The winter school had closed, and my spring work on the farm had begun.
Boys of my age in New England, at least farmer boys, did not, as a
rule, attend school in summer: it was thought that winter schooling
was enough. My mother, however, intended for me to graduate in the
high school later. Like most New England people, mother believed in
the potency of work as a needful part of a boy’s or girl’s education.
Work, she declared never hurt any one; while laziness and the feeling
that one is too good to work were the foundation of shiftlessness and
poverty. People must fight for anything worth having, and farming is a
fight with the soil to make it yield a living.
“Your father,” she would say, “was a farmer and a good one; he believed
as religiously in fighting the soil and keeping down the weeds, as he
believed in fighting the Confederates and putting down the Rebellion.
If you expect this farm to be yours, and to pay off the mortgage on
it,” she would add, “you have got to learn about the work, or the rocks
and weeds will get the best of you, and it will be of no use when you
get it. You will be selling it, and spending the money, and become a
shack of a man like some others who think they are too good to work.”
“But you have succeeded in working the farm,” I argued, “without
knowing the work practically.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “but I was brought up on this farm and have
learned what it will best raise. I know the business part; but if I
understood the farm better I wouldn’t have to stand Bill Jenkins’
dictation, when he wants to have his way instead of mine.”
“What makes you keep him,” I asked; “he growls about what you ought to
do, instead of taking your orders and obeying them.”
“He is faithful,” she replied, “and is to be trusted. If you can’t
trust a man, he is of no use to you anywhere.”
Although Jot had now been with us long enough to receive several
months’ pay, he still wore the same suit of clothes as when he came to
the Stark farm. I afterward learned it was because he had been paying
for his mother’s sickness and funeral. He was still reticent about his
father, and would give no account of himself, except a general one. He
talked, however, quite freely about his mother, and about his uncle
Jed, and was intensely patriotic.
“I would like to fight for this country, as my uncle did,” he would
sometimes say, “if I should ever be needed.”
We continued to read the news of the war as it came across the sea.
Our hearts were thrilled at even the meagre recital given in our
weekly paper, of that great adventure of arms, when like a lion the
great French general with his brave army, stood in the path of German
invasion and said, “They shall not pass!”
On the farm, meanwhile, Jot had been proving the correctness of
mother’s judgment that he would be worth more than his keep. Among
other traits brought out by acquaintance was one striking one. He was
passionately fond of animals, and had a control over them that was
seemingly the result of sympathy. In mowing time, when I would be tired
enough to be resting, he would often be playing with our two year old
colt, Jack; and he seldom came into the pasture without an apple or
some dainty for him. The colt was of Hambletonian stock, high spirited,
and when with Jot full of play.
One day, after we had been mowing hay, mother said, “Bill, there is a
shower coming up, and you had better give the boys a little rest.”
“Well, Miss Stark, I guess it will be a good plan, while we are
loafing, to give Jack a little training. He’s about the hardest scamp
of a colt I ever see.”
But as Bill in his former attempts to train Jack had lost his temper
and struck and kicked him, he found it hard to catch him.
“Let me try to catch him for you, Mr. Jenkins,” said Jot.
“What do you know about colts?” said Bill crossly.
“I got acquainted with him down in the pasture, and will try and catch
him for you, if you are willing.”
Jot’s respectful manner mollified Bill and he assented, saying:
“Well, go ahead with your sleight of hand with the critter; but I can
tell you, he is awful skeetish.”
Jot called the colt to him in coaxing tones, holding out his hand with
a lump of sugar, and Jack came circling around him with flowing mane
and streaming tail; dropping his tail, snuffed at Jot’s hand, let him
take hold of his fetterlock and, yielding to his caresses, allowed him
to slip the bridle over his head and to be led around.
But when Bill attempted to take the colt in charge, he couldn’t manage
him.
“Bill,” said mother, “Jonathan seems to understand him; hadn’t you
better let him try to break him; for I am afraid you’ll spoil him; so
please let him try.”
After he had led Jack around the yard for a while, Jot said to mother,
“I think that will do for this time, Mrs. Stark.” And then, with a
little more petting and another lump of sugar, sent the colt scampering
away.
“My!” said mother, “I didn’t think you could do it.”
In one of our visits to Chester we acquired a dog, or more truthfully,
a dog acquired us.
We had no dog on the place; for Bill hated dogs; said they killed
sheep, and had fleas, and declared, with some truth, that if a dog
didn’t kill sheep, he attracted those who did. But on this day as we
were coming from a store where we had been making purchases, a dog with
tin things tied to his tail came _ki-yi-ing_ piteously from a near-by
shed where some rowdy boys were congregated.
Jot coaxed the dog to him, got him in his arms, took off the tin cans
that had been pinched to his tail, and holding the creature in his
arms, said to the boys: “Who owns this dog?”
“No one owns him,” one of them answered; “he’s been hanging around here
for quite a while.”
We took the frightened creature to the wagon and, when half a mile
away, put him down to shift for himself. The dog would not be deserted
by his new-found friends, but followed the team and, at every attempt
to drive him away, would roll over on his back and implore in doggish
fashion, to go with us. So at last, when we arrived at home, the dog
was with us.
Bill, of course, strenuously objected to having the dog on the place;
but after much pleading I got mother to allow us to keep him, though
she also did not like dogs.
“I won’t have him underfoot,” she declared, “so you must keep him away
from the house--out at the barn;” to which we agreed.
We were delighted, for what boy does not love a dog?
Jot taught him several cunning tricks, among other things, to bring
home the cows at milking time. Because of his color we called him
“Muddy.”
I have told these simple things not alone to reveal Jonathan’s
compassionate nature, but because they were not without influence in
scenes of greater importance, in our later lives, as you shall see.
Jot worked faithfully on the farm, and with its healthy food and work,
had grown to be a strong though slight young man. He had attended
school several winters, learning rapidly.
Meanwhile the war was claiming more and more of our attention, and we
read about it with such interest that we had begun taking a daily
newspaper. When the news came of the sinking of the great passenger
ship, the _Lusitania_, with its hundreds of passengers, it seemed too
dreadful to believe. Though public indignation was at white heat over
this cruel deed, it was soon toned to soberness by thoughts of our own
possible war with this relentless military power.
Soon after the sinking of the _Lusitania_, a great personal sorrow
befell me in the loss of my mother. She passed away after only a few
days’ illness of heart failure. After her burial in the Stark private
burial plot, my Aunt Joe and her husband came to take charge of the
farm. Jonathan continued to work with us, but Bill left to work
elsewhere; for he declared he wouldn’t stand bossing from any one.
The farm did not seem like home to me after mother’s death, and I fell
into such melancholy at times, that Aunt Joe gave me what she called a
good talking to, saying, “I guess your mother is glad to have her boy
care for her; but it is just as natural to die, as it is to be born,
and it don’t do a speck of good to be blue when we lose our friends.”
To illustrate her philosophy, she then sat down and had a good cry with
me.