Without the slightest warning the jam "pulled." Usually certain
premonitory _cracks_, certain sinkings down, groanings forward,
grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs give
opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after
inexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like a
sprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smash
into the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamite
explosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and falling
as the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust one side, or
forced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws with
them.
The rivermen, though caught unaware, reached either bank. They held
their peavies across their bodies as balancing-poles, and zig-zagged
ashore with a calmness and lack of haste that were in reality only an
indication of the keenness with which they fore-estimated each chance.
Long experience with the ways of saw-logs brought them out. They knew
the correlation of these many forces just as the expert billiard-player
knows instinctively the various angles of incident and reflection
between his cue-ball and its mark. Consequently they avoided the centers
of eruption, paused on the spots steadied for the moment, dodged moving
logs, trod those not yet under way, and so arrived on solid ground. The
jam itself started with every indication of meaning business, gained
momentum for a hundred feet, and then plugged to a standstill. The
"break" was abortive.
Now we all had leisure to notice two things. First, the movement had not
been of the whole jam, as we had at first supposed, but only of a block
or section of it twenty rods or so in extent. Thus between the part that
had moved and the greater bulk that had not stirred lay a hundred feet
of open water in which floated a number of loose logs. The second fact
was, that Dickey Darrell had fallen into that open stretch of water and
was in the act of swimming toward one of the floating logs. That much we
were given time to appreciate thoroughly. Then the other section of the
jam rumbled and began to break. Roaring Dick was caught between two
gigantic millstones moving to crush him out of sight.
An active figure darted down the tail of the first section, out over the
floating logs, seized Darrell by the coat-collar, and so burdened began
desperately to scale the very face of the breaking jam.
Never was a more magnificent rescue. The logs were rolling, falling,
diving against the laden man. He climbed as over a treadmill, a
treadmill whose speed was constantly increasing. And when he finally
gained the top, it was as the gap closed splintering beneath him and the
man he had saved.
It is not in the woodsman to be demonstrative at any time, but here was
work demanding attention. Without a pause for breath or congratulation
they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was
moving at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick,
like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attacked
the jam in a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside the
timbers that threatened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanic
forces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattle
the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the
curbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys before
the stampeded herd. And so, out of sight around the lower bend swept the
front of the jam in a swirl of glory, the rivermen riding the great boom
back of the creature they subdued, until at last, with the slackening
current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one
against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the
shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by.
One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and the
brown-faced young man remained. He sat on a stump, staring with
sightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts.
The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near
the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At
dusk the rivermen straggled in from the down-river trail.
The brown-faced young man arose and went to meet them. I saw him return
in close conversation with Jimmy Powers. Before they reached us he had
turned away with a gesture of farewell.
Jimmy Powers stood looking after him long after his form had
disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died
toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from
which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had
faded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken wonder and
adoration.
"Do you know who that is?" he asked me in a hushed voice. "That's
Thorpe, Harry Thorpe. And do you know what he said to me just now, _me_?
He told me he wanted me to work in Camp One next winter, Thorpe's One.
And he told me I was the first man he ever hired straight into One."
His breath caught with something like a sob.
I had heard of the man and of his methods. I knew he had made it a
practice of recruiting for his prize camp only from the employees of his
other camps, that, as Jimmy said, he never "hired straight into One." I
had heard, too, of his reputation among his own and other woodsmen. But
this was the first time I had ever come into personal contact with his
influence. It impressed me the more in that I had come to know Jimmy
Powers and his kind.
"You deserve it, every bit," said I. "I'm not going to call you a hero,
because that would make you tired. What you did this afternoon showed
nerve. It was a brave act. But it was a better act because your rescued
your enemy, because you forgot everything but your common humanity when
danger----"
I broke off. Jimmy was again looking at me with his ironically quizzical
grin.
"Bub," said he, "if you're going to hang any stars of Bethlehem on my
Christmas tree, just call a halt right here. I didn't rescue that
scalawag because I had any Christian sentiments, nary bit. I was just
naturally savin' him for the birling match next Fourther July."
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
There are some authors whom we think of as bookmen; there are others
whom we think of as men first, and as writers secondarily. Lowell, for
example was a bookman; Roosevelt was a man of action who wrote books.
Stewart Edward White, far more of a literary artist than Roosevelt,
gives like him the impression of a man who has done things, of one who
lives a full life, and produces books as a sort of by-product: very
valuable, but not the chief end of existence.
Mr. White was born in a small town near Grand Rapids, Michigan, March
12, 1873. His parents had their own ideas about bringing up children.
Instead of sending him to school they sent for a teacher to instruct
him, they encouraged him to read, they took him traveling, not only to
cities but to the silent places, the great forests, and to the lumber
camps. He spent four years in California, and became a good horseman,
making many trips in the saddle to the picturesque old ranches. When
finally, he entered high school, at sixteen, he went in with boys of his
own age, and graduated at eighteen, president of his class. And what he
was most proud of was that he won and still holds, the five-mile running
record of his school. He was intensely interested in birds at this time,
and spent all his spare hours in the woods, studying bird-life. The
result was a series of articles on birds, published in various
scientific journals,--papers whose columns are not usually open to high
school contributors.
Then came a college course at the University of Michigan, with vacations
spent in cruising about the Great Lakes in a twenty-eight-foot cutter
sloop. After graduation he worked for a time in a packing house, then
hearing of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, he set off with
the other gold-diggers. He did not find a mine, but the experience gave
him a background for two later novels, _The Claim Jumpers_, and _The
Westerners_.
He went east for a year of graduate study at Columbia University. Like
many other students, he found a friend in Professor Brander Matthews,
who encouraged him to write of some of his western experiences. He sold
a few short stories to magazines, and his first novel, _The Claim
Jumpers_ was accepted by Appleton's. _The Westerners_, his next book,
brought him $500 for the serial rights, and with its publication he
definitely determined upon making authorship his calling. But it was not
authorship in a study. _The Blazed Trail_ was written in a lumber camp
in midwinter. He got up at four o'clock, wrote until eight, then put on
his snowshoes and went out for a day's work. When the story was finished
he gave it to the foreman of the camp to read. The man began it after
supper, and when White got up next morning at four, he found him still
reading, so he felt that the book would succeed.
Another year he made a trip to the Hudson Bay country, and on his return
wrote _Conjurer's House_. This was dramatized by George Broadhurst, and
was very successful on the stage. With Thomas Fogarty, the artist, he
made a long canoe trip, and the resulting book, _The Forest_, was
illustrated by Mr. Fogarty. A camping trip in the Sierra Mountains of
California was followed by the writing of _The Mountains_. His next
book, _The Mystery_, was written jointly by Mr. White and Samuel Hopkins
Adams. When it was finished they not only divided the proceeds but
divided the characters for future stories, White taking Handy Solomon,
whom he used again in _Arizona Nights_, and Darrow, who appeared in _The
Sign at Six_.
Then without warning, Mr. White went to Africa. His explanation was
simple:
I went because I wanted to. About once in so often the wheels get
rusty and I have to get up and do something real or else blow up.
Africa seemed to me a pretty real thing. Let me add that I did not
go for material. I never go anywhere for material; if I did I
should not get it. That attitude of mine would give me merely
externals, which are not worth writing about. I go places merely
because for one reason or another they attract me. Then if it
happens that I get close enough to the life, I may later find that
I have something to write about. A man rarely writes anything
convincing unless he has lived the life; not with his critical
faculty alert, but whole-heartedly and because, for the time being,
it is his life.
Naturally he found that he had something to write about on his return.
_The Land of Footprints_, _African Camp Fires_, _Simba_, and _The
Leopard Woman_ were books that grew out of his African trip. Mr. White
next planned to write a series of three novels dealing with the romantic
history of the state of California. The first of these books, _Gold_,
describes the mad rush of the Forty-Niners on the first discovery of
gold in California. _The Gray Dawn_, the second of the series, tells of
the days of the Vigilantes, when the wild life of the mining camps
slowly settled down to law and order. The coming of the World War was a
fresh challenge to his adventurous spirit, and he saw service in France
as a major in the U. S. Field Artillery.
From this sketch it is apparent that Mr. White's books have all grown
out of his experience, in the sense that the background is one that he
has known. This explains the strong feeling of reality that we
experience as we read his stories.
NEW ENGLAND GRANITE
_From the day the Pilgrims landed on a rockbound coast, the name New
Englander has suggested certain traits of character. It connotes a
restraint of feeling which more impulsive persons may mistake for
absence of feeling; a reserve carried almost to the point of coldness; a
quiet dignity which to a breezy Westerner seems like "stand-offishness."
But those who come to know New England people well, find that beneath
the flint is fire. Dorothy Canfield suggests the theme of her story in
the title--"Flint and Fire."_
FLINT AND FIRE
BY
DOROTHY CANFIELD
My husband's cousin had come up from the city, slightly more fagged and
sardonic than usual, and as he stretched himself out in the big
porch-chair he was even more caustic than was his wont about the
bareness and emotional sterility of the lives of our country people.
"Perhaps they had, a couple of centuries ago, when the Puritan
hallucination was still strong, a certain fierce savor of religious
intolerance; but now that that has died out, and no material prosperity
has come to let them share in the larger life of their century, there is
a flatness, a mean absence of warmth or color, a deadness to all
emotions but the pettiest sorts----"
I pushed the pitcher nearer him, clinking the ice invitingly, and
directed his attention to our iris-bed as a more cheerful object of
contemplation than the degeneracy of the inhabitants of Vermont. The
flowers burned on their tall stalks like yellow tongues of flame. The
strong, sword-like green leaves thrust themselves boldly up into the
spring air like a challenge. The plants vibrated with vigorous life.
In the field beyond them, as vigorous as they, strode Adoniram Purdon
behind his team, the reins tied together behind his muscular neck, his
hands grasping the plow with the masterful sureness of the successful
practitioner of an art. The hot, sweet spring sunshine shone down on
'Niram's head with its thick crest of brown hair, the ineffable odor of
newly turned earth steamed up about him like incense, the mountain
stream beyond him leaped and shouted. His powerful body answered every
call made on it with the precision of a splendid machine. But there was
no elation in the grimly set face as 'Niram wrenched the plow around a
big stone, or as, in a more favorable furrow, the gleaming share sped
steadily along before the plowman, turning over a long, unbroken brown
ribbon of earth.
My cousin-in-law waved a nervous hand toward the sternly silent figure
as it stepped doggedly behind the straining team, the head bent forward,
the eyes fixed on the horses' heels.
"There!" he said. "There is an example of what I mean. Is there another
race on earth which could produce a man in such a situation who would
not on such a day sing, or whistle, or at least hold up his head and
look at all the earthly glories about him?"
I was silent, but not for lack of material for speech. 'Niram's reasons
for austere self-control were not such as I cared to discuss with a man
of my cousin's mental attitude. As we sat looking at him the noon
whistle from the village blew and the wise old horses stopped in the
middle of a furrow. 'Niram unharnessed them, led them to the shade of a
tree, and put on their nose-bags. Then he turned and came toward the
house.
"Don't I seem to remember," murmured my cousin under his breath, "that,
even though he is a New-Englander, he has been known to make up errands
to your kitchen to see your pretty Ev'leen Ann?"
I looked at him hard; but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on
his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase
of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram
stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he
overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long arm over to where I
sat, he handed me a small package done up in yellowish tissue-paper.
Without hat-raisings, or good-mornings or any other of the greetings
usual in a more effusive civilization, he explained briefly:
"My stepmother wanted I should give you this. She said to thank you for
the grape-juice." As he spoke he looked at me gravely out of deep-set
blue eyes, and when he had delivered his message he held his peace.
I expressed myself with the babbling volubility of one whose manners
have been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I
cried protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely
wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How _could_ your stepmother
give such a thing away? Why, it must be one of her precious old relics.
I don't _want_ her to give me something every time I do some little
thing for her. Can't a neighbor send her in a few bottles of grape-juice
without her thinking she must pay it back somehow? It's not kind of her.
She has never yet let me do the least thing for her without repaying me
with something that is worth ever so much more than my trifling
services."
When I had finished my prattling, 'Niram repeated, with an accent of
finality, "She wanted I should give it to you."
The older man stirred in his chair. Without looking at him I knew that
his gaze on the young rustic was quizzical and that he was recording on
the tablets of his merciless memory the ungraceful abruptness of the
other's action and manner.
"How is your stepmother feeling to-day, 'Niram?" I asked.
"Worse."
'Niram came to a full stop with the word. My cousin covered his
satirical mouth with his hand.
"Can't the doctor do anything to relieve her?" I asked.
'Niram moved at last from his Indian-like immobility. He looked up under
the brim of his felt hat at the sky-line of the mountain, shimmering
iridescent above us. "He says maybe 'lectricity would help her some. I'm
goin' to git her the batteries and things soon's I git the rubber
bandages paid for."
There was a long silence. My cousin stood up, yawning, and sauntered
away toward the door. "Shall I send Ev'leen Ann out to get the pitcher
and glasses?" he asked in an accent which he evidently thought very
humorously significant.
The strong face under the felt hat turned white, the jaw muscles set
hard, but for all this show of strength there was an instant when the
man's eyes looked out with the sick, helpless revelation of pain they
might have had when 'Niram was a little boy of ten, a third of his
present age, and less than half his present stature. Occasionally it is
horrifying to see how a chance shot rings the bell.
"No, no! Never mind!" I said hastily. "I'll take the tray in when I go."
Without salutation or farewell 'Niram Purdon turned and went back to his
work.
The porch was an enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness,
visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of
lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields. Down at the
foot of our sloping lawn the little river, still swollen by the melted
snow from the mountains, plunged between its stony banks and shouted its
brave song to the stars.
We three middle-aged people--Paul, his cousin, and I--had disposed our
uncomely, useful, middle-aged bodies in the big wicker chairs and left
them there while our young souls wandered abroad in the sweet, dark
glory of the night. At least Paul and I were doing this, as we sat, hand
in hand, thinking of a May night twenty years before. One never knows
what Horace is thinking of, but apparently he was not in his usual
captious vein, for after a long pause he remarked, "It is a night almost
indecorously inviting to the making of love."
My answer seemed grotesquely out of key with this, but its sequence was
clear in my mind. I got up, saying: "Oh, that reminds me--I must go and
see Ev'leen Ann. I'd forgotten to plan to-morrow's dinner."
"Oh, everlastingly Ev'leen Ann!" mocked Horace from his corner. "Can't
you think of anything but Ev'leen Ann and her affairs?"
I felt my way through the darkness of the house, toward the kitchen,
both doors of which were tightly closed. When I stepped into the hot,
close room, smelling of food and fire, I saw Ev'leen Ann sitting on the
straight kitchen chair, the yellow light of the bracket-lamp bearing
down on her heavy braids and bringing out the exquisitely subtle
modeling of her smooth young face. Her hands were folded in her lap. She
was staring at the blank wall, and the expression of her eyes so
startled and shocked me that I stopped short and would have retreated if
it had not been too late. She had seen me, roused herself, and said
quietly, as though continuing a conversation interrupted the moment
before:
"I had been thinking that there was enough left of the roast to make
hash-balls for dinner"--"hash-balls" is Ev'leen Ann's decent Anglo-Saxon
name for croquettes--"and maybe you'd like a rhubarb pie."
I knew well enough she had been thinking of no such thing, but I could
as easily have slapped a reigning sovereign on the back as broken in on
the regal reserve of Ev'leen Ann in her clean gingham.
"Well, yes, Ev'leen Ann," I answered in her own tone of reasonable
consideration of the matter; "that would be nice, and your pie-crust is
so flaky that even Mr. Horace will have to be pleased."
"Mr. Horace" is our title for the sardonic cousin whose carping ways are
half a joke, and half a menace in our family.
Ev'leen Ann could not manage the smile which should have greeted this
sally. She looked down soberly at the white-pine top of the kitchen
table and said, "I guess there is enough sparrow-grass up in the garden
for a mess, too, if you'd like that."
"That would taste very good," I agreed, my heart aching for her.
"And creamed potatoes," she finished bravely, thrusting my unspoken
pity from her.
"You know I like creamed potatoes better than any other kind," I
concurred.
There was a silence. It seemed inhuman to go and leave the stricken
young thing to fight her trouble alone in the ugly prison, her
work-place, though I thought I could guess why Ev'leen Ann had shut the
doors so tightly. I hung near her, searching my head for something to
say, but she helped me by no casual remark. 'Niram is not the only one
of our people who possesses to the full the supreme gift of silence.
Finally I mentioned the report of a case of measles in the village, and
Ev'leen Ann responded in kind with the news that her Aunt Emma had
bought a potato-planter. Ev'leen Ann is an orphan, brought up by a
well-to-do spinster aunt, who is strong-minded and runs her own farm.
After a time we glided by way of similar transitions to the mention of
his name.
"'Niram Purdon tells me his stepmother is no better," I said. "Isn't it
too bad?" I thought it well for Ev'leen Ann to be dragged out of her
black cave of silence once in a while, even if it could be done only by
force. As she made no answer, I went on. "Everybody who knows 'Niram
thinks it splendid of him to do so much for his stepmother."
Ev'leen Ann responded with a detached air, as though speaking of a
matter in China: "Well, it ain't any more than what he should. She was
awful good to him when he was little and his father got so sick. I guess
'Niram wouldn't ha' had much to eat if she hadn't ha' gone out sewing to
earn it for him and Mr. Purdon." She added firmly, after a moment's
pause, "No, ma'am, I don't guess it's any more than what 'Niram had
ought to do."
"But it's very hard on a young man to feel that he's not able to marry,"
I continued. Once in a great while we came so near the matter as this.
Ev'leen Ann made no answer. Her face took on a pinched look of
sickness. She set her lips as though she would never speak again. But I
knew that a criticism of 'Niram would always rouse her, and said: "And
really, I think 'Niram makes a great mistake to act as he does. A wife
would be a help to him. She could take care of Mrs. Purdon and keep the
house."
Ev'leen Ann rose to the bait, speaking quickly with some heat: "I guess
'Niram knows what's right for him to do! He can't afford to marry when
he can't even keep up with the doctor's bills and all. He keeps the
house himself, nights and mornings, and Mrs. Purdon is awful handy about
taking care of herself, for all she's bedridden. That's her way, you
know. She can't bear to have folks do for her. She'd die before she'd
let anybody do anything for her that she could anyways do for herself!"
I sighed acquiescingly. Mrs. Purdon's fierce independence was a rock on
which every attempt at sympathy or help shattered itself to atoms. There
seemed to be no other emotion left in her poor old work-worn shell of a
body. As I looked at Ev'leen Ann it seemed rather a hateful
characteristic, and I remarked, "It seems to me it's asking a good deal
of 'Niram to spoil his life in order that his stepmother can go on
pretending she's independent."
Ev'leen Ann explained hastily: "Oh, 'Niram doesn't tell her anything
about--She doesn't know he would like to--he don't want she should be
worried--and, anyhow, as 'tis, he can't earn enough to keep ahead of all
the doctors cost."
"But the right kind of a wife--a good, competent girl--could help out by
earning something, too."