Dr. Grenfell has given his life to service in the far North among the
fishermen of Labrador. A man of his ability could easily have gained
fame and wealth by practising his profession in some great city. He went
where he was most needed—into the cold, lonely places where humanity
hungers and suffers for help. It has always seemed to me just about the
noblest thing in life for a man of great natural ability to gain what
science and education can give him and carry that great gift out to those
who need it most. Grenfell did that, and this modest story of his life
is wonderful to anyone who can get the message. I have always thought
that the greatest teachers and preachers and wise men generally are
not so much needed in the big cities as in the lonely country places.
The city owes all it has in men and money to the country, but it will
seldom acknowledge the gift. The city itself is able to offer as a gift
knowledge, science and training. Yet those who receive this gift desire
for the most part to remain in the city, when they should carry their
gift out into the lonely and hard places where the city must finally go
for strength. The storm seems hard tonight, but it is a mere zephyr to
the Winters which Dr. Grenfell’s people endure. I wish I could tell you
some of the wonderful things which have happened in that lonely land. At
one place the doctor found a girl dying of typhoid. There was no way of
saving her, and as soon as she was buried it was necessary to burn the
rude bunk and the straw in which she lay. They carried it to the top of
a hill and built a fire. For several days one of the fishing boats had
been lost at sea in the fog, and had been given up for lost with all on
board. The despairing men in that boat—far out at sea—saw the light when
that hideous bed was burned and were able to get to land! Some of you
self-pitying people ought to read how Dr. Grenfell organized a little
orphans’ home to care for the little waifs of this lonely place. In one
case a little girl of four, while her father was away hunting, crawled
out into the snow, so that both legs were badly frozen. Gangrene set in
halfway to the knee, and the father actually chopped both legs off to
save her life! Think of such a child in the frozen North. I think of
her as little Rose hugs the kitty close. Dr. Grenfell took this child,
operated on her, obtained artificial legs, and now she can run about like
other children. I wish I could tell you more about this book. At one
time two men came together after medicine. One took a bottle of cough
mixture, the other a strong turpentine liniment for a sprained knee. By
mistake they mixed up the medicine. One rubbed the cough medicine on
his knee, the other drank the liniment. If I had some fellow who thinks
the Lord has put a special curse on him before our fire tonight I would
tell him what others have endured. The chances are we could make him
contribute something to the cause before we were done with him.
The other book I mentioned, “The Great Hunger,” is a story of Norwegian
life and, as I think, very powerful. A boy born to poverty and disgrace
grew up with a great hunger in his heart—he knew not what it was. He felt
that power and material wealth would bring him the happiness he sought.
He gained education, power, wealth and love, yet still the great hunger
tortured him. Poverty, sickness, the deepest sorrow fell upon him, and
at last the great hunger was satisfied by doing a needed service for the
man who had done him the most hideous wrong! I wish I could tell you more
about it. It is a powerful book; but it is time for little Rose to go to
bed. Off she goes with a hug for all, and the children follow her one by
one. I am not going to put more logs on that fire. Let it die down. The
end of the day has come. Let the storm howl through the night like a pack
of wolves at the door. They cannot get at us. Even if they did they can
never destroy the memory of this night.
“CLASS”
The other day the papers announced the death of the ex-Empress Eugénie.
She lingered along, feeble and half-blind, until she was nearly 95 years
old. She has been called “the Queen of Sorrows,” for few other women have
lived a sadder life. Very few of this generation knew or cared anything
about her. I presume most of our young people skipped the details of her
life as given in the papers. Yet when I was a boy, shortly before the
war between France and Germany, the women of the world regarded this sad
empress as the great model of beauty and fashion. I suppose it would
be hard for women in these days to realize how this beautiful empress
dictated to people in every land how they should arrange their hair and
wear their dresses. At that time most women wore their hair in short nets
bunched just below the neck, and it was the age of “hoopskirts”—most of
them, as it seemed, four to five feet wide. Just how this woman managed
to put her ideas of fashion into the imagination of her sisters I never
could understand. From the big city to the little backwoods hamlet women
were studying to see what “Ugeeny” advised them to wear. I have often
wondered if in her last days the poor, blind, feeble woman remembered
those days of power.
Her death brings to mind an incident that had long been forgotten. I
had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some milk, since our
cow was dry. In those days, any caller—even a little boy—was like a
pond in which one went fishing for compliments. The woman of the house,
an immense, fat creature, with the shape of a barrel, a short, thick
neck and a round moon face, had arrayed herself in glad clothes of the
latest style—several years, I imagine, behind Paris. She wore an immense
hoopskirt, which gave her the appearance of walking inside of a hogshead.
Her hair was parted in the middle and brought down beside her wide face
to be caught in a net just below her ears. I know so little and care so
much less about style in clothes that I can remember in detail only two
costumes that I have ever seen women wear. This outfit is one of them.
“This is just what Ugeeny is wearing,” said the fat lady as she poured
out the milk. “You can tell your aunt that you have seen one lady dressed
just like Paris.”
It did not strike me as very impressive, but I was glad to have the
experience.
“You can tell her, too, that a very fine gentleman came here today and
said I looked enough like Ugeeny to be her half-sister—dressed as I am
now. He has been in Paris, too.”
“It was a book agent,” put in her husband, “and sold her a book on the
strength of that yarn. Say, Mary, you don’t look any more like Ugeeny
than old Spot does—and you don’t need to.”
“The trouble with you, John Drake, is that you have no idea of beauty.”
“I know it. I may not have any soul, but I’ve got a stomach, and I know
that you can make the best doughnuts and Indian pudding ever made in
Bristol County. That’s more than Ugeeny ever did, or ever can do. You are
worth three of her for practical value to the world, and I think you a
handsome woman—but you can’t look like her, because you haven’t got the
shape, and I’m glad of it.”
But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident
truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old
Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.
“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look
like Ugeeny?”
Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.
“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”
“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are
divided into two classes—strung together like beads on different strings.
Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking
or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized
it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the
finest men that ever lived on earth!”
“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa
started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”
But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and
new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the
world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself
carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean.
Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse will have water and heat and light
right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days
farmers will be kings.”
The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.
“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the
crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles
Sumner on the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed them down
and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of
these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what
the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions
which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask
is, _Ain’t I in their class?_”
“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she
shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes
them discontented!”
“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in
Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has
all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty
good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and
such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there will be _farm_
colleges as big as any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or
doctoring. Then people will see that farming is _agriculture_, and the
difference between the two will change the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t
amount to much as a woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will
ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary _in her class_.
These clothes look foolish to me, but every woman who follows Ugeeny in
dress gets into her class, and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one
grade to another, for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt and
that bob net for their hair and rise up to better things, and it will
be Ugeeny that started them. She may be only a painted doll, but she
has given the women ideas of beauty and something better than common.
Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle life. That’s
why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s got the vision of beauty and
something far ahead of you, John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s
getting _class_. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they help to
set her free.”
“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I suppose, according to you,
I ought to put on a swallow-tailed coat every time I milk.”
“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved every day and put on your
best clothes once a day for supper, you would get in the upper class,
and carry your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, _ain’t I in their
class_?”
I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding far down the
road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had grown tired of waiting for the milk,
so he blew the horn to remind me that I was still in the class of errand
boys.
In August of that year I went up on Black Mount after huckleberries,
and ran upon Grandpa once more. He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and
three children were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle of
berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks as sole inhabitants.
Old Grandpa sat on the rock and waved his stick about.
“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I have seen it all in
wheat. Farmers let education and money get away, and, of course, the
best boys chased out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or
’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these coming days to
raise huckleberries in this way. They will be raised in gardens like
strawberries and raspberries. This hill will have to produce something
that is worth more—peaches or apples.”
“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour hill, Grandpa?” asked
one of the boys. “There’s a seedling now—10 years old and not four feet
high!”
“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will coal in place of wood.
I don’t know how it will be done, but some day or ’nuther they will use
yeast in the soil as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll
harness the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these farm colleges
give us knowledge. And farmers, too. They won’t always stand back and
fight each other and backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day
or ’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what life ought to be.
They will come together to live, instead of standing apart to die. I may
not see it, and people laugh at me for saying what I know must come true.
But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they try to kill Galileo?
Wasn’t Morse voted a fool? Hasn’t it always been so with the men and
women who looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead? And, tell
me this: _Ain’t I in their class?_”
That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it, and yet when I read
the headlines announcing the death of Empress Eugénie I had to put the
paper down, for there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer day
on the New England hills. On the rock in that lonely pasture sat old
Grandpa pointing with his stick far across the rolling valley, far to the
shadow on the distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting
him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith undimmed. I wish I
could look across the valley to the distant hills with the sublime hope
with which he asked his old question:
“_Ain’t I in their class?_”
A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah, but if Grandpa could
see it now! The old house with its “beau” windows and new roof seemed
to be dressed with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still
Empress of France. There were power and light and heat all through it.
Two boys and a girl were home from an agricultural college—one of the
boys being manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount was a
forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the old swamp was drained and
lay a thick mat of clover. Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one
thing. Education and power had brought material things, which would have
seemed to be miracles to John and Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,”
after all, as Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent
and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what Grandpa said—“That’s
what they’ve got to be, if the world is going ahead.”
Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the noblest legacy of the
ages.
But in the churchyard back in one corner I came upon Grandpa’s grave. It
was not very well cared for. It had not been trimmed. A bird had made
her nest and reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It was
a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining pasture put her
head over the stone wall and tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected
grave. And this was what they had carved on the stone:
“_The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!_”
If I could have my way I would put up another stone with this inscription:
GRANDPA.
“_He has entered their class._”
“I’LL TELL GOD”
Just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call
“the unseen world.” That means the state of existence after death. Many
of our readers have written asking what I think or know about this. Most
of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather
hard conditions. They have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or
some dear friend. Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to
imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death,
and I have had some curious experiences which you might or might not
credit. When I was a boy, I was thrown much into the society of avowed
spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many
“séances.” The evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those
things disgusted me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did
possess a strange and peculiar power which I have never been able to
understand.
Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered
greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble
over which they constantly brooded. I have come to believe that the blind
and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand things which most
others do not. An afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary
power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or
faculty. The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears.
The deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick judgment
or instinct of decision. The man plunged into grief or despondency at
the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some
extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. Someone has
said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do
anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from
the great “unseen world.” For example, I will ask you this question: Take
a woman like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing. Take a man
who is totally deaf and also blind—_how would they know physically when
they are dead_? I think I can understand why it is that real advancement
in true religion and Christian thought has for the most part been made by
some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been
forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!
Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer. I do not know
whether he is living now or not. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he
has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little
child had with the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf. Through
long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark
discouragement upon him. He owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do.
A hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically,
through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. He did not know what it
was; a longing for human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman
but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she
could not understand. She made her husband comfortable and loved him
in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get
over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. They had
no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. Sometimes at
night you would see the deaf man standing in the barnyard at the gate,
looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious
in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him standing there with
the empty milk pail on his arm. She could not understand the vision and
glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul
at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming
husband by the arm and shout in his ear:
“_Wake up and get that milking done._”
She meant well, and her husband never complained. She meant to save his
money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage
off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”
Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,”
which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. One Saturday afternoon
this man and his wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing
her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. As he
stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed
by a little child. It was a little black-haired thing with great brown
eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. A poor thin
little thing with a shabby dress and tattered shoes. As she passed, the
child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave
her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. The
woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little
stone.
“You awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take that,” and with her
heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. Then something like the love
of a lioness for her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many
fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really
nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded
together forever. Under excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but
they are strangely and forcibly emphatic. The woman quailed before the
roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for
protection. A crowd gathered and Lawyer Brown came running down from his
office.
“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know me; get her for me.”
It was not very hard to do. The woman had married a man with this little
girl. The man had run away and left her (I do not much blame him), and
this “brat” had been left on her hands.
“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “A good riddance to
bad rubbish.”
So Lawyer Brown fixed it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where
his wagon stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.
When the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband
sitting on the wagon seat with the little girl sitting on his lap. She
had found that she could not make him hear, so she just sat there
looking into his face, and they both understood. But the good woman did
not understand.
“What do you mean by picking up a child like you would a stray kitten?
Put her down and leave her here.”
But that was as far as she got. Her husband looked at her with a fierce
glare, and there was a sound in his throat which she did not like. I can
tell you that when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally
assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it that cannot be
resisted. And when they got home and the little child sat up at the table
between them, something of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. She
actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled and ran
to the farmer and climbed on his knee. The woman paused at her work to
watch them as they sat before the fire, and something that was like the
beginning of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came to her that
this little one had seen at once something in her husband’s life and soul
that _she_ had not been able to understand.
There was something more than beautiful in the strange intimacy which
sprang up between the deaf farmer and the little girl. In some way she
made herself understood and she followed him about day by day at his work
or on his lonely walk of a Sunday afternoon. You would see her riding
on the wagon beside him, standing near as he milked, or holding his
finger as he came down the lane at sunset. On a sunny Sunday afternoon,
you might come upon them sitting at the top of a high hill with the
old dog beside them, looking off across the pleasant country. And as
the shadows grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying the
little one, and the old dog walking ahead. I cannot tell you the peace
and renewed hope which the little waif brought to that farmer’s heart
through the gentle yet mighty force of love. And the farmer’s wife would
look out of the window and see them coming. She could not walk with
her husband through lonely places and make him understand, because she
had never learned how. Yet the little one was drawing the older people
closer together and was showing them more of the greatest mystery and the
greatest meaning of life. But there came a Sunday when the little one
could not walk over the hills. The day was bright and fair, the farmer
stood looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and the old
dog put his head on one side and regarded his master curiously. They
could both hear the voice of the hills calling them away. And the voices
came to the little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little
bed upstairs. The doctor shook his head when they called him in. The
child was done with earthly things,—surely called off into the Country
Unseen just as love and home had come to her. The farmer went up into the
sick-room where his wife sat by the little sufferer. This man had never
regarded his wife as a handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as
she bent over the child. For at last in the face of death and sacrifice,
love had really come to that woman’s lonely heart, and the joy of it
illuminated her face like a lamp within.