"Oh, good morning!"
"Nice little farm you have here."
"It's enough for me," I replied. I did not especially like the "little."
One is human.
Then I had an absurd inspiration: he stood there so trim and jaunty and
prosperous. So rich! I had a good look at him. He was dressed in a
woollen jacket coat, knee-trousers and leggins; on his head he wore a
jaunty, cocky little Scotch cap; a man, I should judge, about fifty
years old, well-fed and hearty in appearance, with grayish hair and a
good-humoured eye. I acted on my inspiration:
"You've arrived," I said, "at the psychological moment."
"How's that?"
"Take hold here and help me lift this axle and steady it. I'm having a
hard time of it."
The look of astonishment in his countenance was beautiful to see.
For a moment failure stared me in the face. His expression said with
emphasis: "Perhaps you don't know who I am." But I looked at him with
the greatest good feeling and my expression said, or I meant it to say:
"To be sure I don't: and what difference does it make, anyway!"
"You take hold there," I said, without waiting for him to catch his
breath, "and I'll get hold here. Together we can easily get the wheel
off."
Without a word he set his cane against the barn and bent his back, up
came the axle and I propped it with a board.
"Now," I said, "you hang on there and steady it while I get the wheel
off"--though, indeed, it didn't really need much steadying.
As I straightened up, whom should I see but Harriet standing transfixed
in the pathway half way down to the barn, transfixed with horror. She
had recognised John Starkweather and had heard at least part of what I
said to him, and the vision of that important man bending his back to
help lift the axle of my old wagon was too terrible! She caught my eye
and pointed and mouthed. When I smiled and nodded, John Starkweather
straightened up and looked around.
"Don't, on your life," I warned, "let go of that axle."
He held on and Harriet turned and retreated ingloriously. John
Starkweather's face was a study!
"Did you ever grease a wagon?" I asked him genially.
"Never," he said.
"There's more of an art in it than you think," I said, and as I worked I
talked to him of the lore of axle-grease and showed him exactly how to
put it on--neither too much nor too little, and so that it would
distribute itself evenly when the wheel was replaced.
"There's a right way of doing everything," I observed.
"That's so," said John Starkweather: "if I could only get workmen that
believed it."
By that time I could see that he was beginning to be interested. I put
back the wheel, gave it a light turn and screwed on the nut. He helped
me with the other end of the axle with all good humour.
"Perhaps," I said, as engagingly as I knew how, "you'd like to try the
art yourself? You take the grease this time and I'll steady the wagon."
"All right!" he said, laughing, "I'm in for anything."
He took the grease box and the paddle--less gingerly than I thought he
would.
"Is that right?" he demanded, and so he put on the grease. And oh, it
was good to see Harriet in the doorway!
"Steady there," I said, "not so much at the end: now put the box down on
the reach."
And so together we greased the wagon, talking all the time in the
friendliest way. I actually believe that he was having a pretty good
time. At least it had the virtue of unexpectedness. He wasn't bored!
When he had finished we both straightened our backs and looked at each
other. There was a twinkle in his eye: then we both laughed. "He's all
right," I said to myself. I held up my hands, then he held up his: it
was hardly necessary to prove that wagon-greasing was not a delicate
operation.
"It's a good wholesome sign," I said, "but it'll come off. Do you happen
to remember a story of Tolstoi's called Ivan the Fool'?"
("What is a farmer doing quoting Tolstoi!" remarked his
countenance--though he said not a word.)
"In the kingdom of Ivan, you remember," I said, "it was the rule that
whoever had hard places on his hands came to table, but whoever had not
must eat what the others left."
Thus I led him up to the back steps and poured him a basin of hot
water--which I brought myself from the kitchen, Harriet having
marvellously and completely disappeared. We both washed our hands,
talking with great good humour.
When we had finished I said:
"Sit down, friend, if you've time, and let's talk."
So he sat down on one of the logs of my woodpile: a solid sort of man,
rather warm after his recent activities. He looked me over with some
interest and, I thought, friendliness.
"Why does a man like you," he asked finally, "waste himself on a little
farm back here in the country?"
For a single instant I came nearer to being angry than I have been for a
long time. _Waste_ myself! So we are judged without knowledge. I had a
sudden impulse to demolish him (if I could) with the nearest sarcasms I
could lay hand to. He was so sure of himself! "Oh well," I thought, with
vainglorious superiority, "he doesn't know," So I said:
"What would you have me be--a millionnaire?"
He smiled, but with a sort of sincerity.
"You might be," he said: "who can tell!"
I laughed outright: the humour of it struck me as delicious. Here I had
been, ever since I first heard of John Starkweather, rather gloating
over him as a poor suffering millionnaire (of course millionnaires _are_
unhappy), and there he sat, ruddy of face and hearty of body, pitying
_me_ for a poor unfortunate farmer back here in the country! Curious,
this human nature of ours, isn't it? But how infinitely beguiling!
So I sat down beside Mr. Starkweather on the log and crossed my legs. I
felt as though I had set foot in a new country.
"Would you really advise me," I asked, "to start in to be a
millionnaire?"
He chuckled:
"Well, that's one way of putting it. Hitch your wagon to a star; but
begin by making a few dollars more a year than you spend. When I
began----" he stopped short with an amused smile, remembering that I did
not know who he was.
"Of course," I said, "I understand that."
"A man must begin small"--he was on pleasant ground--"and anywhere he
likes, a few dollars here, a few there. He must work hard, he must save,
he must be both bold and cautious. I know a man who began when he was
about your age with total assets of ten dollars and a good digestion.
He's now considered a fairly wealthy man. He has a home in the city, a
place in the country, and he goes to Europe when he likes. He has so
arranged his affairs that young men do most of the work and he draws the
dividends--and all in a little more than twenty years. I made every
single cent--but as I said, it's a penny business to start with. The
point is, I like to see young men ambitious."
[Illustration: "What would you have me be--a millionaire?"]
"Ambitious," I asked, "for what?"
"Why, to rise in the world; to get ahead."
"I know you'll pardon me," I said, "for appearing to cross-examine you,
but I'm tremendously interested in these things. What do you mean by
rising? And who am I to get ahead of?"
He looked at me in astonishment, and with evident impatience at my
consummate stupidity.
"I am serious," I said. "I really want to make the best I can of my
life. It's the only one I've got."
"See here," he said: "let us say you clear up five hundred a year from
this farm----"
"You exaggerate--" I interrupted.
"Do I?" he laughed; "that makes my case all the better. Now, isn't it
possible to rise from that? Couldn't you make a thousand or five
thousand or even fifty thousand a year?"
It seems an unanswerable argument: fifty thousand dollars!
"I suppose I might," I said, "but do you think I'd be any better off or
happier with fifty thousand a year than I am now? You see, I like all
these surroundings better than any other place I ever knew. That old
green hill over there with the oak on it is an intimate friend of mine.
I have a good cornfield in which every year I work miracles. I've a cow
and a horse, and a few pigs. I have a comfortable home. My appetite is
perfect, and I have plenty of food to gratify it. I sleep every night
like a boy, for I haven't a trouble in this world to disturb me. I enjoy
the mornings here in the country: and the evenings are pleasant. Some of
my neighbours have come to be my good friends. I like them and I am
pretty sure they like me. Inside the house there I have the best books
ever written and I have time in the evenings to read them--I mean
_really_ read them. Now the question is, would I be any better off, or
any happier, if I had fifty thousand a year?"
John Starkweather laughed.
"Well, sir," he said, "I see I've made the acquaintance of a
philosopher."
"Let us say," I continued, "that you are willing to invest twenty years
of your life in a million dollars." ("Merely an illustration," said
John Starkweather.) "You have it where you can put it in the bank and
take it out again, or you can give it form in houses, yachts, and other
things. Now twenty years of my life--to me--is worth more than a million
dollars. I simply can't afford to sell it for that. I prefer to invest
it, as somebody or other has said, unearned in life. I've always had a
liking for intangible properties."
"See here," said John Starkweather, "you are taking a narrow view of
life. You are making your own pleasure the only standard. Shouldn't a
man make the most of the talents given him? Hasn't he a duty to
society?"
"Now you are shifting your ground," I said, "from the question of
personal satisfaction to that of duty. That concerns me, too. Let me ask
you: Isn't it important to society that this piece of earth be plowed
and cultivated?"
"Yes, but----"
"Isn't it honest and useful work?"
"Of course."
"Isn't it important that it shall not only be done, but well done?"
"Certainly."
"It takes all there is in a good man," I said, "to be a good farmer."
"But the point is," he argued, "might not the same faculties applied to
other things yield better and bigger results?"
"That is a problem, of course," I said. "I tried money-making once--in a
city--and I was unsuccessful and unhappy; here I am both successful and
happy. I suppose I was one of the young men who did the work while some
millionnaire drew the dividends." (I was cutting close, and I didn't
venture to look at him). "No doubt he had his houses and yachts and went
to Europe when he liked. I know I lived upstairs--back--where there
wasn't a tree to be seen, or a spear of green grass, or a hill, or a
brook: only smoke and chimneys and littered roofs. Lord be thanked for
my escape! Sometimes I think that Success has formed a silent conspiracy
against Youth. Success holds up a single glittering apple and bids Youth
strip and run for it; and Youth runs and Success still holds the apple."
John Starkweather said nothing.
"Yes," I said, "there are duties. We realise, we farmers, that we must
produce more than we ourselves can eat or wear or burn. We realise that
we are the foundation: we connect human life with the earth. We dig and
plant and produce, and having eaten at the first table ourselves, we
pass what is left to the bankers and millionnaires. Did you ever think,
stranger, that most of the wars of the world have been fought for the
control of this farmer's second table? Have you thought that the surplus
of wheat and corn and cotton is what the railroads are struggling to
carry? Upon our surplus run all the factories and mills; a little of it
gathered in cash makes a millionnaire. But we farmers, we sit back
comfortably after dinner, and joke with our wives and play with our
babies, and let all the rest of you fight for the crumbs that fall from
our abundant tables. If once we really cared and got up and shook
ourselves, and said to the maid: 'Here, child, don't waste the crusts:
gather 'em up and to-morrow we'll have a cottage pudding,' where in the
world would all the millionnaires be?"
Oh, I tell you, I waxed eloquent. I couldn't let John Starkweather, or
any other man, get away with the conviction that a millionnaire is
better than a farmer. "Moreover," I said, "think of the position of the
millionnaire. He spends his time playing not with life, but with the
symbols of life, whether cash or houses. Any day the symbols may change;
a little war may happen along, there may be a defective flue or a
western breeze, or even a panic because the farmers aren't scattering as
many crumbs as usual (they call it crop failure, but I've noticed that
the farmers still continue to have plenty to eat) and then what happens
to your millionnaire? Not knowing how to produce anything himself, he
would starve to death if there were not always, somewhere, a farmer to
take him up to the table."
"You're making a strong case," laughed John Starkweather.
"Strong!" I said. "It is simply wonderful what a leverage upon society a
few acres of land, a cow, a pig or two, and a span of horses gives a
man. I'm ridiculously independent. I'd be the hardest sort of a man to
dislodge or crush. I tell you, my friend, a farmer is like an oak, his
roots strike deep in the soil, he draws a sufficiency of food from the
earth itself, he breathes the free air around him, his thirst is
quenched by heaven itself--and there's no tax on sunshine."