had carried the ideal so long in his heart, also carried on his face the nobility and grandeur of the figure on the mountain. Search for the ideal in others had brought it home to his own life.

To my surprise, the rich and strong man who, I supposed, had no poetry or sentiment in his heart, listened attentively and nodded his head.

“I have seen that stone face in the White Mountains. Your story of course is a mere fancy. There might have been some idle dreamer to whom that happened. I will not deny it, because I know of a case which is somewhat in the same line. I confess that I would not believe it had I not seen it myself.”

So he told his story, and I give it as nearly as possible in his own words:

“It must have been fifteen years ago that I was returning from a business trip to Europe. On the boat I met a college man from my city, an expert in modern languages. We were much together on the trip, and one day we went down into the steerage to look over the immigrants. My friend figured that this group of strange human beings talked with him in fifteen different languages or dialects. One family in particular interested me. They were from the south of Poland; a man and woman of perhaps thirty-five, with two little boys. They were of the dull, heavy, ox-like type—mere beasts of burden in their own country. The woman seemed to me just about the plainest, homeliest creature I had ever seen. Low forehead, flat features, small eyes and great mouth, with huge hands and feet, she seemed, beside the dainty women of our own party, like some inferior animal. I offered her a good-sized bill—they looked as if they needed it—but the woman just pulled her two black-eyed boys closer to her and refused to take it.

“They passed out of my mind, until one fine, sunny morning old Sandy Hook seemed to rise up out of the water, and we headed straight for New York Harbor. I stood with my college friend in front, looking down upon the steerage passengers as they crowded forward to get their first view of America. Strangely enough that little Polish family that had interested me stood right below us, and my friend could hear what they were saying. The ship crawled up the harbor, past Staten Island, and then came to the Statue of Liberty. Most of us have become so familiar with this bronze beauty that we do not even glance at it. I think her strong, fine face and uplifted torch mean little more than old-time habit to many Americans. Not so with that flat-faced, plain Polish woman. As we came even with the ‘bronze goddess’ this woman tore off the little shawl she had tied around her head, reached out her hand and talked excitedly to her husband. My college friend listened to the conversation and laughed.

“‘What is she saying?’ I asked.

“‘Why, the poor, homely thing is telling her husband that it would be the pride and joy of her life if she could only be as beautiful as that statue—if her face were only like that.’

“‘That is the limit. What is _he_ saying?’

“‘Just like every other husband. He is telling her that to him she is handsomer than the old goddess, and for good measure he tells her that under freedom in America she will come to look like “Miss Liberty.”’

“In all my life I had never heard anything so ridiculous, and I laughed aloud. The little family below us looked up at the sound and saw we were laughing at them. A great shadow fell over their day dream and they were silent until we docked, though I noticed that they stood hand in hand all the way. The story seemed so good that I told it everywhere, and it was called the standard joke of the season.

“It faded out of mind and I never thought of it again until about ten years later one of the foremen in the factory died suddenly. I asked the manager who should be put in his place.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a man out in the shop just fitted for it. I can’t pronounce his name, but I will bring him in.’

“He did; a great black-haired man who looked me right in the eye as I like to have people do.

“‘How long have you been in this country?’ I asked.

“‘Ten years. You may not remember, but I came in the ship with you; in the steerage, with my wife and two boys.’

“It flashed into my mind at once; this was what America had done for the man. I smiled as I thought of the flat-faced woman who wanted to look like the Goddess of Liberty, and the man whose faith in America was such that he told her this dream could come true.

“The man more than made good. It is wonderful how things happen in this country. Those two black-eyed boys were at school with my boy and played on the football team with him. They were all three to go to college together.

“Then you know how, before we entered the war, the women organized to do Red Cross work? One day my wife came home and told me how a Polish woman had made the most wonderful talk before her society. Before we knew it America had entered the war, and we were all at it. You couldn’t keep my boy here. He volunteered the first week after war was declared, and these two black-haired boys belonging to my foreman volunteered with him, and they all went over the sea to fight for America.

“I had not seen their mother, and I was curious to see what she looked like after American competence and success had been rubbed in. We had a big parade in our town during one of the Liberty Loan drives, and there was one division of women who carried service flags. I stood in the window of my club watching the parade, and as it happened within six feet of me on the sidewalk stood John, my foreman. I did not laugh this time, nor was he shamed into silence for what he thought of his wife.

“Oh, how that war did stir up and level the elements of American society! There passed before us in parade, side by side, my wife with a service flag of one star and John’s wife with two stars in her flag! And as they passed they turned and looked at us. My wife told me later that they had been talking as they marched. My wife had asked her comrade if she did not feel dreadfully to think of her two great boys far away in France. And the woman with the flat, homely face had answered:

“‘No, I feel glorified to think that I, the poor immigrant woman, can offer my boys in part payment for what America has done for me and my people.’

“And it was just then that I saw her face. I give you my word that at that moment it was the most beautiful face I ever saw. There was a calm beauty and dignity, a light of joy upon it which made me forget the flat nose, the narrow forehead and the great mouth. They passed on, and John, the foreman, looked up at me. We were both thinking the same thing, master and man though we were. I couldn’t reach him with my hand, but I did say:

“‘John, she has had her life wish. She has come to look like the Goddess of Liberty. It was a miracle.’

“And John answered in his slow, thoughtful way:

“‘No, not a miracle—always she has had that great spirit in her heart; always that great love in her soul. She has kept that love and spirit pure all through these hard years, and now at the great sacrifice it shone out through her face. Said I not right that my wife would come to be the most beautiful woman on earth?’”

My friend told the story in a matter-of-fact way, and then fell into a silence. I did not ask him how he reconciled this experience with his statement that beauty is rubbed in from the outside. It wasn’t worth while; we both knew better. The face of mature years is a mask. It is the candle behind it that gives it character and beauty.

CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR

Uncle Isaac Randall was the last Grand Army man in our town. All the other old comrades had passed on. As a boy I used to try to imagine what “the last Grand Army man” would be like. Poets and artists have tried to picture him, but when he actually appears you know how far the real must travel to reach the ideal. For poet and artist would have us look upon some calm, dignified man, carried by the wings of great achievement far above the mean and petty things of life which surround us like a thick fog in a narrow valley. For that, I fear, is what most of us find life to be unless the memory of some great sacrifice or some great devotion can lift our heads up into the perpetual sunshine. Those who knew Uncle Isaac saw little of the hero about him. He was just a little, thin, nervous man, very deaf, irritable and disappointed. No one can play the part of a deaf man with any approach to success unless he be a genuine philosopher, and Uncle Isaac was unfitted by nature for that. Sometimes in Summer, when the sun went down, you would see the old man standing in the barn looking off to the crimson West, over the purpling hills where the shadows came creeping up from the valley. A man with some poetry and philosophy would have seen in the darkening notch where the hills gave way, to let the road pass through, an approach to the beautiful gate through which wife and children and old comrades had passed on, to wait for him beyond the hills. But Uncle Isaac was cursed with that curiosity which is the torture of the deaf—he saw the hired man up on the hill talking to the neighbor’s boy, and his burning desire was to know what they were talking about as they stood in the twilight.

The Great War came, and Uncle Isaac’s two grandsons volunteered. Before they shipped overseas they came back to the farm—very trim and natty in their brown uniforms. It irritated the old man to think that these boys—hardly more than babies—hardly to be trusted to milk a kicking cow—should be sent to fight America’s battles. And those little rifles! They were not much better than popguns, compared with his old army musket. The old man took the gun down from the nail where it had hung for years. He had kept it polished, and the lock with its percussion cap was still working. He would show these young sniffs what real warfare meant. So they went out in the pasture—the old soldier carrying his musket, carefully loaded with a round bullet—pushed in with the iron ramrod. In order to show these boy soldiers what real warfare might be, the old man sighted the musket over the fence and aimed at a board about 300 yards away. The bullet went at least five feet wide, while the old musket kicked back so hard that Uncle Isaac winced with the pain. Then one of the boys quietly raised his “popgun” and aimed at a bush at least half a mile away across the valley. In a fraction of a minute he fired half a dozen bullets which tore up the ground all around that bush. Then the boys hung one of their brown uniforms on the fence across the pasture, and put Grandpa’s old blue coat beside it. You could hardly distinguish the brown coat against the background, while the blue coat stood out like a target. It was hard for the old man to realize that both he and his musket belonged to a vanished past. The boys looked at the gun and at Grandpa marching home—trying to throw his old shoulders back into military form—and smiled knowingly at each other as youth has ever done in the pride of its power. They could not see—who of us ever can see?—the spiritual forces of patriotism which walked beside the old man, waiting for the time to show their power.

The weeks went by, and day by day Grandpa read his paper with growing indignation. You remember how for months the army in France seemed to stand still before that great “Hindenburg line” which stretched out like an iron wall in front of Germany. It seemed to Uncle Isaac as if his boys and the rest of the army were cowards—afraid to march up to the line and fight. One day he threw down his paper and expressed himself fully, as only an old soldier can.

“I told you those boys never would fight. At the Battle of the Wilderness Lee had a line of defense twice as strong as this Hindenburg ever had. Did General Grant sit still and wait for something to happen? Not much!

“‘Forward by the left flank!’

“That was the order, and we went forward. Don’t you know what he said at Fort Donelson? ‘I propose to move on your works at once.’ If General Grant was in France that’s what he’d say, and within an hour you’d see old Hindenburg coming out to surrender! My regiment fought all day against a regiment from North Carolina. I’ll tell you what! Let me have my old regiment and that North Carolina regiment alongside and I’ll guarantee that we will break right through that Hindenburg line, march right across the Rhine, hog-tie the Kaiser and bring him back with us.”

“But, father,” said his daughter gently, “don’t you remember what Harry writes? They don’t fight that way now. The cannon must open a way first. Harry says they fire shells so large and powerful that when they strike the ground they make a hole so large you could put the barn into it. Suppose one of these big shells struck in the middle of your regiment?”

“I don’t care,” said Uncle Isaac. “_We’d start, anyway! We’d move on those breastworks and take our chances!_”

And mother wrote about it to her boys in the army over in France. The young fellows laughed at the thought of those old white-haired men, with their antiquated weapons, lined up before the death-dealing power of Germany. It seemed such a foolish thing to youth. The letter finally came to the grey-haired colonel of the regiment—an elderly man who had in some way held his army place in the ocean of youth which surrounded him. His eyes were moist as he read it, for he knew that if that group of wasted, white-haired men had lined up in front of the army they would not have been alone. Down the aisles of history would have come a throng of old heroes—the spirit of the past would have stood with them. They would have stilled the laughter, and if these old veterans had started forward the whole great army would have thrown off restraint, broken orders and followed them through the “Hindenburg line.”

But Uncle Isaac, at home, humiliated and sad, went about the farm with something like a prayer in his old heart.

“Why can’t _I_ do something to help? Don’t make me know my fighting days are over. What can _I_ do?”