MEETS APPOLLYON
It is one of the prime joys of the long road that no two days are ever
remotely alike--no two hours even; and sometimes a day that begins
calmly will end with the most stirring events.
It was thus, indeed, with that perfect spring Sunday, when I left my
friends, the Vedders, and turned my face again to the open country. It
began as quietly as any Sabbath morning of my life, but what an end it
had! I would have travelled a thousand miles for the adventures which a
bounteous road that day spilled carelessly into my willing hands.
I can give no adequate reason why it should be so, but there are Sunday
mornings in the spring--at least in our country--which seem to put on,
like a Sabbath garment, an atmosphere of divine quietude. Warm, soft,
clear, but, above all, immeasurably serene.
Such was that Sunday morning; and I was no sooner well afoot than I
yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually I am an active
walker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it imparts to both
body and mind, but that morning I found myself loitering, looking widely
about me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter aspects of nature. It was
a fine wooded country in which I found myself, and I soon struck off the
beaten road and took to the forest and the fields. In places the ground
was almost covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides,
not yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of the
meadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags were blooming
along the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets had disappeared, but
they were succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-growing vetches.
I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the forenoon, as
my mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine friends from whom I
had so recently parted:
How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. And
two or three times I found myself in animated conversations with them
in which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for some
natures, as Leonardo said, that “if you are alone you belong wholly to
yourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself”;
but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: it
multiplies. A friend always makes me more than I am, better than I am,
bigger than I am. We two make four, or fifteen, or forty.
Well, I loitered through the fields and woods for a long time that
Sunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me close
by the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, of
course, that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this might
be difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spends
his immortal youth--with a glorious disregard for the future.
Some time after noon--for the sun was high and the day was growing much
warmer--I turned from the road, climbed an inviting little hill, and
chose a spot in an old meadow in the shade of an apple tree and there
I lay down on the grass, and looked up into the dusky shadows of the
branches above me. I could feel the soft airs on my face; I could hear
the buzzing of bees in the meadow flowers, and by turning my head just a
little I could see the slow fleecy clouds, high up, drifting across the
perfect blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields in spring!--he who
has known it, even once, may indeed die happy.
Men worship God in various ways: it seemed to me that Sabbath morning,
as I lay quietly there in the warm silence of midday, that I was truly
worshipping God. That Sunday morning everything about me seemed somehow
to be a miracle--a miracle gratefully accepted and explainable only by
the presence of God. There was another strange, deep feeling which I had
that morning, which I have had a few other times in my life at the rare
heights of experience--I hesitate always when I try to put down the
deep, deep things of the human heart--a feeling immeasurably real,
that if I should turn my head quickly I should indeed SEE that Immanent
Presence....
One of the few birds I know that sings through the long midday is the
vireo. The vireo sings when otherwise the woods are still. You do not
see him; you cannot find him; but you know he is there. And his singing
is wild, and shy, and mystical. Often it haunts you like the memory of
some former happiness. That day I heard the vireo singing....
I don't know how long I lay there under the tree in the meadow, but
presently I heard, from no great distance, the sound of a church-bell.
It was ringing for the afternoon service which among the farmers of this
part of the country often takes the place, in summer, of both morning
and evening services.
“I believe I'll go,” I said, thinking first of all, I confess, of the
interesting people I might meet there.
But when I sat up and looked about me the desire faded, and rummaging
in my bag I came across my tin whistle. Immediately I began practising
a tune called “Sweet Afton,” which I had learned when a boy; and, as
I played, my mood changed swiftly, and I began to smile at myself as
a tragically serious person, and to think of pat phrases with which to
characterize the execrableness of my attempts upon the tin whistle. I
should have liked some one near to joke with.
Long ago I made a motto about boys: Look for a boy anywhere. Never be
surprised when you shake a cherry tree if a boy drops out of it;
never be disturbed when you think yourself in complete solitude if you
discover a boy peering out at you from a fence corner.
I had not been playing long before I saw two boys looking at me from out
of a thicket by the roadside; and a moment later two others appeared.
Instantly I switched into “Marching Through Georgia,” and began to
nod my head and tap my toe in the liveliest fashion. Presently one boy
climbed up on the fence, then another, then a third. I continued to
play. The fourth boy, a little chap, ventured to climb up on the fence.
They were bright-faced, tow-headed lads, all in Sunday clothes.
“It's hard luck,” said I, taking my whistle from my lips, “to have to
wear shoes and stockings on a warm Sunday like this.”
“You bet it is!” said the bold leader.
“In that case,” said I, “I will play 'Yankee Doodle.'”
I played. All the boys, including the little chap, came up around me,
and two of them sat down quite familiarly on the grass. I never had a
more devoted audience. I don't know what interesting event might have
happened next, for the bold leader, who stood nearest, was becoming
dangerously inflated with questions--I don't know what might have
happened had we not been interrupted by the appearance of a Spectre in
Black. It appeared before us there in the broad daylight in the middle
of a sunny afternoon while we were playing “Yankee Doodle.” First I
saw the top of a black hat rising over the rim of the hill. This was
followed quickly by a black tie, a long black coat, black trousers, and,
finally, black shoes. I admit I was shaken, but being a person of iron
nerve in facing such phenomena, I continued to play “Yankee Doodle.”
In spite of this counter-attraction, toward which all four boys turned
uneasy glances, I held my audience. The Black Spectre, with a black book
under its arm, drew nearer. Still I continued to play and nod my head
and tap my toe. I felt like some modern Pied Piper piping away the
children of these modern hills--piping them away from older people who
could not understand them.
I could see an accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know what
put it into my head, and I had no sooner said it than I was sorry for my
levity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless and
triumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Had
any one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such a
scene of simple happiness as this? So I took my whistle from my lips and
asked:
“Is God dead?”
I shall never forget the indescribable look of horror and astonishment
that swept over the young man's face.
“What do you mean, sir?” he asked with an air of stern authority which
surprised me. His calling for the moment lifted him above himself: it
was the Church which spoke.
I was on my feet in an instant, regretting the pain I had given him;
and yet it seemed worth while now, having made my inadvertent remark, to
show him frankly what lay in my mind. Such things sometimes help men.
“I meant no offence, sir,” I said, “and I apologize for my flummery, but
when I saw you coming up the hill, looking so gloomy and disconsolate on
this bright day, as though you disapproved of God's world, the question
slipped out before I knew it.”
My words evidently struck deep down into some disturbed inner
consciousness, for he asked--and his words seemed to slip out before he
thought:
“Is THAT the way I impressed you?”
I found my heart going out strongly toward him. “Here,” I thought to
myself, “is a man in trouble.”
I took a good long look at him. He still a young man, though
worn-looking--and sad as I now saw it, rather than gloomy--with the
sensitive lips and the unworldly look one sees sometimes in the faces of
saints. His black coat was immaculately neat, but the worn button-covers
and the shiny lapels told their own eloquent story. Oh, it seemed to me
I knew him as well as if every incident of his life were written
plainly upon his high, pale forehead! I have lived long in a country
neighbourhood, and I knew him--poor flagellant of the rural church--I
knew how he groaned under the sins of a Community too comfortably
willing to cast all its burdens on the Lord, or on the Lord's accredited
local representative. I inferred also the usual large family and the low
salary (scandalously unpaid) and the frequent moves from place to place.
Unconsciously heaving a sigh the young man turned partly aside and said
to me in a low, gentle voice:
“You are detaining my boys from church.”
“I am very sorry,” I said, “and I will detain them no longer,” and with
that I put aside my whistle, took up my bag and moved down the hill with
them.
“The fact is,” I said, “when I heard your bell I thought of going to
church myself.”
“Did you?” he asked eagerly. “Did you?”
I could see that my proposal of going to church had instantly affected
his spirits. Then he hesitated abruptly with a sidelong glance at my bag
and rusty clothing. I could see exactly what was passing in his mind.
“No,” I said, smiling, as though answering a spoken question, “I am not
exactly what you would call a tramp.”
He flushed.
“I didn't mean--I WANT you to come. That's what a church is for. If I
thought--”
But he did not tell me what he thought; and, though he walked quietly
at my side, he was evidently deeply disturbed. Something of his
discouragement I sensed even then, and I don't think I was ever sorrier
for a man in my life than I was for him at that moment. Talk about the
suffering sinners! I wonder if they are to be compared with the trials
of the saints?
So we approached the little white church, and caused, I am certain,
a tremendous sensation. Nowhere does the unpredictable, the unusual,
excite such confusion as in that settled institution--the church.
I left my bag in the vestibule, where I have no doubt it was the object
of much inquiring and suspicious scrutiny, and took my place in a
convenient pew. It was a small church with an odd air of domesticity,
and the proportion of old ladies and children in the audience was
pathetically large. As a ruddy, vigorous, out-of-door person, with the
dust of life upon him, I felt distinctly out of place.
I could pick out easily the Deacon, the Old Lady Who Brought Flowers,
the President of the Sewing Circle, and, above all, the Chief Pharisee,
sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee--his name I learned was
Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his
acquaintance)--the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged
man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, and a pugnacious
jaw.
“That man,” said I to myself, “runs this church,” and instantly I found
myself looking upon him as a sort of personification of the troubles I
had seen in the minister's eyes.
I shall not attempt to describe the service in detail. There was a
discouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-looking
deacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment.
The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold
hand upon one's living soul. It gave one the impression that this
was indeed a miserable, dark, despairing world, which deserved to be
wrathfully destroyed, and that this miserable world was full of equally
miserable, broken, sinful, sickly people.
The sermon was a little better, for somewhere hidden within him this
pale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so dampened by
the atmosphere of the church that it never rose above a pale luminosity.
I found the service indescribably depressing. I had an impulse to rise
up and cry out--almost anything to shock these people into opening their
eyes upon real life. Indeed, though I hesitate about setting it down
here, I was filled for some time with the liveliest imaginings of the
following serio-comic enterprise:
I would step up the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee,
wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the
condition of the church.
“The only live thing here,” I would tell him, “is the spark in that pale
minister's soul; and you're doing your best to smother that.”
And I fully made up my mind that when he answered back in his
chief-pharisaical way I would gently--but firmly remove him from his
seat, shake him vigorously two or three times (men's souls have often
been saved with less!), deposit him flat in the aisle, and yes--stand on
him while I elucidated the situation to the audience at large. While
I confined this amusing and interesting project to the humours of the
imagination I am still convinced that something of the sort would have
helped enormously in clearing up the religious and moral atmosphere of
the place.
I had a wonderful sensation of relief when at last I stepped out again
into the clear afternoon sunshine and got a reviving glimpse of the
smiling green hills and the quiet fields and the sincere trees--and felt
the welcome of the friendly road.
I would have made straight for the hills, but the thought of that pale
minister held me back; and I waited quietly there under the trees till
he came out. He was plainly looking for me, and asked me to wait and
walk along with him, at which his four boys, whose acquaintance I had
made under such thrilling circumstances earlier in the day, seemed
highly delighted, and waited with me under the tree and told me a
hundred important things about a certain calf, a pig, a kite, and other
things at home.
Arriving at the minister's gate, I was invited in with a
whole-heartedness that was altogether charming. The minister's wife,
a faded-looking woman who had once possessed a delicate sort of
prettiness, was waiting for us on the steps with a fine chubby baby on
her arm--number five.
The home was much the sort of place I had imagined--a small house
undesirably located (but cheap!), with a few straggling acres of
garden and meadow upon which the minister and his boys were trying with
inexperienced hands to piece out their inadequate living. At the very
first glimpse of the garden I wanted to throw off my coat and go at it.
And yet--and yet----what a wonderful thing love is! There was, after
all, something incalculable, something pervasively beautiful about this
poor household. The moment the minister stepped inside his own door he
became a different and livelier person. Something boyish crept into his
manner, and a new look came into the eyes of his faded wife that made
her almost pretty again. And the fat, comfortable baby rolled and
gurgled about on the floor as happily as though there had been two
nurses and a governess to look after him. As for the four boys, I have
never seen healthier or happier ones.
I sat with them at their Sunday-evening luncheon. As the minister bowed
his head to say grace I felt him clasp my hand on one side while the
oldest boy clasped my hand on the other, and thus, linked together, and
accepting the stranger utterly, the family looked up to God.
There was a fine, modest gayety about the meal. In front of Mrs.
Minister stood a very large yellow bowl filled with what she called
rusk--a preparation unfamiliar to me, made by browning and crushing the
crusts of bread and then rolling them down into a coarse meal. A bowl of
this, with sweet, rich, yellow milk (for they kept their own cow), made
one of the most appetizing dishes that ever I ate. It was downright
good: it gave one the unalloyed aroma of the sweet new milk and the
satisfying taste of the crisp bread.
Nor have I ever enjoyed a more perfect hospitality. I have been in
many a richer home where there was not a hundredth part of the true
gentility--the gentility of unapologizing simplicity and kindness.
And after it was over and cleared away--the minister himself donning a
long apron and helping his wife--and the chubby baby put to bed, we all
sat around the table in the gathering twilight.
I think men perish sometimes from sheer untalked talk. For lack of
a creative listener they gradually fill up with unexpressed emotion.
Presently this emotion begins to ferment, and finally--bang!--they blow
up, burst, disappear in thin air. In all that community I suppose there
was no one but the little faded wife to whom the minister dared open his
heart, and I think he found me a godsend. All I really did was to look
from one to the other and put in here and there an inciting comment or
ask an understanding question. After he had told me his situation and
the difficulties which confronted him and his small church, he exclaimed
suddenly:
“A minister should by rights be a leader, not only inside of his church,
but outside it in the community.”
“You are right,” I exclaimed with great earnestness; “you are right.”
And with that I told him of our own Scotch preacher and how he led and
moulded our community; and as I talked I could see him actually growing,
unfolding, under my eyes.
“Why,” said I, “you not only ought to be the moral leader of this
community, but you are!”
“That's what I tell him,” exclaimed his wife.
“But he persists in thinking, doesn't he, that he is a poor sinner?”
“He thinks it too much,” she laughed.
“Yes, yes,” he said, as much to himself as to us, “a minister ought to
be a fighter!”
It was beautiful, the boyish flush which now came into his face and the
light that came into his eyes. I should never have identified him with
the Black Spectre of the afternoon.
“Why,” said I, “you ARE a fighter; you're fighting the greatest battle
in the world today--the only real battle--the battle for the spiritual
view of life.”
Oh, I knew exactly what was the trouble with his religion--at least the
religion which, under the pressure of that church he felt obliged to
preach! It was the old, groaning, denying, resisting religion. It was
the sort of religion which sets a man apart and assures him that the
entire universe in the guise of the Powers of Darkness is leagued
against him. What he needed was a reviving draught of the new faith
which affirms, accepts, rejoices, which feels the universe triumphantly
behind it. And so whenever the minister told me what he ought to be--for
he too sensed the new impulse--I merely told him he was just that. He
needed only this little encouragement to unfold.
“Yes,” said he again, “I am the real moral leader here.”
At this I saw Mrs. Minister nodding her head vigorously.
“It's you,” she said, “and not Mr. Nash, who should lead this
community.”
How a woman loves concrete applications. She is your only true
pragmatist. If a philosophy will not work, says she, why bother with it?
The minister rose quickly from his chair, threw back his head, and
strode quickly up and down the room.
“You are right,” said he; “and I WILL lead it. I'll have my farmers'
meetings as I planned.”
It may have been the effect of the lamplight, but it seemed to me that
little Mrs. Minister, as she glanced up at him, looked actually pretty.
The minister continued to stride up and down the room with his chin in
the air.
“Mr. Nash,” said she in a low voice to me, “is always trying to hold
him down and keep him back. My husband WANTS to do the great
things”--wistfully.
“By every right,” the minister was repeating, quite oblivious of our
presence, “I should lead these people.”
“He sees the weakness of the church,” she continued, “as well as
any one, and he wants to start some vigorous community work--have
agricultural meetings and boys' clubs, and lots of things like that--but
Mr. Nash says it is no part of a minister's work: that it cheapens
religion. He says that when a parson--Mr. Nash always calls him parson,
and I just LOATHE that name--has preached, and prayed, and visited the
sick, that's enough for HIM.”
At this very moment a step sounded upon the walk, and an instant later a
figure appeared in the doorway.
“Why, Mr. Nash,” exclaimed little Mrs. Minister, exhibiting that
astonishing gift of swift recovery which is the possession of even the
simplest women, “come right in.”
It was some seconds before the minister could come down from the heights
and greet Mr. Nash. As for me, I was never more interested in my life.
“Now,” said I to myself, “we shall see Christian meet Apollyon.”
As soon as Mrs. Minister lighted the lamp I was introduced to the great
man. He looked at me sharply with his small, round eyes, and said:
“Oh, you are the--the man who was in church this afternoon.”
I admitted it, and he looked around at the minister with an accusing
expression. He evidently did not approve of me, nor could I wholly blame
him, for I knew well how he, as a rich farmer, must look upon a rusty
man of the road like me. I should have liked dearly to cross swords with
him myself, but greater events were imminent.
In no time at all the discussion, which had evidently been broken off at
some previous meeting, concerning the proposed farmers' assembly at the
church, had taken on a really lively tone. Mr. Nash was evidently in
the somewhat irritable mood with which important people may sometimes
indulge themselves, for he bit off his words in a way that was
calculated to make any but an unusually meek and saintly man exceedingly
uncomfortable. But the minister, with the fine, high humility of those
whose passion is for great or true things, was quite oblivious to the
harsh words. Borne along by an irresistible enthusiasm, he told in
glowing terms what his plan would mean to the community, how the
people needed a new social and civic spirit--a “neighbourhood religious
feeling” he called it. And as he talked his face flushed, and his eyes
shone with the pure fire of a great purpose. But I could see that all
this enthusiasm impressed the practical Mr. Nash as mere moonshine.
He grew more and more uneasy. Finally he brought his hand down with a
resounding thwack upon his knee, and said in a high, cutting voice:
“I don't believe in any such newfangled nonsense. It ain't none of a
parson's business what the community does. You're hired, ain't you, an'
paid to run the church? That's the end of it. We ain't goin' to have any
mixin' of religion an' farmin' in THIS neighbourhood.”
My eyes were on the pale man of God. I felt as though a human soul were
being weighed in the balance. What would he do now? What was he worth
REALLY as a man as well as a minister?
He paused a moment with downcast eyes. I saw little Mrs. Minister glance
at him--once--wistfully. He rose from his place, drew himself up to his
full height--I shall not soon forget the look on his face--and uttered
these amazing words:
“Martha, bring the ginger-jar.”
Mrs. Minister, without a word, went to a little cupboard on the farther
side of the room and took down a brown earthenware jar, which she
brought over and placed on the table, Mr. Nash following her movements
with astonished eyes. No one spoke.
The minister took the jar in his hands as he might the communion-cup
just before saying the prayer of the sacrament.
“Mr. Nash,” said he in a loud voice, “I've decided to hold that farmers'
meeting.”
Before Mr. Nash could reply the minister seated himself and was pouring
out the contents of the jar upon the table--a clatter of dimes, nickels,
pennies, a few quarters and half dollars, and a very few bills.
“Martha, just how much money is there?”
“Twenty-four dollars and sixteen cents.”
The minister put his hand into his pocket and, after counting out
certain coins, said:
“Here's one dollar and eighty-four cents more. That makes twenty-six
dollars. Now, Mr. Nash, you're the largest contributor to my salary in
this neighbourhood. You gave twenty-six dollars last year--fifty cents a
week. It is a generous contribution, but I cannot take it any longer.
It is fortunate that my wife has saved up this money to buy a
sewing-machine, so that we can pay back your contribution in full.”
He paused; no one of us spoke a word.
“Mr. Nash,” he continued, and his face was good to see, “I am the
minister here. I am convinced that what the community needs is more of a
religious and social spirit, and I am going about getting it in the way
the Lord leads me.”
At this I saw Mrs. Minister look up at her husband with such a light in
her eyes as any man might well barter his life for--I could not keep my
own eyes from pure beauty of it.
I knew too what this defiance meant. It meant that this little family
was placing its all upon the altar--even the pitiful coins for which
they had skimped and saved for months for a particular purpose. Talk of
the heroism of the men who charged with Pickett at Gettysburg! Here was
a courage higher and whiter than that; here was a courage that dared to
fight alone.
As for Mr. Nash, the face of that Chief Pharisee was a study. Nothing is
so paralyzing to a rich man as to find suddenly that his money will
no longer command him any advantage. Like all hard-shelled, practical
people, Mr. Nash could only dominate in a world which recognized the
same material supremacy that he recognized. Any one who insisted upon
flying was lost to Mr. Nash.
The minister pushed the little pile of coins toward him.
“Take it, Mr. Nash,” said he.
At that Mr. Nash rose hastily.
“I will not,” he said gruffly.
He paused, and looked at the minister with a strange expression in his
small round eyes--was it anger, or was it fear, or could it have been
admiration?
“If you want to waste your time on fiddlin' farmers' meetings--a man
that knows as little of farmin' as you do--why go ahead for all o' me.
But don't count me in.”
He turned, reached for his hat, and then went out of the door into the
darkness.
For a moment we all sat perfectly silent, then the minister rose, and
said solemnly:
“Martha, let's sing something.”
Martha crossed the room to the cottage organ and seated herself on the
stool.
“What shall we sing?” said she.
“Something with fight in it, Martha,” he responded; “something with
plenty of fight in it.”
So we sang “Onward, Christian Soldier, Marching as to War,” and followed
up with:
Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve And press with rigour on; A heavenly
race demands thy zeal And an immortal crown.
When we had finished, and as Martha rose from her seat, the minister
impulsively put his hands on her shoulders, and said:
“Martha, this is the greatest night of my life.”
He took a turn up and down the room, and then with an exultant boyish
laugh said:
“We'll go to town to-morrow and pick out that sewing-machine!”
I remained with them that night and part of the following day, taking
a hand with them in the garden, but of the events of that day I shall
speak in another chapter.
CHAPTER V. I PLAY THE PART OF A SPECTACLE PEDDLER
Yesterday was exactly the sort of a day I love best--a spicy,
unexpected, amusing day--crowned with a droll adventure.
I cannot account for it, but it seems to me I take the road each morning
with a livelier mind and keener curiosity. If you were to watch me
narrowly these days you would see I am slowly shedding my years. I
suspect that some one of the clear hill streams from which I have been
drinking (lying prone on my face) was in reality the fountain of eternal
youth. I shall not go back to see.
It seems to me, when I feel like this, that in every least thing upon
the roadside, or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure. What a
world it is! A mile south of here I shall find all that Stanley found in
the jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary at the Pole!
You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall seat of your wagon, driving
townward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life--your
life--is not all a gray smudge, as you think it is, but crammed, packed,
loaded with miraculous things. I can show you wonders past belief in
your own soul. I can easily convince you that you are in reality a poet,
a hero, a true lover, a saint.
It is because we are not humble enough in the presence of the divine
daily fact that adventure knocks so rarely at our door. A thousand times
I have had to learn this truth (what lesson so hard to learn as the
lesson of humility!) and I suppose I shall have to learn it a thousand
times more. This very day, straining my eyes to see the distant wonders
of the mountains, I nearly missed a miracle by the roadside.
Soon after leaving the minister and his family--I worked with them in
their garden with great delight most of the forenoon--I came, within a
mile--to the wide white turnpike--the Great Road.
Now, I usually prefer the little roads, the little, unexpected, curving,
leisurely country roads. The sharp hills, the pleasant deep valleys, the
bridges not too well kept, the verdure deep grown along old fences, the
houses opening hospitably at the very roadside, all these things I love.
They come to me with the same sort of charm and flavour, only vastly
magnified, which I find often in the essays of the older writers--those
leisurely old fellows who took time to write, REALLY write. The
important thing to me about a road, as about life--and literature, is
not that it goes anywhere, but that it is livable while it goes. For
if I were to arrive--and who knows that I ever shall arrive?--I think I
should be no happier than I am here.
Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road--the broad, smooth
turnpike--rock-bottomed and rolled by a State--without so much as a
loitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to laugh
over, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance--not so much as a dreamy
valley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly from some
particular place to some other particular place and from time to time a
motor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving its
dust to settle upon quiet travellers like me.
Thus to-day when I came to the turnpike I was at first for making
straight across it and taking to the hills beyond, but at that very
moment a motor-car whirled past me as I stood there and a girl with a
merry face waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat in return--and as
I watched them out of sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth and
friendliness there in the Great Road.
“These are just people, too,” I said aloud--“and maybe they really like
it!”
And with that I began laughing at myself, and at the whole, big,
amazing, interesting world. Here was I pitying them for their benighted
state, and there were they, no doubt, pitying me for mine!
And with that pleasant and satisfactory thought in my mind and a song in
my throat I swung into the Great Road.
“It doesn't matter in the least,” said I to myself, “whether a man takes
hold of life by the great road or the little ones so long as he takes
hold.”
And oh, it was a wonderful day! A day with movement in it; a day that
flowed! In every field the farmers were at work, the cattle fed widely
in the meadows, and the Great Road itself was alive with a hundred
varied sorts of activity. Light winds stirred the tree-tops and rippled
in the new grass; and from the thickets I heard the blackbirds crying.
Everything animate and inanimate, that morning, seemed to have its
own clear voice and to cry out at me for my interest, or curiosity, or
sympathy. Under such circumstances it could not have been long--nor
was it long--before I came plump upon the first of a series of odd
adventures.
A great many people, I know, abominate the roadside sign. It seems to
them a desecration of nature, the intrusion of rude commercialism upon
the perfection of natural beauty. But not I. I have no such feeling.
Oh, the signs in themselves are often rude and unbeautiful, and I
never wished my own barn or fences to sing the praises of swamp root or
sarsaparilla--and yet there is something wonderfully human about these
painted and pasted vociferations of the roadside signs; and I don't
know why they are less “natural” in their way than a house or barn or
a planted field of corn. They also tell us about life. How eagerly they
cry out at us, “Buy me, buy me!” What enthusiasm they have in their
own concerns, what boundless faith in themselves! How they speak of the
enormous energy, activity, resourcefulness of human kind!
Indeed, I like all kinds of signs. The autocratic warnings of the road,
the musts and the must-nots of traffic, I observe in passing; and I
often stand long at the crossings and look up at the finger-posts, and
consider my limitless wealth as a traveller. By this road I may, at my
own pleasure, reach the Great City; by that--who knows?--the far wonders
of Cathay. And I respond always to the appeal which the devoted pilgrim
paints on the rocks at the roadside: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of God
is at hand,” and though I am certain that the kingdom of God is already
here, I stop always and repent--just a little--knowing that there is
always room for it. At the entrance of the little towns, also, or in
the squares of the villages, I stop often to read the signs of taxes
assessed, or of political meetings; I see the evidences of homes broken
up in the notices of auction sales, and of families bereaved in the dry
and formal publications of the probate court. I pause, too, before
the signs of amusements flaming red and yellow on the barns (boys, the
circus is coming to town!), and I pause also, but no longer, to read
the silent signs carved in stone in the little cemeteries as I pass.
Symbols, you say? Why, they're the very stuff of life. If you cannot see
life here in the wide road, you will never see it at all.
Well, I saw a sign yesterday at the roadside that I never saw anywhere
before. It was not a large sign--indeed rather inconspicuous--consisting
of a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upon
a white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing cars
could not avoid seeing it:
[ REST ]
I cannot describe the odd sense of enlivenment, of pleasure I had when I
saw this new sign.
“Rest!” I exclaimed aloud. “Indeed I will,” and I sat down on a stone
not far away.
“Rest!”
What a sign for this very spot! Here in the midst of the haste and
hurry of the Great Road a quiet voice was saying, “Rest.” Some one with
imagination, I thought, evidently put that up; some quietist offering
this mild protest against the breathless progress of the age. How often
I have felt the same way myself--as though I were being swept onward
through life faster than I could well enjoy it. For nature passes the
dishes far more rapidly than we can help ourselves.
Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only some
cunning advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has its
price), thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure
which he will make a mile or so farther on. Or else some humourist
wasting his wit upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me,
perhaps) to accept his ironical advice. But it would be well worth while
should I find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand.
So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing a
rather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who painted
these signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than a
trader or humourist. (Confidentially, I could not make a picture of
him in which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair). As I walked
onward again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, and
I enjoyed thinking what I should say if I met him. A mile farther up the
road I saw another sign exactly like the first.
“Here he is again,” I said exultantly, and that sign being somewhat
nearer the ground I was able to examine it carefully front and back, but
it bore no evidence of its origin.
In the next few miles I saw two other signs with nothing on them but the
word “Rest.”
Now this excellent admonition--like much of the excellent admonitions in
this world--affected me perversely: it made me more restless than ever.
I felt that I could not rest properly until I found out who wanted me to
rest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista for new adventure.
Presently, away ahead of me in the road, I saw a man standing near
a one-horse wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some activity near the
roadside, but I could not tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer I
discovered that he was a short, strongly built, sun-bronzed man in
working-clothes--and with the shortest of short hair. I saw him take a
shovel from the wagon and begin digging. He was the road-worker.
I asked the road-worker if he had seen the curious signs. He looked up
at me with a broad smile (he had good-humoured, very bright blue eyes).
“Yes,” he said, “but they ain't for me.”
“Then you don't follow the advice they give?”
“Not with a section like mine,” said he, and he straightened up and
looked first one way of the road and then the other. “I have from Grabow
Brook, but not the bridge, to the top o' Sullivan Hill, and all the
culverts between, though two of 'em are by rights bridges. And I claim
that's a job for any full-grown man.”
He began shovelling again in the road as if to prove how busy he was.
There had been a small landslide from an open cut on one side and a
mass of gravel and small boulders lay scattered on the smooth macadam. I
watched him for a moment. I love to watch the motions of vigorous men
at work, the easy play of the muscles, the swing of the shoulders, the
vigour of stoutly planted legs. He evidently considered the conversation
closed, and I, as--well, as a dusty man of the road--easily dismissed.
(You have no idea, until you try it, what a weight of prejudice the man
of the road has to surmount before he is accepted on easy terms by the
ordinary members of the human race.)
A few other well-intentioned observations on my part having elicited
nothing but monosyllabic replies, I put my bag down by the roadside
and, going up to the wagon, got out a shovel, and without a word took
my place at the other end of the landslide and began to shovel for all I
was worth.
I said not a word to the husky road-worker and pretended not to look
at him, but I saw him well enough out of the corner of my eye. He was
evidently astonished and interested, as I knew he would be: it was
something entirely new on the road. He didn't quite know whether to be
angry, or amused, or sociable. I caught him looking over at me several
times, but I offered no response; then he cleared his throat and said:
“Where you from?”
I answered with a monosyllable which I knew he could not quite catch.
Silence again for some time, during which I shovelled valiantly and with
great inward amusement. Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard human
nut! I decided at that moment, to have him invite me to supper.
Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping my work, he himself paused
and leaned on his shovel. I kept right on.
“Say, partner,” said he, finally, “did YOU read those signs as you come
up the road?”
“Yes,” I said, “but they weren't for me, either. My section's a long
one, too.”
“Say, you ain't a road-worker, are you?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes,” said I, with a sudden inspiration, “that's exactly what I am--a
road-worker.”
“Put her there, then, partner,” he said, with a broad smile on his
bronzed face.
He and I struck hands, rested on our shovels (like old hands at it), and
looked with understanding into each other's eyes. We both knew the trade
and the tricks of the trade; all bars were down between us. The fact is,
we had both seen and profited by the peculiar signs at the roadside.
“Where's your section?” he asked easily.
“Well,” I responded after considering the question, “I have a very long
and hard section. It begins at a place called Prosy Common--do you know
it?--and reaches to the top of Clear Hill. There are several bad spots
on the way, I can tell you.”
“Don't know it,” said the husky road-worker; “'tain't round here, is it?
In the town of Sheldon, maybe?”
Just at this moment, perhaps fortunately, for there is nothing so
difficult to satisfy as the appetite of people for specific information,
a motor-car whizzed past, the driver holding up his hand in greeting,
and the road-worker and I responding in accordance with the etiquette of
the Great Road.
“There he goes in the ruts again,” said the husky road-worker. “Why is
it, I'd like to know, that every one wants to run in the same identical
track when they've got the whole wide road before 'em?”
“That's what has long puzzled me, too,” I said. “Why WILL people
continue to run in ruts?”
“It don't seem to do no good to put up signs,” said the road-worker.
“Very little indeed,” said I. “The fact is, people have got to be bumped
out of the ruts they get into.”
“You're right,” said he enthusiastically, and his voice dropped into the
tone of one speaking to a member of the inner guild. “I know how to get
'em.”
“How?” I asked in an equally mysterious voice.
“I put a stone or two in the ruts!”
“Do you?” I exclaimed. “I've done that very thing myself--many a time!
Just place a good hard tru--I mean stone, with a bit of common dust
sprinkled over it, in the middle of the rut, and they'll look out for
THAT rut for some time to come.”
“Ain't it gorgeous,” said the husky road-worker, chuckling joyfully, “to
see 'em bump?”
“It is,” said I--“gorgeous.”
After that, shovelling part of the time in a leisurely way, and part of
the time responding to the urgent request of the signs by the roadside
(it pays to advertise!), the husky road-worker and I discussed many
great and important subjects, all, however, curiously related to roads.
Working all day long with his old horse, removing obstructions, draining
out the culverts, filling ruts and holes with new stone, and repairing
the damage of rain and storm, the road-worker was filled with a world of
practical information covering roads and road-making. And having learned
that I was of the same calling, we exchanged views with the greatest
enthusiasm. It was astonishing to see how nearly in agreement we were as
to what constituted an ideal road.
“Almost everything,” said he, “depends on depth. If you get a good solid
foundation, the' ain't anything that can break up your road.”
“Exactly what I have discovered,” I responded. “Get down to bedrock and
do an honest job of building.”
“And don't have too many sharp turns.”
“No,” said I, “long, leisurely curves are best--all through life. You
have observed that nearly all the accidents on the road are due to sharp
turnings.”
“Right you are!” he exclaimed.
“A man who tries to turn too sharply on his way nearly always skids.”
“Or else turns turtle in the ditch.”
But it was not until we reached the subject of oiling that we mounted to
the real summit of enthusiastic agreement. Of all things on the road, or
above the road, or in the waters under the road, there is nothing that
the road-worker dislikes more than oil.
“It's all right,” said he, “to use oil for surfacin' and to keep down
the dust. You don't need much and it ain't messy. But sometimes when you
see oil pumped on a road, you know that either the contractor has been
jobbin', or else the road's worn out and ought to be rebuilt.”
“That's exactly what I've found,” said I. “Let a road become almost
impassable with ruts and rocks and dust, and immediately some man says,
'Oh, it's all right--put on a little oil--'”
“That's what our supervisor is always sayin',” said the road-worker.
“Yes,” I responded, “it usually is the supervisor. He lives by it. He
wants to smooth over the defects, he wants to lay the dust that every
passerby kicks up, he tries to smear over the truth regarding conditions
with messy and ill-smelling oil. Above everything, he doesn't want the
road dug up and rebuilt--says it will interfere with traffic, injure
business, and even set people to talking about changing the route
entirely! Oh, haven't I seen it in religion, where they are doing their
best to oil up roads that are entirely worn out--and as for politics, is
not the cry of the party-roadster and the harmony-oilers abroad in the
land?”
In the excited interest with which this idea now bore me along I had
entirely forgotten the existence of my companion, and as I now glanced
at him I saw him standing with a curious look of astonishment and
suspicion on his face. I saw that I had unintentionally gone a little
too far. So I said abruptly:
“Partner, let's get a drink. I'm thirsty.”
He followed me, I thought a bit reluctantly, to a little brook not
far up the road where we had been once before. As we were drinking,
silently, I looked at the stout young fellow standing there, and I
thought to myself:
What a good, straightforward young fellow he is anyway, and how
thoroughly he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped with
unilluminated knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was a
fine bit of road-mending for me to do.
Most people have sight, but few have insight; and as I looked into
the clear blue eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift inspiration, and
before I could repent of it I had said to him in the most serious voice
that I could command:
“Friend, I am in reality a spectacle-peddler--”
His glance shifted uncomfortably to my gray bag.
“And I want to sell you a pair of spectacles,” I said. “I see that you
are nearly blind.”
“Me blind!”
It would be utterly impossible to describe the expression on his
face. His hand went involuntarily to his eyes, and he glanced quickly,
somewhat fearfully, about.
“Yes, nearly blind,” said I. “I saw it when I first met you. You don't
know it yourself yet, but I can assure you it is a bad case.”
I paused, and shook my head slowly. If I had not been so much in
earnest, I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I had
begun my talk with him half jestingly, with the amusing idea of breaking
through his shell, but I now found myself tremendously engrossed, and
desired nothing in the world (at that moment) so much as to make him see
what I saw. I felt as though I held a live human soul in my hand.
“Say, partner,” said the road-worker, “are you sure you aren't--” He
tapped his forehead and began to edge away.
I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixed
on him:
“It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Apparently, as you look about, you
see everything there is to see, but as a matter of fact you see nothing
in the world but this road--”
“It's time that I was seein' it again then,” said he, making as if to
turn back to work, but remaining with a disturbed expression on his
countenance.
“The Spectacles I have to sell,” said I, “are powerful magnifiers”--he
glanced again at the gray bag. “When you put them on you will see a
thousand wonderful things besides the road--”
“Then you ain't road-worker after all!” he said, evidently trying to be
bluff and outright with me.
Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only about
so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him
more uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!--than to feel that he is being
played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him,
and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight
home. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:
“My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more in
earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it,
but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this.”
I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply
as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his
roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and
when he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the
roads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I have
never seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took
his eyes from my face.
“And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles,” said I, “it was
only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of
roads as well as your own.”
I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know now
how the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplished
operation. Will the patient live or die?
The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under the
anesthetic.
“I guess, partner,” said he, “you're trying to put a stone or two in my
ruts!”
I had him!
“Exactly,” I exclaimed eagerly.
We both paused. He was the first to speak--with some embarrassment:
“Say, you're just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He
was always sayin' things that meant something else and when you found
out what he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in your
insides.”
I laughed.
“It's a mighty good sign,” I said, “when a man begins to feel queer in
the insides. It shows that something is happening to him.”
With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and
friendly--and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a
time, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky
road-worker chuckling to himself; finally, straightening up, he said:
“Say, there's more things in a road than ever I dreamt of.”
“I see,” said I, “that the new spectacles are a good fit.”
The road-worker laughed long and loud.
“You're a good one, all right,” he said. “I see what YOU mean. I catch
your point.”
“And now that you've got them on,” said I, “and they are serving you
so well, I'm not going to sell them to you at all. I'm going to present
them to you--for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyed
meeting more than I have you.”
We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I
have learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better
to find a way to uncover it.
“Same here,” said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine
feeling in his voice.
Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get
in and go home with him.
“I want you to see my wife and kids,” said he.
The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper--and a good
supper it was--but I spent the night in his little home, close at the
side of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time all
night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in
the smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my
window, and sometimes I heard them sound their brassy horns.
I wish I could tell more of what I saw there, of the garden back of the
house, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simple
history--but, the road calls!
When I set forth early this morning the road-worker followed me out
to the smooth macadam (his wife standing in the doorway with her hands
rolled in her apron) and said to me, a bit shyly:
“I'll be more sort o'--sort o' interested in roads since I've seen you.”
“I'll be along again some of these days,” said I, laughing, “and I'll
stop in and show you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I can sell you
another pair!”
“Maybe you kin,” and he smiled a broad, understanding smile.
Nothing brings men together like having a joke in common.
So I walked off down the road--in the best of spirits--ready for the
events of another day.
It will surely be a great adventure, one of these days, to come this way
again--and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, and the Minister, and
drop in and sell another pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems to
me I have a wonderfully rosy future ahead of me!
P. S.--I have not yet found out who painted the curious signs; but I am
not as uneasy about it as I was. I have seen two more of them already
this morning--and find they exert quite a psychological influence.