Father Sells the Farm
Green's Coulee was a delightful place for boys. It offered hunting and
coasting and many other engrossing sports, but my father, as the seasons
went by, became thoroughly dissatisfied with its disadvantages. More and
more he resented the stumps and ridges which interrupted his plow. Much
of his quarter-section remained unbroken. There were ditches to be dug
in the marsh and young oaks to be uprooted from the forest, and he was
obliged to toil with unremitting severity. There were times, of course,
when field duties did not press, but never a day came when the necessity
for twelve hours' labor did not exist.
Furthermore, as he grubbed or reaped he remembered the glorious prairies
he had crossed on his exploring trip into Minnesota before the war, and
the oftener he thought of them the more bitterly he resented his
up-tilted, horse-killing fields, and his complaining words sank so deep
into the minds of his sons that for years thereafter they were unable to
look upon any rise of ground as an object to be admired.
It irked him beyond measure to force his reaper along a steep slope, and
he loathed the irregular little patches running up the ravines behind
the timbered knolls, and so at last like many another of his neighbors
he began to look away to the west as a fairer field for conquest. He no
more thought of going east than a liberated eagle dreams of returning to
its narrow cage. He loved to talk of Boston, to boast of its splendor,
but to live there, to earn his bread there, was unthinkable. Beneath the
sunset lay the enchanted land of opportunity and his liberation came
unexpectedly.
Sometime in the spring of 1868, a merchant from LaCrosse, a plump man
who brought us candy and was very cordial and condescending, began
negotiations for our farm, and in the discussion of plans which
followed, my conception of the universe expanded. I began to understand
that "Minnesota" was not a bluff but a wide land of romance, a prairie,
peopled with red men, which lay far beyond the big river. And then, one
day, I heard my father read to my mother a paragraph from the county
paper which ran like this, "It is reported that Richard Garland has sold
his farm in Green's Coulee to our popular grocer, Mr. Speer. Mr. Speer
intends to make of it a model dairy farm."
This intention seemed somehow to reflect a ray of glory upon us, though
I fear it did not solace my mother, as she contemplated the loss of home
and kindred. She was not by nature an emigrant,--few women are. She was
content with the pleasant slopes, the kindly neighbors of Green's
Coulee. Furthermore, most of her brothers and sisters still lived just
across the ridge in the valley of the Neshonoc, and the thought of
leaving them for a wild and unknown region was not pleasant.
To my father, on the contrary, change was alluring. Iowa was now the
place of the rainbow, and the pot of gold. He was eager to push on
toward it, confident of the outcome. His spirit was reflected in one of
the songs which we children particularly enjoyed hearing our mother
sing, a ballad which consisted of a dialogue between a husband and wife
on this very subject of emigration. The words as well as its wailing
melody still stir me deeply, for they lay hold of my sub-conscious
memory--embodying admirably the debate which went on in our home as
well as in the homes of other farmers in the valley,--only, alas! our
mothers did not prevail.
It begins with a statement of unrest on the part of the husband who
confesses that he is about to give up his plow and his cart--
Away to Colorado a journey I'll go,
For to double my fortune as other men do,
_While here I must labor each day in the field
And the winter consumes all the summer doth yield_.
To this the wife replies:
Dear husband, I've noticed with a sorrowful heart
That you long have neglected your plow and your cart,
Your horses, sheep, cattle at random do run,
And your new Sunday jacket goes every day on.
_Oh, stay on your farm and you'll suffer no loss,
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss._
But the husband insists:
Oh, wife, let us go; Oh, don't let us wait;
I long to be there, and I long to be great,
While you some fair lady and who knows but I
May be some rich governor long 'fore I die,
_Whilst here I must labor each day in the field,
And the winter consumes all the summer doth yield_.
But wife shrewdly retorts:
Dear husband, remember those lands are so dear
They will cost you the labor of many a year.
Your horses, sheep, cattle will all be to buy,
You will hardly get settled before you must die.
Oh, stay on the farm,--etc.
The husband then argues that as in that country the lands are all
cleared to the plow, and horses and cattle not very dear, they would
soon be rich. Indeed, "we will feast on fat venison one-half of the
year." Thereupon the wife brings in her final argument:
Oh, husband, remember those lands of delight
Are surrounded by Indians who murder by night.
Your house will be plundered and burnt to the ground
While your wife and your children lie mangled around.
This fetches the husband up with a round turn:
Oh, wife, you've convinced me, I'll argue no more,
I never once thought of your dying before.
I love my dear children although they are small
And you, my dear wife, I love greatest of all.
Refrain (both together)
We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.
This song was not an especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains
and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his
sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule
the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a
molly-coddle--or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an
antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which
exactly expressed his love of exploration and adventure.
This ballad which dates back to the conquest of the Allegheny mountains
opens with a fine uplifting note,
Cheer up, brothers, as we go
O'er the mountains, westward ho,
Where herds of deer and buffalo
Furnish the fare.
and the refrain is at once a bugle call and a vision:
Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha!
and when my mother's clear voice rose on the notes of that exultant
chorus, our hearts responded with a surge of emotion akin to that which
sent the followers of Daniel Boone across the Blue Ridge, and lined the
trails of Kentucky and Ohio with the canvas-covered wagons of the
pioneers.
A little farther on in the song came these words,
When we've wood and prairie land,
Won by our toil,
We'll reign like kings in fairy land,
Lords of the soil!
which always produced in my mind the picture of a noble farm-house in a
park-like valley, just as the line, "Well have our rifles ready, boys,"
expressed the boldness and self-reliance of an armed horseman.
The significance of this song in the lives of the McClintocks and the
Garlands cannot be measured. It was the marching song of my
Grandfather's generation and undoubtedly profoundly influenced my father
and my uncles in all that they did. It suggested shining mountains, and
grassy vales, swarming with bear and elk. It called to green savannahs
and endless flowery glades. It voiced as no other song did, the pioneer
impulse throbbing deep in my father's blood. That its words will not
bear close inspection today takes little from its power. Unquestionably
it was a directing force in the lives of at least three generations of
my pioneering race. Its strains will be found running through this book
from first to last, for its pictures continued to allure my father on
and on toward "the sunset regions," and its splendid faith carried him
through many a dark vale of discontent.
Our home was a place of song, notwithstanding the severe toil which was
demanded of every hand, for often of an evening, especially in winter
time, father took his seat beside the fire, invited us to his knees, and
called on mother to sing. These moods were very sweet to us and we
usually insisted upon his singing for us. True, he hardly knew one tune
from another, but he had a hearty resounding chant which delighted us,
and one of the ballads which we especially like to hear him repeat was
called _Down the Ohio_. Only one verse survives in my memory:
The river is up, the channel is deep,
The winds blow high and strong.
The flash of the oars, the stroke we keep,
As we row the old boat along,
Down the O-h-i-o.
Mother, on the contrary, was gifted with a voice of great range and
sweetness, and from her we always demanded _Nettie Wildwood_, _Lily
Dale_, _Lorena_ or some of Root's stirring war songs. We loved her
noble, musical tone, and yet we always enjoyed our father's tuneless
roar. There was something dramatic and moving in each of his ballads. He
made the words mean so much.
It is a curious fact that nearly all of the ballads which the
McClintocks and other of these powerful young sons of the border loved
to sing were sad. _Nellie Wildwood_, _Minnie Minturn_, _Belle Mahone_,
_Lily Dale_ were all concerned with dead or dying maidens or with
mocking birds still singing o'er their graves. Weeping willows and
funeral urns ornamented the cover of each mournful ballad. Not one
smiling face peered forth from the pages of _The Home Diadem_.
Lonely like a withered tree,
What is all the world to me?
Light and life were all in thee,
Sweet Belle Mahone,
wailed stalwart David and buxom Deborah, and ready tears moistened my
tanned plump cheeks.
Perhaps it was partly by way of contrast that the jocund song of
_Freedom's Star_ always meant so much to me, but however it came about,
I am perfectly certain that it was an immense subconscious force in the
life of my father as it had been in the westward marching of the
McClintocks. In my own thinking it became at once a vision and a lure.
The only humorous songs which my uncles knew were negro ditties, like
_Camp Town Racetrack_ and _Jordan am a Hard Road to Trabbel_ but in
addition to the sad ballads I have quoted, they joined my mother in _The
Pirate's Serenade_, _Erin's Green Shore_, _Bird of the Wilderness_, and
the memory of their mellow voices creates a golden dusk between me and
that far-off cottage.
During the summer of my eighth year, I took a part in haying and
harvest, and I have a painful recollection of raking hay after the
wagons, for I wore no shoes and the stubble was very sharp. I used to
slip my feet along close to the ground, thus bending the stubble away
from me before throwing my weight on it, otherwise walking was painful.
If I were sent across the field on an errand I always sought out the
path left by the broad wheels of the mowing machine and walked therein
with a most delicious sense of safety.
It cannot be that I was required to work very hard or very steadily, but
it seemed to me then, and afterward, as if I had been made one of the
regular hands and that I toiled the whole day through. I rode old Josh
for the hired man to plow corn, and also guided the lead horse on the
old McCormick reaper, my short legs sticking out at right angles from my
body, and I carried water to the field.
It appears that the blackbirds were very thick that year and
threatened, in August, to destroy the corn. They came in gleeful clouds,
settling with multitudinous clamor upon the stalks so that it became the
duty of Den Green to scare them away by shooting at them, and I was
permitted to follow and pick up the dead birds and carry them as "game."
There was joy and keen excitement in this warfare. Sometimes when Den
fired into a flock, a dozen or more came fluttering down. At other times
vast swarms rose at the sound of the gun with a rush of wings which
sounded like a distant storm. Once Den let me fire the gun, and I took
great pride in this until I came upon several of the shining little
creatures bleeding, dying in the grass. Then my heart was troubled and I
repented of my cruelty. Mrs. Green put the birds into potpies but my
mother would not do so. "I don't believe in such game," she said. "It's
bad enough to shoot the poor things without eating them."
Once we came upon a huge mountain rattlesnake and Den killed it with a
shot of his gun. How we escaped being bitten is a mystery, for we
explored every path of the hills and meadows in our bare feet, our
trousers rolled to the knee. We hunted plums and picked blackberries and
hazelnuts with very little fear of snakes, and yet we must have always
been on guard. We loved our valley, and while occasionally we yielded to
the lure of "Freedom's star," we were really content with Green's Coulee
and its surrounding hills.