Part 1
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TREADING THE NARROW WAY
By R. E. Barrett
Boston THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO. Inc.
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Copyrighted 1917 By R. E. BARRETT _Rights Reserved_
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PREFACE
The chapters in this book are not based on fiction, they are not drawn from imagination, they are not gems that come from culture and learning, but are gleaned entirely from the rugged school of life, and are for the purpose of cheering the down-hearted to a realization that a good life has its just reward, that through continued combat every temptation, obstacle and evil will vanish if a strict observance of God's law is kept in carefully treading in the narrow way.
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DEDICATION
To that dear teacher who urged me to go to school when I was past twenty years of age, and helped to mold in me the true principles of honor.
To a fine Judge on the Bench whose many fatherly talks to poor unfortunates, whose feet had slipped from the narrow way, who helped me to obey and respect the law.
To a splendid intellectual lawyer, one of God's clean home men, whose guest I have been at many intellectual feasts, to him I owe the avoidance of the saloon and learned the intrinsic value of sobriety.
To my two eldest sisters, one sister-in-law, and my devoted wife through whom I learned the desperate struggle and what it means to live clean.
To a poorly paid self-educated minister to whom I am deeply indebted for the first introduction to my master.
To these in the major part, and a few others, God bless them all, I owe whatever I am to them, to these dear people I affectionately dedicate this book.
R. E. B.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I. Early Footsteps. 9 II. Getting the Backbone. 21 III. The Two Paths. 32 IV. God's Intention Man's Prevention 46 V. The Sadness Behind the Vale 61 VI. Gratitude. 71 VII. Just Poems. 87 VIII. Sallie's Loyalty. 112 IX. Sunshine. 117 X. Temperance. 133 XI. Every Day Philosophy. 145 XII. Glimpses from the Past. 158 XIII. Hopes That Exploded. 179 XIV. The Weary Traveler. 196
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TREADING THE NARROW WAY
EARLY FOOTSTEPS.
Robert Emmett Barrett was the soothing and patriotic cognomen my father fastened upon me when I first opened my eyes and I looked him squarely in the face. I say my father named me and I honestly think he did. The first two-thirds of the name proves my contention and opens the book wide enough that the reader has no trouble in discerning the nationality of my father. Mother was an English woman and I knew it the first time she called father "Arry." If mother had had her equal rights in naming me, I might have been a Gladstone; but somehow or other father monopolized mother's half interest and she finally became disgusted and told him to name me any blooming thing he wanted to. If mother could have foreseen this savage war across the orient, I believe, she would have handled the center name, but the way it stands I wouldn't shoulder a gun for England and I can't use my undeveloped oratory against Ireland, and I am about half persuaded to let them settle their own troubles. It being no fault of mine that I am half Irish and half English, I let it go at that and get along with everybody the best I can. It's hard to separate the halves from the whole, and so, from a perpendicular standpoint, I give the Irish the top half and the English the bottom half; I'd rather let the English have the running half anyway.
So far the name Emmett hasn't done me much good, I've only used it nine or ten times since I had it, thrice at political speeches, a couple of Fourth of July addresses, once on Decoration Day, once at a church wrangle, and a few times when I was mad. I find it doesn't help me much on bank cheques, they get turned down as quickly with the Emmett signed as without it. If the name is ever going to do me any good I wish it would hurry up and be a progressive or I will be compelled to think father was impartial and talked mother out of her rightful one-half interest.
After the ordeal of naming me had been fairly or unfairly dealt with, I was told I was a free born American citizen and some day I might be President and have absolute dominion over the blue room, where I suppose the chief executive goes when he has the "Blues." I never considered this encouragement very seriously, for, as I have read in some almanac, there is only one chance in eighteen million, the odds are against the slim chance and it's sort of a blue skim milk proposition or a church raffle affair, and if it's the only time that opportunity is going to knock at my door I don't think I'll be at home, I'll let Wilson do the best he can and let some live Republican Progressive have my chance.
If Wilson would only hurry up and get the Government to make those loans they've been talking so long about and loan it, at about four per cent, to citizens like myself, irrespective of names and nationality, and not have the principal come due too quickly, but in periods, like twenty year franchises, I believe he ought to have a second term; but if he doesn't get some loans placed pretty soon I don't know what hard working men like myself are going to do.
The only thing I ask Wilson to be careful about when he loans the money is the rate. I don't want to see the rate on loans as high as it was during Cleveland's second administration.
I borrowed eighteen dollars in 1894 to settle up a partnership fanning deal with a Methodist preacher. It seems that outside of the banks no one had any money, and you had to call on the gentleman banker, get down on your knees and have tears as large as pullet eggs rolling down your hollow cheeks, if you succeeded in your desires. Somehow the bankers knew they had a good thing; they not only got the fat and tallow but they stripped you clear to the bone.
The eighteen dollar note was dated August 28, 1894, and read in part; "With interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum"; and from here on comes the craftiness of the banker: He interlined thus: "From January 18, 1894, if not paid when due." On October 23rd the same year I paid ten dollars on the note; September the 11th, 1895, six dollars; and December the 5th, 1895 the final payment and accrued interest was eight dollars and twenty-five cents, making a total of twenty-four dollars and twenty-five cents on a loan of eighteen dollars for one year, three months and seven days. What was the rate of interest charged? That banker is retired and worth a hundred thousand dollars; hadn't he ought to be?
To borrow money under that rate you needed the health of a bear, a cataract of energy, a colossal mind, unlimited self-respect, boundless self-confidence, all impregnated with an iron honesty. That kind of interest makes me feel like the investor, who bought some unseen land from an honest real estate man, and, when he went to look at his property he found it submerged in water. The real estate man told him it could be irrigated, but he had no idea it was susceptible of such profuse moisture. After he gazed at it a while he said "Instead of buying this land by the acre I should have bought it by the quart." He probably has an unrecorded deed, I have the paid note in my possession, I feel proud I got it paid; but my pride halted suddenly when I got it paid and in all these years it hasn't advanced much for men who can take a nickle and make it into a dollar so all fired quick. Some time I'll frame that note with a glass on both sides of it.
Coming back to the early events. I was born beneath the shadows of the Rocky Mountains where the placid and sleepy Platte wound leisurely through the broad meadows and sleeping undeveloped valleys and had abundance of God's elixir before the day of the great reclamation projects that sapped its mountain waters.
Because I mention the Platte here, don't get me mixed with that other fellow that has made the Platte famous and was until recently holding a cabinet position on an underpaid salary, he's no relation of mine and I never knew him until he ran for President. He did the opposite from what I did and took that one slim chance, made three strikes and fanned; I'm glad I let it alone.
When I was six years old and my parents still said what I should do they took Horace Greeley's advice and went a hundred and six miles farther west. At their destination there was no buildings except the section house, depot and a little building that sheltered the hand car. The entire population was not over a baker's dozen. I don't believe there was a quieter place on God's footstool.
One good thing about those days was the taxes; I think a week's compensation on the railroad would pay the taxes, County, State and Municipal from 1887 to 1890. How we have progressed in taxes since then! Especially Colorado.
In this little dreary place where I had no associations to lead me astray I took account of my surroundings. I was away out there on the barren plains where the grass curled and burned under the blazing sun, where foliage was scant, where the lonely cactus and prickly pear awaited the step of man to imbed itself and cause more pain, no trees or flowers to whisper words of encouragement, no cheerful forest or shady dells, nothing at all to cause the deeper emotions of a queer nature to assert themselves. Nothing but the broad miraged prairie stretching as far as the eye could see.
No cooling breeze to alleviate the pain on a youthful face or the faces of those careworn early pioneers who blazed the way for future generations, who would erect homes, till the soil, plant trees, and endeavor to further promote civilization, until succeeding generations would reap the pleasure and peace that was purchased through these sacrifices and hardships of their forefathers. We owe to the pioneers such a vast debt of gratitude that we never can pay the the principal with no interest attached, and it's a different kind of interest than four per cent a month.
After I had grown to manhood and my lot had been cast in other places it was over fourteen years before I saw much of the old scenes, but when returning to the old places I noticed great changes. The town had grown; few of the old places were left and the old haunts and nooks were hard to find.
A dreary and quiet sadness steals over one when looking at his boyhood and manhood earliest recollections, and as I glanced at the old scenes I stood and looked longingly, earnestly and lovingly at the old familiar places. There was the locust grove I helped to plant two decades ago; there was the little stream after which the town was named: there was the old pump which so many times quenched my thirst; there was the exact spot where dearie said the joyful word; there was the old house where our first baby was born; there was the farm patch I used to plow, and the meadow where I pitched the hay. All seemed different and as the pathos of the change surged in my breast I walked away longing for something I couldn't get, and would never get again.
GETTING THE BACKBONE.
About the year 1889 when I was seventeen years old I commenced on the lowest rung on the railroad ladder and went to work on the section. I was frail physically, and must have been the same mentally, for I never got beyond the third rung. I worked in the days when you spoke for the spring job the preceding fall, and then often your application met failure. In hard times when jobs are few the fellow that has them is blessed with unusual longevity, and whenever some one did pass beyond, his demise was railroad talk for a long time.
When you consider that all through the central west, which had a few years earlier been homesteaded after several repeated crop failures, almost the entire population were looking for employment and the only cash job in the country was a section job, you can realize how desirable and prized a position it was.
I don't remember how it came that my application was slumbering all through the cold winter with a large number of those half-starved homesteaders who hadn't raised anything for so many years, received recognition in the spring; but it did and I got one of the plums.
The first time I pumped a hand-car I fully realized the Lord had made no mistake by taking out one of the ribs and leaving the backbone whole. If you ever pumped a hand-car I will pass from this painful mode of travel and let you refresh your own memory and backache.
I got along pretty well, when the "Boss" wasn't nervous that the road master would come along and want to borrow another fifty dollars on his word without interest, everything went nicely. When weed cutting time, came I gritted my teeth, held my back as straight as I could and whacked away. Besides the excruciating pain in the back that made you feel like you would like to give one long piercing yell, throw your shovel away and run for town, there was the additional pain of seeing the "Boss" sitting on the hand car resting his back. He had the advantage and the authority! I must keep at it and cut the weeds or the wheels of the locomotive would slip, the traveler couldn't resume his journey, all traffic would stop, and down would go the railroad stock and let out all the water.
It would have been a blessing if the water could have been spilled by some patent process where the weeds were to be cut, but, monopolies monopolize and if the Lord didn't see fit to have the rain fall in September instead of June no one was to blame, except Grover Cleveland. The Republicans said the country always went to the dogs and dried up when the Democrats elected a President. I was too young then to know much about statesmanship and I wouldn't want to say for repetition whether or not the Lord and Cleveland were working together or otherwise, but I do remember some one was mighty stingy with the moisture.
If you, my dear reader, have never had the privilege of cutting weeds for a dollar and thirty-five cents per day for three weeks in succession then, for all that's good and beautiful, take my advice and let the Jap, Greek, or Italian have your place and do the mowing. Either of them can get better wages and any of these dark-skinned brethren will do as much in three days as the white man would in one day and cause the pale face no extra exertion.
The pain in the back caused from close association with a shovel from seven o'clock to twelve o'clock and from one o'clock to six even now, over twenty years afterwards, almost makes me break down and give vent to my feelings in a more noticeable manner than my friend Taft when he was informed that he had carried Utah. If you have ever been tortured with lumbago, you have a slight knowledge of what races up and down the back of a weed cutter. When he bends down he can't get up and when he gets up he can't get down. There you are! Humiliated, suffering and mad, knife blade sticking you whenever you move, but you must or bust. You are a free born American citizen but you must lose sight of the special endowment when you are cutting weeds. The constitution may be back of you, but just at present you have got to get back of your own constitution and a "darn" good one too, or you've lost your job and that dearly beloved stipend of thirteen and one-half cents an hour.
Being on the low rung of the railroad ladder is the same as in all other departments, the man at the bottom gets the low wages, needs the good back and carries the heavy burden. He don't need much brain; he is told what to do; how to do it and when. He's told when to go to work and when to quit. Brains would be a nuisance and, if he had any, he wouldn't be working on the section. Time has proved that, and the Dago takes his place.
What became of the Irish, Swede, German and Bohemian section men of twenty-five years ago is more than I know. Extempore, an increase of brains did something for him and you don't find him tramping ties with the Dago. But the man at the low rung hasn't much choice; he can work or quit. His job is always in jeopardy as he couldn't save enough in a year to loan out an occasional "fifty" to smooth the feelings of an over auspicious road-master. He's at the bottom and whatever falls goes down to him and in an undignified way he must carry the whole load, for it can not go lower. The general manager can ease his feelings on the superintendent, and he on the road-master and the road-master can growl at the section foreman, but when the section foreman dumps the whole putrid, half-boiled mess on the unlearned day laborer you can see the urgent necessity of a fine piece of choice workmanship in the middle of the back. You seldom see a man with a front like a wash-tub turned edgewise working on the railroad. There is no room for him! You must be able to see your feet if you cut weeds, and have a stomach that can say "Hello" to the backbone at nine fifteen A. M.
When the winds used to tear loose from the nasty bad lands of South Dakota and come tearing over the semi-arid plains for three days in succession at a velocity of sixty miles an hour it seems the Lord could have improved on man by giving him a gizzard to grind up the accumulated gravel that had been beaten into his daily bread. It came pretty near taking the hide off from me to keep pace with those hungry homesteaders who were afraid of losing their jobs and existence.
I am glad that I had the backbone. The term is applicable in two ways. One is the acquisition of a resilient mechanism in the center of your back, starting at the base of your brain and running down to a certain point or as far as is necessary, and the other is a priceless stamina, determination and a square deal. I am not sorry that I acquired some on the railroad; its a good thing to have in the every day affairs of life.
I hardened my backbone when I worked on the steel gang a few years afterwards, and, if there is such a thing as a steel backbone, I claim some right to its possession through low remuneration and dirty cabbage. Keen retrenchment policies make better satisfied stockholders and also make wages that would embarrass a bumble bee if he were buying a pair of leggings and expected to pay for them.
It takes unlimited backbone for a congressman to vote "Yes" on the prohibition amendment and turn down the easy money of the brewers. It takes backbone for a president to cast custom aside and step into the halls of congress and demand that the party pledges be kept. It takes a better backbone to enter the same halls and take a determined stand on a cause that means better citizenship. It takes backbone if the minister ousts the liberal paying hypocrite who is helping to kill the church with his pocketbook.
It takes backbone every day you live and if you don't use it in the way it was intended you can't tread the narrow path and expect to slip into heaven without being recognized. You may do it on earth but you must not try it where you are known. It takes backbone to be a Christian, the earnest conscientious kind, that can lay all jealousy aside, all prejudice and hatred and give the offender a square Christian deal. Unless you can do these things you CAN'T be a Christian, the kind that Jesus told us to be. The other kind is a sham and an out-and-out sinner is far better. True Christianity will not allow one individual to do another of the slightest wrong. The conscience of a real Christian will not allow any ill feeling or the harboring of malice. You know it's wrong, your conscience reminds you of the wrong and unless you remove that kind of Christianity you can never receive the fruits that come from the narrow way and be a successful Christian. You know yourself if you are a sham so why try to fool anybody and carry a false label.
THE TWO PATHS.
Don't forget the warning of the Saviour when he says: "Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter thereby. For narrow is the gate and straitened is the way that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it." Travel the path that becomes shining gold, the one that grows lovelier, the one where you are never alone: You'll need the friend of this path when the heartaches and trials are hard to bear. Don't chance the other path and sell your soul for pleasure, wealth and damnation.
The journey of life, be it one of success or failure, closely resembles two paths. When we reach the age of accountability we must of our own volition choose one of these paths. Where the paths commence to fork out and go in separate directions we see a sign spread clear across the entrance and it says: "I am the way, the truth and the light." We study this for a long time and then go to the other side and on the same sign board it says: "Though your sins were as crimson they shall be whiter than snow." We are young, full of life and can't really understand what it means but we are ready to start on life's pathway and there are only two paths to choose from.
We look around and see the broad, open path with no restrictions, filled with the aroma of choice flowers, we meet social companions, have gay parties, they tell us of the pleasures they are enjoying. From this survey and study we note that the broad path looks cheerful and inviting, the narrow one seems straight ahead as far as we can see.
We can notice that the crowd seems to be going the broad way. People in all conditions of life, well dressed, prosperous looking people of wealth and affluence, and the ordinary working people in their customary garb. They look happy and contented, and we decide to take the broad way.
We didn't notice, until after the start, that the course has a descending grade and we get a long distance on the way before we call a halt. We have seen a great many things that are not elevating and we conclude that after we go a short distance we'll turn back, start over and take the other path, and though the things that looked so inviting at the beginning are losing their attractiveness.
The demoralizing things we see are pitiful. There is a poor fellow reeling with drunkenness. MY! hear that vulgar, profane language coming from the foul mouth of that young man. There's a party drinking wine, laughing boisterously and telling stories that are very improper for ladies and gentlemen. There is a poor girl in a calico dress that seems to be alone; her face looks sad and she seems to be watching and waiting for someone. There is a pitiful story in her once pretty face that would cause you to weep if you knew it.