Chapter V: Part 5

“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?”

And Uncle Isaac finally had his chance. Perhaps you remember how at one time during the war things seemed dark enough. Our boys were swarming across the ocean, and submarines were watching for them. Food was scarce. Frost and storm had turned against us. Money was flowing out like water. Spies and German sympathizers were poisoning the public mind, and the Liberty Loan campaign was lagging. Uncle Isaac, reading it all day by day in his paper, felt like a man in prison galled to the soul by his inability to help. There came a big patriotic meeting at the county town. It was a factory town with many European laborers. They were restless and uneasy, opposed to the draft, tired of the war and not yet in full sympathy with America. Uncle Isaac determined to go to this meeting, though his daughter did all she could to dissuade him. There was no stopping him when he once made up his mind, so his daughter let him have his way, but she sent old John Zabriski along with him. Old John was a German Pole who came to this country as a young man out of the German army. He had lived on Uncle Isaac’s farm for years, and just as a cabbage or a tomato plant seems the stronger and better for transplanting, so this transplanted European in the soil of this country had grown into the noblest type of American. So the daughter, standing in the farmhouse door with eyes that were a little dimmed, watched these two old men drive away to the meeting.

They had the speaker’s stand in front of the court house. The street was packed with a great crowd. Right in front was a group of sullen, defiant foreigners who had evidently come for trouble. The sheriff was afraid of them, and inside the court house out of sight, but ready for instant service, was a squad of soldiers. A young man who was running for the Legislature caught sight of Uncle Isaac and led him through the court house to the speaker’s platform, and John went, too, as bodyguard. The old veteran sat there in his blue coat and hat with the gold braid, unable to hear a word, but full of the spirit which had come down to him from the old days.

Something was wrong. Even Uncle Isaac could see that, and John Zabriski beside him looked grave and anxious. That solid group of rough men in front began to sway back and forth like the movement of water when the high wind blows over it, and a sullen murmur, growing louder, came from the crowd. A small, effeminate-looking man was making a speech. Very likely his ancestors came originally to this country two centuries ago, but somewhere back in the years this man’s forebears had made a fortune. Instead of serving as a tool to spur the family on to finer things it had been spread out like a soft cushion to carry them through life without a bruise or bump. And these rough men, whose life had been all bruise and turmoil, knew that this soft little American was here talking platitudes when he should have been over in France. Perhaps you have never heard the angry murmur of a sullen crowd grow into a roar of rage, until the crowd becomes like a wild beast. The sheriff had heard this, and he was frankly frightened. He started a messenger back into the court house to notify the soldiers, but old John Zabriski stopped him.

“Wait,” he said, “do not that. You lose those men by fighting. We gain them.”

Then, before anyone could stop him, old John stepped up in front and barked out strange words which seemed like a command. Then a curious thing happened. The angry murmur stilled. The crowd stopped its movement, and then every man stood at attention! Almost every man there had in former years served in one of the European armies, and what old John had barked at them was the old army command which had been drilled into them years before. And through force of habit which had become instinct, that order, for the moment, changed that mob into an army of attentive soldiers. The bandmaster was a man of imagination, and as quickly as his men could catch up their instruments they began playing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Poor old Uncle Isaac heard nothing of this. He could only guess what it was all about until John Zabriski laboriously wrote on a piece of paper:

“Dey blay der Shtar Banner!”

Then there came into Uncle Isaac’s sad life the great, glorious joy of power and opportunity. He walked down to the front of the stage, took off his gold-braided hat and bowed his white head before them all. And old John Zabriski, the transplanted European, came and stood at his side. A young woman, dressed all in white, caught up a flag and came and stood beside the two old men. Then a wounded soldier with one empty sleeve pinned to his breast followed her. And there in that sunlit street a great, holy silence fell over that vast crowd. For there before them on that platform stood the glory, the pride, the precious legacy of American history. The last Grand Army man, the European peasant made over into an American, and the young people who represented the promise and hope shining in the legacy which men like Uncle Isaac and John Zabriski have given them.

When the band stopped playing a mighty cheer went up from that great crowd, and one by one the men of that sullen group in front took off their hats and joined in the cheering. They made Uncle Isaac get up again and again to salute, and no less a person than Judge Bradley shook both hands and said:

“We all thank you, Captain Randall. You have saved this great meeting and made this town solidly patriotic.” It was a proud old soldier who marched into the farmhouse kitchen that night, and in answer to his daughter’s questioning eyes he said:

“Annie, I want you to write those boys all about it. Tell ’em they are not doing it all. Tell ’em Judge Bradley called me cap’n and said I saved the meeting. I only wish General Grant could have been there!”

All of which goes to show that those of you who have come to white hair should not feel that you are out of the game yet. Material things may go by us, but the spirit of the good old days is still the last resort!

“SNOW BOUND”

This is the one night of the year for reading “Snow Bound.” Every man with New England blood in his veins should read Whittier’s poem at least once a year. That becomes as much of a habit as eating baked beans and fishballs. For two days now the storm has roared over our hills and shut us in. It must have been on just such a night as this that Emerson wrote:

“The sled and traveler stopped; the courier’s feet
Delayed; all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

Of course, Emerson lived at a time when the telephone and the electric light and the steam-heated house were dreams too obscure even for his great mind to comprehend. So, in spite of this fearful storm, the strong arm of the electric current still reaches our house, and while the telephone is slow, we can get our message through, after a fashion. But we are shut in. The car and the truck are useless tonight. The horses stamp contentedly in the barn—not troubling about the head-high drifts which are piled along the roadway. A bad night for a fire or for a hurry call for the doctor; but why worry about that as we sit here before the fire?

I got my copy of “Snow Bound” in 1872, and I have read the poem at least once each year since, and I have carried it all over the country with me. It is a little shabby now, but somehow that is the way I like to see old friends:

“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.

...

“Between the andiron’s straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered low,
The apples sputtered in a row
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

...

“What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow.”

...

There is no finer picture of the old-time Northern farm home, and we Yankees are bound to think that with all her faults New England did in those days set the world an example of what a farm home ought to be. So I lay aside the book and look about me to see how close New Jersey can come on this fearful night to matching this old-time picture.

Here we are before the fire. Great logs of apple wood are blazing up into the black chimney. In Whittier’s day the open fire produced all the light, but here we have our electric light blazing, and I think as I sit here how miles away the great engines are working to send the current far up among the lonely hills to our home. For supper we had a thick tomato soup, a big dish of cornmeal mush—the grain ground in our little grinder—pot cheese, entire wheat bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk we could drink. Just run that over and see if it does not furnish as fine a balanced ration and as good a lot of vitamines as any $2 dinner in New York—and nearly 80 per cent of it was produced on this farm. Now the girls have washed the dishes and planned breakfast, and here we are. Mother sits in the first choice of seats before the fire. That is where she belongs. She is mending a pair of stockings, and as her fingers fly, no doubt she is thinking of those warmer days back in Mississippi. My daughter has just put a new record into her Victrola. The music comes softly to us—“Juanita.”

“Soft o’er the fountain
Lingering falls the Southern moon.”

I wonder what Whittier’s folks would have said to that! Two of the little girls are looking over some music, trying to get the air in “I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls!” There is no “frost line” in this house for the fire to drive back, for there is a good hot-water radiator in the corner. The pipe from the spring seems to have frozen, but the faithful old windmill, standing over the well at the barn, has stretched out its arms to catch this roaring gale and make it carry the water up to the tank. Thomas and three of the boys are playing parchesi, while the rest of the company give them all advice about playing from time to time. I have a big chair by the corner of the fireplace—where grandfather is supposed to sit—and little Rose is curled up on my lap eating an apple. I wish you were here. We could easily make room for you right in front of the fire, and we would surely call on you for a new story.

The wind is howling on the outside. As we sit here in comfort there comes an eager, pitiful face at the window pleading to be taken in. No, it is not the old story of the wayward child coming back to the lights of home. The nearest we can come to that at Hope Farm is the black cat with the dash of white at her face and throat. She and her tribe are expected to stay at the barn and catch rats, but there she is out in the cold looking in at the window. Mother is as stern as a Spartan mother when it comes to cats in the house. She _will not_ have them there. But, after all, they are Hope Farm folks, and the little girls plead so hard that the good lady looks the other way when the baby opens the door. In comes the black cat and, though they were not invited, three of her brothers and sisters run in with her! So now I shall sit with little Rose on my lap, while on her lap is a cushion on which the white-faced kitty purrs contentedly. In the original “Snow Bound” the mug of cider simmered between the andirons. No hot drinks for us. A little of that cold pasteurized apple juice goes well. We see no use in cooking apples before the fire. There is that big basket of Baldwins by the table. Help yourself—we like them cold. Cherry-top was ahead in the game, but Thomas has just taken his leading “man” and sent him back to the starting point. The boy is a good sport. He takes a big bite out of a fresh Baldwin and goes after them again. The nearest we can come to “nuts from brown October’s wood” is a big bag of roasted peanuts. We have all been eating them and throwing the hulls at the fire. They have accumulated so that Mother’s idea of neatness compels her to get up and brush them all into the blaze. I did not tell you that we are starting up our little Florida farm again. Jack will grow a crop of sugar cane and peanuts.

And so, here in New Jersey, as well as in old-time New England, we care not how the wind blows or how the storm roars. This is home, and we are satisfied with it—all of us, from the white-faced kitty up to the Hope Farm man. We have all worked to make this home. It is a co-operative affair. None of us could be called rich or great, yet nothing could ever buy what we see in our big fire. Every now and then Mother looks up from her work and glances across the room at me with a smile. I know what she has in mind. Some of us rise to the power of animals in our ability to communicate thought without words. Life has been very much of a fight with us, but it seems worth while as we look at this big room full of eager young people, content and happy with the simple things of life. As little Rose snuggles up closer to me and pulls the kitty with her I begin to think of some of the complaining fault-finding people I know. I _do_ know some star performers at the job of pitying themselves and magnifying their own troubles. On a night like this I will wager an apple that they are pouring out the gloom and trouble like a man tipping over a barrel of cold water. It’s their rheumatism or their debts or the Administration or the Republican party, or something else that they hold responsible for their troubles. I wish I could have some of those fellows here tonight, and also some of you folks who know the joy of looking on the bright side. We would do our best to rub some of the gloom out of them. I will guarantee that any one of us could, if we wanted to, tell the truth about our own troubles so that these gloomy individuals would look like “pikers” in their poor little self-pity! I would like to read extracts from two new books to them. One is “A Labrador Doctor,” by W. T. Grenfell; the other, “The Great Hunger,” by John Bojer.

I have just been reading these books, and I shall read them over again. Dr. Grenfell has given his life to service in the far North among the fishermen of Labrador. A man of his ability could easily have gained fame and wealth by practising his profession in some great city. He went where he was most needed—into the cold, lonely places where humanity hungers and suffers for help. It has always seemed to me just about the noblest thing in life for a man of great natural ability to gain what science and education can give him and carry that great gift out to those who need it most. Grenfell did that, and this modest story of his life is wonderful to anyone who can get the message. I have always thought that the greatest teachers and preachers and wise men generally are not so much needed in the big cities as in the lonely country places. The city owes all it has in men and money to the country, but it will seldom acknowledge the gift. The city itself is able to offer as a gift knowledge, science and training. Yet those who receive this gift desire for the most part to remain in the city, when they should carry their gift out into the lonely and hard places where the city must finally go for strength. The storm seems hard tonight, but it is a mere zephyr to the Winters which Dr. Grenfell’s people endure. I wish I could tell you some of the wonderful things which have happened in that lonely land. At one place the doctor found a girl dying of typhoid. There was no way of saving her, and as soon as she was buried it was necessary to burn the rude bunk and the straw in which she lay. They carried it to the top of a hill and built a fire. For several days one of the fishing boats had been lost at sea in the fog, and had been given up for lost with all on board. The despairing men in that boat—far out at sea—saw the light when that hideous bed was burned and were able to get to land! Some of you self-pitying people ought to read how Dr. Grenfell organized a little orphans’ home to care for the little waifs of this lonely place. In one case a little girl of four, while her father was away hunting, crawled out into the snow, so that both legs were badly frozen. Gangrene set in halfway to the knee, and the father actually chopped both legs off to save her life! Think of such a child in the frozen North. I think of her as little Rose hugs the kitty close. Dr. Grenfell took this child, operated on her, obtained artificial legs, and now she can run about like other children. I wish I could tell you more about this book. At one time two men came together after medicine. One took a bottle of cough mixture, the other a strong turpentine liniment for a sprained knee. By mistake they mixed up the medicine. One rubbed the cough medicine on his knee, the other drank the liniment. If I had some fellow who thinks the Lord has put a special curse on him before our fire tonight I would tell him what others have endured. The chances are we could make him contribute something to the cause before we were done with him.

The other book I mentioned, “The Great Hunger,” is a story of Norwegian life and, as I think, very powerful. A boy born to poverty and disgrace grew up with a great hunger in his heart—he knew not what it was. He felt that power and material wealth would bring him the happiness he sought. He gained education, power, wealth and love, yet still the great hunger tortured him. Poverty, sickness, the deepest sorrow fell upon him, and at last the great hunger was satisfied by doing a needed service for the man who had done him the most hideous wrong! I wish I could tell you more about it. It is a powerful book; but it is time for little Rose to go to bed. Off she goes with a hug for all, and the children follow her one by one. I am not going to put more logs on that fire. Let it die down. The end of the day has come. Let the storm howl through the night like a pack of wolves at the door. They cannot get at us. Even if they did they can never destroy the memory of this night.

“CLASS”

The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress Eugénie. She lingered along, feeble and half-blind, until she was nearly 95 years old. She has been called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women have lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation knew or cared anything about her. I presume most of our young people skipped the details of her life as given in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before the war between France and Germany, the women of the world regarded this sad empress as the great model of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would be hard for women in these days to realize how this beautiful empress dictated to people in every land how they should arrange their hair and wear their dresses. At that time most women wore their hair in short nets bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of “hoopskirts”—most of them, as it seemed, four to five feet wide. Just how this woman managed to put her ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I never could understand. From the big city to the little backwoods hamlet women were studying to see what “Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often wondered if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman remembered those days of power.

Her death brings to mind an incident that had long been forgotten. I had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some milk, since our cow was dry. In those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The woman of the house, an immense, fat creature, with the shape of a barrel, a short, thick neck and a round moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris. She wore an immense hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance of walking inside of a hogshead. Her hair was parted in the middle and brought down beside her wide face to be caught in a net just below her ears. I know so little and care so much less about style in clothes that I can remember in detail only two costumes that I have ever seen women wear. This outfit is one of them.

“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat lady as she poured out the milk. “You can tell your aunt that you have seen one lady dressed just like Paris.”

It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was glad to have the experience.

“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman came here today and said I looked enough like Ugeeny to be her half-sister—dressed as I am now. He has been in Paris, too.”

“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold her a book on the strength of that yarn. Say, Mary, you don’t look any more like Ugeeny than old Spot does—and you don’t need to.”

“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have no idea of beauty.”

“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got a stomach, and I know that you can make the best doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in Bristol County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can do. You are worth three of her for practical value to the world, and I think you a handsome woman—but you can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the shape, and I’m glad of it.”

But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.

“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look like Ugeeny?”

Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.

“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”

“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are divided into two classes—strung together like beads on different strings. Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the finest men that ever lived on earth!”

“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”

But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean. Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse will have water and heat and light right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days farmers will be kings.”

The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.

“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner on the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed them down and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask is, _Ain’t I in their class?_”

“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes them discontented!”

“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there will be _farm_ colleges as big as any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or doctoring. Then people will see that farming is _agriculture_, and the difference between the two will change the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t amount to much as a woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary _in her class_. These clothes look foolish to me, but every woman who follows Ugeeny in dress gets into her class, and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one grade to another, for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt and that bob net for their hair and rise up to better things, and it will be Ugeeny that started them. She may be only a painted doll, but she has given the women ideas of beauty and something better than common. Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle life. That’s why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s got the vision of beauty and something far ahead of you, John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s getting _class_. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they help to set her free.”

“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I suppose, according to you, I ought to put on a swallow-tailed coat every time I milk.”

“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved every day and put on your best clothes once a day for supper, you would get in the upper class, and carry your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, _ain’t I in their class_?”

I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding far down the road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had grown tired of waiting for the milk, so he blew the horn to remind me that I was still in the class of errand boys.

In August of that year I went up on Black Mount after huckleberries, and ran upon Grandpa once more. He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and three children were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle of berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks as sole inhabitants. Old Grandpa sat on the rock and waved his stick about.

“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I have seen it all in wheat. Farmers let education and money get away, and, of course, the best boys chased out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or ’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these coming days to raise huckleberries in this way. They will be raised in gardens like strawberries and raspberries. This hill will have to produce something that is worth more—peaches or apples.”

“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour hill, Grandpa?” asked one of the boys. “There’s a seedling now—10 years old and not four feet high!”

“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will coal in place of wood. I don’t know how it will be done, but some day or ’nuther they will use yeast in the soil as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll harness the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these farm colleges give us knowledge. And farmers, too. They won’t always stand back and fight each other and backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day or ’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what life ought to be. They will come together to live, instead of standing apart to die. I may not see it, and people laugh at me for saying what I know must come true. But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they try to kill Galileo? Wasn’t Morse voted a fool? Hasn’t it always been so with the men and women who looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead? And, tell me this: _Ain’t I in their class?_”