Chapter VI: Part 6

That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it, and yet when I read the headlines announcing the death of Empress Eugénie I had to put the paper down, for there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer day on the New England hills. On the rock in that lonely pasture sat old Grandpa pointing with his stick far across the rolling valley, far to the shadow on the distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith undimmed. I wish I could look across the valley to the distant hills with the sublime hope with which he asked his old question:

“_Ain’t I in their class?_”

A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah, but if Grandpa could see it now! The old house with its “beau” windows and new roof seemed to be dressed with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still Empress of France. There were power and light and heat all through it. Two boys and a girl were home from an agricultural college—one of the boys being manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount was a forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the old swamp was drained and lay a thick mat of clover. Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one thing. Education and power had brought material things, which would have seemed to be miracles to John and Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,” after all, as Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what Grandpa said—“That’s what they’ve got to be, if the world is going ahead.”

Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the noblest legacy of the ages.

But in the churchyard back in one corner I came upon Grandpa’s grave. It was not very well cared for. It had not been trimmed. A bird had made her nest and reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It was a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining pasture put her head over the stone wall and tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected grave. And this was what they had carved on the stone:

“_The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!_”

If I could have my way I would put up another stone with this inscription:

GRANDPA.

“_He has entered their class._”

“I’LL TELL GOD”

Just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call “the unseen world.” That means the state of existence after death. Many of our readers have written asking what I think or know about this. Most of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather hard conditions. They have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or some dear friend. Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death, and I have had some curious experiences which you might or might not credit. When I was a boy, I was thrown much into the society of avowed spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many “séances.” The evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those things disgusted me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did possess a strange and peculiar power which I have never been able to understand.

Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble over which they constantly brooded. I have come to believe that the blind and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand things which most others do not. An afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or faculty. The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears. The deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick judgment or instinct of decision. The man plunged into grief or despondency at the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. Someone has said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from the great “unseen world.” For example, I will ask you this question: Take a woman like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing. Take a man who is totally deaf and also blind—_how would they know physically when they are dead_? I think I can understand why it is that real advancement in true religion and Christian thought has for the most part been made by some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!

Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer. I do not know whether he is living now or not. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little child had with the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf. Through long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark discouragement upon him. He owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do. A hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically, through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. He did not know what it was; a longing for human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she could not understand. She made her husband comfortable and loved him in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. They had no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. Sometimes at night you would see the deaf man standing in the barnyard at the gate, looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him standing there with the empty milk pail on his arm. She could not understand the vision and glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming husband by the arm and shout in his ear:

“_Wake up and get that milking done._”

She meant well, and her husband never complained. She meant to save his money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”

Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,” which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. One Saturday afternoon this man and his wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. As he stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed by a little child. It was a little black-haired thing with great brown eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. A poor thin little thing with a shabby dress and tattered shoes. As she passed, the child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. The woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little stone.

“You awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take that,” and with her heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. Then something like the love of a lioness for her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded together forever. Under excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but they are strangely and forcibly emphatic. The woman quailed before the roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for protection. A crowd gathered and Lawyer Brown came running down from his office.

“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know me; get her for me.”

It was not very hard to do. The woman had married a man with this little girl. The man had run away and left her (I do not much blame him), and this “brat” had been left on her hands.

“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “A good riddance to bad rubbish.”

So Lawyer Brown fixed it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where his wagon stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.

When the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband sitting on the wagon seat with the little girl sitting on his lap. She had found that she could not make him hear, so she just sat there looking into his face, and they both understood. But the good woman did not understand.

“What do you mean by picking up a child like you would a stray kitten? Put her down and leave her here.”

But that was as far as she got. Her husband looked at her with a fierce glare, and there was a sound in his throat which she did not like. I can tell you that when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it that cannot be resisted. And when they got home and the little child sat up at the table between them, something of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. She actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled and ran to the farmer and climbed on his knee. The woman paused at her work to watch them as they sat before the fire, and something that was like the beginning of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came to her that this little one had seen at once something in her husband’s life and soul that _she_ had not been able to understand.

There was something more than beautiful in the strange intimacy which sprang up between the deaf farmer and the little girl. In some way she made herself understood and she followed him about day by day at his work or on his lonely walk of a Sunday afternoon. You would see her riding on the wagon beside him, standing near as he milked, or holding his finger as he came down the lane at sunset. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, you might come upon them sitting at the top of a high hill with the old dog beside them, looking off across the pleasant country. And as the shadows grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying the little one, and the old dog walking ahead. I cannot tell you the peace and renewed hope which the little waif brought to that farmer’s heart through the gentle yet mighty force of love. And the farmer’s wife would look out of the window and see them coming. She could not walk with her husband through lonely places and make him understand, because she had never learned how. Yet the little one was drawing the older people closer together and was showing them more of the greatest mystery and the greatest meaning of life. But there came a Sunday when the little one could not walk over the hills. The day was bright and fair, the farmer stood looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and the old dog put his head on one side and regarded his master curiously. They could both hear the voice of the hills calling them away. And the voices came to the little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little bed upstairs. The doctor shook his head when they called him in. The child was done with earthly things,—surely called off into the Country Unseen just as love and home had come to her. The farmer went up into the sick-room where his wife sat by the little sufferer. This man had never regarded his wife as a handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as she bent over the child. For at last in the face of death and sacrifice, love had really come to that woman’s lonely heart, and the joy of it illuminated her face like a lamp within.

The farmer was left alone with the child. She knew him and beckoned him to come near and moved her lips to speak. The man lay on the bed beside her and put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would, he could not hear her message. I suppose there can be no sadder picture in the book of time than this denial by fate of the right to hear the last message of love from one passing off into the long journey from which there comes no report. Hopeless and bitter with disappointment, the man found pencil and paper and a large book and gave them to the child. Sitting up in bed with a last painful effort the little one painfully wrote or printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her little face aflame with love. He hid the note in his pocket as his wife and the doctor came in—for the message from the unseen world seemed to him too sacred for other human eyes.

The woman watched her husband closely and wondered why he felt so cheerful as the days passed by. The little one was no longer with him, yet he went about his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile. She could not understand, but now and then she would see him take from his pocket an envelope, open it and read what seemed to be a letter. He would sometimes sit before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful. As she went about her work, she would see him take out this mysterious letter and read it over and over, as one would read a message from a friend very dear of old and happy days. And she wondered what it could be that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and then there came the time when one evening in June the sun seemed to pass behind the western hill with royal splendor. It seemed as if there had never been such gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night, and the practical wife looked from her back-door and saw her husband standing in the barnyard gate like one in a glorious vision. The cows stood in the lane, the empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood gazing off to the west unheeding the call to his work. And as the woman waited she saw her dreaming husband take that mysterious letter from his pocket and read it once more. She could see the look of joy which spread over his face as he read it. And this plain, practical woman, moved by some sudden impulse, walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her husband’s shoulder. He started out of his dream and looked guiltily at the empty milk pail, but she only smiled and pointed to the paper he had in his hand. He hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it to her. It was just the scrawl which the little child had written after her failure to make him hear. It was the last message from one who stood on the threshold of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within. And this was what the woman read, written in straggling childish letters:

“_I’ll tell God how good you are._”

And the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved of love and sympathy through all these years, standing in the lonely silence of that golden sunset knew that God’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen country through the influence of that little child.

A DAY’S WORK

“Well, boys, I’m going to quit and call it a day!” As the Hope Farm man spoke he got up from his knees in the strawberry patch and proceeded to straighten out his back. It was half past four on Saturday, September 4. Our week’s work was done—all but the chores. Our folks had picked and packed and shipped four big truckloads of produce, with a surplus of nearly 100 bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for next week. This in addition to regular farm work—and one day off fishing for the boys. It does not seem possible that September has come upon us! I do not know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the clock’s calendar points to that date. When the foolish finger of “daylight saving” appears on the clock we can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on the calendar. That is like the finger of fate. Yet it seems out of date. We have not finished picking Gravenstein apples. In former years Labor Day found us clearing up the McIntosh. This year we have not even touched them! Last year the Mammoth sweet corn was about cleaned out in August. Now we are beginning to pick. The season and the calendar are fighting this year. Now if they will both turn in and hold Jack Frost up for a couple of weeks later than usual we will forgive the season.

This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely no one else wanted it. Thomas had not come back from his night on the market. Philip cleaned up the chores, while the rest went to picking apples and tomatoes. My daughter goes across the lawn with 100 or more chickens at her heels. They are black Jersey Giants and R. I. Reds going to breakfast. Out on the cool back porch Mother is playing the part of family “Red.” That is, she is canning tomatoes. This porch is screened in, and there is an oil stove to put heat into the canning outfit. The lady is peeling a basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes! This job of mine would make one of those model gardeners too disgusted for comment. We set out the strawberry plants in April, in rows three feet apart, the plants two feet in the row. The soil is strong, and we wanted to push it hard. So in part of the patch we planted early peas between the rows, and in the rest early potatoes. The theory of this plan is sound enough. You get a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them out in time for the berry plants to run out and cover the patch. In practice this does not always work. While the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the patch clean. Then came a time when these vines fell down and refused to get up. Then came the constant rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all over to seek shelter under these vines. Before we could interfere the patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the long rains kept it growing. The richness of the soil delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the time we got them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle. Here I am cleaning up this mess. Most of the work must be done with the fingers—a hoe would tear up too many runners. You have to get down on your knees and pull. As I crawl across the patch I leave a pile of weeds behind me like a windrow. I hold up my fingers and it seems surprising that they are not worn down at least half an inch. If I had kept those peas and potatoes out of here the berries would be far better, and I would not have this crawling job. I am not to be alone here after all. That big black chicken leaves his crowd on the lawn and comes over here to scratch beside me. The Jersey Giants are very tame and enterprising. This one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member of my family to take this job from choice. He will have all the worms I can dig out!

There is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and the truck comes snorting into the barnyard. At the same time Tom and Broker, the big grays, come down the hill with a load of apples. Tom scents the gasoline and pricks back his ears with a snort. You can see him turn his head as if talking to sober old Broker:

“That fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful breath he has! For years we went on the road like honest horses and did all the marketing on the farm. Why does this man keep such a great awkward thing around? It may have speed, but I’ll bet it eats him out of house and home!”

“Well, now,” said old Broker, “every horse to his job. Working right on this farm is good enough for me. Let that truck do the road work, says I. No place like home for an honest horse like me.”

“Not much. I like a little life now and then. I want to get out on the road among horses and see what is going on. That great, lazy, smelling thing has got us farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are doing. And look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and its keep—my stars!”

“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself. A gallon of oats costs something, too. I’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for less than $200 a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work off our shoulders!”

“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was a very small matter.

Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. The load sold for $106.95. It was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes. That looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding load of about the same class of goods brought $143. That is about the way they have gone this season. Our prices are certainly lower, and every item of cost is higher. There can be no question about that, yet our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But for the truck we would be worse off than we are now. We never could handle our crop with the horses. It is more and more necessary to get the goods right into market promptly and with no stop. While the truck has become a necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. Old Tom is right in saying that I have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year and putting it in shape for the season. That item alone will add quite a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. Some of the smaller farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. This is a hard life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that for some reason people are not buying such goods as they did. The retail trade is rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. I think the plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.

My back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. I must straighten them out by a change of occupation. I am going up on the hill to look at the apple picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded, dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. She eats two tomatoes on the way up, and then I find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I think some of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh, well, these scientists will probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. We are picking Gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels or more. I planted a block of these trees as an experiment. Now I wish I had more of them. The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. This year any big apple brings a fair price. For instance, that despised Wolf River has been our best seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce, which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top is going to Paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. I have told in past years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and how they have bought others. These trees have given surprising returns. The larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long way toward paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or selling at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” It would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it comes in bearing. The only chemical I know of for extracting character out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the day on the hills—here in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and I go down on a load of apples—big Tom and Broker creeping down the steep hillside as if they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.

I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried several bushels to the geese, and these wise birds make much of them. The big sow, too, stands chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a grassy corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a very proud little cow, for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending to chew her small cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste of real cream already. But here is a pull at my shoulder, and little Rose, her face washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14 of us today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all on the table, so we can see what there is to start with. Have some of this soft hash. That means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it. You may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is a good time for working up the odds and ends. Then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that if I took my family to the restaurant in the city where I sometimes have my dinner, the bill would be about as follows:

Hash $4.20
Potatoes 1.40
Beets 1.40
Sweet corn 3.60
Tomatoes 1.40
Milk .90
Bread and butter 1.40
Baked apples 2.30
-----
$16.60

That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. Now what would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30 at the full limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was charged 30 cents for it! But no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it is free here, and I hope you will have another baked apple. Try another glass of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream in when they drink it.

That dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. I am back at those berries, and Philip has come to help me. Our folks have stopped picking apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have been picked off. That will have to be our “hay” this winter. The women folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little shopping. Philip and I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse, and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than I expected. A car has just rolled in with a family after apples. One well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is _that_ the Hope Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen! Why does he do that very common work? He ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”

This young man will never know what it will mean next Spring when the vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his own labor turned them from failure to success. He probably never will know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. This weed-pulling gets to be mechanical. It doesn’t require much thought and I have a chance to consider many things as we work. A short distance away is that patch of annual sweet clover. The plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches tall and still growing. The plants are seeding at different dates—some of them earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be for those of us who have the vision to make use of it.

But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn. I am quite sure that I could have picked 50 bushels of Gravenstein apples from those low trees instead of working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day. What now? I’m going to make an application of hot water and get this soil off my hands and arms, shave, put on some clean clothes and take my book out on the front porch until the girls come home. What book? Well, I found in an old bookstore a copy of James G. Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress.” As I had just read Champ Clark’s book I wanted to read Blaine’s. I can well remember when about 40 per cent of the people of this country considered James G. Blaine a hero. The trouble was that about 60 per cent thought otherwise. His book is a sound and serious discussion of the legislation which covered the Civil War and 20 years after. As I worked here today I have been thinking of what Blaine says of Senator Matt Carpenter. This man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went blind. For three years he sat in darkness. Yet this affliction proved a great blessing, for he forced himself to review and analyze and prove what he had read, so that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers were remarkable. This book contains the best statement I have ever read of the reasons for trying to impeach President Andrew Johnson, and how and why the effort failed. What’s that got to do with farming? Well, I think the political events which clustered around that incident came about as near to smashing the Constitution and wrecking the Government as anything that has yet happened. But here comes Cherry-top on his new wheel. He actually got home ahead of the car. I must hurry, or our folks will not find that literary reception committee waiting for them. Better come along with me. I have some other books that will make you think, and I’ll guarantee that thinking will do you more good right now than a day’s work.

PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY

Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or rather a pair of geese. As you read this they will be browning and sizzling in the oven, with plenty of “sage and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They will come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and backed by several big pumpkin pies. I shall resign the position of carver, remembering my old experience with the roast duck and the minister. The duck got away from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending by upsetting the gravy in front of the minister’s plate. After the usual objections Mother will apply the carving knife to the geese, secretly proud of her skill as an anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted goose except provide white meat. Since Nature decided not to implant that delicacy in the breast of a goose, man cannot supply it. Therefore the lady must content herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most blind men eating the white breast of a turkey and then the brown breast of a goose would call for more of the latter. It is something like this rather foolish preference for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell! Anyway, a goose, well stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering well suited to the Hope Farm table.

No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over Mother’s generous slices Mr. Gander will lead his family across the lawn and find something to be thankful for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great respect for Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature may have left the white meat out of the goose in order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put an extra quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems to me that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about the most successful teachers of youth I have ever known. To many a learned educator I would say, “Go to the goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose meat is rapidly disappearing from the Thanksgiving altar. Mother has scraped the bones nearly clean. What little remains will be boiled out as soup. This bird has lived what I may call an eminently successful life. He ends his career in the highest place possible to be conceived of in the philosophy of a goose. He was trained and educated from the start, and as I look at Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of any human teachers who have had any greater success in training their charges into just what a man or woman ought to be.

In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the old barn and laid 21 eggs. We rather expected more, but the goose was master of ceremonies. She came back to the same place each day, and finally we found her there hissing like the steam escaping from a broken pipe. It was her signal that she was ready to serve as incubator. So we put 13 eggs under her and eight more under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure as a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a wonder. She had raised three broods of chicks with great success. Surely she ought to be a better guide and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children would you not choose those who have had experience? In due time, and on the same day, the goose walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on her nest and compelled five to stay under her. The two broods kept apart. The hen was evidently disappointed with the way the goose handled children, and she punished her brood whenever they tried to mingle with their own brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after about eight weeks I noticed a strange thing. The hen’s brood, though eating the same food, would average at least 30 per cent lighter than the goslings which ran with the goose. There was no question about it—the hen’s charges were inferior in size and weight and in “common sense,” or the art of looking out for themselves.

There being no chance for an argument about it, I concluded that it was very largely a matter of education, and we began to study the methods of teaching employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen. The first thing we noticed was the influence of the male side of the family. Roger Red, the big rooster, paid no attention to his wife’s family. All he did was to mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after worms or seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way he kicked it to one side and gave not even a suggestion to his busy wife. He was like one of those men who will not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife carry the child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was a true head of the family. He kept right with the goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off rats and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a hawk or a cat. In time of danger the rooster ran for shelter, but the gander stepped right out in front of his brood with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s arm, and that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the enemy. He taught his children to graze on weeds and grass. When anyone forgot to feed them the gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family right into the garden, where they picked up their share. He led the goslings through the wet grass and into the brook, where they cleaned out all the watercress and weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the barnyard and cried if breakfast did not come on time. She would not let her children wade through the wet grass or get into the water, and she did not know that a young goose can eat grass like a calf. The hen worried herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts of geese and headed for the brook.

Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed to understand the first law of education—to train a child properly you must understand his natural instincts and tendencies and build upon them. For many generations the hen has feared water, and has been taught that all feathered young must be kept away from it. I have no doubt that a race of swimming hens could be developed, provided the fear of water could be taken from the mind of the hen. _For the hen must swim with her mind before she can swim with her feet!_ I have seen many cut-and-dried teachers as much afraid of the truth as this big Red hen was afraid of water. At any rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior to the other. One set had the benefit of father’s example and influence. Their teacher knew from long experience just what a young goose ought to know. The teacher knew that because she had been a goose herself, and could remember her youth. The hen’s brood knew nothing of their father’s example—no more than some little humans who only seem to know there is a man in the world who claims to be the detached head of the family. The hen’s goslings were brought up in one of these beheaded families. Their teacher ranked as a successful educator, but as she had never been a young goose herself she could not teach her children what they ought to know. It was not unlike trying to make a blacksmith out of a poet, or a drygoods salesman out of a natural farmer. These feathered children were fed and warmed and defended, but they could not make perfect geese because they were not trained to work out a goose job.

The result was clearly evident. The young geese under the hen were undersized and fell into the hen character. After centuries of domestication or slavery the average hen loses the independence of the wild bird. Now and then a nobler specimen will feel some dormant brain cell thrill within her, remember the freedom of centuries ago and fly into the trees, but for the most part the modern hen is a selfish, fawning, tricky creature. She drives her family away as soon as the children become tiresome, and there is little or no real community life among hens. When their usual food is not forthcoming all but a few adventurous spirits stand slouching about waiting for help. Thus the goslings were taught to fawn upon man for their food and reject their brothers and sisters in the other brood. It was an unnatural life for a goose, and these little ones could not thrive under such training. On the other hand, Mr. Gander’s pupils were taught by an expert on goose training. They were taught to swim, to bathe in the wet grass, to eat grass or hay, to get out and find their own breakfast if man did not do his duty. As a result they grew up with strong independence of character. While the others might fawn and beg for food, the gander’s class were taught to scorn such subservient behavior. And they were taught family life and co-operation. While the hens separate and lead their selfish, separate lives, the geese live in a group. There they go now in a solid bunch across the lawn. Throw a stick into a flock of hens or let a dog run at them, and they will scatter in all directions. Try the same with a flock of young geese, and they will line up in solid array “all for each and each for all.” I do not know of anything finer in the education of geese or children than this thorough idea of co-operation. In the future those groups which are taught like the geese will rule the nation. Those which are taught to fear strange things or live the selfish life of a hen will always serve. In other words, the future of this country depends on its teachers and their wisdom? You are right!

But the real, final test of a goose’s education is made with the carving-knife. Judging from the empty plates I think this one will pass a good examination. If I am not mistaken this was one of the hen’s goslings. When we saw that their teacher was a failure we put them into Mr. Gander’s class. He looked them over and knocked them down with his wing a few times. Then he put his wise head to one side as if to say:

“I’ll do my best with them. They have been spoiled, and I must take some of the conceit out of them first. If the law forbidding corporal punishment holds in New Jersey I will resign the task, because no goose can ever live a successful life unless those foolish hen ideas are whipped out of him. And another thing: I won’t have that Red hen bothering around me. The influence of a foolish mother is the worst thing a teacher has to contend with. I’ll try to make geese out of them, but keep that hen away!”

The Red hen put up a great cry for a time. She ran out and called for her “darling children” to leave those low companions. The goose took those “darling children” right by the tail feathers and pulled them back. The gander waddled up to the hen and took one nip which sent her squawking to the barnyard, where the big rooster was challenging the world.

“I’ve been insulted!” she screamed, “and my dear children have been stolen from me. If you have the courage of a mouse you will defend your wife!”

“Where is he?” roared the rooster, and he started on a run for the orchard. There was the goose with all her children at school, and right in front was the gander with his great beak open and that right wing all unslung for a blow. The rooster got within about six feet of him and then halted. He didn’t like the looks of that sharp beak.

“Good-morning, Mr. Gander! I saw you over in the next field, and I came to ask how the worms are running over there!”

As he went back the rooster, after the manner of husbands generally, sought to pacify his wife.

“After all, your children are in a good school, and you will now have more time for your neglected household duties. Nursing those children has been a hard strain on you. Now for a little recreation!”

From my own experience I can testify that Professor Gander is right. No one can train a child properly if the mother is foolish naturally, and seeks to interfere with the child’s education. Those who undertake to “take a child” into their family may well take heed from Professor Gander. It were far better that such a child never saw his mother again. She may easily ruin the life which she brought into the world.

But at any rate, this bird on the table was well educated to live the perfect life of a goose. Have another slice! I know you can eat another helping of this dressing. Pass back your plate. Of course I know Mother would like to hold that other goose back for a later meal, but that is not the true Thanksgiving spirit. Pass back for another slice and I will use my influence with the housekeeper to carve the second goose. Its education has been finished.

COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL

I imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the world on fire. So we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand back to see it spread. For we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay in a drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start it going. We find the world more like a soggy swamp. It does not flare up—our little blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the water it comes to an end. Missionaries who have been among the savage tribes of Africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage is the simple act of striking a match. These men and their ancestors have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of two sticks together. Often many hours of this laborious friction were needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and then nurse it into flame. Here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced the effect of hours of hard toil! One savage stole a box of matches and undertook to “show off” before his friends. He could start the little flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. Of course, the little match flame could only spread _to things of its own size_. You cannot jump flame from a glimmer to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or gunpowder.

Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry Barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver before some political society. When a man is well satisfied with his own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his admiration. When you come to be as old as I am, you will recognize the signs. I knew Henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world on fire. Yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for an instant at its delivery. Henry would deliver it with a loud voice and many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. When there was no blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it sputtered for a moment and then flickered out. Youth cannot understand how long years of drudgery are required to split and splinter those big sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently splitting and drying the wood. I tried to tell Henry that when Lincoln delivered his speech at Gettysburg few people realized that it was to become a classic. A new generation with the power to look back through the mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full place in the American mind. Henry could not see it. When did youth ever know the back-looking vision of age? It is a wise thing that youth must ever look ahead.

I had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey to Starkville, Miss. That pleasant town lies west of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad—on a side road of its own. When I went there 37 years ago the track wound on through what seemed like a wilderness, with here and there a negro cabin. Now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages or blue grass pastures. In former years the streets of Starkville were just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons determined. I knew a man who came to town in November and bought an empty wagon. He could not haul it home until the following April, so deep was the mud. Now the main street was as smooth and solid as Broadway, and firm stone roads branched out into the country in all directions. The streets were thickly lined with cars. Here, as in Kentucky, I saw men riding on genuine saddle horses, which shuffled quickly along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs. It seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and it is no wonder that the years fell away and I went back in memory to those old days.

It was in 1883 that I was graduated at an agricultural college and went down to “reform and uplift the South.” Since then I have heard the motive or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,” “nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives pinned to the latter! Yet, looking back upon it now, I feel that while perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential thing. I had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those days. I had a great abiding faith in the power of education to lift men up and set them free. A few years before I had given up the thought of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because I had had no training which fitted me to do anything well. It seemed to me that the agricultural college had given me almost the miraculous help which came to the man with the darkened mind. Who could blame youth for feeling that the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains of depression and trouble? I had been told that the chief assets of Mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a proud and well-bred race to train their hands to labor!” That was surely in line with my stock of material assets, and so I came to set the South on fire with ambition and vision.

Well do I remember the day I walked into the little brick building where _The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was printed. Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill looked me over. Colonel O’Brien was tall and straight—every inch a soldier. Sergeant Hill was short and fat. You would not think it, but he was with Forrest when they captured Fort Pillow. Sergeant Hill’s remark was:

“Another one of them literary cranks, I’ll bet.”

Colonel O’Brien was more practical.

“Come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”