My Mother is Stricken
In the summer of 1889, notwithstanding a widening opportunity for
lectures in the East, I decided to make another trip to the West. In all
my mother's letters I detected a tremulous undertone of sadness, of
longing, and this filled me with unrest even in the midst of the
personal security I had won. I could not forget the duty I owed to her
who had toiled so uncomplainingly that I might be clothed and fed and
educated, and so I wrote to her announcing the date of my arrival.
My friend, Dr. Cross, eager to see The Short-Grass Country which was a
far-off and romantic territory to him, arranged to go with me. It was in
July, and very hot the day we started, but we were both quite disposed
to make the most of every good thing and to ignore all discomforts. I'm
not entirely certain, but I think I occupied a sleeping car berth on
this trip; if I did so it was for the first time in my life. Anyhow, I
must have treated myself to regular meals, for I cannot recall being ill
on the train. This, in itself, was remarkable.
Strange to say, most of the incidents of the journey between Boston and
Wisconsin are blended like the faded figures on a strip of sun-smit
cloth, nothing remains definitely distinguishable except the memory of
our visit to my Uncle William's farm in Neshonoc, and the recollection
of the pleasure we took in the vivid bands of wild flowers which spun,
like twin ribbons of satin, from beneath the wheels of the rear coach as
we rushed across the state. All else has vanished as though it had
never been.
These primitive blossoms along the railroad's right-of-way deeply
delighted my friend, but to me they were more than flowers, they were
cups of sorcery, torches of magic incense. Each nodding pink brought
back to me the sights and sounds and smells of the glorious meadows of
my boyhood's vanished world. Every weed had its mystic tale. The slopes
of the hills, the cattle grouped under the trees, all wrought upon me
like old half-forgotten poems.
My uncle, big, shaggy, gentle and reticent, met us at the faded little
station and drove us away toward the sun-topped "sleeping camel" whose
lines and shadows were so lovely and so familiar. In an hour we were at
the farm-house where quaint Aunt Maria made us welcome in true pioneer
fashion, and cooked a mess of hot biscuit to go with the honey from the
bees in the garden. They both seemed very remote, very primitive even to
me, to my friend Cross they were exactly like characters in a story. He
could only look and listen and smile from his seat in the corner.
William, a skilled bee-man, described to us his methods of tracking wild
swarms, and told us how he handled those in his hives. "I can scoop 'em
up as if they were so many kernels of corn," he said. After supper as we
all sat on the porch watching the sunset, he reverted to the brave days
of fifty-five when deer and bear came down over the hills, when a rifle
was almost as necessary as a hoe, and as he talked I revived in him the
black-haired smiling young giant of my boyhood days, untouched of age or
care.
He was a poet, in his dreamy reticent way, for when next morning I
called attention to the beauty of the view down the valley, his face
took on a kind of wistful sweetness and a certain shyness as he
answered with a visible effort to conceal his feeling--"I like it--No
place better. I wish your father and mother had never left the valley."
And in this wish I joined.
On the third day we resumed our journey toward Dakota, and the Doctor,
though outwardly undismayed by the long hard ride and the increasing
barrenness of the level lands, sighed with relief when at last I pointed
out against the level sky-line the wavering bulk of the grain elevator
which alone marked the wind-swept deserted site of Ordway, the end of
our journey. He was tired.
Business, I soon learned, had not been going well on the border during
the two years of my absence. None of the towns had improved. On the
contrary, all had lost ground.
Another dry year was upon the land and the settlers were deeply
disheartened. The holiday spirit of eight years before had entirely
vanished. In its place was a sullen rebellion against government and
against God. The stress of misfortune had not only destroyed hope, it
had brought out the evil side of many men. Dissensions had grown common.
Two of my father's neighbors had gone insane over the failure of their
crops. Several had slipped away "between two days" to escape their
debts, and even little Jessie, who met us at the train, brave as a
meadow lark, admitted that something gray had settled down over the
plain.
Graveyards, jails, asylums, all the accompaniments of civilization, were
now quite firmly established. On the west lay the lands of the Sioux and
beyond them the still more arid foot-hills. The westward movement of the
Middle Border for the time seemed at an end.
My father, Jessie told me, was now cultivating more than five hundred
acres of land, and deeply worried, for his wheat was thin and light and
the price less than sixty cents per bushel.
It was nearly sunset as we approached the farm, and a gorgeous sky was
overarching it, but the bare little house in which my people lived
seemed a million miles distant from Boston. The trees which my father
had planted, the flowers which my mother had so faithfully watered, had
withered in the heat. The lawn was burned brown. No green thing was in
sight, and no shade offered save that made by the little cabin. On every
side stretched scanty yellowing fields of grain, and from every worn
road, dust rose like smoke from crevices, giving upon deep-hidden
subterranean fires. It was not a good time to bring a visitor to the
homestead, but it was too late to retreat.
Mother, grayer, older, much less vigorous than she had been two years
before, met us, silently, shyly, and I bled, inwardly, every time I
looked at her. A hesitation had come into her speech, and the indecision
of her movements scared me, but she was too excited and too happy to
admit of any illness. Her smile was as sweet as ever.
Dr. Cross quietly accepted the hot narrow bedroom which was the best we
could offer him, and at supper took his place among the harvest help
without any noticeable sign of repugnance. It was all so remote, so
characteristic of the border that interest dominated disgust.
He was much touched, as indeed was I, by the handful of wild roses which
father brought in to decorate the little sitting-room. "There's nothing
I like better," he said, "than a wild rose." The old trailer had
noticeably softened. While retaining his clarion voice and much of his
sleepless energy, he was plainly less imperious of manner, less harsh of
speech.
Jessie's case troubled me. As I watched her, studied her, I perceived
that she possessed uncommon powers, but that she must be taken out of
this sterile environment. "She must be rescued at once or she will live
and die the wife of some Dakota farmer," I said to mother.
Again I was disturbed by the feeling that in some way my own career was
disloyal, something built upon the privations of my sister as well as
upon those of my mother. I began definitely to plan their rescue. "They
must not spend the rest of their days on this barren farm," I said to
Dr. Cross, and my self-accusation spurred me to sterner resolve.
It was not a pleasant time for my good friend, but, as it turned out,
there was a special providence in his being there, for a few days later,
while Jessie and I were seated in the little sitting-room busily
discussing plans for her schooling we heard a short, piercing cry,
followed by low sobbing.
Hurrying out into the yard, I saw my mother standing a few yards from
the door, her sweet face distorted, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
"What is it, mother?" I called out.
"I can't lift my feet," she stammered, putting her arms about my neck.
"I can't move!" and in her voice was such terror and despair that my
blood chilled.
It was true! She was helpless. From the waist downward all power of
locomotion had departed. Her feet were like lead, drawn to the earth by
some terrible magnetic power.
In a frenzy of alarm, Jessie and I carried her into the house and laid
her on her bed. My heart burned with bitter indignation. "This is the
end," I said. "Here is the result of long years of ceaseless toil. She
has gone as her mother went, in the midst of the battle."
At the moment I cursed the laws of man, I cursed myself. I accused my
father. Each moment my remorse and horror deepened, and yet I could do
nothing, nothing but kneel beside the bed and hold her hand while
Jessie ran to call the doctor. She returned soon to say she could not
find him.
Slowly the stricken one grew calmer and at last, hearing a wagon drive
into the yard, I hurried out to tell my father what had happened. He
read in my face something wrong. "What's the matter?" he asked as I drew
near.
"Mother is stricken," I said. "She cannot walk."
He stared at me in silence, his gray eyes expanding like those of an
eagle, then calmly, mechanically he got down and began to unhitch the
team. He performed each habitual act with most minute care, till I,
impatient of his silence, his seeming indifference, repeated, "Don't you
understand? Mother has had a stroke! She is absolutely helpless."
Then he asked, "Where is your friend Dr. Cross?"
"I don't know, I thought he was with you."
Even as I was calling for him, Dr. Cross came into the cabin, his arms
laden with roses. He had been strolling about on the prairie.
With his coming hope returned. Calmly yet skillfully he went to the aid
of the sufferer, while father, Jessie and I sat in agonized suspense
awaiting his report.
At last he came back to us with gentle reassuring smile.
"There is no immediate danger," he said, and the tone in which he spoke
was even more comforting than his words. "As soon as she recovers from
her terror she will not suffer"--then he added gravely, "A minute blood
vessel has ruptured in her brain, and a small clot has formed there. If
this is absorbed, as I think it will be, she will recover. Nothing can
be done for her. No medicine can reach her. It is just a question of
rest and quiet." Then to me he added something which stung like a
poisoned dart. "She should have been relieved from severe household
labor years ago."
My heart filled with bitterness and rebellion, bitterness against the
pioneering madness which had scattered our family, and rebellion toward
my father who had kept my mother always on the border, working like a
slave long after the time when she should have been taking her ease.
Above all, I resented my own failure, my own inability to help in the
case. Here was I, established in a distant city, with success just
opening her doors to me, and yet still so much the struggler that my
will to aid was futile for lack of means.
Sleep was difficult that night, and for days thereafter my mind was rent
with a continual and ineffectual attempt to reach a solution of my
problem, which was indeed typical of ambitious young America everywhere.
"Shall I give up my career at this point? How can I best serve my
mother?" These were my questions and I could not answer either of them.
At the end of a week the sufferer was able to sit up, and soon recovered
a large part of her native cheerfulness although it was evident to me
that she would never again be the woman of the ready hand. Her days of
labor were over.
Her magnificent voice was now weak and uncertain. Her speech painfully
hesitant. She who had been so strong, so brave, was now both easily
frightened and readily confused. She who had once walked with the grace
and power of an athlete was now in terror of an up-rolled rug upon the
floor. Every time I looked at her my throat ached with remorseful pain.
Every plan I made included a vow to make her happy if I could. My
success now meant only service to her. In no other way could I justify
my career.
Dr. Cross though naturally eager to return to the comfort of his own
home stayed on until his patient had regained her poise. "The clot seems
in process of being taken up," he said to me, one morning, "and I think
it safe to leave her. But you had better stay on for a few weeks."
"I shall stay until September, at least," I replied. "I will not go back
at all if I am needed here."
"Don't fail to return," he earnestly advised. "The field is just opening
for you in Boston, and your earning capacity is greater there than it is
here. Success is almost won. Your mother knows this and tells me that
she will insist on your going on with your work."
Heroic soul! She was always ready to sacrifice herself for others.
The Doctor's parting words comforted me as I returned to the shadeless
farmstead to share in the work of harvesting the grain which was already
calling for the reaper, and could not wait either upon sickness or age.
Again I filled the place of stacker while my father drove the four-horse
header, and when at noon, covered with sweat and dust, I looked at
myself, I had very little sense of being a "rising literary man."
I got back once again to the solid realities of farm life, and the
majesty of the colorful sunsets which ended many of our days could not
conceal from me the starved lives and lonely days of my little sister
and my aging mother.
"Think of it!" I wrote to my brother. "After eight years of cultivation,
father's farm possesses neither tree nor vine. Mother's head has no
protection from the burning rays of the sun, except the shadow which the
house casts on the dry, hard door-yard. Where are the 'woods and prairie
lands' of our song? Is this the 'fairy land' in which we were all to
'reign like kings'? Doesn't the whole migration of the Garlands and
McClintocks seem a madness?"
Thereafter when alone, my mother and I often talked of the good old days
in Wisconsin, of David and Deborah and William and Frank. I told her of
Aunt Loretta's peaceful life, of the green hills and trees.
"Oh, I wish we had never left Green's Coulee!" she said.
But this was as far as her complaint ever went, for father was still
resolute and undismayed. "We'll try again," he declared. "Next year will
surely bring a crop."
In a couple of weeks our patient, though unable to lift her feet, was
able to shuffle across the floor into the kitchen, and thereafter
insisted on helping Jessie at her tasks. From a seat in a convenient
corner she picked over berries, stirred cake dough, ground coffee and
wiped dishes, almost as cheerfully as ever, but to me it was a pitiful
picture of bravery, and I burned ceaselessly with desire to do something
to repay her for this almost hopeless disaster.
The worst of the whole situation lay in the fact that my earnings both
as teacher and as story writer were as yet hardly more than enough to
pay my own carefully estimated expenses, and I saw no way of immediately
increasing my income. On the face of it, my plain duty was to remain on
the farm, and yet I could not bring myself to sacrifice my Boston life.
In spite of my pitiful gains thus far, I held a vital hope of
soon,--very soon--being in condition to bring my mother and my sister
east. I argued, selfishly of course, "It must be that Dr. Cross is
right. My only chance of success lies in the east."
Mother did her best to comfort me. "Don't worry about us," she said. "Go
back to your work. I am gaining. I'll be all right in a little while."
Her brave heart was still unsubdued.
While I was still debating my problem, a letter came which greatly
influenced me, absurdly influenced all of us. It contained an invitation
from the Secretary of the Cedar Valley Agriculture Society to be "the
Speaker of the Day" at the County Fair on the twenty-fifth of September.
This honor not only flattered me, it greatly pleased my mother. It was
the kind of honor she could fully understand. In imagination she saw her
son standing up before a throng of old-time friends and neighbors
introduced by Judge Daly and applauded by all the bankers and merchants
of the town. "You must do it," she said, and her voice was decisive.
Father, though less open in his expression, was equally delighted. "You
can go round that way just as well as not," he said. "I'd like to visit
the old town myself."
This letter relieved the situation in the most unexpected way. We all
became cheerful. I began to say, "Of course you are going to get well,"
and I turned again to my plan of taking my sister back to the seminary.
"We'll hire a woman to stay with you," I said, "and Jessie can run up
during vacation, or you and father can go down and spend Christmas with
old friends."
Yes, I confess it, I was not only planning to leave my mother again--I
was intriguing to take her only child away from her. There is no excuse
for this, none whatever except the fact that I had her co-operation in
the plan. She wanted her daughter to be educated quite as strongly as I
could wish, and was willing to put up with a little more loneliness and
toil if only her children were on the road to somewhere.
Jessie was the obstructionist. She was both scared and resentful. She
had no desire to go to school in Osage. She wanted to stay where she
was. Mother needed her,--and besides she didn't have any decent clothes
to wear.
Ultimately I overcame all her scruples, and by promising her a visit to
the great city of Minneapolis (with the privilege of returning if she
didn't like the school) I finally got her to start with me. Poor, little
scared sister, I only half realized the agony of mind through which you
passed as we rode away into the Minnesota prairies!
The farther she got from home the shabbier her gown seemed and the more
impossible her coat and hat. At last, as we were leaving Minneapolis on
our way to Osage she leaned her tired head against me and sobbed out a
wild wish to go home.
Her grief almost wrecked my own self-control but I soothed her as best I
could by telling her that she would soon be among old friends and that
she couldn't turn back now. "Go on and make a little visit anyway," I
added. "It's only a few hours from Ordway and you can go home at any
time."
She grew more cheerful as we entered familiar scenes, and one of the
girls she had known when a child took charge of her, leaving me free to
play the part of distinguished citizen.
The last day of the races was in action when I, with a certain amount of
justifiable pride, rode through the gate (the old familiar sagging gate)
seated beside the President of the Association. I wish I could believe
that as "Speaker of the Day," I filled the sons of my neighbors with
some small part of the awe with which the speakers of other days filled
me, and if I assumed something of the polite condescension with which
all public personages carry off such an entrance, I trust it will be
forgiven me.
The event, even to me, was more inspiring in anticipation than in
fulfillment, for when I rose to speak in the band-stand the wind was
blowing hard, and other and less intellectual attractions were in full
tide. My audience remained distressingly small--and calm. I have a dim
recollection of howling into the face of the equatorical current certain
disconnected sentences concerning my reform theory, and of seeing on the
familiar faces of David Babcock, John Gammons and others of my bronzed
and bent old neighbors a mild wonder as to what I was talking about.
On the whole I considered it a defeat. In the evening I spoke in the
Opera House appearing on the same platform whence, eight years before, I
had delivered my impassioned graduating oration on "Going West." True, I
had gone east but then, advice is for others, not for oneself. Lee Moss,
one of my classmates, and in those Seminary days a rival orator, was in
my audience, and so was Burton, wordless as ever, and a little sad, for
his attempt at preaching had not been successful--his ineradicable
shyness had been against him. Hattie was there looking thin and old, and
Ella and Matilda with others of the girls I had known eight years
before. Some were accompanied by their children.
I suspect I aroused their wonder rather than their admiration. My
radicalism was only an astonishment to them. However, a few of the men,
the more progressive of them, came to me at the close of my talk and
shook hands and said, "Go on! The country needs just such talks." One of
these was Uncle Billy Frazer and his allegiance surprised me, for he had
never shown radical tendencies before.
Summing it all up on my way to Chicago I must admit that as a great man
returning to his native village I had not been a success.
After a few hours of talk with Kirkland I started east by way of
Washington in order that I might stop at Camden and call upon old Walt
Whitman whose work I had been lecturing about, and who had expressed a
willingness to receive me.
It was hot and dry in the drab little city in which he lived, and the
street on which the house stood was as cheerless as an ash-barrel, even
to one accustomed to poverty, like myself, and when I reached the door
of his small, decaying wooden tenement, I was dismayed. It was all so
unlike the home of a world-famous poet.
It was indeed very like that in which a very destitute mechanic might be
living, and as I mounted the steps to Walt's room on the second story my
resentment increased. Not a line of beauty or distinction or grace
rewarded my glance. It was all of the same unesthetic barrenness, and
not overly clean at that.
The old man, majestic as a stranded sea-God, was sitting in an arm
chair, his broad Quaker hat on his head, waiting to receive me. He was
spotlessly clean. His white hair, his light gray suit, his fine linen
all gave the effect of exquisite neatness and wholesome living. His
clear tenor voice, his quiet smile, his friendly hand-clasp charmed me
and calmed me. He was so much gentler and sweeter than I had expected
him to be.
He sat beside a heap of half-read books, marked newspapers, clippings
and letters, a welter of concerns which he refused to have removed by
the broom of the caretaker, and now and again as he wished to show me
something he rose and hobbled a step or two to fish a book or a letter
out of the pile. He was quite lame but could move without a crutch. He
talked mainly of his good friends in Boston and elsewhere, and alluded
to his enemies without a particle of rancor. The lines on his noble face
were as placid as those on the brow of an ox--not one showed petulance
or discouragement. He was the optimist in every word.
He spoke of one of my stories to which Traubel had called his attention,
and reproved me gently for not "letting in the light."
It was a memorable meeting for me and I went away back to my work in
Boston with a feeling that I had seen one of the very greatest literary
personalities of the century, a notion I have had no cause to change in
the twenty-seven years which have intervened.