to come near and moved her lips to speak. The man lay on the bed beside
her and put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would, he
could not hear her message. I suppose there can be no sadder picture in
the book of time than this denial by fate of the right to hear the last
message of love from one passing off into the long journey from which
there comes no report. Hopeless and bitter with disappointment, the man
found pencil and paper and a large book and gave them to the child.
Sitting up in bed with a last painful effort the little one painfully
wrote or printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her little
face aflame with love. He hid the note in his pocket as his wife and the
doctor came in—for the message from the unseen world seemed to him too
sacred for other human eyes.
The woman watched her husband closely and wondered why he felt so
cheerful as the days passed by. The little one was no longer with him,
yet he went about his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile.
She could not understand, but now and then she would see him take from
his pocket an envelope, open it and read what seemed to be a letter. He
would sometimes sit before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful.
As she went about her work, she would see him take out this mysterious
letter and read it over and over, as one would read a message from a
friend very dear of old and happy days. And she wondered what it could
be that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and then there
came the time when one evening in June the sun seemed to pass behind
the western hill with royal splendor. It seemed as if there had never
been such gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night, and the
practical wife looked from her back-door and saw her husband standing in
the barnyard gate like one in a glorious vision. The cows stood in the
lane, the empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood gazing
off to the west unheeding the call to his work. And as the woman waited
she saw her dreaming husband take that mysterious letter from his pocket
and read it once more. She could see the look of joy which spread over
his face as he read it. And this plain, practical woman, moved by some
sudden impulse, walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her
husband’s shoulder. He started out of his dream and looked guiltily at
the empty milk pail, but she only smiled and pointed to the paper he had
in his hand. He hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it to
her. It was just the scrawl which the little child had written after her
failure to make him hear. It was the last message from one who stood on
the threshold of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within.
And this was what the woman read, written in straggling childish letters:
“_I’ll tell God how good you are._”
And the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved of love and sympathy
through all these years, standing in the lonely silence of that golden
sunset knew that God’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen
country through the influence of that little child.
A DAY’S WORK
“Well, boys, I’m going to quit and call it a day!” As the Hope Farm man
spoke he got up from his knees in the strawberry patch and proceeded to
straighten out his back. It was half past four on Saturday, September 4.
Our week’s work was done—all but the chores. Our folks had picked and
packed and shipped four big truckloads of produce, with a surplus of
nearly 100 bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for next
week. This in addition to regular farm work—and one day off fishing for
the boys. It does not seem possible that September has come upon us! I do
not know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the clock’s calendar
points to that date. When the foolish finger of “daylight saving” appears
on the clock we can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on
the calendar. That is like the finger of fate. Yet it seems out of date.
We have not finished picking Gravenstein apples. In former years Labor
Day found us clearing up the McIntosh. This year we have not even touched
them! Last year the Mammoth sweet corn was about cleaned out in August.
Now we are beginning to pick. The season and the calendar are fighting
this year. Now if they will both turn in and hold Jack Frost up for a
couple of weeks later than usual we will forgive the season.
This morning I took this strawberry job from choice—surely no one
else wanted it. Thomas had not come back from his night on the market.
Philip cleaned up the chores, while the rest went to picking apples and
tomatoes. My daughter goes across the lawn with 100 or more chickens
at her heels. They are black Jersey Giants and R. I. Reds going to
breakfast. Out on the cool back porch Mother is playing the part of
family “Red.” That is, she is canning tomatoes. This porch is screened
in, and there is an oil stove to put heat into the canning outfit. The
lady is peeling a basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well
smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes! This job of mine
would make one of those model gardeners too disgusted for comment. We set
out the strawberry plants in April, in rows three feet apart, the plants
two feet in the row. The soil is strong, and we wanted to push it hard.
So in part of the patch we planted early peas between the rows, and in
the rest early potatoes. The theory of this plan is sound enough. You get
a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them out in time for the berry
plants to run out and cover the patch. In practice this does not always
work. While the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the patch
clean. Then came a time when these vines fell down and refused to get up.
Then came the constant rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all
over to seek shelter under these vines. Before we could interfere the
patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the long rains kept it growing.
The richness of the soil delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the
time we got them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle.
Here I am cleaning up this mess. Most of the work must be done with the
fingers—a hoe would tear up too many runners. You have to get down on
your knees and pull. As I crawl across the patch I leave a pile of weeds
behind me like a windrow. I hold up my fingers and it seems surprising
that they are not worn down at least half an inch. If I had kept those
peas and potatoes out of here the berries would be far better, and I
would not have this crawling job. I am not to be alone here after all.
That big black chicken leaves his crowd on the lawn and comes over here
to scratch beside me. The Jersey Giants are very tame and enterprising.
This one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member of my family
to take this job from choice. He will have all the worms I can dig out!
There is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and the truck comes
snorting into the barnyard. At the same time Tom and Broker, the big
grays, come down the hill with a load of apples. Tom scents the gasoline
and pricks back his ears with a snort. You can see him turn his head as
if talking to sober old Broker:
“That fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful breath he has! For years
we went on the road like honest horses and did all the marketing on the
farm. Why does this man keep such a great awkward thing around? It may
have speed, but I’ll bet it eats him out of house and home!”
“Well, now,” said old Broker, “every horse to his job. Working right on
this farm is good enough for me. Let that truck do the road work, says I.
No place like home for an honest horse like me.”
“Not much. I like a little life now and then. I want to get out on the
road among horses and see what is going on. That great, lazy, smelling
thing has got us farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are
doing. And look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and its keep—my
stars!”
“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself. A gallon of oats costs
something, too. I’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for
less than $200 a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work
off our shoulders!”
“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the
lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and
pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded
like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was
a very small matter.
Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. The
load sold for $106.95. It was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes.
That looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding
load of about the same class of goods brought $143. That is about the
way they have gone this season. Our prices are certainly lower, and
every item of cost is higher. There can be no question about that, yet
our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But for
the truck we would be worse off than we are now. We never could handle
our crop with the horses. It is more and more necessary to get the goods
right into market promptly and with no stop. While the truck has become a
necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. Old Tom is right
in saying that I have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year
and putting it in shape for the season. That item alone will add quite
a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. Some of the smaller
farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. This is
a hard life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that for some
reason people are not buying such goods as they did. The retail trade is
rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. I think the
plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in
the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.
My back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. I must straighten
them out by a change of occupation. I am going up on the hill to look at
the apple picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded,
dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. She eats two tomatoes
on the way up, and then I find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt
on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I think some
of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh, well, these scientists will
probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. We are picking
Gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels
or more. I planted a block of these trees as an experiment. Now I wish I
had more of them. The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care
much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. This year
any big apple brings a fair price. For instance, that despised Wolf River
has been our best seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce,
which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top is going to
Paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. I
have told in past years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and
how they have bought others. These trees have given surprising returns.
The larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long
way toward paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or selling
at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” It
would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it
comes in bearing. The only chemical I know of for extracting character
out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the day on the hills—here
in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes
purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would
never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and I go down on a
load of apples—big Tom and Broker creeping down the steep hillside as if
they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.
I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried several bushels to the
geese, and these wise birds make much of them. The big sow, too, stands
chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a grassy
corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a very proud little cow,
for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending
to chew her small cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to
complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste of real cream
already. But here is a pull at my shoulder, and little Rose, her face
washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14
of us today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all on the table,
so we can see what there is to start with. Have some of this soft hash.
That means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it.
You may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is a good time for
working up the odds and ends. Then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled
beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the
milk you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that if I took my
family to the restaurant in the city where I sometimes have my dinner,
the bill would be about as follows:
Hash $4.20
Potatoes 1.40
Beets 1.40
Sweet corn 3.60
Tomatoes 1.40
Milk .90
Bread and butter 1.40
Baked apples 2.30
-----
$16.60
That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. Now what
would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30
at the full limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was charged 30
cents for it! But no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it
is free here, and I hope you will have another baked apple. Try another
glass of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream
in when they drink it.
That dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. I am back at those
berries, and Philip has come to help me. Our folks have stopped picking
apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have
been picked off. That will have to be our “hay” this winter. The women
folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little
shopping. Philip and I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse,
and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than
I expected. A car has just rolled in with a family after apples. One
well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is
talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is _that_ the Hope
Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen! Why does he do that very common
work? He ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”
This young man will never know what it will mean next Spring when the
vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his
own labor turned them from failure to success. He probably never will
know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. This weed-pulling gets
to be mechanical. It doesn’t require much thought and I have a chance to
consider many things as we work. A short distance away is that patch of
annual sweet clover. The plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches
tall and still growing. The plants are seeding at different dates—some of
them earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be for those of
us who have the vision to make use of it.
But my day’s work is over—I’m going to adjourn. I am quite sure that I
could have picked 50 bushels of Gravenstein apples from those low trees
instead of working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day. What
now? I’m going to make an application of hot water and get this soil off
my hands and arms, shave, put on some clean clothes and take my book out
on the front porch until the girls come home. What book? Well, I found in
an old bookstore a copy of James G. Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress.”
As I had just read Champ Clark’s book I wanted to read Blaine’s. I can
well remember when about 40 per cent of the people of this country
considered James G. Blaine a hero. The trouble was that about 60 per cent
thought otherwise. His book is a sound and serious discussion of the
legislation which covered the Civil War and 20 years after. As I worked
here today I have been thinking of what Blaine says of Senator Matt
Carpenter. This man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went blind.
For three years he sat in darkness. Yet this affliction proved a great
blessing, for he forced himself to review and analyze and prove what he
had read, so that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers were
remarkable. This book contains the best statement I have ever read of the
reasons for trying to impeach President Andrew Johnson, and how and why
the effort failed. What’s that got to do with farming? Well, I think the
political events which clustered around that incident came about as near
to smashing the Constitution and wrecking the Government as anything that
has yet happened. But here comes Cherry-top on his new wheel. He actually
got home ahead of the car. I must hurry, or our folks will not find that
literary reception committee waiting for them. Better come along with
me. I have some other books that will make you think, and I’ll guarantee
that thinking will do you more good right now than a day’s work.
PROFESSOR GANDER’S ACADEMY
Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or rather a pair of
geese. As you read this they will be browning and sizzling in the oven,
with plenty of “sage and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They
will come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and backed
by several big pumpkin pies. I shall resign the position of carver,
remembering my old experience with the roast duck and the minister. The
duck got away from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending by
upsetting the gravy in front of the minister’s plate. After the usual
objections Mother will apply the carving knife to the geese, secretly
proud of her skill as an anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted
goose except provide white meat. Since Nature decided not to implant that
delicacy in the breast of a goose, man cannot supply it. Therefore the
lady must content herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most blind
men eating the white breast of a turkey and then the brown breast of a
goose would call for more of the latter. It is something like this rather
foolish preference for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady and
Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell! Anyway, a goose, well
stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering well suited to the Hope Farm
table.
No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over Mother’s generous slices
Mr. Gander will lead his family across the lawn and find something to
be thankful for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great respect for
Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature may have left the white
meat out of the goose in order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put
an extra quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems to me
that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about the most successful
teachers of youth I have ever known. To many a learned educator I would
say, “Go to the goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young
for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose meat is rapidly
disappearing from the Thanksgiving altar. Mother has scraped the bones
nearly clean. What little remains will be boiled out as soup. This bird
has lived what I may call an eminently successful life. He ends his
career in the highest place possible to be conceived of in the philosophy
of a goose. He was trained and educated from the start, and as I look at
Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of any human teachers who
have had any greater success in training their charges into just what a
man or woman ought to be.
In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the old barn and laid 21
eggs. We rather expected more, but the goose was master of ceremonies.
She came back to the same place each day, and finally we found her there
hissing like the steam escaping from a broken pipe. It was her signal
that she was ready to serve as incubator. So we put 13 eggs under her
and eight more under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure as
a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a wonder. She had
raised three broods of chicks with great success. Surely she ought to be
a better guide and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first
brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children would you not
choose those who have had experience? In due time, and on the same day,
the goose walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on her nest
and compelled five to stay under her. The two broods kept apart. The
hen was evidently disappointed with the way the goose handled children,
and she punished her brood whenever they tried to mingle with their own
brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after about eight weeks I
noticed a strange thing. The hen’s brood, though eating the same food,
would average at least 30 per cent lighter than the goslings which ran
with the goose. There was no question about it—the hen’s charges were
inferior in size and weight and in “common sense,” or the art of looking
out for themselves.
There being no chance for an argument about it, I concluded that it was
very largely a matter of education, and we began to study the methods
of teaching employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen. The first
thing we noticed was the influence of the male side of the family. Roger
Red, the big rooster, paid no attention to his wife’s family. All he did
was to mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after worms or
seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way he kicked it to one side and
gave not even a suggestion to his busy wife. He was like one of those men
who will not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife carry the
child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was a true head of the family. He
kept right with the goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off
rats and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a hawk or a cat. In
time of danger the rooster ran for shelter, but the gander stepped right
out in front of his brood with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s
arm, and that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the enemy.
He taught his children to graze on weeds and grass. When anyone forgot to
feed them the gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family right
into the garden, where they picked up their share. He led the goslings
through the wet grass and into the brook, where they cleaned out all the
watercress and weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the barnyard
and cried if breakfast did not come on time. She would not let her
children wade through the wet grass or get into the water, and she did
not know that a young goose can eat grass like a calf. The hen worried
herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts of geese
and headed for the brook.
Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed to understand the
first law of education—to train a child properly you must understand
his natural instincts and tendencies and build upon them. For many
generations the hen has feared water, and has been taught that all
feathered young must be kept away from it. I have no doubt that a race
of swimming hens could be developed, provided the fear of water could
be taken from the mind of the hen. _For the hen must swim with her mind
before she can swim with her feet!_ I have seen many cut-and-dried
teachers as much afraid of the truth as this big Red hen was afraid of
water. At any rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior
to the other. One set had the benefit of father’s example and influence.
Their teacher knew from long experience just what a young goose ought to
know. The teacher knew that because she had been a goose herself, and
could remember her youth. The hen’s brood knew nothing of their father’s
example—no more than some little humans who only seem to know there is a
man in the world who claims to be the detached head of the family. The
hen’s goslings were brought up in one of these beheaded families. Their
teacher ranked as a successful educator, but as she had never been a
young goose herself she could not teach her children what they ought to
know. It was not unlike trying to make a blacksmith out of a poet, or
a drygoods salesman out of a natural farmer. These feathered children
were fed and warmed and defended, but they could not make perfect geese
because they were not trained to work out a goose job.