_The Grinnell Spirit_
Between the Grand Canyon and the ship there might be "many a slip,"
especially as I was to conclude my guardianship of the travellers in my
own town, prosaically placed in the great Mississippi Valley, which
consists of two plains--one at the top and the other at the bottom,
filled with corn and hogs, and most prosperous and contented people.
The place towards which we journeyed holds two things which are the
biggest, most beautiful, and best things in the world--my home and my
work, both of which my guests wished to see. I was anxious that they
should; for there, if anywhere, they could come close to that I gloried
in most, the American Spirit.
After the barren plains, the monotonous miles of sage-brush, and the
long, straight stretches of railroad tracks, it was good to look upon
green meadows and commodious farmhouses sheltered by groves of maple and
elm, and surrounded by great fields of young corn just peeping above the
black, rich clods.
During the last few hours of the trip the Herr Director thought every
station at which the train stopped was our destination, and began
gathering his various belongings. When finally we reached it he jumped
out almost before the train stopped, so eager was he to see the place
where he was to spend at least a fortnight, and really see the American
home from the inside.
Again fortune favored me. It was early June. The air was soft from
recent rains, the grassy lawns were wonderfully green; peonies were
opening their buds, adding touches of color, snowballs hung thick upon
the bushes, and blooming roses filled the air with sweet odors.
It seemed as if our neighbors had conspired to make the town ready for
my distinguished visitors, and I could see that they enjoyed the peace
of it, the friendliness of the park-like streets, the sight of well-kept
homes set in gardens, and the cordial greetings of the people we met.
Their appreciation of all they saw before reaching the house, and their
evident delight in the rooms prepared for them, not to mention their
astonishment at finding their trunks awaiting them there, afforded me
not only pleasure, but a great sense of relief; I felt that the race was
won. I had faith to believe that they would be happy in our town of six
thousand inhabitants, which is not unlike other places of the same size.
It has its public park, two or three shopping streets, churches,
schoolhouses, a few factories large and small, clubs, lodges, and all
the things of which like towns may legitimately boast; yet it has a
background peculiarly its own.
It was founded by an intrepid pioneer who brought a colony of New
Englanders from the hills of Massachusetts to this treeless prairie, and
with the imperious will of his race said: "Let there be a town!" And
lumber was carted over miles of deep mud, cabins were built and there
was a town.
And again he said: "Let there be a railroad!" And he diverted the course
of a great railroad system miles out of its way, and there was a
railroad.
And he said: "There must be no saloon in this place!" So more than half
a century before strong drink was acknowledged to be a social and
physical foe, he had seen its true nature and put prohibition into every
deed of real estate, thus making it impossible for liquor to gain a
foothold.
Years passed and he said: "Let there be a college!" and he brought one
across the state, and there was a college; a young, infant thing just
started by Christian missionaries who had come from the East, each of
them to plant a church, all of them to plant a college.
This infant educational institution was put into its rude cradle in the
midst of an unshaded campus, and when it had grown to generous size,
with buildings to house it and trees to shade it, a cyclone swept the
campus bare, and instead of a joyous Commencement, which was but a few
days distant, there were funerals and desolation, wreck and ruin.
On a pile of débris sat the same pioneer with a determined smile playing
upon his face, and at once, while the tears upon the mourners' cheeks
were still wet, he and others like him began rebuilding the town and the
college.
Those men now "rest from their labor" in that bit of rolling prairie
saved from the plowmen and the harvester, and consecrated to hold our
dead until the great day.
The morning after our arrival in Grinnell, the Herr Director and the
Frau Directorin, who, during our travels, had little opportunity to
indulge their fondness for exercise, walked out to the cemetery. It is a
beautiful, well-kept spot, but half spoiled by crowding headstones. From
it can be seen church steeples peeping through the elm trees which
shelter the town; the ugly stand-pipe and the tall chimney of our one
big factory. At our feet lay the little artificial lake where much
fishing is done, and sometimes fish are caught. As far as we could see
were prosperous farms with their comfortable homes, generous barns,
turreted silos, and wide meadows where calves and colts grazed.
One of our virtues, the Herr Director thought, was that we do not boast
about our dead. Whatever boasting we do, and we do not boast too much,
it ceases when the earth covers us. He saw no fulsome eulogies carved
upon the headstones; often nothing but a name and the two dates of birth
and death.
In the face of that great and last achievement we are very humble and
honest; although in our little cemetery lie buried men and women of whom
I should like to boast. They were the great, real Americans who worked
diligently, honestly and humbly, who left no huge fortunes to curse the
next generation; but built their modest homes, and before the roof tree
was lifted, had built a church and a schoolhouse. They put their tithes
into the Lord's treasury before they put money into a bank, and while
they were still wading through mud, anchored the college upon a rock,
making its growth and permanence their great extravagance.
They believed in an austere Christ, but believed in Him implicitly,
followed Him consistently and left a legacy of simplicity, temperance
and frugality.
Yes, I boasted of our dead to my guests. I boasted of that grim,
fighting man whose name the town bears, who was the personification of
the determined, American pioneer, the conqueror of mere circumstances.
I boasted of that firm, unyielding, controversial Calvinist, George F.
Magoun, who ruled the college in his own stern way. He was the last, but
not the least of his kind, who built deep and strong and straight upon
the foundations of morality and religion; so that others could build
loftily and boldly.
I led them to the grave where rests the body of his successor, the two
differing from one another in opinions and method at every point; for
the younger man was the forerunner of a new dispensation, its prophet,
disciple and martyr. Yet both men were made of the same stern,
unyielding stuff, and both rested their lives and the hope of life's
better things to come, upon the same foundation.
When the names of those Americans who prophesied the day of the Kingdom,
who worked for it and suffered for it, shall be placed upon the honor
roll, the name of George A. Gates, now carved upon a modest monument,
will be found imperishably written there.
Near by, under the shade of slender white birches, we saw the simple
shaft which marks the resting place of one of the Iowa Band, James J.
Hill, who holds his place in the annals of the college, not only because
he gave the first dollar to help found it, but because of the continued
loyalty of his sons.
I wished my guests could have come to us before we buried the man whose
life spanned the old and the new--the white-haired, ever youthful,
eloquent teacher, Leonard F. Parker, who smiled benignly upon us all
until his eyes closed forever, and with their closing, a benediction was
gone. He was the type of missionary teacher who began his career in a
log cabin, who, whether he taught in a country school or in a great
State University, taught with a passion for men. The impress of his
personality remained with his pupils long after they had forgotten his
erudite lore.
As great as these great Americans were their wives, and no one can ever
think of them as less than the equals of their husbands.
If the American woman occupies a unique place in the world, it is not
only because the American man has been more generous than his European
brother, but because she has proved her equality. She has attained the
measure of rights and privileges still denied to most of her sisters
elsewhere because she earned and deserved them.
We, the living, sons and daughters of these great teachers by birth and
by adoption, cannot hold in too high esteem the legacy they left us. We
do not know with as firm an assurance as we ought to know, how much we
owe to them, and that, if we waste our inheritance, we waste spiritual
forces which we cannot generate.
They were all, in the true sense, provincial, narrow men. They thought
of America and of the world and of the world to come, in the terms of
their creed, their town and their college; while we who have circled the
globe and think in world terms first, and boast of wider vision and
larger faith, may be in danger of overlooking the fact that in our small
place and places like it may be decided the fate of America, and through
America, the fate of the world.
The Herr Director was astonished and the Frau Directorin pained to find
that we lived in a servantless house and in practically a servantless
town; that we were our own cooks and housemaids, butlers and gardeners.
When the Herr Director saw me mowing my lawn in broad daylight he
wondered that I did not lose caste among my fellows.
The Frau Directorin was remarkably adaptable. She delighted in wielding
the dustless mop (to reduce "the meat"), she dusted the bric-à-brac, and
out of the kindness of her heart and in spite of our protests, became
"first aid" to my wife.
One morning, just as I was waking, I heard the rattle of a lawn-mower
under my window; not the quick, sharp, sustained noise which usually
arouses the neighborhood, but a slow, measured sound, by fits and
starts. In between I could hear puffing and panting, like that of a
small steam engine. When I looked out of the window I saw something
which my eyes could not believe. The Herr Director had begun mowing the
lawn, and I let him finish it. It pretty nearly finished him; but after
his bath and a generous American breakfast, he glowed from health and
happiness.
"I never knew," he said, "the elevating power of physical labor. I think
I will take a lawn-mower home with me."
The Frau Directorin put a damper upon his enthusiasm by reminding him
that he would have to take a lawn home with him too, and more than that,
the town itself; for in their environment he would not dare use the
lawn-mower even if he had one.
I am quite sure now that the Herr Director would have liked to take my
little town home with him, with the lawn-mower and the lawn. If he
could have done so, he might have changed the course of empires.
I urged him, if he really wished to annex us, to do it soon; for there
is no little danger that we, too, shall lose faith in the redemptive
power of labor, the sufficiency of little things, the grandeur of plain
living and high thinking, the exaltation of the humble, the inheritance
for the meek and the reward of the righteous. When we lose those, we
have lost that which, in our proud, provincial way, we call "The
Grinnell Spirit"--an integral part of the American--the World-spirit.