It was the fifth inning, with the score one to one. There were two out
and New York had worked a man around to third base. One more pitched ball
would tell the story. Consider the mix-up of the races in this “American
game.” The man on third base straining like a greyhound to get home was
an Indian. The man at bat was of French blood, while the next batter was
an Irishman with a Jew close behind him. The catcher was an Englishman
and the pitcher a pure Indian. This Indian stood there like a silent
representative of fate with the ball in his hand, eyeing that Frenchman,
who shook his bat defiantly. I presume neither of them thought for the
instant how 200 years ago it would have been tomahawk against musket in
place of ball and bat. Yet the race traits were evident—the light and
airy nerve of the Gaul and the crafty silence of the red man! Oh, how
that ball did go in! “Ball!” shouted the umpire and the batter took his
base. Then it seemed as if bedlam had broken loose. Men and women shouted
and cheered and laughed and cried, for they thought that the Indian was
“rattled” at last. But his ancestors went through too much fire for that.
He stood in the center as cool as a cake of ice. The play for the man on
first was to run to second when the ball was pitched, and run he did.
I noticed that the catcher jumped six feet to the right as that Indian
threw the ball. It went like lightning right into the catcher’s hands.
The second baseman had run up behind the pitcher and took the throw from
the catcher. Of course the runner on third tried to run in on this throw,
but back came the ball ahead of him and he was out! Then in an instant
the mighty crowd saw that New York had been ambushed. It was a great
trick, and played so accurately and quickly and with such daring that
even the Philadelphia “fans” were mind-paralyzed and forgot to cheer.
The silence which followed the Indian to the players’ bench was the most
eloquent tribute of the day. And it happened, as every “sport” already
knows, that New York finally won two to one. The needed runs were made
on mighty hits by an Indian and an Irishman, and the great crowd filed
out and home to talk it over. I wish I could tell my children how some
Cape Cod Yankee had a hand in it, but too many of these are occupied in
telling what they or their ancestors used to do. I think the game was
invented and developed by Yankees, and that they have made the most
money out of it. Probably Cape Cod is willing to rest content with this
and let the others handle the ball. I am ready to admit we ought to have
been home picking apples, but we saw the game, and the apple harvest will
go better to pay for it.
TRANSPLANTING THE YOUNG IDEA
Of all the planting that a farmer finds it necessary to do there is
nothing quite equal to transplanting home-grown plants in the garden
of education. Some homes might be called hotbeds, others are very cold
frames, and there are grades running all between. Children grow up away
from childhood and show that they are ready for transplanting—with
evidences around the head to be compared with those on a tomato plant.
You cut off their roots, and try to trim their heads and plant them in
the hard field of practical life or in the sheltered garden of education.
It is a large undertaking, for here is the best crop of your farm put out
at a hazard. You may not have grown or trimmed it right, and the soil in
which you plant it may not prove congenial, or some wild old strain from
a remote ancestor may “come back” when it should “stay out.” You cannot
tell about these things except by experiment, therefore there is nothing
quite equal to this sort of transplanting. That is the way Mother and
I felt as we took the two older children off to college. My experience
has taught me both the power and the weakness of an education. He who
can grasp the true spirit of it acquires a trained mind, and that means
mastery. He who simply “goes to college” and drifts along with the crowd
without real mental training is worse off than if he never had entered.
He cannot live up to his reputation as a college man, and when a man
must go through life always dragging behind his reputation he is only a
tin can tied to the tail of what was once his ambition. I can imagine
an intelligent parrot going through college, and perhaps passing the
examinations, but all his life he would be a parrot, unable to apply
what he had learned to practical things. I made up my mind long ago to
give each one of the children opportunity. That means a chance to study
through a good college. Each and every one must pay back to me later the
money which this costs. My backing continues just as long as they show
desire, through their labor, to think and work out the real worth of
education. Should they become mentally and morally lazy and assume that
“going to college” is like having the measles or raising a beard—out
they come at once, for if I know anything at all it is the fact that the
so-called student who goes through college just because his parents think
it is the thing to do makes about as poor a drone as the human hive can
produce.
Where should the children go? The case of the girl was quickly settled
by her mother. Years ago this good lady had her own dreams of a college
education and knew just where she wanted to go. Denied the privilege of
going herself, she nominated her daughter as her substitute. That settled
it—there was no primary or referendum or special election. There seemed
to me something of poetic realization in this setting of the only bud
into the long-desired and long impossible tree of knowledge. As for the
boy—the case was different. I would like to send at least one child back
to my old college, and I think a couple of the smaller ones will go
later. I know better than to try to crowd boys into associations which
are not congenial. If your boy has intelligence enough to justify his
going to college let him use his intelligence to decide something of what
he wants. I advised the boy to select one of the smaller colleges of high
reputation and keep away from the great universities. He made what I
call a good choice—an institution of high character, lonely location and
with one great statesman graduate who stands up in history like a great
lighthouse, to show the glory of public life and the dangerous rock of
his own private habits.
Well, Mother and I traveled close to 900 miles up and down through New
England on this trip of planning in the garden of education. I could
write a book on the memories and anticipations which filled the minds of
this Hope Farm quartette. As the train rushed up the country, winding
through villages and climbing hills, we took on groups of bright-faced
boys on their way to college. Before we reached the end of our journey
the train was crowded with them. There was one sour-faced old fellow on
the train who viewed those boys with no benevolent eye.
“A lazy, careless lot. I’d put them all at work!”
The old man was wrong—he was sour. Even the evidence of hope and faith in
the future which those bright-eyed boys brought could not sweeten him.
Here were the thinkers and dreamers and workers of the future. Underneath
their fun and careless hope they carried the prayers of their mothers
and the poorly expressed dreams of fathers who saw in those boys the
one chance to carry on a life work. While the old man scowled on I found
myself quoting from “Snow Bound,” Whittier’s picture of the college boy
who taught the winter school:
“Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”
The responsibility of acting as “young apostles” would have wearied these
boys, but unconsciously they were absorbing part of the spirit which will
fit them for the work. Finally the train stopped and poured us out into
a dusty road. There were not teams enough to carry 10 per cent of the
crowd, and the rest of us cheerfully took up our burdens, crossed the
river and mounted a steep and dusty hill. It took me back 30 years and
more, to my first three-mile dusty walk to college. At the hilltop, as
the glory of the college campus stood revealed in the shimmering light
of the setting sun, it must have seemed to the freshmen that they had
surely been “walking up Zion’s hill.” To me it was like old times patched
up and painted with perhaps a few ornaments added. Two boys went by
bending under the weight of mattresses. When I first hit college I bought
a bedtick, carried it to the barn and stuffed it with straw. It was all
the same, only there was the difference which the years naturally bring
in comfort and convenience. But finally the darkness came and the moon
seemed to climb up over the college buildings, flooding the campus with
long bright splinters of light. As we walked back under the trees there
came back to me the one, unchangeable, holy thing of college life—the
undying, gentle, kindly spirit of the college which a man must carry as
long as he lives.
We got up before five o’clock and traveled far down the Connecticut
Valley to plant the family flower. Those of you who have read “The
Princess” and have fairly active imaginations may realize how the Hope
Farm man felt at this institution. Here men did not even reach a back
seat. There was absolutely nothing for me to do except stand about, hat
in hand, and pay the bills. At the railroad station three good-looking
girls of the Y. W. C. A. met us and told us just where to go. At the
college another girl took a suitcase and walked off with it to show my
daughter’s room. The express business and the trunks were all handled
by a fine-looking woman who gave points on good-nature to any express
agent I ever saw. The sale of furniture, the bureau of information, the
handling of money—the complete organization was conducted by women and
girls. It was all well done, in a thoroughly business-like manner and
with rare courtesy. True, the girls who conducted the information bureau
stopped now and then to eat popcorn or candy. College boys of equal rank
would probably have smoked cigarettes. There was just one other man in
the hall, who, like me, had brought his daughter there to plant her in
the garden of education. I caught his eye, and knew that our thoughts
were twins. I fully expected at any time to see “two stalwart daughters
of the plow” approaching to do their duty.
The spirit of this college seemed excellent. It may be a debatable
question with some as to whether a school taught, organized and
conducted entirely by women is more desirable than one taught by men or
where co-education is permitted. There is no debate in our family, since
the ruling spirit, whose instincts are usually right, has decided the
question. It seemed to me that the training at this school is sure to
give these girls responsibility and dignity. My two girls went into a
store to buy furniture for the room, and I stayed outside until the time
came for my part of the deal—paying for it. Across the campus and up the
street came a beautiful woman walking slowly and thoughtfully on. Tall
and shapely, but for her years she might have represented Tennyson’s
Princess. Every movement of her body gave the impression of power. Her
face seemed like a mask of patient suffering with an electric light of
knowledge and faith behind it. I remember years ago to have seen another
such woman walking across the village green in a country town. A rough
man a stranger to me, took off his hat and said:
“Some woman—that!”
Yes, indeed—“some woman!” It is possible that some of these “daughters
of the plow” had an eye on the Hope Farm man for watching ladies walking
across the campus, but had they arrested me I should have told them the
story of Billy Hendricks. Billy was apprentice in a printer’s shop in
England. The boss offered a prize and a raise in wages to the apprentice
who could set up a certain advertisement in the best form. Billy needed
the money. He went to the foreman and asked:
“How can I make this ‘ad’ so it will show true proportions?”
“Look at me!” said the foreman.
There he stood, big and broad-shouldered, a true figure of a man, and as
Billy studied him he found the words of that “ad” shaping themselves in
his mind. The others were mechanical. Billy had vision and won. Some of
us who must admit that we have neither beauty nor shape are glad to have
before our children an example of what the coming woman ought to be.
THE SLEEPLESS MAN
Some of our people are telling us about the best or the most satisfying
meal they ever ate. This question of food seems to depend on habit,
hunger and personal taste. I saw a man once in a lumber camp eat plate
after plate of a stew made of meat, potatoes and carrots—cooked in a
big iron kettle over an open fire. At home, this man would have growled
at turkey or terrapin, but here he was pushing back his plate again and
again asking the cook to put more carrots in. “Why,” he said, “I thought
carrots were made for horses to eat. I didn’t know human beings ate
them!” He never had been a real human before—not until hunger caught him
and pulled him right up to that iron pot. At his club in the city he
could not have eaten three mouthfuls of that stew.
It is different with sleep. The man with no appetite can get on after a
fashion, but if he cannot sleep he is a pitiable object. I met one once—a
rich man who had worked too hard—starved himself for sleep in order to
get hold of rather more than his share of money and power. He had passed
the limit of nerves and was denied the power of sleeping. A few snatches
of rest were all he could get, but through the long still nights he lay
awake, thinking, thinking with the constant terror that this would end in
a disordered mind.
We sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he told me all about
it. To you sleep seems like a very common and simple thing. The night
finds you tired and you shut your eyes and before you know it you are
sailing off into a peaceful, unknown country. Here was a man who could
not sleep. He must remain chained to the cares and terrors of his daily
life, and the bitterness of it was that all the money he had slaved so
hard to obtain could not buy him what comes to you and me with the mere
closing of the eyes. It seemed to me the most despairing mockery for this
man to repeat Sir Philip Sidney’s “Ode to Sleep”:
“Come sleep; O Sleep! the certain hour of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O make in me these civil wars to cease
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head.”
“That’s it,” said my friend, “_A weary head, a weary head_. Mine is
weary, but sleep will not come.” He sat looking at the fire for a long
time, and then he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his eyes.
“I wish you would tell me about the _best sleep_ you ever had. Men may
tell of their best meal, but I want to know about rest—the best sleep.”
It was a strange request, but as I sat there, my mind went back to
a hillside near the New England coast where the valley slopes away
to a salt marsh with a sluggish stream running through it. A low,
weatherbeaten farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept hill. It
is a lonely place. Few come that way in daylight, and at night there are
no household lights to be seen.
It had rained through the night, and the morning brought a thick heavy
fog. It was too wet to hoe corn, and Uncle Charles said we could all go
gunning. He was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot. So
we tramped off along the marsh following the creek until it reached the
ocean. What a glorious day that was for a boy! I carried an old army
musket that kicked my shoulder black and blue. We tramped along the shore
and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers and other sea fowl.
Now and then a flock of birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and
Uncle Charles would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. It all comes
back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the sea fowl and dull roar of the
ocean as it pounded upon the beach. Late in the afternoon we tramped
home wet and tired, but with a long string of birds. The ocean roared on
behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.
It was not good New England thrift to eat those birds—the guests at the
Parker House in Boston would pay good money for them. While we had been
hunting, Aunt Eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse had been busy
with a “New England Dinner.” There was a big plate of salt codfish, first
boiled and then fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed
with it. There were boiled potatoes which split open in a rich dry flour,
boiled onions and carrots and great slices of brown bread and butter.
Then the odor from the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous
pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! Ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy in a New England
kitchen as a wet dreary night is coming on after a tiresome day? No? I
am both sorry and glad for you. You have missed one of the greatest joys
of life, but you have much to look forward to. When Uncle Charles began
to cut that pan-dowdy, we boys realized that we could not do it full
justice, so we went out and ran around the house half a dozen times to
make more room for the top of the feast.
After supper the dishes were washed, the house cleaned up, and we washed
out our guns. The old musket had kicked my shoulder so that I could
hardly raise the arm, but no human being could have made me admit it.
We got Uncle Charles to tell us about the time he shot at the officer
at Port Hudson during the war, and about the humpbacked man who carried
the powder from Plymouth to Boston during the Revolution. Then through
the gloom and fog came two young men to call on the girls. In those days
it seemed to me very poor taste for one to listen to the conversation
of girls rather than war stories. True, the war stories were time-worn,
but the girl conversation was older yet. Soon the little melodeon was
talking up and a quartette was singing the old songs of half a century
ago. It may have been the day’s tramping, the old musket, the last plate
of pan-dowdy or the tap of the rain on the windows, but sitting there by
the warm kitchen stove, I felt a delicious drowsiness stealing over me.
Bed is the place for sleep, and we boys climbed the stairs past the great
center chimney, and quickly tumbled into bed. In the room below that
quartette had started an old favorite:
“Along the aisles of the dim old forest
I strayed in the dewy dawn
And heard far away in their silent branches
The echoes of the morn.
“They stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,
Like chimes from a holier land,
As though far away in those haunted arches
Were happy—an angel band.”
There was one great booming bass voice which had unconsciously fallen
into the key of the dull roar which the distant ocean was making. The
rain was gently tapping on the roof, and all the joys and pleasant
memories of youth were whispering happy things in our ears as we sailed
off on the most beautiful voyage to dreamland.
I told this as best I could before the fire while my weary friend
listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face.
And when I stopped sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep.
There are very few of us who would stand for a photograph taken while we
were asleep, but this man’s face was free from care. An orator might not
think it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience to sleep,
but I am not an orator, and I would like to be able to give my friends
what they consider the blessed things of life! And Peace, blissful Peace,
had put her healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY
It brought the worst storm we have had this Winter. This season will pass
on into history as about the roughest we have had in 20 years. There came
a whirl of snow which filled the air and sifted in through every crack
and hole. We let the storm alone, and got away from it. Merrill sorted
out seed corn at the barn. Philip had some inside painting to do, the
women folks kept at their household work, and the children got out into
the storm. They came in now and then to stand by the fire—with faces the
color of their hair. As for me, I cannot say that I hurt myself with hard
labor. We piled the logs in the open fireplace and started a roaring
fire. With a pile of books on one side and a pen and paper at the other,
my big chair gave a very good foundation for a Lincoln celebration. I
presume we all have our personal habits of reading. Some people read only
one kind of books, and stick to the one in hand until it is finished.
My plan is different. Right now I am reading Dante, “Rural Credits,”
“Manufacture of Chemical Manure,” Whittier’s Poems and Lowell’s essay on
Abraham Lincoln. A poor jumble of stuff for a human head you will say,
but I turn from one to another, so that instead of a mixed-up jumble I
try to have these different thoughts in layers through the mind. In this
way one may get a blend which is better than a hash. It may seem absurd
to think of putting poetry into rural credits or fertilizers, but unless
you can do something of the sort you can never get very far with them.
That was the great secret of Lincoln’s power. As judged by knowledge or
training or what we call “education,” there were many abler men in the
country at his time, but Lincoln knew how to appeal to the imagination
of the plain, common people. Read his speeches and papers and see how
he framed a fact with a mental picture which the common people could
understand. There were some wonderful pictures at the World’s Fair in
Chicago. Some were called masterpieces of fabulous value. People stood
before them and went on with something of awe in their heart—not quite
grasping the artist’s meaning. One less pretentious picture was named
“The Breaking of Home Ties,” and day by day a great throng stood before
it, silent and wet-eyed. It was a very simple home scene, picturing a boy
leaving his country home. Men studied it, walked away and then turned and
slowly came back that they might see it once more. As long as they live
people will remember that picture, because the poetry of it appealed to
them as the higher art could not do. I think Lincoln held the imagination
of the plain people much as that picture did. He was one who had suffered
and had been brought up with plain and simple family habits which were
fixed.
The children have come running in to warm their hands. They are lined
up in front of the big fire, rosy-faced and covered with snow. They
stand looking at me as I write. Dinner is nearly ready, and there is no
question about their readiness for it. Here comes Mother to look out at
the storm, and she forgets to remember that this group of snowbirds by
my fire have forgotten to stamp the snow off their feet. There will be a
puddle of water when they move off—but it will soon dry up. As I watch
them all it seems a good time to pick up Lowell’s essay on Lincoln:
“_He is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it
seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud.... He
has always addressed the intelligence of men. Never their prejudices,
their passion or their ignorance._”
Now I think that intelligence and power to speak as people think can only
come out of good family relations. Do I mean to say that the family group
is superior to the college, the school or the other great institutions
for training human thought? I do, wherever the family group is bound
together as it should be by love, good will, ambition and something of
sacrifice!
This nation and every other is ruled by the family spirit. All public
government is based on self-government, and the family is the training
school for all. What could the college or the school do with a great
crowd or mob of students who have never known the restraints of good
family life? Ask any teacher to tell you the difference between children
reared in a clean, careful family and those reared where the family
relations are much like a cross-cut saw. Line up the adults you know,
make a fair estimate of their character and see whether you can select
those who in their childhood had a fair chance in family life. There are,
of course, exceptions to all rules, but generally the boy or girl will
carry through life the habits and the human policies which are given him
in the family. As a rule these will be carried into the new family which
the boy or girl may start, and thus be handed on like those qualities
which are transmitted through blood lines. No use talking—the family unit
is the most important element in human society. A nation’s fame rests
upon the nation’s family.