HARVEST

_Timothy Hurley_, an old farmer, slaves all his life and mortgages his

farm in order to enable his children to lead an idle, parasitic life.

Started on this road toward so-called culture by the school-master,

_William Lordan_, _Hurley's_ children leave their father's farm and in

due time establish themselves in society as priest, lawyer, secretary

and chemist, respectively.

The secretary son is ashamed of his lowly origin and denies it. The

lawyer son is much more concerned with his motor car than with the

condition of the farm that has helped him on his feet. The priest has

departed for America, there to collect funds for Church work. Only

_Maurice_, the youngest son of _Timothy Hurley_, remains at home as the

farm drudge, the typical man with the hoe.

_Jack Hurley_, the chemist, and _Timothy's_ only daughter _Mary_, retain

some loyalty to the old place, but when they return after an absence of

years, they find themselves out of touch with farm life, and they too

turn their back on their native heath. _Jack Hurley's_ notion of the

country is that of most city people: nature is beautiful, the scenery

lovely, so long as it is someone else who has to labor in the scorching

sun, to plow and toil in the sweat of his brow.

_Jack_ and his wife _Mildred_ are both extremely romantic about the

farm.

_Jack._ It stands to reason farming must pay enormously. Take a

field of oats, for instance; every grain that's sown gives a huge

percentage in return.... I don't know exactly how many grains a

stalk carries, but several hundred I'm sure ... why, there's no

investment in the world would give you a return like that.

But soon they discover that every grain of corn does not yield hundreds

of dollars.

_Maurice._ You can't have a solicitor, and a priest, and a chemist

in a family without spending money, and for the last ten years

you've been all drawing money out of the farm ... there's no more to

drain now.... Oh, I suppose you think I'm a bloody fool not to be

able to make it pay; but sure what chance have I and I never taught

how to farm? There was money and education wanted to make priests

and doctors and gentlemen of you all, and wasn't there money and

education wanted to make a farmer of me? No; nothing taught me only

what I picked up from my father and the men, and never a bit of

fresh money to put into the farm only it all kept to make a

solicitor of Bob and a chemist of you.

During _Jack's_ visit to the farm a fire breaks out and several

buildings on the place are destroyed. Much to the horror of the

well-bred _Jack_, he learns that his father himself had lit the match in

order to get "compensation." He sternly upbraids the old farmer.

_Jack._ Didn't you see yourself how dishonest it was?

_Timothy._ Maybe I did, but I saw something more, and that was that

I was on the way to being put out of the farm.

_Jack_ is outraged; he threatens to inform on his own people and offers

to stay on the farm to help with the work. But two weeks' experience in

the field beneath the burning sun is more than delicate _Jack_ can

stand. He suffers fainting spells, and is in the end prevailed upon by

his wife to leave.

_Mary_, old _Hurley's_ daughter, also returns to the farm for rest and

quiet. But she finds no peace there, for the city is too much in her

blood. There is, moreover, another lure she cannot escape.

_Mary._ I was too well educated to be a servant, and I was never

happy as one, so to better myself I learned typing.... It's a hard

life, Jack, and I soon found out how hard it was, and I was as

dissatisfied as ever. Then there only seemed one way out of it ...

and he ... my employer, I mean.... I went into it deliberately with

my eyes open. You see, a woman I knew chucked typing and went in for

this ... and I saw what a splendid time she had, and how happy she

was--and I was so miserably unhappy--and how she had everything she

wanted and I had nothing, and ... and.... But this life made me

unhappy, too, and so in desperation I came home; but I've grown too

far away from it all, and now I'm going back. Don't you see, Jack,

I'm not happy here. I thought if I could get home to the farm and

the old simple life it would be all right, but it isn't. Everything

jars on me, the roughness and the hard living and the coarse

food--oh, it seems ridiculous--but they make me physically ill. I

always thought, if I could get away home to Knockmalgloss I could

start fair again.... So I came home, and everything is the same, and

everyone thinks that I'm as pure and innocent as when I went away,

but ... but ... But, Jack, the dreadful thing is I want to go

back.... I'm longing for that life, and its excitement and splendor

and color.

In her misery and struggle a great faith sustains _Mary_ and keeps her

from ruin. It is the thought of her father, in whom she believes

implicitly as her ideal of honesty, strength and incorruptibility. The

shock is terrible when she learns that her father, even her father, has

fallen a victim to the cruel struggle of life,--that her father himself

set fire to the buildings.

_Mary._ And I thought he was so simple, so innocent, so

unspoiled!... Father, the simple, honest peasant, the only decent

one of us. I cried all last night at the contrast! His

unselfishness, his simplicity.... Why, we're all equally bad now--he

and I--we both sell ourselves, he for the price of those old houses

and I for a few years of splendor and happiness....

The only one whom life seems to teach nothing is _Schoolmaster Lordan_.

Oblivious of the stress and storm of reality, he continues to be

enraptured with education, with culture, with the opportunities offered

by the large cities. He is particularly proud of the Hurley children.

_Lordan._ The way you've all got on! I tell you what, if every boy

and girl I ever taught had turned out a failure I'd feel content and

satisfied when I looked at all of you and saw what I've made of you.

_Mary._ What you've made of us? I wonder do you really know what

you've made of us?

_Lordan._ Isn't it easily seen? One with a motor car, no less.... It

was good, sound seed I sowed long ago in the little schoolhouse and

it's to-day you're all reaping the harvest.

"Harvest" is a grim picture of civilization in its especially

demoralizing effects upon the people who spring from the soil. The mock

culture and shallow education which inspire peasant folk with awe, which

lure the children away from home, only to crush the vitality out of them

or to turn them into cowards and compromisers. The tragedy of a

civilization that dooms the tillers of the soil to a dreary monotony of

hard toil with little return, or charms them to destruction with the

false glow of city culture and ease! Greater still this tragedy in a

country like Ireland, its people taxed to the very marrow and exploited

to the verge of starvation, leaving the young generation no opening, no

opportunity in life.

It is inevitable that the sons and daughters of Ireland, robust in body

and spirit, yearning for things better and bigger, should desert her.

For as _Mary_ says, "When the sun sets here, it's all so dark and cold

and dreary." But the young need light and warmth--and these are not in

the valley of ever-present misery and want.

"Harvest" is an expressive picture of the social background of the Irish

people, a background somber and unpromising but for the streak of dawn

that pierces that country's dark horizon in the form of the inherent and

irrepressible fighting spirit of the true Irishman, the spirit of the

Fenian revolt whose fires often slumber but are never put out, all the

ravages of our false civilization notwithstanding.