IV

_In Kansas: The First Harvest_

MONDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 1, 1912. A little west of Newton, Kansas. In

the public library of a village whose name I forget.

Here is the story of how I came to harvest. I was by chance taking a

short respite from the sunshine, last Monday noon, on the porch of the

Mennonite farmer. I had had dinner further back. But the good folk

asked me to come in and have dessert anyway. It transpired that one of

the two harvest hands was taking his farewell meal. He was obliged to

fill a contract to work further West, a contract made last year. I

timidly suggested I might take his place. To my astonishment I was

engaged at once. This fellow was working for two dollars a day, but I

agreed to $1.75, seeing my predecessor was a skilled man and twice as

big as I was. My wages, as I discovered, included three rich meals,

and a pretty spare room to sleep in, and a good big bucket to bathe in

nightly.

I anticipate history at this point by telling how at the end of the

week my wages looked as strange to me as a bunch of unexpected

ducklets to a hen. They were as curious to contemplate as a group of

mischievous nieces who have come to spend the day with their

embarrassed, fluttering maiden aunt.

I took my wages to Newton, and spent all on the vanities of this life.

First the grandest kind of a sombrero, so I shall not be sunstruck in

the next harvest-field, which I narrowly escaped in this. Next, the

most indestructible of corduroys. Then I had my shoes re-soled and

bought a necktie that was like the oriflamme of Navarre, and attended

to several other points of vanity. I started out again, dead broke and

happy. If I work hereafter I can send most all my wages home, for I

am now in real travelling costume.

But why linger over the question of wages till I show I earned those

wages?

Let me tell you of a typical wheat-harvesting day. The field is two

miles from the house. We make preparations for a twelve-hour siege.

Halters and a barrel of water and a heap of alfalfa for the mules,

binder-twine and oil for the reaper and water-jugs for us are loaded

into the spring wagon. Two mules are hitched in front, two are led

behind. The new reaper was left in the field yesterday. We make haste.

We must be at work by the time the dew dries. The four mules are soon

hitched to the reaper and proudly driven into the wheat by the son of

the old Mennonite. This young fellow carries himself with proper

dignity as heir of the farm. He is a credit to the father. He will not

curse the mules, though those animals forget their religion sometimes,

and act after the manner of their kind. The worst he will do will be

to call one of them an old cow. I suppose when he is vexed with a cow

he calls it an old mule. My other companion is a boy of nineteen from

a Mennonite community in Pennsylvania. He sets me a pace. Together we

build the sheaves into shocks, of eight or ten sheaves each, put so

they will not be shaken by an ordinary Kansas wind. The wind has been

blowing nearly all the time at a rate which in Illinois would mean a

thunderstorm in five minutes, and sometimes the clouds loom in the

thunderstorm way, yet there is not a drop of rain, and the clouds are

soon gone.

In the course of the week the boy and I have wrestled with heavy ripe

sheaves, heavier green sheaves, sheaves full of Russian thistles and

sheaves with the string off. The boy, as he sings _The day-star hath

risen_, twists a curious rope of straw and reties the loose bundles

with one turn of the hand. I try, but cannot make the knot. Once all

sheaves were so bound.

Much of the wheat must be cut heavy and green because there is a

liability to sudden storms or hail that will bury it in mud, or soften

the ground and make it impossible to drag the reaper, or hot winds

that suddenly ripen the loose grain and shake it into the earth. So it

is an important matter to get the wheat out when it is anywhere near

ready. I found that two of the girls were expecting to take the place

of the departing hand, if I had not arrived.

The Mennonite boy picked up two sheaves to my one at the beginning of

the week. To-day I learn to handle two at a time and he immediately

handles three at a time. He builds the heart of the sheaf. Then we add

the outside together. He is always marching ahead and causing me to

feel ashamed.

The Kansas grasshopper makes himself friendly. He bites pieces out of

the back of my shirt the shape and size of the ace of spades. Then he

walks into the door he has made and loses himself. Then he has to be

helped out, in one way or another.

The old farmer, too stiff for work, comes out on his dancing pony and

rides behind the new reaper. This reaper was bought only two days ago

and he beams with pride upon it. It seems that he and his son almost

swore, trying to tinker the old one. The farmer looks with even more

pride upon the field, still a little green, but mostly golden. He

dismounts and tests the grain, threshing it out in his hand, figuring

the average amount in several typical heads. He stands off, and is

guilty of an æsthetic thrill. He says of the sea of gold: "I wish I

could have a photograph of that." (O eloquent word, for a Mennonite!)

Then he plays at building half a dozen shocks, then goes home till

late in the afternoon. We three are again masters of the field.

We are in a level part of Kansas, not a rolling range as I found it

further east. The field is a floor. Hedges gradually faded from the

landscape in counties several days' journey back, leaving nothing but

unbroken billows to the horizon. But the hedges have been resumed in

this region. Each time round the enormous field we stop at a break in

the line of those untrimmed old thorn-trees. Here we rest a moment and

drink from the water-jug. To keep from getting sunstruck I profanely

waste the water, pouring it on my head, and down my neck to my feet. I

came to this farm wearing a derby, and have had to borrow a slouch

with a not-much-wider rim from the farmer. It was all the extra

headgear available in this thrifty region. Because of that

not-much-wider rim my face is sunburned all over every day. I have not

yet received my wages to purchase my sombrero.

As we go round the field, the Mennonite boy talks religion, or is

silent. I have caught the spirit of the farm, and sing all the

hymn-tunes I can remember. Sometimes the wind turns hot. Perspiration

cannot keep up with evaporation. Our skins are dry as the dryest

stubble. Then we stand and wait for a little streak of cool wind. It

is pretty sure to come in a minute. "That's a nice air," says the boy,

and gets to work. Once it was so hot all three of us stopped five

minutes by the hedge. Then it was I told them the story of the hens I

met just west of Emporia.

I had met ten hens walking single-file into the town of Emporia. I was

astonished to meet educated hens. Each one was swearing. I would not

venture, I added, to repeat what they said.

_Not a word from the Mennonites._

I continued in my artless way, showing how I stopped the next to the

last hen, though she was impatient to go on. I inquired "Where are you

all travelling?" She said "To Emporia." And so I asked, "Why are you

swearing so?" She answered, "Don't you know about the Sunday-school

picnic?" I paused in my story.

_No word from the Mennonites. One of them rose rather impatiently._

I poured some water on my head and continued: "I stopped the last hen.

I asked: "Why are you swearing, sister? And what about the picnic?"

She replied: "These Emporia people are going to give a Sunday-school

picnic day after to-morrow. Meantime all us hens have to lay devilled

eggs."

"We do not laugh at jokes about swearing," said the Mennonite driver,

and climbed back on to his reaper. My partner strode solemnly out into

the sun and began to pile sheaves.

Each round we study our shadows on the stubble more closely, thrilled

with the feeling that noon creeps on. And now, up the road we see a

bit of dust and a rig. No, it is not the woman we are looking for, but

a woman with supplies for other harvesters. We work on and on, while

four disappointing rigs go by. At last appears a sunbonnet we know.

Our especial Mennonite maid is sitting quite straight on the edge of

the seat and holding the lines almost on a level with her chin. She

drives through the field toward us. We motion her to the gap in the

hedge.

We unhitch, and lead the mules to the gap, where she joins us. With

much high-minded expostulation the men try to show the mules they

should eat alfalfa and not hedge-thorns. The mules are at last tied

out in the sun to a wheel of the wagon, away from temptation, with

nothing but alfalfa near them.

The meal is spread with delicacy, yet there is a heap of it. With a

prayer of thanksgiving, sometimes said by Tilly, sometimes by one of

the men, we begin to eat. To a man in a harvest-field a square meal is

more thrilling than a finely-acted play.

The thrill goes not only to the toes and the finger-tips, but to the

utmost ramifications of the spirit. Men indoors in offices, whose

bodies actually require little, cannot think of eating enormously

without thinking of sodden overeating, with condiments to rouse, and

heavy meats and sweets to lull the flabby body till the last faint

remnants of appetite have departed and the man is a monument of sleepy

gluttony.

Eating in a harvest field is never so. Every nerve in the famished

body calls frantically for reinforcements. And the nerves and soul of

a man are strangely alert together. All we ate for breakfast turned to

hot ashes in our hearts at eleven o'clock. I sing of the body and of

the eternal soul, revived again! To feel life actually throbbing back

into one's veins, life immense in passion, pulse and power, is not

over-eating.

Tilly has brought us knives, and no forks. It would have been more

appropriate if we had eaten from the ends of swords. We are finally

recuperated from the fevers of the morning and almost strong enough

for the long, long afternoon fight with the sun. Fresh water is poured

from a big glittering can into the jugs we have sucked dry. Tilly

reloads the buggy and is gone. After another sizzling douse of water

without and within, our long afternoon pull commences.

The sun has become like a roaring lion, and we wrestle with the

sheaves as though we had him by the beard. The only thing that keeps

up my nerve in the dizziness is the remembrance of the old Mennonite's

proverb at breakfast that as long as a man can eat and sweat he is

safe. My hands inside my prickling gloves seem burning off. The wheat

beards there are like red-hot needles. But I am still sweating a

little in the chest, and the Mennonite boy is cheerfully singing:

"When I behold the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss

And pour contempt on all my pride."

Two-thirds round the field, methinks the jig is up. Then the sun is

hidden by a friend of ours in the sky, just the tiniest sort of a

cloud and we march on down the rows. The merciful little whiff of

dream follows the sun for half an hour.

The most terrible heat is at half-past two. Somehow we pull through

till four o'clock. Then we say to ourselves: "We can stand this

four-o'clock heat, because we have stood it hotter."

'Tis a grim matter of comparison. We speed up a little and trot a

little as the sun reaches the top of the western hedge. A bit later

the religious hired man walks home to do the chores. I sing down the

rows by myself. It is glorious to work now. The endless reiterations

of the day have developed a certain dancing rhythm in one's nerves,

one is intoxicated with his own weariness and the conceit that comes

with seizing the sun by the mane, like Sampson.

It is now that the sun gracefully acknowledges his defeat. He shows

through the hedge as a great blur, that is all. Then he becomes a

mist-wrapped golden mountain that some fairy traveller might climb in

enchanted shoes. This sun of ours is no longer an enemy, but a

fantasy, a vision and a dream.

Now the elderly proprietor is back on his dancing pony. He is

following the hurrying reaper in a sort of ceremonial fashion,

delighted to see the wheat go down so fast. At last this particular

field is done. We finish with a comic-tragedy. Some little rabbits

scoot, panic-stricken, from the last few yards of still-standing

grain. The old gentleman on horseback and his son afoot soon

out-manoeuvre the lively creatures. We have rabbit for supper at the

sacrifice of considerable Mennonite calm.

It was with open rejoicing on the part of all that we finished the

field nearest the house, the last one, by Saturday noon. The boy and I

had our own special thrill in catching up with the reaper, which had

passed by us so often in our rounds. As the square in mid-field grows

smaller the reaper has to turn oftener, and turning uses up much more

time than at first appears.

The places where the armies of wheat-sheaves are marshalled are magic

places, despite their sweat and dust. There is nothing small in the

panorama. All the lines of the scene are epic. The binder-twine is

invisible, and has not altered the eternal classic form of the sheaf.

There is a noble dignity and ease in the motion of a new reaper on a

level field. A sturdy Mennonite devotee marching with a great bundle

of wheat under each arm and reaching for a third makes a picture

indeed, an essay on sunshine beyond the brush of any impressionist.

Each returning day while riding to the field, when one has a bit of

time to dream, one feels these things. One feels also the essentially

patriarchal character of the harvest. One thinks of the Book of Ruth,

and the Jewish feasts of ingathering. All the new Testament parables

ring in one's ears, parables of sowing and reaping, of tares and good

grain, of Bread and of Leaven and the story of the Disciples plucking

corn. As one looks on the half-gathered treasure he thinks on the

solemn words: "For the Bread of God is that which cometh down out of

Heaven and giveth life unto the World," and the rest of that sermon on

the Bread of Life, which has so many meanings.

This Sunday before breakfast, I could fully enter into the daily

prayers, that at times had appeared merely quaint to me, and in my

heart I said "Amen" to the special thanksgiving the patriarch lifted

up for the gift of the fruit of the land. I was happy indeed that I

had had the strength to bear my little part in the harvest of a noble

and devout household, as well as a hand in the feeding of the wide

world.

What I, a stranger, have done in this place, thirty thousand strangers

are doing just a little to the west. We poor tramps are helping to

garner that which reestablishes the nations. If only for a little

while, we have bent our backs over the splendid furrows, to save a

shining gift that would otherwise rot, or vanish away.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY FOURTH, 1912. In the shadow of a lonely

windmill between Raymond and Ellinwood, Kansas.

I arrived hot and ravenous at Raymond about eleven A.M. on this

glorious Independence Day, having walked twelve miles facing a strange

wind. At first it seemed fairly cool, because it travelled at the rate

of an express train. But it was really hot and alkaline, and almost

burnt me up. I had had for breakfast a cooky, some raisins and a piece

of cheese, purchased with my booklet of rhymes at a grocery. By the

time I reached Raymond I was fried and frantic.

The streets were deserted. I gathered from the station-master that

almost everyone had gone to the Dutch picnic in the grove near

Ellinwood. The returns for the Johnson-Flynn fight were to be received

there beneath the trees, and a potent variety of dry-state beverage

was to flow free. The unveracious station-master declared this

beverage was made of equal parts iron-rust, patent medicine and

rough-on-rats, added to a barrel of brown rain-water. He appeared to

be prejudiced against it.

I walked down the street. Just as I had somehow anticipated, I spied

out a certain type of man. He was alone in his restaurant and I

crouched my soul to spring. The only man left in town is apt to be a

soft-hearted party. "Here, as sure as my name is tramp, I will wrestle

with a defenceless fellow-being."

Like many a restaurant in Kansas, it was a sort of farm-hand's

Saturday night paradise. If a man cannot loaf in a saloon he will loaf

in a restaurant. Then certain problems of demand and supply arise

according to circumstances and circumlocutions.

I obtained leave for the ice-water without wrestling. I almost emptied

the tank. Then, with due art, I offered to recite twenty poems to the

solitary man, a square meal to be furnished at the end, if the rhymes

were sufficiently fascinating.

Assuming a judicial attitude on the lunch-counter stool he put me in

the arm-chair by the ice-chest and told me to unwind myself. As usual,

I began with _The Proud Farmer_, _The Illinois Village_ and _The

Building of Springfield_, which three in series contain my whole

gospel, directly or by implication. Then I wandered on through all

sorts of rhyme. He nodded his head like a mandarin, at the end of each

recital. Then he began to get dinner. He said he liked my poetry, and

he was glad I came in, for he would feel more like getting something

to eat himself. I sat on and on by the ice-chest while he prepared a

meal more heating than the morning wind or the smell of fire-crackers

in the street. First, for each man, a slice of fried ham large enough

for a whole family. Then French fried potatoes by the platterful. Then

three fried eggs apiece. There was milk with cream on top to be poured

from a big granite bucket as we desired it. There was a can of beans

with tomato sauce. There was sweet apple-butter. There were canned

apples. There was a pot of coffee. I moved over from the ice-chest and

we talked and ate till half-past one. I began to feel that I was solid

as an iron man and big as a Colossus of Rhodes. I would like to report

our talk, but this letter must end somewhere. I agreed with my host's

opinions on everything but the temperance question. He did not believe

in _total_ abstinence. On that I remained noncommittal. Eating as I

had, how could I take a stand against my benefactor even though the

issue were the immortal one of man's sinful weakness for drink? The

ham and ice water were going to my head as it was. And I could have

eaten more. I could have eaten a fat Shetland pony.

My host explained that he also travelled at times, but did not carry

poetry. He gave me much box-car learning. Then, curious to relate, he

dug out maps and papers, and showed me how to take up a claim in

Oregon, a thing I did not in the least desire to do. God bless him in

basket and in store, afoot or at home.

This afternoon the ham kept on frying within me, not uncomfortably. I

stopped and drank at every windmill. Now it is about four o'clock in

the afternoon and I am in the shadow of one more. I have found a

bottle which just fits my hip pocket which I have washed and will use

as a canteen henceforth. When one knows he has his drink with him, he

does not get so thirsty.

But I have put down little to show you the strange intoxication that

has pervaded this whole day. The inebriating character of the air and

the water and the intoxication that comes with the very sight of the

wind-mills spinning alone, and the elation that comes with the

companionship of the sun, and the gentleness of the occasional good

Samaritans, are not easily conveyed in words. When one's spirit is

just right for this sort of thing it all makes as good an Independence

Day as folks are having anywhere in this United States, even at

Ellinwood.

THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1912. In the office of the Ellinwood livery stable

in the morning.

Everyone came home drunk from the Dutch picnic last night. Ellinwood

roared and Ellinwood snorted. I reached the place from the east just

as the noisy revellers arrived from the south.

Ellinwood is an old German town full of bar-rooms, forced by the

sentiment of the dry voters in surrounding territory to turn into

restaurants, but only of late. The bar-fixtures are defiantly

retained. Ever and anon Ellinwood takes to the woods with malicious

intent.

Many of the citizens were in a mad-dog fury because Flynn had not

licked Johnson. This town seems to be of the opinion that that battle

was important. The proprietor of the most fashionable hotel

monopolized the 'phone on his return from the woods. He called up

everybody in town. His conversation was always the same. "What'd ya

think of the fight?" And without waiting for answer: "I'll bet one

hundred thousand dollars that Flynn can lick Johnson in a fair fight.

It's a disgrace to this nation that black rascal kin lay hands on a

white man. I'll bet a hundred thousand dollars.... A hundred thousand

dollars ..." etc.

I sat a long time waiting for him to get through. At last I put in my

petition at another hostelrie. This host was intoxicated, but gentle.

In exchange for what I call the squarest kind of a meal I recited the

most cooling verses I knew to a somewhat distracted, rather alcoholic

company of harvest hands. First I recited a poem in praise of Lincoln

and then one in praise of the uplifting influence of the village

church. Then, amid qualified applause, I distributed my tracts, and

retreated to this stable for the night.