Chapter VII: Part 7

And almost before I knew it my job of uplifting the South was on. I suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” I fed the press, set type, swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to sing in the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials. At least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader. Those were the days when living was a joy. Some days there would be a little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement would come. Now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send them home in defeat and disgrace. These occasions were bright spots on the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright lexicon of youth to the great editorials I ground out at that battered and shaky table in the corner. Among other things I broke a labor strike in that town, alone and unassisted. It was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor thing beside the great editorial on “The South’s Future,” which I wrote on that stormy day in Christmas week.

It comes back to me now as I write this. In those days everybody “knocked off” during Christmas week and we printed no paper. Yet we all seemed to come to the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.” It was cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips. Colonel O’Brien had started a fire in the fireplace, and he and Sergeant Hill stood before it smoking their pipes and telling war stories. Colonel O’Brien was telling how he heard the soldiers around their fires at night saying it was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Sergeant Hill told about the Indian who went after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers, and how in consequence the Yankees captured the printing outfit. I must tell you that story some day. And while these two old vets kept down on the ground in thought I was up on the heights developing a glorious future for the “Sunny South.” And at the last flourish of the pen I cleared my throat and read it to these old soldiers. And, honestly, I did not get the humor of it. These two men had given all they had of youth, ambition, money and hope to their section. They must walk softly all their remaining days amid the ruins and the melancholy of defeat. And here was I without the least conception of what life must have meant to the Southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring out dreams of a future which seemed even beyond the vision of an Isaiah. Great is youth and glorious are its prophetic visions. At any rate, the old soldiers let their pipes go out as they listened.

“Fine,” said Sergeant Hill. “Splendid. I reckon you’ll have us all in Heaven 40 years hence?”

“Fine,” said Colonel O’Brien. “Fine. I hope I’ll be here to see it; but today I saw that paper collector from New Orleans in town. We can’t pay his bill. He’ll have to leave on the night train. Better shut up the office.” And they tramped out into the mud, and I knew that as they plowed up the street they were looking at each other as men do when they feel a pity for some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in front of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called unorthodox. And I locked the door and sat before the fire polishing that editorial. Collectors might pound on the door, paper and ink might run short—what were these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts were to save the country? Surely, I had it all planned out that night, and went home, rising far up above the fog and rain, and bumping my head against the stars! Do I not know just how Henry Barkman felt about his great oration? Heaven give him the philosophy to endure with patience the day which finally came to me when I had to realize that I was not an uplifter, after all! And yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer, deny to youth the glorious foolishness with which he

“Longs to clutch the golden keys;
To mold the mighty state’s decrees
And shape the whisper of the throne!”

And now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all these dreams. Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill have answered the last call.

“They know at last whose cause was right
In God the Father’s sight!”

Old Sol, the black man who turned the press, has passed on with them. Years ago _The Southern Live Stock Journal_ was absorbed by a stronger publication. It is doubtful if in all the town or country you could find an old copy of the paper. Those great editorials which I climbed into the clouds to write were evidently too thin and light for this world. They have all sailed away far from the mind of man. The little building where we started the candle flame which was to burn up all the prejudice and depression in the South seems to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding house. The little shop where (with Sol on the crank of the press and I feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt to be a mental feast, is now a kitchen where cow peas, bacon and greens and corn bread form a more substantial food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. It was no longer a molder of public opinion.

“_To what base uses we may return, Horatio._”

And yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the vision had come true. I wished that Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill might stand in front of the old building and look about them. No longer a sea of mud, but smooth, firm pavements. The sidewalks were lined with cars. Beautiful trees shaded the streets, until the town seemed like a New England Village with six generations behind it. Outside, stretching away in every direction, was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass and clover. Here and there was a young man in the uniform of the American Union. In the vaults of the banks were great bundles of Liberty bonds. And a gray-haired man on the street corner told me this:

“_You will find that the very States which sixty years ago tried to break up the Union will, in the future, prove to be the very ones which must hold it together._”

Yet let me tell Henry Barkman and the millions who felt as he did about his oration, that no one in all that town remembered my former editorials or the great work of the _Journal_. My literary work has been blown away as completely as the clouds among which it was composed. At the end of the great college commencement exercises a man came on the stage with a great bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. I am not much in the habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me, but I will confess that I thought: “Here is where my soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated. All things come round to him who will but wait.”

But this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed that I ever tried to “uplift the South.” He said I entered into the young life of the town and was remembered with affection because I played baseball with skill and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!

And let me say to the Henry Barkmans who read this that the lesson of all this is the truest thing I know. Many a man has gone out into life like a knight on a crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious weapons. In after years people cannot remember what his weapons were, but he got into their hearts with some simple, common thing which seemed foolish beside his great deeds. Nobody remembered my brain children, though they were embalmed in ink and cradled in a printing press. But I put a twist on a baseball, overcame the force of gravity and made the ball dodge around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40 years! Not one of my old subscribers spoke of the paper, but seven of the old baseball club, gray or bald, near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of youth, got together.

I think you older people will get my point. For the benefit of Henry Barkman and his friends perhaps I can do no better than to quote the following:

“_God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty._”

HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES

“_Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth._”

That was written by François Rabelais over 500 years ago. It is so true that it has entered the language as a proverb, or “old saying.” We hear it again and again in all classes of society. It is true that the great majority of us has no idea of the life or the life ambitions of the great world outside of our own little valley of thought. I suppose this failure to understand the “other half” is one of the things which do most to keep people apart and prevent anything like fair co-operation. It is the basis of most of the bitter intolerance which has ever been used by the “ruling classes” to keep the great mass of the people in subjection. Years ago some old lord or baron would build a strong castle on a hill and make the farmers for miles around believe that he “protected” them. Therefore, they built his castle free, gave their sons for his soldiers, and toiled on the land that he might live in idleness. And what did he “protect” them from? Why, from another group of farmers a few miles away, who, in like manner, were supporting another idle gang of cutthroats in another strong castle. These two groups of farmers did not need to be “protected” from each other. They had the same needs, the same wrongs and the same desires. Left to understand each other and to work together, they would have had no trouble, but would have led happier and far more prosperous lives. As it was they did not understand “how the other half liveth,” and thus they fought when they should have fraternized.

I find much of the same feeling between city people and farmers—consumers and producers. They do not understand how “the other half liveth,” and they find fault when they should from every point of economy work together. Your city man thinks the farmer has a soft job, and that with present high prices he is making a barrel of money. Either that or he is a slow-thinking drudge—a sort of inferior being, who doesn’t know any better than to carry the load which others strap on his back. He is “the backbone of the country” all right in a political campaign—but the backbone is merely a mechanical contrivance if you detach it from the brain. And the average farmer regards the city worker or commuter as a grafter—getting far more than he earns, and putting in short, easy days. It isn’t all graft and ease by a long way. Many of these city workers must travel miles to their jobs, and some of them put in longer hours than the average farmer. Many of them save little or nothing, and the wolf is always prowling around the door. Between these two classes it is a case of not knowing “how the other half liveth,” and this failure to understand has created a form of intolerance which separates two classes about as the old barons separated the groups of farmers years ago.

And something of the same lack of tolerant understanding has separated classes of farmers. The grain farmers, live-stock men, dairymen, gardeners and fruit growers all think at times that they have the hardest lot. The labor question, the markets or the weather all seem to turn against them. For instance, the dairymen usually think their lot is harder than that of others. They must work day after day in all sorts of weather and under hard conditions. I know about this, for I have worked on a dairy farm where conditions were very hard. Yet I also know that at this season the average dairyman has a good job compared with the life of the market gardener or fruit grower. On our own farm it has rained each day and night for many days. Get into a sweet corn or tomato field and pick the crop in a pouring rain, or pick early apples while the foliage is like a great sponge. Then sort out and pack, load the truck and travel through the rain to market, stand out in the rain and sell the load out to peddlers and dealers, and then hurry back home for another round of the same work. The fruit and vegetables are nearly as perishable as milk, and must be rushed promptly away. The dairyman knows beforehand what his milk will bring. The price may not be what he thinks is right, but he knows for weeks or months in advance what he can surely expect. We never know when we start what our stuff will bring. We must take what we can get for perishable fruit. We know what we have already spent, and what each load must bring in order to get our money back. Thus far corn is about equal in price to last year, tomatoes are lower, apples are at least 30 per cent lower, and so on. The dairyman has his troubles, but let him follow this job for a month and he would realize that “there are others.” In much the same way I can show that the potato men, the hay and grain farmers, the sheep men and all the rest, have their troubles—and hard ones at that. If farmers could only understand these things better, and realize that there are thorns and tacks in every so-called “soft job,” there would be greater tolerance in the world, and that is the only thing that can ever lead to true co-operation and fair treatment.

Pretty much the same thing is true of business. We ran upon a strange incident the other day. The city of Paterson, N. J., is a good market town. Work is well paid and the workmen are free spenders. It is a city of many breeds and races of men. On the market you will probably hear more languages and dialects than were used on the Tower of Babel. A large share of farm produce is distributed by peddlers—most of them of foreign blood. They are shrewd and tireless workers. I never can see when they sleep. Night after night they come on the market to buy produce, and day after day—through heat and cold, rain or shine—you see them driving their horses up and down the streets and lanes—always good-natured, always with a smile. Well, we sold Spot, our black cow, to one of these men—an Italian. Thomas had done business with him for some years. We had sold him many goods—he had always paid for them. He made part payment for the cow by giving about the most remarkable looking check I ever saw. It was on a first-class bank made out in a straggling hand, and signed by two names. We had passed several like it before through our bank, so I deposited it, as usual. In a few days it came back unpaid.

Thomas and I went to Paterson that night to see what was wrong. I wish some of you whose lives have been spent entirely in the country could see how this “other half liveth.” This man lived on a side street. The lower part of his house had been fitted as a little store. In the small backyard were several milk goats, a small flock of chickens and a shed, in which were two horses. Under a small, rude shelter of boards was old Spot, chewing away at green cornstalks. The man was a big, pleasant-faced Italian. You would mark him for an honest man on his appearance. There was a brood of children—eight or nine, I should say—and a pleasant-faced little wife, who carried the latest arrival around at her work. When confronted with the protested check, this man merely smiled and waved his hands. He could not read it! Two small boys—the oldest perhaps 12 years of age—seemed to be the only members of the family who could read and write English. They read the protest paper to their father and made him understand. He only smiled and spread out his hands as people do who talk with their shoulders. These two little boys had made out the check and signed it for their parents. They either did not figure out their bank balance, or figured it wrong. There was no attempt at dishonesty, and the check would finally be honored. That seemed to be all there was to it. These little boys, through the public school, represented all that these older people know of the great business life of America.

I know a good many Americans whose pedigrees run back close to Plymouth Rock. If some of them had let that check go in this way I should have loaded old Spot right on the truck and carried her home. Thomas knew this man and his reputation, and his way of doing business. He will pay, and in a few days of peddling he will pad out his bank account and then the check will go through. So we shook hands with him and came home. But that is the way “the other half liveth.” This man and woman came to a strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American business is what they learn at the public schools. I wish you could have seen the way that check was made out—yet any old piece of paper may be worth more than a gold-plated certificate if there is genuine character back of it. I am told that in most mill towns the banks carry a good many accounts just like this one; in fact, a good proportion of the business is conducted in about that way. It is said that some of the smaller manufacturers do not keep any set of books which enable them to figure their income tax! There are some men who could not buy a cow or a cat from us on credit, while others could have what credit they need right on their face and reputation.

There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen. We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of green cornstalks and a little grain. This milk will sell for 18 cents, at least. The cow can live in that little shed until the middle of December, or about 120 days. In that time she will give 1,500 quarts or more, which, at 18 cents, means $270, and she can then be sold for at least $90 for beef! That makes $360 gross income for one cow in four months. Her feed will be mostly refuse tops and stalks from vegetables and a small amount of grain. She will be well cared for, carded and brushed every day, and made comfortable. Thus not half the cows know “how the other half liveth.” Someone will take these figures, multiply them by 25, and show what tremendous incomes our dairymen are making. The fact is this man can keep just one cow at a profit. If he kept two the extra cost of food would about eat up his profits. So we went whirling home through the dusk, thinking that we had had a glimpse at a little of the life of the other half, and it made me feel something more of charity for my fellow men. When you come to think of what the American public school means to that family, you realize the immense responsibility that goes with education. We can hardly be too careful about what our schools teach and how they teach it. I wonder how many of us, if we were transplanted to some foreign land, would be willing to turn our business over to our children and let them conduct it as they learned to do it from the schools! I think we would all be more tolerant and reasonable if we would let our children bring to us more of the spirit of youth and more of hope of the future. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, the wind had dried the grass, and on the lawn in front of the house our great army of children were dancing and playing as if there were no such thing as tomato rot, wet corn and low prices. I think that these handicaps would have seemed much lighter if we could have gone out and danced with the kids. I wonder where, along the road, we gave up doing that.

THE INDIANS WON

Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet on the concrete and my collar turned up.

It was a gray, raw, miserable day—good Indian weather as it turned out. It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a devoted little band of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this great crowd sat cold-eyed and impartial. At one side of the field there was a dash of bright color where a group of stolid Indians sat wrapped in big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a tangled mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of a football.

Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,” but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age. Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the 1,000 yelling young maniacs who sent these green-clad boys down to meet the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the game; it will be _a peach_.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a haughty spirit, wearing pride as conspicuously as they will wear their first high hat. They had not lost a game, but had trampled over two of the greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very confident, and fully convinced of the great superiority of the white man!

I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a game of tag than a human battering ram. Here, however, was a round of the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment. All around me, however, there seemed standing up hundreds of swarthy, dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.

It would have made a theme for a great historian as these young men lined up for the game. The whites trotted out confident and proud. Why not? The “betting” favored them, their record was superior, as their race was supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their places and shambled through their motions, silent and without great show of confidence. It came to me as not at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors of these boys had faced each other under very different circumstances. Francis Parkman, the historian, tells of a famous battle in the upper Connecticut Valley. The white settlers had built a stockade as protection against roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort was attacked by such a band, which had come down the valley capturing prisoners and booty. It was a savage fight, but the white men held their own, and finally a Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a parley. He actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they were out of food, and then to retreat. In that gray mist, with my feet on the concrete, I could shut my eyes and see the ancestors of these football players. Stern white men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent red men creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up their booty in sight—as price for the corn. The frost on the leaves told them that Winter with all its cold and peril was approaching. Here were the necessities of life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow of the woods were the captives—men, women and children—and the white settlers held out for _them_. For at that time, if not now, New England _knew the value of a man_ to the nation. He was far above the dollar, even though the women and children would be a care and a danger.

In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old fighters lay in the hearts of these green-clad boys who had come down from these historic old hills. At that instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers led by the writhing “cheer leaders”—the glory and fame of the good old college on the hill. You could not have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.

On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned Indians seemed to have something of the same spirit in their hearts. Silent and impassive, they seemed for the moment to have cast off their college training and gone back to the free, wild life, only carrying the discipline which authority and college training had given them. I wonder if any of these red men thought as they lined up on that field that it was the lack of just this stern discipline which lost them this country and nearly wiped out their race? Men fitted to play this game of football never would have given away Manhattan Island, or permitted a handful of white men to drive them from the coast. Over 1,000 men, each with the burning drop of Indian or Negro blood in his veins, were hoping and praying that in this modern battle the red men would humble the pride of Manhattan, as their ancestors had lost the island. Out of the gray mist there seemed to stride ghosts of stout Dutchmen and thin Yankees and silent, noiseless Indians to watch this fairer combat.

At the signal the ball was kicked far down the field by a white man whose ancestors may have come with Hendrik Hudson. It was caught by a red man, whose ancestors may have been kings or chiefs while the white man’s were European peasants. Back he came running with the ball to form the basement of a pile of 10 struggling fighters, and the game was on. You must get someone else to describe the game. I do not understand it well enough. The two groups of players lined up against each other, and one side tried to batter the other down, or send a man through with the ball. Again and again came this fierce shock, and a strange and unexpected thing was happening. The Indians had no band of singers or cheer leaders, no pretty girls were urging them on, no pride of superior dominating race, but silently and resolutely they were smashing the white men back. It was hard. These boys in green died well. There was one light man who took the ball and ran through the Indians as his ancestors may have run the gauntlet, but they pulled him down. Inch by inch the white men were battered back over the line. The air seemed full of red blankets, for those substitutes at the side lines were back into the centuries coming home from a season on the warpath. Yet the green singers yelled on and shouted their defiance. Then the white men made a great rally and forced the Indians back, grimly battling over the other line. At the end of the first half the score stood 10 to 7, in favor of the white men. “It’s all over,” said a man who sat next to me. “They will come back and trample all over the Indians, for white men always have the endurance.” A man nearby with a touch of bronze in his skin glared at us with a look in his eyes that was not quite good to see. Back came the players, at it again. There was great trampling, but of the unexpected kind. These slouching and shambling Indians suddenly turned into human tigers, and the plain truth is that they both outwitted and walked right over the green-clad whites. There was no stopping them. All the cheering and singing and sentiment and “race-superiority” went for nothing. For here was where pride and a haughty spirit ran up against destruction, and great was the fall thereof. Yet I was proud of the way these white boys met their fate. They had been too confident, and had lost what is called the “psychological drop” on the enemy. The Indians had them at the stake with a hot fire burning, for no one knows what a victory right there would have meant for the good old college far away among the hills. Yet, face to face with fate, cruel, silent and relentless, those boys never faltered, but fought on. I liked them better in defeat than in their airy confidence before the game. When it was all over they got up out of the mud of defeat and gave their college war cry. There may have been a few cracked and corner-clipped notes in it, but it was fine spirit and good losing. Nearby the Indians waved their blankets and gave another college yell. And the 1,000 or more men with that burning drop of blood in their veins went home with shining faces and gleaming eyes, with better dreams for the future of their race. For they had made the white man’s burden of superiority a hard burden to carry.

My football days are over. No use for me to tell what great things I did 30 years ago. This age demands a “show me,” and I cannot give it. If I had my way I would introduce football, baseball, basketball, pushball and all other clean and organized games into every country town. I would organize leagues and contests and get country children to play. Do you ever stop to think that work, long and continuous, for ourselves and our children, has not taught us how to organize or use our forces together as we should? It is true. _Organized_ play will do more to bring our children together for co-operative work than anything I can think of. It will give discipline, which is what we need. Two of these green-clad boys stood an Indian on his head and whirled him around like a top. It was part of the game. He got up good-naturedly and took his place in the line. Imagine what his grandfather would have done! One white boy was running with the ball and two Indians butted him, while another got him by the legs. The boy simply held on to the ball. It was discipline and training in self-control. Step on a city man’s foot in a crowded car and he would want to fight. Our country people need such discipline and spirit before they can compete with organized business. If I could have my way I would have our country children drilled in just such loyalty to the home town or district as these college boys displayed on the field. Tell me, if you will, how it can be gained now in any way except through organized and loyal play for our children. You know very well what I mean. Work is an essential of life, and it must be made the foundation of character. Organized and clean play is another essential, as I see it now, and I think its development and firm direction is to be one of the greatest forces in building up life in the country.

IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL

It was last year, as I recall it, at about this season, one of the children asked me a strange question:

“_What was the thankfullest day you ever saw?_”

Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days come and go, and every one of them has brought a dozen things to be thankful for. I sometimes think as the hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the day they are recording right now is about the best of all. I have passed Thanksgiving Day in the mud, in the snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded city, on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you can mention. I have given hearty thanks over baked beans, salt pork, bread and cheese, turkey and all the rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all burn away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.

They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in a swamp in Northern Michigan. No one had dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was a rich, middle-aged lumberman and his young wife. How this tough, hard pine knot of a man ever selected this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had come with him into the woods on one of his business trips, and the silence by day and the whispering of the pines at night had filled her with terror. The rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a toy—a hothouse flower who could not live his life or help fight his battles. He had a great business deal on hand which required all his energies, but this girl could not understand or help him. She had begged and cried to go back to “civilization,” and they were on their way. And in this lonely place the axle of the carriage had snapped and left them in the mud.

It had been one of those gray, melancholy days which seem to fit best into the idea of a New England Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming on and there were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had climbed out of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside. She had been crying in her disappointment, for she had expected to reach the railroad that night, and spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this lonely wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with an old farmer who finally agreed to haul the broken carriage back to the blacksmith shop for repairs.

“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but not for man—so I can’t put you up. Quarter of a mile down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter hotel.”

He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started back along the road. There was nothing for us to do but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen some strong, capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is after all made of common clay, with little of that spirit or courage which we somehow think should belong to the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little woman and a sad and silent big man who walked through the mud and up the little sand hill in search of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful for, and, yet did they but know it, they were to find the most precious thing in life in this lonely wilderness.

Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a long, rambling building, weatherbeaten and out of repair. Over the door was a faded sign, “Farmers’ Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the house a little man with a bald head and a pair of great spectacles perched at the end of his nose was chasing a big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to watch them. The old man finally cornered the rooster by the garden fence and carried him flapping and squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully, and evidently approved the choice, for the old man, still holding the rooster, pushed the wheel-chair into the house and then, picking up his ax, started for the chopping block just as we turned in from the road. We startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The gray bird did not stop to welcome us, but darted off into the shadows. He mounted the roost in the henhouse from which the old man easily pulled him a little later.

You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers bowing and scraping as their guests arrive. Ike Sawyer could not play the part. He just peered at us over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.

“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put you up.” Then he led the way into the rambling old house. It was dark now, and the old man lighted a lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman did not rise from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.

“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband. “I play feet and she plays hands, and between us we make out fine.”

The old man bustled about and started a fire in the big fireplace. The young woman had entered the poor old building with an angry snarl of discontent on her face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed up and filled the room with warm light, I noticed that the snarl faded out and she sat watching the old lady with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a moment, but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch the sweet-faced old lady “play hands.” On the other side of the fireplace, silent and strong, her husband sat watching his wife with eyes half closed under his thick, bushy eyebrows.

I have seen the cook in a quick lunch counter stand in his little box and toss food together, and I have seen a chef earning nearly as much as the President daintily working in his great kitchen, but nothing will ever seem to equal the way that meal was prepared when Annie played hands and Ike played feet. Ike pushed a little table up in front of his wife, and at her call brought flour and milk and all that she needed for making biscuits. He stood beside her chair as the thin fingers did their work. Now and then he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and once he touched her beautiful head. As though forgetting her guests Annie would smile back at him—a beautiful smile which brought a strange look to the face of the young woman who sat watching them. At first it seemed like an amused sneer. Then there came a puzzled, curious look—the first faint glimmering of the thought that this old man and woman _out of their trouble, out of their loneliness, had found and preserved that most precious of all earth’s blessings—love_!

When a fellow has eaten more than 60,000 meals, as I have in my time, it must be a very good performance in that line to stand out like a bump or a peg in memory. Through all my days I can never forget that supper in the fire-lighted room where Ike played feet and Annie played hands and brains. Ike started a roaring fire in the kitchen stove. Then he brought in a basket of potatoes and Annie selected the best ones for baking. He came with a fragrant brown ham, and cut slices, under her eye, she measuring with her thin finger to make sure they were not too thick. She cut the bread herself, selected the eggs for frying, mixed the gravy and seemed to know by the sputter in the pan when the ham was done. Ike pushed her chair over to the table so she could spread the cloth and arrange the service. Then at a word he pushed her chair to the window where half a dozen plants were blooming. She cut two little nosegays and put them beside the plates of her guests. Ike brought in the ham and eggs, the great, mealy baked potatoes, the brown biscuits and the apple pie. In her city home a servant would have approached the lady and gently announced:

“Dinner is served!”

Ike Sawyer, when Annie nodded approval, simply invited:

“_Sit by and eat!_”

It was all so simple and human that it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do when the discontented and peevish young woman picked up the little nosegay at her husband’s plate and pinned it on his coat. She even patted his shoulder just as Ike had done with Annie. We were all ready to begin, when Ike, standing by Annie’s chair, took off his great spectacles and held up his hand.

“I don’t know who you be or whether you’re church folks or not, but me an’ Annie always makes every day a season for Thanksgivin’.”

Then in the deep silence with only the popping of the fire and the dim noises of the night, as accompaniment, the old man bowed his head and made his prayer. He prayed that the “stranger within our gates” might find peace and strength and go on his way thankful for all the blessings of life. Under those great bushy eyebrows the eyes of the strong, rich man glowed with a strange light. The young wife glanced at him, and the sneer faded away from her face. Then Ike became the landlord once more and he bustled about, tempting us to eat a little more of this or another piece of that, and at every word of praise falling back upon his stock explanation:

“It’s her—Annie plays hands and I play feet. Everybody knows hands have more skill than feet.”

After supper the big man and his wife stood at the window looking out into the wet, dismal night. After a little hesitation he put his arm gently around her. She did not throw it away as she did when he tried to comfort her in the swamp, but rather pulled it closer. After Ike had cleared up his dishes and caught and dressed the gray rooster we all sat before the fire and talked. With a few shrewd questions the lumberman drew out Ike’s story. Years before he and Annie had owned a good farm in New York. There they heard of the wonderful new town that was to be built in Northern Michigan. A city was to arise there, the railroad was coming, and fortune was to float on golden wings over the favored place. It is strange how people like Ike and Annie cannot see how much they need home and old friends and old scenes to make life satisfying. They are not made of the stuff used in building pioneers, but they cannot realize it and they listen to plausible dreams and go chasing after the impossible. So Ike and Annie sold the farm and came to start the great city. It never started. The railroad headed 20 miles west. Out among the scrub oaks you could find some of the rotting stakes marked “Broadway,” “Clay St.,” or “Lake Avenue.” The swamp and forest refused to be civilized. Ike built his hotel in anticipation of the human wave which would wash prosperity his way. It never came, and only a rough, rambling house remained as the weatherbeaten gravestone of Sawdust City. Of all the pioneers there were only Ike and Annie—last of them all—celebrating their happy Thanksgiving!

“Why don’t you sell out and move to some town?” said the practical lumberman.

“Well, sir—it would be too far from home! Me and Annie know this place—every corner of it. Every crick of a timber at night brings a memory. We are just part of the place. And the little girl is buried off there by the brook. We couldn’t go away from that, could we?”

“But isn’t it so _awful_ lonesome?”

It was the young woman who asked, and it was Annie who softly answered her.

“No, for we have great company. I have Ike and he has me. All these long years have tried us out. We know each other, and we are satisfied. Each Thanksgiving finds us happier than before, because we know that our last years are to be our best years.”

The rich man looked over to Ike and Annie with something of hopeless envy printed on his face. His wife nodded her head gently and then sat gazing into the fire until Ike gave us clearly to understand that 10 o’clock was the hour for retiring at the “Farmers’ Rest.”

We stayed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the gray rooster, stuffed with chestnuts and bread-crumbs, might well have stood up in the platter to crow at the praises heaped upon him. The forenoon was gloomy and dull, but just as we came to the table the sun broke through the clouds. A long splinter of sunshine broke through the window—falling upon Annie’s snow-white hair. Ike hurried to move her chair out of the sun, but the rich man asked Ike to leave her there, for I think something in that sunny picture took him back to childhood—where most men go on Thanksgiving Day.

And shortly after dinner the farmer came up the road with the carriage. The axle had been mended and the horses rested. We all shook hands with Ike and Annie. I was to go my way and the other guests were to pass out of our little world.

Annie held the young girl’s hand for a moment.

“My dear, I hope you will soon be back in the city among your friends, where you will not be so lonely. It must be hard for you here.”

The girl hesitated a moment and then put her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“John, would it mean very much to you if we went right back to the camp so you could finish your business?”

“Yes, it would—but I am afraid——”

“Then we will _not_ go home yet, but we will go back until you are through. I have had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I would rather stay in the woods.”

And so they turned in their tracks and went back through the swamp. The night before she said she should always hate the place where the accident had made Ike Sawyer’s hotel a necessity. Now as she passed it she smiled and gave her husband a pinch—a trick she must have learned from Annie. And so they went on through the sunny afternoon of the “thankfullest day of their lives.” They were thinking of the working force at the “Farmers’ Rest”—the feet and the hands!

And the thought in their minds framed itself over and over into words:

“_Out of their poverty, out of their trouble and loneliness, this man and woman have found each other, and thus have found the most beautiful and precious thing in life—love!_”

OLD-TIME POLITICS

“What is the matter with this political campaign?”

An old man who can remember public events far back of the Civil War and beyond asked that question the other day. He said this campaign reminded him more of a Sunday school convention. Nobody was fighting, and very few such epithets as “liar” or “thief” or “rascal” were being used. In these days no one seems to care who is to be elected. We are all too busy trying to pay our bills. The old man bewailed the loss of power and interest in this generation. He thought this quiet indifference meant that as a nation we have lost our political vigor. Having been through some of those old-time battles, I cannot fully agree with him. It is true that few people seem interested, yet they will vote this year, and I think the quiet and thoughtful study most of them are making will prove as effective as the big noise and excitement we used to have. We are merely doing things differently now. Whether the great excitement of those old political days made us better citizens is a question which has long puzzled me. I know that in those nervous and high-strung days we did many foolish things as a part of “politics.” On the other hand, I wish sometimes that our people could get as thoroughly worked up over the tribute we are paying to the profiteers as we did in those old days over the tariff and the slavery issue.

I can well remember taking part in the campaign between Garfield and Hancock. The Democrats felt that they had been robbed of the Presidency in ’76, but as they failed to renominate Tilden the Republicans called them quitters. I had dropped out of college for awhile to work as hired man for a farmer in a Western State, and we certainly had a great time. This farmer was an old soldier; he was a good talker and thought well of his own exploits. When you found that combination 40 years ago you struck a red-hot partisan. The man’s wife was a Democrat, because her father had been. She was one of those small, black-eyed women who acquire the habit of dominating things in the schoolroom and then concentrate the habit when they take a school of one pupil in the home. Her brother lived on the next farm. He had turned Republican because he wanted to be elected county clerk. It was fully worth the price of admission to sit by the fire some stormy night and hear this woman put those two Republicans on the broiler of her tongue. They were big men, fully capable of holding their own in any ordinary argument, but this small woman cowed them as she formerly did her A B C pupils. It was enough to make any young man very thoughtful about marrying a successful teacher to see this small woman point a finger at her big husband and say:

“Now John Crandall, don’t you dare to say it isn’t the truth!”

And John didn’t dare, though from his political religion it might be a base fabrication. One day, after a particularly hard thrust, John and I were digging potatoes, and he unburdened his mind a little: