Looking Backward
Memories of the Price We Pay
WHAT a price we pay for what we know! I laugh as I look backward--and
weep and rejoice.
I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, altho it is quite
evident that I could have handled a pretty good-sized spoon. But father
being a country preacher, we had tin spoons. We never had to tie a red
string around our spoons when we loaned them for the ladies' aid
society oyster supper. We always got our spoons back. Nobody ever
traded with us by mistake.
Do you remember the first money you ever earned? I do. I walked several
miles into the country those old reaper days and gathered sheaves. That
night I was proud when that farmer patted me on the head and said, "You
are the best boy to work, I ever saw." Then the cheerful old miser put
a nickel in my blistered hand. That nickel looked bigger than any money
I have since handled.
That "Last Day of School"
Yet I was years learning it is much easier to make money than to handle
it, hence the tale that follows.
I was sixteen years old and a school teacher. Sweet sixteen--which
means green sixteen. But remember again, only green things grow. There
is hope for green things. I was so tall and awkward then--I haven't
changed much since. I kept still about my age. I was several dollars
the lowest bidder. They said out that way, "Anybody can teach kids."
That is why I was a teacher.
I had never studied pedagogy, but I had whittled out three rules that I
thought would make it go. My first rule was, Make 'em study. My second,
Make, em recite. That is, fill 'em up and then empty 'em.
My third and most important rule was, Get your money!
I walked thirteen miles a day, six and a half miles each way, most of
the time, to save money. I think I had all teaching methods in use.
With the small fry I used a small paddle to win their confidence and
arouse their enthusiasm for an education. With the pupils larger and
more muscular than their teacher I used love and moral suasion.
We ended the school with an "exhibition." Did you ever attend the old
back-country "last day of school exhibition"? The people that day came
from all over the township. They were so glad our school was closing
they all turned out to make it a success. They brought great baskets of
provender and we had a feast. We covered the school desks with boards,
and then covered the boards with piles of fried chicken, doughnuts and
forty kinds of pie.
Then we had a "doings." Everybody did a stunt. We executed a lot of
literature that day. Execute is the word that tells what happened to
literature in District No. 1, Jackson Township, that day. I can shut my
eyes and see it yet. I can see my pupils coming forward to speak their
"pieces." I hardly knew them and they hardly knew me, for we were
"dressed up." Many a head showed father had mowed it with the
sheepshears. Mother had been busy with the wash-rag--clear back of the
ears! And into them! So many of them wore collars that stuck out all
stiff like they had pushed their heads on thru their big straw hats.
I can see them speaking their "pieces." I can see "The Soldier of the
Legion lay dying in Algiers." We had him die again that day, and he had
a lingering end as we executed him. I can see "The boy stood on the
burning deck, whence all but he had fled." I can see "Mary's little
lamb" come slipping over the stage. I see the tow-headed patriot in
"Give me liberty or give me death." I feel now that if Patrick Henry
had been present, he would have said, "Give me death."
There came a breathless hush as "teacher" came forward as the last act
on the bill to say farewell. It was customary to cry. I wanted to yell.
Tomorrow I would get my money! I had a speech I had been saying over
and over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before
that "last day of school" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great
opening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled
down my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on my six-dollar suit.
And my pupils wept as their dear teacher said farewell. Parents wept.
It was a teary time. I only said, "Weep not for me, dear friends. I am
going away, but I am coming back." I thought to cheer them up, but they
wept the more.
Next day I drew my money. I had it all in one joyous wad--$240. I was
going home with head high and aircastles even higher. But I never got
home with the money. Talk about the fool and his money and you get very
personal.
For on the way home I met Deacon K, and he borrowed it all. Deacon K
was "such a good man" and a "pillar of the church." I used to wonder,
tho, why he didn't take a pillow to church. I took his note for $240,
"due at corncutting," as we termed that annual fall-time paying up
season. I really thought a note was not necessary, such was my
confidence in the deacon.
For years I kept a faded, tear-spattered, yellow note for $240, "due at
corncutting," as a souvenir of my first schoolteaching. Deacon K has
gone from earth. He has gone to his eternal reward. I scarcely know
whether to look up or down as I say that. He never left any forwarding
address.
I was paid thousands in experience for that first schoolteaching, but I
paid all the money I got from it--two hundred and forty
thirteen-mile-a-day dollars to learn one thing I could not learn from
the books, that it takes less wisdom to make money, than it does to
intelligently handle it afterwards. Incidentally I learned it may be
safer to do business with a first-class sinner than with a second-class
saint.
Which is no slap at the church, but at its worst enemies, the foes of
its own household.
Calling the Class-Roll
A lyceum bureau once sent me back to my home town to lecture. I imagine
most lecturers have a hard time lecturing in the home town. Their
schoolmates and playmates are apt to be down there in the front rows
with their families, and maybe all the old scores have not yet been
settled. The boy he fought with may be down there. Perhaps the girl who
gave him the "mitten" is there.
And he has gotten his lecture out of that home town. The heroes and
villains live there within striking distance. Perhaps they have come to
hear him. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" Perhaps this is why some
lecturers and authors are not so popular in the home town until several
generations pass.
I went back to the same hall to speak, and stood upon the same platform
where twenty-one years before I had stood to deliver my graduating
oration, when in impassioned and well modulated tones I had exclaimed,
"Greece is gone and Rome is no more, but fe-e-e-e-ear not, for I will
sa-a-a-a-ave you!" or words to that effect.
Then I went back to the little hotel and sat up alone in my room half
the night living it over. Time was when I thought anybody who could
live in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the time had come
when I knew the person who could go on living in any hotel has a
superior order of vitality.
I held thanksgiving services that night. I could see better. I had a
picture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one years
before, just before commencement. I had not seen the picture these
twenty-one years, for I could not then afford to buy one. The price was
a quarter.
I got a truer perspective of life that night. Did you ever sit alone
with a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years before? It is
a memorable experience.
A class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take charge of
the world. They were so glad the world had waited so long on them. They
were so willing to take charge of the world. They were going to be
presidents and senators and authors and authoresses and scientists and
scientist-esses and geniuses and genius-esses and things like that.
There was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright. It was not
the one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no
brilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to lack intellect. He
was "conditioned" into the senior class. We all felt a little sorry for
Jim.
As commencement day approached, the committee of the class appointed
for that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to
him that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going
to let him speak, because he couldn't make a speech that would do
credit to such a brilliant class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the
oleander commencement night.
Shake the barrel!
The girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the
home telephone exchange, and had become absolutely indispensable to the
community. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at
the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking
department of the home postoffice. The boy who was going to Confess was
raising the best corn in the county, and his wife was speaker of the
house.
Most of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become the
head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with a lot of
men working for him. The committee that took him out behind the
schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now
have to wait in line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lambert,
Private." They would have to send up their cards, and the watchdog who
guards the door would tell them, "Cut it short, he's busy!" before they
could break any news to him today.
They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last
alumni meeting. They hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood
that night.
Dull boy or girl--you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you
do not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of
cheer from the story of Jim?
Hours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel room I was lost in that
school picture and the twenty-one years. There were fifty-four young
people in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel,
and now as I called the roll on them, most of them that I expected to
go up had shaken down and some that I expected to stay down had shaken
up.
Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to
Congress and one had gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to
brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found
happiness and some had found unhappiness. It seemed as tho almost every
note on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one
school of fifty-four.
When that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen, yet
most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies. The
twenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses.
The only changes had come where God had come into a life to uplift it,
or where Mammon had entered to pull it down. And I saw better that the
foolish dreams of success faded before the natural unfolding of
talents, which is the real success. I saw better that "the boy is
father to the man."
The boy who skimmed over his work in school was skimming over his work
as a man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going
to the bottom of things in manhood. Which had helped him to go to the
top of things!
Jim Lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him
twenty-one years before.
The lazy boy became a "tired" man. The industrious boy became an
industrious man. The sporty boy became a sporty man. The domineering
egotist boy became the domineering egotist man.
The boy who traded knives with me and beat me--how I used to envy him!
Why was it he could always get the better of me? Well, he went on
trading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one years
afterwards, he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery. He
was now called a bad man, when twenty-one years ago when he did the
same things on a smaller scale they called him smart and bright.
The "perfectly lovely" boy who didn't mix with the other boys, who
didn't whisper, who never got into trouble, who always had his hair
combed, and said, "If you please," used to hurt me. He was the
teacher's model boy. All the mothers of the community used to say to
their own reprobate offspring, "Why can't you be like Harry? He'll be
President of the United States some day, and you'll be in jail." But
Model Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr.
Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry
certainly was a successful model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless
relic at forty. He was "perfectly lovely" because he hadn't the energy
to be anything else. It was the boys who had the hustle and the energy,
who occasionally needed bumping--and who got it--who really grew.
I have said little about the girls of the school. Fact was, at that age
I didn't pay much attention to them. I regarded them as in the way. But
I naturally thought of Clarice, our social pet of the class--our real
pretty girl who won the vase in the home paper beauty contest. Clarice
went right on remaining in the social spotlight, primping and flirting.
She outshone all the rest. But it seemed like she was all out-shine and
no in-shine. She mistook popularity for success. The boys voted for
her, but did not marry her. Most of the girls who shone with less
social luster became the happy homemakers of the community.
But as I looked into the face of Jim Lambert in the picture, my heart
warmed at the sight of another great success--a sweet-faced irish lass
who became an "old maid." She had worked day by day all these years to
support a home and care for her family. She had kept her grace and
sweetness thru it all, and the influence of her white, loving life
radiated far.
The Boy I Had Envied
Frank was the boy I had envied. He had everything--a fine home, a
loving father, plenty of money, opportunity and a great career awaiting
him. And he was bright and lovable and talented. Everybody said Frank
would make his mark in the world and make the town proud of him.
I was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some of my classmates will never
know how their thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the sensitive,
shabby boy who swept the floors, built the fires and carried in the
coal. After commencement my career seemed to end and the careers of
Frank and the rest of them seemed to begin. They were going off to
college and going to do so many wonderful things.
But the week after commencement I had to go into a printing office,
roll up my sleeves and go to work in the "devil's corner" to earn my
daily bread. Seemed like it took so much bread!
Many a time as I plugged at the "case" I would think of Frank and
wonder why some people had all the good things and I had all the hard
things.
How easy it is to see as you look backward. But how hard it is to see
when you look forward.
Twenty-one years afterward as I got off the train in the home town, I
asked, "Where is he?" We went out to the cemetery, where I stood at a
grave and read on the headstone, "Frank."
I had the story of a tragedy--the tragedy of modern unpreparedness. It
was the story of the boy who had every opportunity, but who had all the
struggle taken out of his life. He never followed his career, never
developed any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent a fortune, broke
his father's heart, shocked the community, and finally ended his wasted
life with a bullet fired by his own hand.
Why Ben Hur Won
It revived the memory of the story of Ben Hur.
Do you remember it? The Jewish boy is torn from his home in disgrace.
He is haled into court and tried for a crime he never committed. Ben
Hur did not get a fair trial. Nobody can get a fair trial at the hands
of this world. That is why the great Judge has said, judge not, for you
have not the full evidence in the case. I alone have that.
Then they condemn him. They lead him away to the galleys. They chain
him to the bench and to the oar. There follow the days and long years
when he pulls on the oar under the lash. Day after day he pulls on the
oar. Day after day he writhes under the sting of the lash. Years of the
cruel injustice pass. Ben Hur is the helpless victim of a mocking fate.
That seems to be your life and my life. In the kitchen or the office,
or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and
pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life seems one
futureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often look across the
street and see somebody who lives a happier life. That one is chained
to no oar. See what a fine time they all have. Why must we pull on the
oar?
How blind we are! We can only see our own oar. We cannot see that they,
too, pull on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they are looking
back at us and envying us. For while we envy others, others are envying
us.
But look at the chariot race in Antioch. See the thousands in the
circus. See Messala, the haughty Roman, and see! Ben Hur from the
galleys in the other chariot pitted against him. Down the course dash
these twin thunderbolts. The thousands hold their breath. "Who will
win?" "The man with the stronger forearms," they whisper.
There comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the
stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms
of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben
Hur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge forearms? From the
galleys!
Had Ben Hur never pulled on the oar, he never could have won the
chariot race.
Sooner or later you and I are to learn that Providence makes no
mistakes in the bookkeeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed by
grim necessity, every honest effort is laid up at compound interest in
the bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time comes when we
need every ounce. Sooner or later our chariot race is on--when we win
the victory, strike the deciding blow, stand while those around us
fall--and it is won with the forearms earned in the galleys of life by
pulling on the oar.
That is why I thanked God as I stood at the grave of my classmate. I
thanked God for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle, and for
the circumstances that compelled it.
I am not an example of success.
But I am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of The
University of Hard Knocks.