woman capable of supporting her husband through these trials and still
capable of holding the love of those who opposed him. In the face of
an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it this quiet,
unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected and trusted by all. She
took up her burdens without complaint, hid her troubles in her heart,
and walked bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she found
a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere Christian woman she
lived and acted out her faith and did her life’s duty with dignity and
cheerfulness. The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm
and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed memories of her.
LAUGHTER AND RELIGION
I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who cannot laugh. He may
have great learning or power or skill or wealth, but if fate has denied
him a keen sense of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious
flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we may call “the
healing balm of tears.” Unless there chance to be some volcanic eruption
of the heart they must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet,
if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf see more of the
ludicrous side of life than do those who have full hearing. It comes to
be amusing to notice how men and women strive and worry over the poor
non-essential things of conversation, and waste time and strength trying
to make others understand simple things which the deaf man comes to know
at a glance. Those who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear
all the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may wonder why the
inability to hear may act as a torture to the tender heart. They do not
know how closely sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand
without losing many of the finer things of life. Yet, as between the
tearless man and the unfortunate soul who is denied the joy of laughter,
the latter is more deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity but
the other is nearer the gallows.
One great reason why the negro race has come through its troubles with
reasonable success is because fate has given the black man the blessed
privilege of laughter. Many a time when other races would have gone out
to rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or laugh his troubles
away. So, as between the man who cannot weep or lash himself into a rage
and he who cannot laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and
far more to be pitied.
I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject, as some years
ago I was in the business of trying to inoculate some very serious and
sad-minded people with the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so
tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter to start them. I
was stranded in a farm neighborhood in a Western State working as hired
man through a very dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads
when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a gloom and social
stagnation which the modern town man can hardly realize. I did my work
by day and at night went about to churches and schoolhouses “speaking
pieces.” We called those gloomy and discouraged people together and tried
to make them laugh.
I remember one such entertainment held in a country schoolhouse far back
in the mud of a January thaw. The dimly lighted room was crowded with
sad-faced, discouraged men and women to whom life had become a tragedy
through dwelling constantly upon their own troubles. At intervals during
my entertainment two sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have
made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful songs about
beautiful women who died young or children who proved early in life
that they were too good for this world. During one of these intervals a
farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern artist can command
a salary which enables him to ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood
the financial manager was the boss.
“See here now,” said the farmer, “we hired you to come here and make us
laugh. Why don’t you do it? I’ve got my hired man in there. He’s all
ready to go on a spree and he will do it if you don’t make him laugh. We
have paid you $2.50 to come here and speak. That means $1.25 an hour or
$12.50 for a 10-hour day. No other man in this neighborhood gets such
wages. It’s big money, now go back and earn it. _Make that man laugh!_
It’s a moral obligation for you to do it.”
There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity feeling that he would
be a hero, the champion of the neighborhood, if he could hold humor at
bay. When I went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by the
stove and said it was the unanimous request of the audience that I should
read or recite the “Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in
my line, but who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years before
I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the poem, and with the noble
courage of youth I started the best imitation I could muster. No one, not
even the author, ever considered the “Raven” as a humorous poem, but it
struck the hired man that way. I had cracked jokes in and out of dialect.
I had “made faces” and played the clown generally without affecting the
hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of “Quoth the Raven—Nevermore!”
the hired man exploded with a roar that shook the building, and the rest
of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The rest of the audience
joined with him, and long after the meeting closed and the lanterns
twinkled down the dark and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter
from the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there was about the
“Raven” to explode that man I have never known. It changed his life.
It broke a spring somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of
laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood. The minister
told me in the Spring that his people had received a great spiritual
uplifting during the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the
hired man.
That same Winter I went to a church for another entertainment. I sat in
the pulpit beside the minister and every time I stopped for breath he
would lean over and whisper:
“_Make them laugh! Give them something humorous! Make them laugh!_”
He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It was a gloomy night.
The people were sad and discouraged. Their religion was a torment to them
at the time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I did my best
with discouraging results. I will confess that I lost faith for once in
my life and quit trying. There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer
in the front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed my efforts
straight to him. It came to be the one desire of my life to make that
solemn-faced man laugh, and he would not do it. It seemed to me as if he
sat there with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some wise old
horse listening to the chatter of a young colt. I could not stir him and
I confess that I quit ingloriously and “took up the collection.”
But, when we all went out on the church steps while lanterns were being
lighted and the boys brought up the horses I saw my solemn-faced friend
talking with another farmer.
“John,” said the farmer as he snapped down the globe of his lantern, “how
did you like the show?”
“Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am so sore around my
ribs that I’m going home to rub liniment on my sides.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, Henry, that young feller was so funny that _I never come so nigh
to laughing in the House of God as I done tonight_. When I get home out
of sight of the elder, I am going to stand right up on my hind-legs and
holler.”
A DAY IN FLORIDA
A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for him. He would
rust out. There was “more life and human nature on Broadway, New York,
in 15 minutes than in a week of Florida.” So I thought I would see how
much “real human nature” the sun could observe as Putnam County revolved
beneath his eye.
As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly a cloud in the sky.
The mercury stood at about 65 degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen
from the orange trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the
new leaves showed their light green against the darker old leaves. On
the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove
of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street,
with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole
in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For
while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house
door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every
growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red hens with their broods
of chickens ran about under the orange trees. In front of the house I
found a group of “redheads and towheads” gathered around a fisherman who
carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three young alligators and the
children were buying them. They finally got the three for a dollar, and
they intend taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to “raise”
them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope Farm alligator. Finally
the school bell rang and the older children scattered while the little
ones played on. I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product in
this locality. I understand there are but four white children of school
age—not enough to maintain a school! There is a broken and abandoned
schoolhouse here, but it has not been occupied for some years. There
is a school for colored children. Our people opened a school here, but
in this locality the State actually does more for educating colored
children than for whites. Think over what that means and see if Broadway
can match the “human nature” which comes out of such a situation. Our
own children are rosy as flowers. They ought to be, for they have played
out in the sun every day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot
nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms—for that dread
disease gets into the system through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter
paradise for children and elderly people. As these children pen up their
alligators and separate for school and play, an old man walks with firm
and active steps down the shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old
and is still planting a garden—very likely for the seventieth time! On
the platform of the store he will meet a group of men who will sit for
hours discussing the weather or looking off through the pines toward
the blue lake. On Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set,
anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce struggle for food,
clothing, amusement and shelter. There is quite as much “human nature”
about these slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun. In
this little place where our folks have wintered there are nine different
men who live alone. There are perhaps 30 voters in this district, and
strange as it may seem they are about evenly divided between the two
great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers have moved in
here. They draw their pensions, work their gardens or groves and live
in peace in this carefree land. “Human nature?” Ask these old soldiers
with “warfare over,” as the sun goes down and they look out over the
lake, why they ever came to Florida, and if they are disappointed. If you
started a contest with a prize for the man who can take the longest time
to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet it was in Florida
that the world’s record for speed with a motor car was recently made.
While some of our neighbors might consume two hours in going a mile, it
was in Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27⅓ seconds. This
contest in speed is a very good illustration of the contrary character of
Florida climate and conditions. Many people fail here because they try to
fit Broadway “human nature” to this balmy gentle land. You cannot use the
same brand!
The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man was working a mule
on a cultivator—tearing up the surface of an old orange grove. The only
auto in the town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough of
the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing in the soft air.
Charlie went by followed by a big colored man. They carry spades and
axes for Charlie is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when
a grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought home to be
buried.
Mother and I had planned to take the train at noon and go south for a few
miles to do some shopping and look up a “colony” or land boom scheme.
So we got ready and went to the station in ample time. And there we
waited, as everyone else does in this land of tomorrow. An hour crawled
by, and still there was nothing in sight up the track except the distant
pines and the heat rising from the sands. No one quarrels with fate in
Florida—what is the use? Under similar circumstances in New Jersey I
should have been held in some way responsible for the delay, but here it
did not matter—if the train did not come, another day would do. We waited
about 100 long minutes and then the good lady announced that she was
going home, as there would not be time to get around, and home she went,
good-natured and smiling as the Florida sun.
Let me add that the next day we waited nearly two hours again and then
went home once more, but who cares whether he goes today or some future
“tomorrow”?
Having been cut out of our trip I became interested in the funeral. A
little group of wagons was drawn up under the pines waiting for the
train. I have said that an old resident was coming “home”—to be buried
by the side of husband and relatives—in the rough little cemetery behind
the pines. At last, a puff of thick smoke up the track showed where the
dawdling train was showing the true speed of a hearse. Down the grade it
came, halting with many a wheeze and groan in front of the little station
where the fated box was taken off. Our little funeral procession was
quickly made up. Uncle Ed drove old Frank ahead with the minister and the
Hope Farm Man as passengers. Then came the dead in a farm wagon, and half
a dozen one-horse teams straggling on behind. Your funeral on Broadway
with its gilded hearse, black horses and nodding plumes might be far more
inspiring. Who can say, however, that there was less of “human nature” in
this little weatherbeaten string crawling over the Florida sand? I was
thinking as we went how this dead woman had seen what seemed like the
death of hope in this land. For right where we were passing, on these
dead fields, she had seen orange groves in full fruitage, and had seen
them all wiped out in a day of frost!
You would have said that Charlie stood leaning on his spade beside two
great heaps of snow. The soil was pure white sand, and as they threw
it from the grave it had drifted in over the sides until no dark color
showed. On Broadway there would have been an imposing procession, the
organ pouring out tones that seemed to carry a message far beyond the
comprehension of the living. Here in this lonely little clearing, my
friend the minister led the way, the little group of mourners followed,
and Charlie and Uncle Ed with a few neighbors carried the dead. I wish I
could have had you there with me—you who say that life and human nature
crowd into the “lively” places. I wish I could paint the picture as I saw
it.
The minister and the station agent’s wife began to sing. One of the men
who helped carry the coffin laid down his load and joined the singers.
They wanted me to make a quartette, but I am no musician and I could
not have made a sound. It was better for me to stand in the background
against a tree, by the side of the colored man who leaned on his shining
spade and bowed his gray head. For does not the color line fade out at
the grave? I wish you could have seen it, the trio of singers, the sad
group under the pines, the earth piled up like snowdrifts, the pine tops
quivering and moaning, and the Florida sun streaming over all. I felt the
pine tree against which I leaned tremble as the wind blew through it.
In a tree over us a gray squirrel turned his ear as if to listen. For
gathered around those piles of glistening sand were men and women who
carried all the world holds of “human nature”—tragedy, despair, hope,
sorrow and peace. Not 100 feet from where I stood was a row of six little
white stones where six old army comrades were buried. I studied their
names, six men of the army and navy from New York, Maine, New Hampshire,
South Carolina, Vermont and Ohio. There they lie in the sand, sleeping
“the sleep that knows no waking.” And this woman wanted to be brought
back to this lonely place that she might rest with her people. “Human
nature?” I made a dull companion as old Frank toiled back with us to the
village.
Our folks had left the house and I followed them along the shady path to
the lake. The younger people had been in bathing. They were sitting on
the lake shore, the children were shouting and playing as they ran about
the beach. I am glad they were not at the funeral. As Mother and I walked
slowly back, the little ones came trailing on, waving branches of palm
and singing. And there over the fence was our famous gallon-and-a-half
cow—easily the most energetic citizen in the place.
Night comes quickly in Florida and brings a chill with it. The sun seems
to tumble directly into the west and to leave little warmth behind.
Before we ended our slow walk home, darkness had fallen and Uncle Ed had
started a grateful fire of logs. As if to demonstrate the Florida axiom
that there are only two absolutely sure things—death and taxes—we found
the county assessor before the fire. He had reached us on his rounds and
was ready to tell us how much we owed the State. You will see therefore
that the human life in Florida is much the same as anywhere else only
“more so” for here there is no artifice or straining after effect. Men
and women are naturally human—as they were meant to be.
THE BASEBALL GAME
“_Two strikes, three balls!_”
A silence so intense that you could feel it fell upon 60,000 people who
saw the umpire put up his hand to announce the second strike. It was the
crisis of the first baseball game for the world’s championship between
New York and Philadelphia. The great stands were black with people, and
thousands more were perched upon the rocks which rose above the level in
which the ball grounds are laid out. The boy and I sat on the bleachers.
It was the only place we could get; we sat there three hours before the
game began—and we were among the last to get in. Of course you will say
we should have been at home picking apples—but without discussing that I
will admit that we were packed away in that “bleacher” crowd.
There were some 25,000 of us crowded on those wooden benches with our
feet hanging down. Here and there in this black mass of hats a spot of
lighter color showed where a woman had crowded in with the rest. There
may have been 100 women in this crowd. The “stands” where the reserved
seats are placed were bright with women’s gay colors. Our seats were not
reserved, but well “deserved” after our struggle for them.
I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of you have no doubt read
that description in “Ben Hur” of the motley crowd which surged out to the
Crucifixion. Gibbon describes the masses of humans who attended the Roman
games. The world as known at that time gathered at these spectacles, yet
I doubt if those old-time hordes could produce the variety of blood or
color which showed within 1,000 feet of where we sat. Within four feet
sat two colored men showing traces of two distinct African races. The
young man on my right was certainly an Irishman. The fat man, who was
wide enough to fill two seats, was a German. In front an Italian, behind
a Swede, off there a Frenchman, a Spaniard and even a Chinaman. There
was an Arab whose father ate dates in the desert. The son looked forward
to this date as an oasis in the desert of hard work. Here were Indians,
Japanese, Mexicans, Russians, Turks—the entire world had poured the blood
of its races into that vast crowd. I do not believe the great Coliseum
at Rome ever held a larger company. Yet this crowd was different. In
the savage hordes of centuries ago the air was filled with a babel of
sound—each race shrieking in its own language. This vast army of “fans”
thought and spoke in the common languages of English and baseball. For
there is a true language of baseball. Nothing can be popular unless it
acquires a language of its own. It was an orderly crowd too. Somehow
these waiting men seemed to feel that they had come to the hush and
dignity of a great occasion. You may laugh at us—you poor unfortunate
people who do not know a home run from a fly catch, but you have missed
a lot of the thrill and joy of life. We feel sorry for you. To the true
baseball crank this game represented the climax of the year, for here
were the best 18 players in the world ready for the supreme struggle.
So these thousands sat silent and watchful. As you know, when stirred
by passion 60,000 people can give vent to the most hideous and awesome
sound. Yet when stilled by the thought of what is to come the silence of
this great army is most profound. Now, of course, you and I may say—what
a pity that all these people and all the energy and money they represent
could not be used for some more useful purpose. I could name half a dozen
things which this country needs. If it were possible to gather 60,000
people in behalf of any of these things with the claws of elemental
savagery barely covered with thin cotton gloves no Legislature in the
land would dare refuse the demanded law. That is true, but it is also
true that human nature has not yet evolved from the point where at the
last analysis the physical power and what it stands for appeals first
to the young and strong. You cannot get away from that, and it must be
considered in all our regrets about the “younger generation.” We can have
anything we want in legislation and reform whenever we can work up a
spirit and a demand for it which is akin to this baseball feeling! For in
this silent, orderly crowd there was nothing but cotton over the claws.
There was a dignified-looking citizen not far from us who looked like a
fair representative of the “City of Brotherly Love.” You would choose
him as one of a thousand to take charge of a Sunday school. Yet when a
Philadelphia player raced home with the first run there came a hoarse cry
that might have startled even a listless Cæsar 2,000 years ago. There
was our Philadelphia friend on one foot waving his hat and shrieking
defiance and taunts at the crowd of New York “fans.” Why, the germ of
that man’s mind was back in the centuries, clad in hairy flesh and skins
shouting a war cry at what were then its enemies! And when New York tied
the score the entire bleachers seemed to rise like a great black wave of
humanity with shrieks and cries and waving hats. For the moment these
were hardly human beings—as we like to consider the race. They were crazy
barbarians lapsed for the moment back to elemental motives. And as I came
back to find myself standing up with the rest I was not sure but that the
brief trip back to barbarism had after all been a profitable one!