Chapter II: Part 2

A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts—coming from the best stock this country has ever produced. This is not the narrow-eyed, cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the hillside farms who went to the valleys and at the little water-powers laid the foundations of New England’s manufacturing. These sturdy people saw clearly into the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power of the valley streams they cultivated and restrained their own powers until the man as well as the machine became a tremendous force. Honorable misfortune befell this manufacturing family, but could not crush it. In those days the boys, under such circumstances, dropped all their own ambitions and took the first job that presented itself, without a murmur and with joy that they could do it. The girls did the same, though there were few openings for women then outside of housework and the schoolroom. Grandmother had a taste for music, and became a music teacher. She finally secured a position as teacher in a little town in Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm man was born she went into what was then a strange country for the daughter of a Massachusetts Abolitionist! What a journey that must have been, before the Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother was then. The South was in a blaze of excitement, yet this quiet, gentle Northern girl won the love and respect of all. There she met the man who was to be her husband—a young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted down by family cares, political convictions and ill health. He was a Union man whose family had made their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last. Grandmother was married and went to the South just before the storm broke. What a life that was in the dreary little town during those years of fighting! Her husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon declare him too feeble and sick for even that desperate service. He cobbled shoes, leached the soil in old smokehouses for salt, and “lived” as best he could. Once he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of cotton which he sold to pay passage money to the North. After the war he was State Senator and Judge under the patched-up government which followed. Carpetbaggers and rascals from the North lined their pockets with gold and brought shame upon their party and torture and death to the ignorant black men who followed them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and thieving Grandmother’s husband never touched a dishonest dollar and did his best to give character to a despised and degraded race. Of course he failed, for the race did not have strength enough to see that what he tried to offer them was better than the hatred of their old masters and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held out. It was not all lost, for when he was buried I am told that around his grave there was a thick fringe of white people and back—at a respectful distance—acres of black, shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward stirring of manhood in hearts untrained yet appreciating true service to country.

I speak of these things to make my point clear that Grandmother was a woman capable of supporting her husband through these trials and still capable of holding the love of those who opposed him. In the face of an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it this quiet, unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected and trusted by all. She took up her burdens without complaint, hid her troubles in her heart, and walked bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she found a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere Christian woman she lived and acted out her faith and did her life’s duty with dignity and cheerfulness. The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed memories of her.

LAUGHTER AND RELIGION

I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who cannot laugh. He may have great learning or power or skill or wealth, but if fate has denied him a keen sense of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we may call “the healing balm of tears.” Unless there chance to be some volcanic eruption of the heart they must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet, if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf see more of the ludicrous side of life than do those who have full hearing. It comes to be amusing to notice how men and women strive and worry over the poor non-essential things of conversation, and waste time and strength trying to make others understand simple things which the deaf man comes to know at a glance. Those who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear all the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may wonder why the inability to hear may act as a torture to the tender heart. They do not know how closely sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand without losing many of the finer things of life. Yet, as between the tearless man and the unfortunate soul who is denied the joy of laughter, the latter is more deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity but the other is nearer the gallows.

One great reason why the negro race has come through its troubles with reasonable success is because fate has given the black man the blessed privilege of laughter. Many a time when other races would have gone out to rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or laugh his troubles away. So, as between the man who cannot weep or lash himself into a rage and he who cannot laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and far more to be pitied.

I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject, as some years ago I was in the business of trying to inoculate some very serious and sad-minded people with the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter to start them. I was stranded in a farm neighborhood in a Western State working as hired man through a very dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a gloom and social stagnation which the modern town man can hardly realize. I did my work by day and at night went about to churches and schoolhouses “speaking pieces.” We called those gloomy and discouraged people together and tried to make them laugh.

I remember one such entertainment held in a country schoolhouse far back in the mud of a January thaw. The dimly lighted room was crowded with sad-faced, discouraged men and women to whom life had become a tragedy through dwelling constantly upon their own troubles. At intervals during my entertainment two sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful songs about beautiful women who died young or children who proved early in life that they were too good for this world. During one of these intervals a farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern artist can command a salary which enables him to ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood the financial manager was the boss.

“See here now,” said the farmer, “we hired you to come here and make us laugh. Why don’t you do it? I’ve got my hired man in there. He’s all ready to go on a spree and he will do it if you don’t make him laugh. We have paid you $2.50 to come here and speak. That means $1.25 an hour or $12.50 for a 10-hour day. No other man in this neighborhood gets such wages. It’s big money, now go back and earn it. _Make that man laugh!_ It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”

There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity feeling that he would be a hero, the champion of the neighborhood, if he could hold humor at bay. When I went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by the stove and said it was the unanimous request of the audience that I should read or recite the “Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in my line, but who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years before I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the poem, and with the noble courage of youth I started the best imitation I could muster. No one, not even the author, ever considered the “Raven” as a humorous poem, but it struck the hired man that way. I had cracked jokes in and out of dialect. I had “made faces” and played the clown generally without affecting the hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of “Quoth the Raven—Nevermore!” the hired man exploded with a roar that shook the building, and the rest of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The rest of the audience joined with him, and long after the meeting closed and the lanterns twinkled down the dark and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter from the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there was about the “Raven” to explode that man I have never known. It changed his life. It broke a spring somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood. The minister told me in the Spring that his people had received a great spiritual uplifting during the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the hired man.

That same Winter I went to a church for another entertainment. I sat in the pulpit beside the minister and every time I stopped for breath he would lean over and whisper:

“_Make them laugh! Give them something humorous! Make them laugh!_”

He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It was a gloomy night. The people were sad and discouraged. Their religion was a torment to them at the time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I did my best with discouraging results. I will confess that I lost faith for once in my life and quit trying. There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer in the front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed my efforts straight to him. It came to be the one desire of my life to make that solemn-faced man laugh, and he would not do it. It seemed to me as if he sat there with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some wise old horse listening to the chatter of a young colt. I could not stir him and I confess that I quit ingloriously and “took up the collection.”

But, when we all went out on the church steps while lanterns were being lighted and the boys brought up the horses I saw my solemn-faced friend talking with another farmer.

“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the globe of his lantern, “how did you like the show?”

“Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am so sore around my ribs that I’m going home to rub liniment on my sides.”

“How’s that?”

“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that _I never come so nigh to laughing in the House of God as I done tonight_. When I get home out of sight of the elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and holler.”

A DAY IN FLORIDA

A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for him. He would rust out. There was “more life and human nature on Broadway, New York, in 15 minutes than in a week of Florida.” So I thought I would see how much “real human nature” the sun could observe as Putnam County revolved beneath his eye.

As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly a cloud in the sky. The mercury stood at about 65 degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen from the orange trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the new leaves showed their light green against the darker old leaves. On the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street, with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red hens with their broods of chickens ran about under the orange trees. In front of the house I found a group of “redheads and towheads” gathered around a fisherman who carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three young alligators and the children were buying them. They finally got the three for a dollar, and they intend taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to “raise” them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope Farm alligator. Finally the school bell rang and the older children scattered while the little ones played on. I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product in this locality. I understand there are but four white children of school age—not enough to maintain a school! There is a broken and abandoned schoolhouse here, but it has not been occupied for some years. There is a school for colored children. Our people opened a school here, but in this locality the State actually does more for educating colored children than for whites. Think over what that means and see if Broadway can match the “human nature” which comes out of such a situation. Our own children are rosy as flowers. They ought to be, for they have played out in the sun every day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms—for that dread disease gets into the system through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter paradise for children and elderly people. As these children pen up their alligators and separate for school and play, an old man walks with firm and active steps down the shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old and is still planting a garden—very likely for the seventieth time! On the platform of the store he will meet a group of men who will sit for hours discussing the weather or looking off through the pines toward the blue lake. On Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set, anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce struggle for food, clothing, amusement and shelter. There is quite as much “human nature” about these slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun. In this little place where our folks have wintered there are nine different men who live alone. There are perhaps 30 voters in this district, and strange as it may seem they are about evenly divided between the two great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers have moved in here. They draw their pensions, work their gardens or groves and live in peace in this carefree land. “Human nature?” Ask these old soldiers with “warfare over,” as the sun goes down and they look out over the lake, why they ever came to Florida, and if they are disappointed. If you started a contest with a prize for the man who can take the longest time to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet it was in Florida that the world’s record for speed with a motor car was recently made. While some of our neighbors might consume two hours in going a mile, it was in Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27⅓ seconds. This contest in speed is a very good illustration of the contrary character of Florida climate and conditions. Many people fail here because they try to fit Broadway “human nature” to this balmy gentle land. You cannot use the same brand!

The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man was working a mule on a cultivator—tearing up the surface of an old orange grove. The only auto in the town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough of the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing in the soft air. Charlie went by followed by a big colored man. They carry spades and axes for Charlie is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when a grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought home to be buried.

Mother and I had planned to take the train at noon and go south for a few miles to do some shopping and look up a “colony” or land boom scheme. So we got ready and went to the station in ample time. And there we waited, as everyone else does in this land of tomorrow. An hour crawled by, and still there was nothing in sight up the track except the distant pines and the heat rising from the sands. No one quarrels with fate in Florida—what is the use? Under similar circumstances in New Jersey I should have been held in some way responsible for the delay, but here it did not matter—if the train did not come, another day would do. We waited about 100 long minutes and then the good lady announced that she was going home, as there would not be time to get around, and home she went, good-natured and smiling as the Florida sun.

Let me add that the next day we waited nearly two hours again and then went home once more, but who cares whether he goes today or some future “tomorrow”?

Having been cut out of our trip I became interested in the funeral. A little group of wagons was drawn up under the pines waiting for the train. I have said that an old resident was coming “home”—to be buried by the side of husband and relatives—in the rough little cemetery behind the pines. At last, a puff of thick smoke up the track showed where the dawdling train was showing the true speed of a hearse. Down the grade it came, halting with many a wheeze and groan in front of the little station where the fated box was taken off. Our little funeral procession was quickly made up. Uncle Ed drove old Frank ahead with the minister and the Hope Farm Man as passengers. Then came the dead in a farm wagon, and half a dozen one-horse teams straggling on behind. Your funeral on Broadway with its gilded hearse, black horses and nodding plumes might be far more inspiring. Who can say, however, that there was less of “human nature” in this little weatherbeaten string crawling over the Florida sand? I was thinking as we went how this dead woman had seen what seemed like the death of hope in this land. For right where we were passing, on these dead fields, she had seen orange groves in full fruitage, and had seen them all wiped out in a day of frost!

You would have said that Charlie stood leaning on his spade beside two great heaps of snow. The soil was pure white sand, and as they threw it from the grave it had drifted in over the sides until no dark color showed. On Broadway there would have been an imposing procession, the organ pouring out tones that seemed to carry a message far beyond the comprehension of the living. Here in this lonely little clearing, my friend the minister led the way, the little group of mourners followed, and Charlie and Uncle Ed with a few neighbors carried the dead. I wish I could have had you there with me—you who say that life and human nature crowd into the “lively” places. I wish I could paint the picture as I saw it.

The minister and the station agent’s wife began to sing. One of the men who helped carry the coffin laid down his load and joined the singers. They wanted me to make a quartette, but I am no musician and I could not have made a sound. It was better for me to stand in the background against a tree, by the side of the colored man who leaned on his shining spade and bowed his gray head. For does not the color line fade out at the grave? I wish you could have seen it, the trio of singers, the sad group under the pines, the earth piled up like snowdrifts, the pine tops quivering and moaning, and the Florida sun streaming over all. I felt the pine tree against which I leaned tremble as the wind blew through it. In a tree over us a gray squirrel turned his ear as if to listen. For gathered around those piles of glistening sand were men and women who carried all the world holds of “human nature”—tragedy, despair, hope, sorrow and peace. Not 100 feet from where I stood was a row of six little white stones where six old army comrades were buried. I studied their names, six men of the army and navy from New York, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont and Ohio. There they lie in the sand, sleeping “the sleep that knows no waking.” And this woman wanted to be brought back to this lonely place that she might rest with her people. “Human nature?” I made a dull companion as old Frank toiled back with us to the village.

Our folks had left the house and I followed them along the shady path to the lake. The younger people had been in bathing. They were sitting on the lake shore, the children were shouting and playing as they ran about the beach. I am glad they were not at the funeral. As Mother and I walked slowly back, the little ones came trailing on, waving branches of palm and singing. And there over the fence was our famous gallon-and-a-half cow—easily the most energetic citizen in the place.

Night comes quickly in Florida and brings a chill with it. The sun seems to tumble directly into the west and to leave little warmth behind. Before we ended our slow walk home, darkness had fallen and Uncle Ed had started a grateful fire of logs. As if to demonstrate the Florida axiom that there are only two absolutely sure things—death and taxes—we found the county assessor before the fire. He had reached us on his rounds and was ready to tell us how much we owed the State. You will see therefore that the human life in Florida is much the same as anywhere else only “more so” for here there is no artifice or straining after effect. Men and women are naturally human—as they were meant to be.

THE BASEBALL GAME

“_Two strikes, three balls!_”

A silence so intense that you could feel it fell upon 60,000 people who saw the umpire put up his hand to announce the second strike. It was the crisis of the first baseball game for the world’s championship between New York and Philadelphia. The great stands were black with people, and thousands more were perched upon the rocks which rose above the level in which the ball grounds are laid out. The boy and I sat on the bleachers. It was the only place we could get; we sat there three hours before the game began—and we were among the last to get in. Of course you will say we should have been at home picking apples—but without discussing that I will admit that we were packed away in that “bleacher” crowd.

There were some 25,000 of us crowded on those wooden benches with our feet hanging down. Here and there in this black mass of hats a spot of lighter color showed where a woman had crowded in with the rest. There may have been 100 women in this crowd. The “stands” where the reserved seats are placed were bright with women’s gay colors. Our seats were not reserved, but well “deserved” after our struggle for them.

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.

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