HOPE FARM NOTES
BY
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
REPRINTED FROM
THE RURAL NEW YORKER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
TO
L. D. C. AND A. F. C.
WHO REPRESENT
“_The Hen with one Chicken_”
AND
_The Chicken_.
Most of these notes were originally printed in the _Rural New-Yorker_
from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers
of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of
them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection,
and I wish to acknowledge here the great help which I have received
from my daughter, Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has
been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological order. “A Hope
Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother” were originally printed in 1902. The
others follow in the order of their original publication. The reader
must understand that the children alluded to represent two distinct
broods,—the second brood appearing just after the sketch entitled
“Transplanting the Young Idea.” From the very first the object of these
notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful
side of Farm Life.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN 1
A HOPE FARM SERMON 21
GRANDMOTHER 26
LAUGHTER AND RELIGION 33
A DAY IN FLORIDA 38
THE BASEBALL GAME 45
TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA 51
THE SLEEPLESS MAN 58
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY 63
UNCLE ED’S PHILOSOPHY 69
A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE 75
LOUISE 82
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY 88
“THE FINEST LESSON” 94
“COLUMBUS DAY” 107
THE COMMENCEMENT 114
“ORGANIZATION” 122
THE FACE OF LIBERTY 130
CAPTAIN RANDALL’S HOUR 138
“SNOW BOUND” 147
“CLASS” 155
“I’LL TELL GOD” 163
A DAY’S WORK 171
PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY 181
COLONEL O’BRIEN AND SERGEANT HILL 189
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES 198
THE INDIANS WON 206
IKE SAWYER’S HOTEL 214
OLD-TIME POLITICS 224
HOPE FARM NOTES
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN
As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set out for me every
day. During the Winter it was sawing and splitting wood. Our barn stood
so that somehow on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road, and
it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other was turned so it was
always cold and frosty, with little if any sun. The hens, the cow and the
sheep always made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented the
comfortable and the bright side of life. The old gentleman who brought
me up always put the woodpile on the frosty side of the barn. He argued
that if the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would stop to look
at the passers-by, feel something of the joy of living, and stop his work
to absorb a little of it. We were brought up to believe that labor was
a curse, put upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and
never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side, he must move fast in
order to keep warm. He would not stop to loaf in the sun, he could not
throw stones or practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens
on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was that the boy would
accomplish more on the frosty side, and realize that labor represented
the primal curse which somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the
farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed much of my life on the
frosty side of the barn, silent and thoughtful, while the hens cackled
and sang on the sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could not
see that the thing which made the hens lay would surely make the boy work.
There will always be a dispute as to whether a boy or a man does his
best work under the spur of necessity, or out of a full bag of the oats
of life. And they do it with greater or less cruelty as more or less of
their life has been spent on the frosty side. I never yet saw a self-made
man who did anything like a perfect job on himself. They usually spoil
their own sons by giving them too easy a time, while work is a necessity
in building character. Work without play of some sort is labor without
soul, and that is one of the most cruel and dangerous things in the
world. I have noticed that most men who pass their childhood on the
frosty side of the barn have what I call a squint-eyed view of youth.
They spend a large part of their time telling how they had to work as
a boy, and how much inferior their own sons are since they do not have
chores to do. That man’s boys will pay no attention except when his eye
is upon them, and rightly so, I think. The man looks across the table at
mother, with a shake of his head, for is not the Smith family responsible
for the fact that these boys do not equal their wonderful sire? I have
learned better than to expect much sympathy from my boys for what
happened 50 years ago.
The old gentleman would come now and then and look around the corner of
the barn to see if I was at work. The frosty side of the barn in youth
has one advantage. It forces the boy to think and reason out the justice
of life. Uncle Daniel had not read enough of history to know that Guizot,
the great French historian, says that the only thing which those who
represent tyranny, injustice or evil are afraid of _is the human mind_.
What he means is that whenever you can get the plain, common people to
think clearly and with their own brains, they will sooner or later wipe
off the slate of history and write freedom in big letters. On the sunny
side I think I should have talked and so rid myself of my thought before
it could print itself upon my little brain, but there on the frosty side
of the barn I know that I said little, but reasoned it out with the clear
wisdom of childhood. If Uncle Daniel had been a student of Shakespeare,
he would have gone straight to that famous passage in Julius Cæsar which
probably expresses the thought of 90 per cent of the humans capable of
thinking, who have ever lived to maturity:
“Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights;
Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
I was thinking out my problem, and I want to tell you younger men that
the questions which started at the teeth of my saw on the frosty side
of that old barn have cut their way through the years, and chased
and haunted me all through life. The injustice of labor and social
conditions—that is the foundation of the trouble in the world. Upon
it all helpful education should be based. Youth’s ideals will always
chase you like that, if you give them half a chance, and you never can
have better mental companions. I was trying to reason out one of two
resolutions. Off in that dim future of manhood when I should grow up, my
time would come, and I might have power over some other boy, or maybe a
man. I could put him on the frosty or on the sunny side of the barn, as
I saw fit. What would I do to him to pay for my session on the frosty
side? Somehow I think it is natural for human beings to seek reparation
and promise themselves to take their misfortunes out of someone else when
their power comes. I think I should have grown up with something of that
determination in mind had it not been for the poet Longfellow.
Now you will smile, you successful farmers, you dry old analyzers and
solemn teachers and you budding young hopes. What has poetry to do with
farming or agricultural education? What did the poet Longfellow ever do
for farming? Did he ever have a hen in an egg-laying contest that laid
300 eggs in a year? Did he ever raise a prize pumpkin, or a prize crop of
potatoes? Did he even originate the Longfellow variety of flint corn? Do
not men need solid pith rather than flabby poetry in their thought? It is
true that Longfellow would have starved to death on a good farm. Yet his
poetry and the thought that went with it were one of the things that made
New England dominate this country in thought. My childhood was passed
at a time when we had no science to study. Bacteria were swimming all
about us in the air, the food and the water. I had, no doubt, swallowed
millions of them at every mouthful, and we grew fat on them. We had
no books on science or bulletins, but every farmhouse had its copy of
Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes. The best duck-raiser
in our town was a man who could recite Bryant’s poem, “To a Water
Fowl,” with his eyes shut. I think I could safely challenge many famous
poultrymen to recite even one verse of that poem, yet who would say that
he would not be a better poultryman and a better man if he could carry in
his heart a few verses of that poem?
“There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.”
...
“He who from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way which I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.”
I had recited Longfellow’s “Resignation” in school. I gave it about as
a parrot would, but on the frosty side of the old barn one verse shoved
itself into my little brain:
“Let us be patient;
These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.”
Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it was a great thing for a
boy to think about. I looked both words up in the dictionary and got,
perhaps, half of their meaning. In all our town there seemed to be no one
except our old minister to come around on the frosty side of the barn
with comfort or promise, but this celestial benediction which the poet
told about got right to you. It might even live under that awful pile of
wood which I was to saw, and it would be worth the job of sawing it if I
could find such a thing under the pile. I heard people speak of a “nigger
in the woodpile” in terms of reproach, but a celestial benediction down
under the wood was certainly entitled to all respect. I did not fully
understand it, or what it meant, but it got into me and stayed there,
where the multiplication table or the rule of square root never would
remain. My belief is that if I had committed to memory in place of that
poem some excellent classroom lecture at college I should have become a
little anarchist, and gone through life pushing such people as I could
reach toward the frosty side of the barn. As it was, that poem, repeated
over and over, made me vow as a child that if I ever could influence or
direct the lives of farmers I would do my best to see that they lived and
did their work on the sunny side of the barn.
In my day children were brought up on “the Scriptures and a stick,” both
well applied, and yet all these “lectures and lickings” never stuck in
my life as did the noble poetry we read in school, and the few pictures
which hung on the walls of the home. There is a curious thing about some
of these pictures. I am told of a case where two boys in the Tennessee
mountains volunteered for the navy. Their mountain home was as far
removed from the ocean as it well could be. They had never seen even a
large pond. For three generations not one of their ancestors had ever
seen the salt water. Yet these boys would not listen to any call for the
army, but they demanded a place in the navy. The story came to an officer
in a nearby camp, and he became interested and visited that home. Both
father and mother were puzzled over the action of their boys, and they
could not understand why Henry and William had demanded the ocean. As the
officer turned away he noticed hanging on the wall in the living-room
of that house the crude picture of a ship under full sail and on an
impossible blue ocean. It had come into that family years before, wrapped
around a package of goods, and mother had hung it on the wall. From their
youth those boys had grown up with that picture before them, and it had
decided their lives. It was stronger than the influence of father and
mother—they could not overcome it. I speak of that in order that you men
and women with children of your own may understand how the dreams, the
poetry, the visions of youth may prove stronger influences than any of
the science, the wisdom, or the fine examples you may put before your
little ones.
On the wall of our old living-room at home was a chromo entitled “Joseph
and His Brethren.” It was an awful work of art. It showed a group of men
putting a boy down into a hole in the ground. It would have made the head
of an art department weep in misery, and yet it affected me deeply. I
used to stand and study it, with the result that at least one chapter of
the Bible gave me great joy, and that was the story of Joseph and his
brothers. That story helped to keep me sweet and hopeful on the frosty
side of the barn, for I reasoned it all out as I worked. Here, I thought,
was a farm boy. He did rather more than his share of living on the frosty
side, and see what he came to. I used to picture Joseph in mind as he
came walking over the desert carrying his father’s instructions about the
sheep and the management of the farm. His brothers saw him coming, and
they said among themselves, “Behold, this dreamer cometh.” You see, even
in those days, practical men could not understand the value of a dreamer,
a poet or a thinker as the first aid to practical agriculture. I have no
doubt that Joseph the dreamer often forgot to water the sheep. I have no
doubt but that they got away from him when he was herding them, and so
his brothers quickly got rid of him, and they sent him off to the place
where they thought dreams never came true. And that is where they made
their mistake, and the same mistake is often made in these days by other
practical farmers, for dreams that are based on faith and pure ambition
always come true. If Joseph had not been a dreamer, carrying the ideals
of his childhood into Egypt, we can readily understand which side of the
barn his brothers would have gone to when they appeared before him later.
But Joseph was a man who remembered the dreams and the hopes of his
childhood kindly; he gave those brothers the sunniest side of the barn,
and by doing so he made himself one of the great men in history.
You may surely take it from me that at some time in your life, if you
prove worth the salt you have eaten, your State or your country will call
you up before the judgment seat, and will say to you:
“I demand your life. In your youth you had ideals of manhood and of
service. I have trained you and given you knowledge. I now demand your
life as proof that your old ideals were true.”
That comes to all men not only on the battlefield, but in all the humble
walks of life—the farm, the factory, the shop, wherever men are put
at labor, and it means a life given to service, the use of power and
knowledge, in order that men less fortunate may live on the sunny side of
the barn.
We had something of an illustration of this when America entered the
great war. Many of us felt honestly that our boys were not quite up to
the standard. We thought they were a little lazy, inefficient or spoiled,
because they did not think as we did about labor and the necessity for
work. We did not realize what the trouble was, and so we generally
charged it to the influence of mother’s side of the family. We could not
understand that by education, training and example, we had simply taught
those boys only the material and selfish side of life. They demanded
unconsciously more of its poetry and romance and thus the war swept
them away in a blaze of glory. We suddenly woke up to find that under
the inspiration of an unselfish desire, our lazy and careless boys had
become the finest soldiers this world has ever seen. They were made so
through the power of poetry and imagination, for “making the world safe
for democracy” is only another name for making the great life offering
in order that helpless men and women may know the comfort and glory of
living on the “sunny side of the barn.”
I think I have lived long enough and under conditions which fit me to
know human nature better than most men know books. Our present improved
man came from a savage. Originally man was a confirmed dweller on the
frosty side of the barn. As human life has developed, the tendency has
been for this man to run for a warm place on the sunny side. In order to
get there, his natural tendency has been to crowd some weaker brother
back into the frost. We may not like to admit it, but as we have crowded
poetry and imagination and love out of agricultural education, we have
lost track of the thought that there is one great duty we owe to society
for the great educational machine she has given us. That one great life
duty is to try to carry some more unfortunate brother out of the frost
into the comfort of the sunny side of the barn. We are too much in the
habit of trying to leave this practical betterment to the Legislature
or to the Federal Government, when it never can be done unless we do it
ourselves, as a part of human sacrifice. You must remember that in spite
of all our scientific work, the world is still largely fed and clothed
by the plain farmers, whose stock in trade is largely human nature and
instinct. The shadow which undoubtedly lies over farming today is due to
the fact that too many of these men and women feel that they are booked
hopelessly to spend their lives on the frosty side of the barn.
It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep resentment,
such as in a very much smaller way came to me as a little boy, for
you will see how real and true are the ideals of childhood. The great
aim of all education should be to find some way of putting poetry and
imagination into the hearts of the men and women who are now on the
frosty side of the barn. There is more in this than any mere increase
of food production, or increase of land values. A great industrial
revolution is facing this nation. Such things have come before again and
again. They were always threatening, and every time they appeared strong
men and women feared for the future of their country. Yet in times past
these dark storms have always broken themselves against a solid wall of
contented and prosperous freeholders. They always disappear and turn into
a gentle, reviving rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That
is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken apart and remade,
better than ever before, by skilled and happy workmen. It is on the
frosty side of the barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down and
destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can be no human progress
except that which is finally built upon contentment and faith. Men and
women must be brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to
remain the land of opportunity, and such men and women as we have here
must do the work.
If you ask me how this is to be done, I can only go back to childhood
once more for an illustration. I know all the characters of the following
little drama. We will call the children John, Mary and Bert. John and
Mary were relatives of the old gentleman who owned the farm, and they
came for a long visit. Bert was the farm boy, put out to work on that
farm for his board and clothes, one of the thousands of war orphans who
represented a great legacy which the Civil War had left to this country.
John and Mary were bright and petted and pampered. You know how such
smart city children can usually outshine and outbluff a farm boy. The
woman of the house, a thrifty New England soul, decided that this was her
chance to get the woodshed filled with dry wood, and so she put the three
children at it. Before Bert knew what was going on, those city children
had it all “organized.” Bert was to work on the frosty side of the barn
where the woodpile was, and he was to saw and split all the wood. John
played until Bert had split an armful, then John carried it about two
rods to the shed, where Mary took it out of his arms and piled it inside.
I have lived some years since that time, and I have seen many enterprises
come and go, and if that arrangement is not typical of thousands of cases
which show the relation between the farmer and middleman and handler, I
have simply lived and observed in vain, _and Bert represented the farmer_.
And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange for that
combination was still more typical. Now and then the woman would think
the woodshed was not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery
to labor was necessary. She would then come out with half a pie, or a
few cookies, to stimulate the work. Strange to say, the distribution of
this prize was always given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely
useless work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies were
handed to her for distribution. For a great many centuries, it must be
said that the farmer never had much of a chance with the town man when it
came to receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution of that
pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths of it, and handed the
balance to Bert, for even then those city children had formed the idea
that a silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast of burden,
fit for the frosty side of the barn.
And just as happens in other and larger forms of business, there were,
in that toy performance of a great drama, forms of legislative bribery
for middlemen and farmers. Those children were told that if they would
hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive pleasure and a
present. John and Mary, as middlemen, might go to the circus, while the
boy on the saw would receive a fine present. This would be a book which
told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood in two weeks,
and then asked his mother if he couldn’t please go down the road and
saw five cords more for a poor widow woman during his play time. Ever
since the world began, that seems to have been the idea of agricultural
legislation. The real direct pleasure and profit have gone to John and
Mary, while to Bert has gone the promise of an education which will teach
him how to work a little harder. Looking back over the world’s history,
the most astonishing thing to me is that society has failed to see that
the best investment of public money and power is that made closest up to
the ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have received
it, largely because they have been able to organize and make a stronger
appeal to the imagination.
Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where
the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came
one day particularly cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty
wood to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for play, and put an
extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just how the battle started; it may have
been caused by Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world
the relations between two boys and a girl have upset all calculations
and changed the course of history. Or it may be that the spirit of
injustice boiled up in the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away
his peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found fault because he
did not work faster, Bert dropped his saw and tackled the tormentor. If I
am to tell the truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science at
all about the battle which that boy put up for the rights of farm labor.
He should, I suppose, have imitated some of the old heroes described
by Homer and Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most
effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and I regret to say
that he lowered his head, and, without regard for science, butted John in
the stomach and knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took hold of
his hair with both hands, and proceeded to pound his head on the frosty
ground, while Mary danced about, not caring to interfere, but evidently
waiting to bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John was
getting ready to call “enough” the kitchen door opened and out came the
woman of the house with the old minister.
She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice as she peered
over her spectacles at the boys on the ground, and the three children
were arraigned before her. “What shall I do with these children? I shall
never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on these children
already, and see how little they have piled, and here they are fighting
over it. I think the best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the
saw.”
I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister as he rolled up
his wrinkles and prepared to answer. It was worth a good deal to see how
he looked out of the corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.
“My good friend,” said he, “this is not a case for prayer or for
punishment, or for investigation, or for education. It is a case for
an adjustment of labor and pie. That boy on the saw has been doing
practically all of the work, and getting almost nothing of the reward. He
is discouraged, and I don’t blame him. You cannot crowd more work out of
him with a stick. Move him out into the sun, give him the pie, and let
him eat his share and distribute the rest. Make the other boy split and
carry and pile all that wood, and put that girl at washing windows. _The
closer you put the pie up to the sawbuck, the more wood you will have
cut._”
Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that does not tell the
whole story. It is the pie of life, or the fair distribution of that pie,
which leads men and women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need
most of all in this country is some power like that of the old minister,
who can drive that thought home to human society, and it will not be
driven home until our leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more
of the poetry and the imagination which lead men and women to attempt the
impossible and work it out. You will not agree with me when I say that in
a majority of the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle,
humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the harder and sterner
influence of science and sharp business practice. As the years go on you
will come to see that I am right.
I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for some of us to
understand, for modern education has led us away from the thought. In
our grasp for knowledge we have tried to substitute science entirely
for sentiment, forgetting that the really essential things of life
cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together by faith. In
reaching out after power we have tried too hard to imitate the shrewd
scheming of the politician and the big interests. We have failed thus far
because we have neglected too many of our natural weapons. Over 200 years
ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:
“I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to make
all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”
Andrew Fletcher’s wise man knew what he was talking about. Very likely
some of you older people can remember the famous Hutchinson family in
the days before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire farmhouse
where they were raised. It was just a group of plain farmers who traveled
about the country singing simple little songs about freedom. That plain
farm family did more to make the American people see the sin of slavery
than all the statesmen New England could muster or all the laws she could
make. There was little science and less art about their singing, but it
was in the language of the common people and they understood it.
“The ox bit his master;
How came that to pass?
The ox heard his master say
‘All flesh is grass!’”
There came a crisis in the Civil War when soldier and statesman stood
still wondering what to do next, for they were powerless without the
spirit of the people. Then William Cullen Bryant wrote the great song in
which he poured out the burning thought of the people:
“We’re coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi’s winding stream
And from New England’s shore.
We leave our plows and workshops,
Our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance,
But with a silent tear.
“We’re coming, we’re coming, the Union to restore;
We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!”
Had it not been for such songs and the spirit they aroused the Civil War
never could have been won. We now understand that during the great war
the French army was at the point of mutiny, and was saved not by stern
discipline but by a renewal of its spiritual power. I think it will be as
hard as for a man to try and lift himself by his boot straps to try to
put farming into its proper place through science and material prosperity
alone. We need poets to give us songs and playwrights to put our story in
such pictures that the world must listen to it and understand. The one
great thing which impels us to work on and fight is the hope that the
property which we may leave behind us will be safe and put to reasonable
use. Some of us may leave cash and lands; others can give the world only
a family of children, but at heart our struggle is to see that this
heritage may be made safe.
For most of us make a great mistake in locating a storage place for the
heritage which we hope to leave to the future. We work and we toil; we
struggle to improve conditions; we strive to capitalize our worry and our
work into money and into land in order that our children may carry on our
work. Have you ever stopped to think who holds the future of all this?
Many of you no doubt will say that the future of this great nation lies
in the banks and vaults of the cities where money is piled up mountains
high. We have all acted upon that principle too long, digging wealth
from the soil and then sending it into the town for investment, until
we have come to think that our future lies there. We are wrong; it is a
mistake. The future of this land, and all it means to us, lies in the
hands of little children, who are playing on the city streets or in the
open fields of the country, and it is not so much in their hands as in
the pictures which are being printed on their little minds and souls.
And this future will be safer with poetry and imagination than with the
multiplication table alone.
I know about this from my own start in life. I was expected to be
satisfied with work until I was 21, and then have a suit of clothes and a
yoke of oxen. One trouble with the farmers of New England was that they
thought this a sufficient outfit for their boys. I think I might have
fallen in with that plan and contented my life with it had it not been
for a crude picture which hung in the shop where we pegged shoes. It was
a poor color scheme, a perfect daub of art, in which some amateur artist
had tried to express a thought which was too large for his soul. A bare
oak tree, with most of its branches gone, was framed against the Winter
sky. It was evening; a few stars had appeared, and the sky was full of
color. The artist had tried to arrange the stars and the sky colors so
that they represented a crude American flag, with the oak tree serving
as the staff. His great unexpressed thought was that at the close of
the Civil War God had painted His promise of freedom on the sky in the
coloring of that flag. As a child, that crude picture became a part of
my life. I have never been able to forget the glory of it, as I have
forgotten the meanness, the poverty, the narrow blindness of our daily
lives, so that all through the long and stormy years, wherever I have
walked, I have seen that flag upon the sky, and I have waited hopefully
for the coming of the sunrise of that day when, through the work of real
education, when with the help of such men and such women as are here
today, every hopeless man, every lonely woman, every melancholy child
upon a sad and desolate hill farm, may feel the thrill of opportunity,
and the joy and the glory of living upon the sunny side of the barn.
A HOPE FARM SERMON
No use talking, the best part of a vacation is getting home. We were all
sorry to leave Cape Cod. To tell you the truth duty seemed to be stuck
full of thorns a foot long as we looked back at it from the easy bed of a
loafer on his vacation. No wonder the poor little Bud cried when our good
host kissed her good-bye. We looked at her with much the same expression
as that on the face of the woman who missed an important train by half a
minute and listened to the forcible remark of a man who was also left! We
got over that, however. The harness was put on our shoulders so gently
that we hardly felt it, and here we are again with a soft pad of gentle
and happy memories to put where the rub comes hardest. Everything was
all O. K. at home. Grandmother was in good spirits, the Chunk reported
good sales, and the weather had been fair for farm work. The boys had
the corn all cleaned up and the weeds mostly cut. The strawberries have
been transplanted; the alfalfa clipped off; the squashes have grown into
a perfect tangle of vines, the sweet potatoes look well, and there is no
blight in the late white ones! The children found nine new little pigs
and 30 new chickens waiting them. Yes! Yes! It was a happy homecoming. I
climbed the hill on Sunday and looked off over the old familiar valley.
There were the same glorious old hills with the shadows chasing along
them, the little streams stealing down through their fringes of grass
and bushes, the cultivated fields, and the homes of neighbors peeping
out through the orchards! Surely home is a goodly place after all. Other
places are good to come away from, but home is the place to go to!
Now, I know that many of my readers are in trouble. I am, and every
mail brings news from people who are carrying crosses and facing hard
duties with more or less bravery. There are women left alone on the farm,
striving to drag a heavy heart through life. Men have seen wife and child
pass away. Others have seen hopes and ambitions crushed out. This season
has been hard for many. I will quote from a letter just at hand from
central New York, where flood and storm have scarred the hillsides and
ruined crops:
“One neighbor hung himself; one says he shall have an auction and go to
the old ladies’ home; another had the blues until he cried.”
Now, in spite of all the talk we have of the Nation’s great prosperity, I
know that there are thousands of sad hearts in country homes, sad because
they have seen the cherished things of life and the work of self-denying
years swept out of their grasp by a power which they could neither master
nor comprehend. The picture of a strong man dropping his head upon the
table and crying like a child is the saddest vision that can rise before
our eyes. Farm life has its tragic side, and the sadness of it would
crush us down at times if we would permit it to do so. No wonder men and
women grow despondent when with each year comes a little more of the
living blight which slowly destroys hope and faith in one’s physical
ability to master the secret of happiness. I do not blame men and women
who give way to despondency under pressure of griefs which have staggered
me. I only regret that they cannot realize that for most of the afflicted
of middle years the only true help is a moral one.
I feel like repeating that last sentence, though it may come like the
application of a liniment I knew as a boy. The old man who brought me
up invented a certain “lotion.” Whenever I cut or burned my flesh that
lotion bottle was hauled out, a hen’s feather inserted and a liberal
allowance smeared over the wound. It was like rubbing liquid fire on the
flesh, but it _did_ pull the smart out and carry it far away. I used to
imagine that the “lotion” gathered the pain all into a lump and pulled it
out by the roots with one quick twitch. One of the most helpful books I
have ever read is a little volume entitled “Deafness and Cheerfulness.” I
read it over and over, and I wish that every deaf man or friend of a deaf
man could have it. I find in this little book the following message which
I commend to all who feel their courage giving way:
“The noblest dealing with misfortune is in manly silence to bear it;
the next to the meanest is in feebleness to weep over it; the wholly
unpardonable is to ask others to weep also.”
With the first and third of these propositions I fully agree. It is not
always a sign of weakness for a man to get off into solitude somewhere
and find relief in tears. When the tear glands are completely dried up
the man loses an element of character which all the iron in his will
cannot replace. But “manly silence” _is_ the “noblest dealing with
misfortune”—and also the hardest. It is human to cry out and complain at
the pain of what we call injustice, but if the child is human should not
the grown man be something more? What are years and the burning balm of
experience given us for if not to enable us to rise up nearer to divine
strength? As I look about me it occurs that most of us who have reached
middle life or beyond have grown unconsciously away from childhood and
youthful strength. We somehow feel that people ought to regard us as
others did 25 years ago. The fat man of 45 is no longer the young sprout
of 20, though he may think so. If I am not mistaken, one great trouble
with many of us is the fact that we crave and beg for the things that
go with youth when in reality we are grown-up men and women! It is our
duty now to face life and its problems, not with the careless hope of
youth, but with the sober and abiding faith that should come with mature
years. Run over a child’s ambitions and, after his short grief, his
spirits rise again for the next opportunity. The man’s hopes are shaken
by repeated defeat, and hope of physical victory finds itself caged at
every turn by former defeat. We may grieve or despond over this and play
the child; or we may act the man, raise our hopes and ideals above the
range of former defeat, and find comfort and courage in doing the things
which shame infirmity and affliction. I know some of you will say that
this complacent man may moralize—but give him a touch of trouble, and
how he would whine! I hope not! Trouble has taken many a mouthful out
of us but, if I thought any honest friend really meant that, it would be
the greatest trouble of all. I repeat that the greatest comfort to the
despondent must be a moral one, yet the riding of some harmless hobby
helps one to walk with fortitude. Let a man say to himself that he will
study and work to breed the finest pigs or raise the finest strawberries
or master some science or public question, and he will find strength and
comfort in his work! I’ll promise not to attempt any more preaching for
a good while if you will let me end this little sermon with a quotation
from Whittier:
“Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind;
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined.
Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,
And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.
In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly.
But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight,
And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night.”
GRANDMOTHER
The last celebration of Thanksgiving was about the most startling that
any of the Hope Farmers remember. I have passed this holiday under quite
varied conditions. “Boy” on a New England farm and in a boarding-house,
cattle herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a lumber camp, teacher in
a country school district, hired man and book agent on a Michigan farm,
“elocutionist” in a dramatic company, “professor of modern languages”
(with a slim grip on English alone) in a young ladies’ seminary,
printer’s devil in a Southern newspaper office, ditcher in a swamp, and
other capacities too numerous to mention. A man may perhaps lay claim to
a bit of helpful philosophy if he can find some fun in all such days and
carry along in his mental pocket “much to be thankful for.” He is sure
to come to a time in life when these “treasures of memory” will be very
useful. I would not refer to family matters that might well be marked
“private” and locked away with the skeleton in the closet if I did not
know that the plain, simple matters of family record are things that all
the world have in common.
A pirate or a man trying to hide himself might have seen virtues in the
dull, misty fog that settled upon the city the night before Thanksgiving.
Grandmother had been slowly failing through the day. The night brought
her greater pain than ever. All through these long months we had been
able to keep from her the real nature of her disease. I took it upon
myself to keep the children happy. If we grown-ups found it hard to be
thankful we would see that the little folks put out enough thanks for the
whole family. I took them down to the market to pick out a turkey! We had
a great time, and finally found a turkey fat enough. The market man gave
each of the children a handful of nuts—and they now want Mother to give
him all her trade. They went home fairly radiant with happiness. Was it
not better for them to go to sleep with the pleasant side of the day in
their hearts rather than the shadow which the rest of us could feel near
us?
The morning came dark and dismal. It didn’t seem like Thanksgiving
as the Bud and I went after the doctor. The clerks and professional
people seemed to be taking a holiday, but the drivers, the diggers and
heavy workmen were at their jobs as usual. The streets were filled with
children dressed up in ridiculous costumes, wearing masks or with faces
blackened. These urchins went about begging money from passers-by. Our
little folks were rather shocked at this way of celebrating Thanksgiving.
Where this ridiculous mummery came from or how it crept into a
Thanksgiving celebration is more than I can say. It may be as close as a
city child can come to thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest! Charlie
and his family came in from the farm, and Jack came from his school.
Grandmother made a desperate struggle and was finally able to sit up so
that her children and grandchildren might be about her. As the children
grew restless in the house I took them out and we walked along the
river. My mind was busy with other matters relating to other days, but
the little folks, happily, saw only the great bright side of the future.
Their past was too small to cast any shadow. We went as far as Grant’s
Tomb and passed through the room where the great general’s remains are
lying. As we passed in, the Graft and Scion saw the men take off their
hats and they did the same.
“Why do they make you take off your hat?” asked the Graft, when we came
out.
I tried to explain to him that this was one of the things that people
should not be _made_ to do. They should do it because they wanted to show
their respect or reverence. I doubt if I made him understand it, for when
a boy is hungry and other boys are playing football in a nearby vacant
lot even the gentlest sermon loses its point. Our dinner was such a
success that we did not have chairs enough to go around. The children had
to sit on boxes and baskets. A taste of everything from turkey down went
in to Grandmother, but she could eat little. The plates came back again
and again until the Hope Farm man was obliged to say:
“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over after all.”
He had not only to turn it over but scrape many of the bones clean. The
farm folks finally went home and Jack too was obliged to go. Happily
the little folks were tired out and they were asleep early. About two
o’clock Mother woke me. She did not do it before, because it might have
alarmed Grandmother, who did not, I think, clearly understand her
true condition. There was apparently no pain or struggle at the end.
We noticed that her face lighted up with a strange, puzzled look, of
surprise and wonder—and well it might when one is called upon to lay
down the troubles and toil of such a life as hers in the dim, mysterious
country which one must die to enter.
Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to tell the children about it.
They must have known that some strange thing was happening. They woke up
early and saw the undertaker passing through the room. Then Mother got
them together and told them that poor Grandmother had suffered so long
that God pitied her and had taken her to Him. The little folks sat with
thoughtful faces for a while and then one of them said with wide-open
eyes:
“Is Grandmother _dead_ then?”
And so the body of poor Grandmother passed away from us while her spirit
and memory passed deeper than ever into the lives of the Hope Farm folks.
Life with her had ceased to be comfortable. It was merely a steady,
hopeless struggle against pain and depression. Mother was able to go
through these long months calmly and hopefully because she knows that her
mother had every service that love could render. It is with that thought
in mind that I feel like saying a solemn word to those whom I have never
met, yet who seem to be as close as personal friends can be. Do not for
an instant begrudge the money, the time or toil which you may spend upon
those of your loved ones who need your help. That is a part of the cross
which you must carry cheerfully or reject. Do not let those whom you
serve see that it is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. It is not
merely a part of hard, cold duty, but the vital force in the development
of character. It may be that I am now talking to someone who is putting
personal comfort above the self-denial which goes with the sacred trust
which God has put into our lives. Where will the flag of “comfort” lead
them when the discomforting days come? A conscience is a troublesome
thing at best, but one that has been gently and truly developed through
self-sacrifice is a better companion than the barbed finger of trouble
thrust into the very soul at last by the relentless hand of fate!
A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record
of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts—coming
from the best stock this country has ever produced. This is not the
narrow-eyed, cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the hillside
farms who went to the valleys and at the little water-powers laid the
foundations of New England’s manufacturing. These sturdy people saw
clearly into the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power of
the valley streams they cultivated and restrained their own powers until
the man as well as the machine became a tremendous force. Honorable
misfortune befell this manufacturing family, but could not crush it.
In those days the boys, under such circumstances, dropped all their
own ambitions and took the first job that presented itself, without
a murmur and with joy that they could do it. The girls did the same,
though there were few openings for women then outside of housework and
the schoolroom. Grandmother had a taste for music, and became a music
teacher. She finally secured a position as teacher in a little town
in Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm man was born
she went into what was then a strange country for the daughter of a
Massachusetts Abolitionist! What a journey that must have been, before
the Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother was then. The South
was in a blaze of excitement, yet this quiet, gentle Northern girl won
the love and respect of all. There she met the man who was to be her
husband—a young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted down by family
cares, political convictions and ill health. He was a Union man whose
family had made their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last.
Grandmother was married and went to the South just before the storm
broke. What a life that was in the dreary little town during those years
of fighting! Her husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate
service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon declare him too
feeble and sick for even that desperate service. He cobbled shoes,
leached the soil in old smokehouses for salt, and “lived” as best he
could. Once he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of cotton
which he sold to pay passage money to the North. After the war he was
State Senator and Judge under the patched-up government which followed.
Carpetbaggers and rascals from the North lined their pockets with gold
and brought shame upon their party and torture and death to the ignorant
black men who followed them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and
thieving Grandmother’s husband never touched a dishonest dollar and did
his best to give character to a despised and degraded race. Of course
he failed, for the race did not have strength enough to see that what
he tried to offer them was better than the hatred of their old masters
and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held out. It was not all lost,
for when he was buried I am told that around his grave there was a thick
fringe of white people and back—at a respectful distance—acres of black,
shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward stirring of manhood in
hearts untrained yet appreciating true service to country.