Wisconsin in Story and Song;
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Title: Wisconsin in Story and Song;
Editor: Charles Ralph Rounds
Henry Sherman Hippensteel
Release date: November 11, 2012 [eBook #41344]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WISCONSIN IN STORY AND SONG; ***
Wisconsin in Story and Song
SELECTIONS FROM THE PROSE AND
POETRY OF BADGER STATE
WRITERS
EDITED BY
CHARLES RALPH ROUNDS
HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH OF THE
MILWAUKEE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
AND
HENRY SHERMAN HIPPENSTEEL
HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND DIRECTOR
OF HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER TRAINING OF THE
STEVENS POINT NORMAL SCHOOL
PUBLISHERS
THE PARKER EDUCATIONAL COMPANY
MADISON, WISCONSIN
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY
THE PARKER EDUCATIONAL CO.,
MADISON, WISCONSIN
_To the authors of today and of former days,
whose genius and co-operation have made this
book possible, and to the young people who
may, by reading these pages, be inspired to
carry the banner of our state still farther
into the realm of literature,
WISCONSIN IN STORY AND SONG
is affectionately dedicated._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page
General Wisconsin Writers.
HAMLIN GARLAND 13-39
Haying Time, Among the Corn Rows, Ploughing, Ladrone, The
Toil of the Trail, The Blue Jay, Pom Pom Pull Away, The
Old-Fashioned Threshing in Green's Coolly.
GENERAL CHARLES KING 40-63
Ray's Ride for Life (from "Marion's Faith"), The Final Blow.
JOHN MUIR 64-71
Snow Banners.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX 72-84
The Two Glasses, The Kingdom of Love, The Tendril's Fate,
Three Friends, Ambitions' Trail, Morning Prayer, I Am, Which
Are You?
RAY STANNARD BAKER 85-98
Through the Air, Marconi and His Great Achievements--New
Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy, The Roping at Pasco's.
"DAVID GRAYSON" 99-113
An Argument with a Millionaire.
ZONA GALE 114-127
Why?, The Holy Place, Friendship Village.
EBEN EUGENE REXFORD 128-144
Watering Plants, Tea Roses for Beds, The Old Village Choir,
The Two Singers, The Unfruitful Tree, A Day in June, Silver
Threads Among the Gold, When Silver Threads Are Gold Again.
CARL SCHURZ 145-149
Selections from his Reminiscences, The True Americanism.
HONORÉ WILLSIE 150-162
The Forbidden North, A Story of a Great Dane Puppy.
EDNA FERBER 163-171
Steeped In German.
GEORGE L. TEEPLE 172-183
The Battle of Gray's Pasture.
GEORGE BYRON MERRICK 184-188
Old Times on the Upper Mississippi.
HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD 189-192
John G. Whittier.
ALBERT H. SANFORD 193-195
The Story of Agriculture in the United States.
CHARLES D. STEWART 196-201
On a Moraine.
ELLIOTT FLOWER 202-208
The Impractical Man.
JENKIN LLOYD JONES 209-212
Nuggets from a Welsh Mine.
EVERETT McNEIL 213-218
Mother's Wolf Story.
The University Group.
PRESIDENT CHARLES R. VAN HISE 220-224
The Future of Man in America.
DEAN E. A. BIRGE 224-228
Milton.
RASMUS B. ANDERSON 228-230
Bjarne Herjulfson, 986.
REUBEN GOLD THWAITES 230-234
The Discovery of Wisconsin.
FREDERICK J. TURNER 234-238
The Significance of the Frontier in American History.
PAUL S. REINSCH 238-241
The New Education of China.
GEORGE C. COMSTOCK 242-244
Astrology in Life and Literature.
J. F. A. PYRE 245-246
Byron in Our Day.
EDWARD A. ROSS 246-250
The Conflict of Oriental and Western Cultures in China.
GRANT SHOWERMAN 251-254
A Lad's Recollections of His Boyhood Haunts and Experiences
in the Earlier Days.
WILLIAM E. LEONARD 254-260
The Glory of the Morning, Love Afar, The Image of Delight, A
Dedication.
THOMAS H. DICKINSON 260-263
In Hospital.
WILLIAM J. NEIDIG 263-265
The Buoy-Bell.
BRALEY--WINSLOW--JONES 265-268
Sometimes, The Pioneers, A Little Book of Local Verse.
JOSEPH P. WEBSTER 269
Sweet Bye and Bye.
Writers of Local Distinction.
SHERIFF, BOND, THOMSON, WHITNEY, BAER, HENDERSON, ADAMS,
PLANTZ, CARLTON, MOORE, LATHROP, MANVILLE, BLAISDELL, NAGLE,
CHASE, DAVIDSON, BROWN, WHEELER 270-285
Other Wisconsin Writers and Their Works.
NAMES ONLY WITHOUT SELECTIONS 286
Wisconsin Humorists.
LUTE A. TAYLOR 288-290
"BILL" NYE 291-294
GEORGE W. PECK 294-297
WILLIAM F. KIRK 297-298
PREFACE.
In preparing this book the editors have had two main purposes in view.
Their first purpose has been to furnish some definite knowledge
concerning literary productions of Wisconsin people. They have been
surprised, and they feel that their readers will be surprised, to find
how many authors of national repute have been intimately associated
with Wisconsin life; and further, to find that many writers who have
not as yet gained fame outside the state have written things that are
beyond doubt highly creditable.
The second purpose has been to kindle the surprise just mentioned into
wholesome effort, particularly among our young people, to appreciate
what literature is and how it is produced, and to encourage these
readers to study the life round about them with a view to expressing
their observations in literary language. In other words, they hope
that this book may stimulate Wisconsin authors to still greater
literary activity.
The difficulties in the preparation of such a compilation as this may
be readily imagined. First, there is the problem of selection or
rejection on account of geographical eligibility. The editors have not
drawn the line at nativity or at present residence, but have rather
defined it thus: Anyone who, in his mature life, has become identified
with Wisconsin, both through residence and through literary,
educational, or other activity, is geographically eligible.
Literary eligibility is still more difficult to determine. In general,
the editors have been guided in their decisions by the judgment of the
reading public, which is, after all, in many ways one of the best
critics. There is, however, the problem of early writers who had
considerable vogue in their day; and likewise that of young authors
whose works are just now beginning to appear. They can scarcely hope
to have done exact justice in either one of these two fields. New
writers of promise are arising. Perhaps some that have held the center
of the stage will soon have to give place. Literary estimates are
inherently a changing quantity. Absolutely just criticism of today
will be warped judgment tomorrow.
Further, it is possible that there may be serious oversight in this
collection. For any such error the editors wish beforehand to make due
apology. It has not been their intention to discriminate against any
person or group or section. They will be placed under obligation by
any persons who will, upon reading the selections here noted, write
them with respect to other authors whose works, they feel, should have
been represented.
While this book, it is hoped, will have a general interest for all
Wisconsin readers, it is believed that it may prove of particular use
as supplementary reading in the seventh and eighth grades and the
early years of the high school. To the end that the selections may
prove available for this use, brief biographical and critical
explanations have been given with nearly every selection.
The editors acknowledge with gratitude the ready co-operation of both
authors and publishers in permitting the use of copyrighted material,
specific credit being given in each case in the proper connection.
Particular mention should also be made of the "Bibliography of
Wisconsin Authors," prepared in 1893 for the Wisconsin Historical
Society by Emma A. Hawley, under direction of Reuben Gold Thwaites;
and of "The So-called School of Wisconsin Authors," Miss Zona Gale's
thesis, under the same date.
C. R. R.
H. S. H.
GENERAL WRITERS.
HAMLIN GARLAND.
Hamlin Garland was born in the beautiful La Crosse valley,
September 16, 1860, and lived there until he was eight years
old. Twenty-three years ago he purchased the old homestead
near West Salem, La Crosse County, and to this he delights to
return each year for part of his summer. As one reads his
description of the trip to West Salem over the Northwestern
Line in his story, "Up the Cooley," he is compelled to see
how much Mr. Garland loves the scenes of Wisconsin.
Among the other states which may share in the right to claim
Hamlin Garland are Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, and South
Dakota. In Iowa he learned what the rural school, the
academy, and the farm could teach him. It was in the Boston
Public Library that he formed much of his literary style and
determined that the material for his future literary work
should be the western life that he knew so well. In Illinois
he began his work as a teacher and a lecturer. Here he met
the girl who was to become his wife, Miss Zulima Taft, sister
of the artist, Lorado Taft. Chicago is his present home. Mr.
Garland visited his parents in South Dakota in 1883 and took
up a claim there. Here he got material which he incorporated
into some of his stories, among which the Moccassin Ranch is
the most notable.
The experience in these several states gave Hamlin Garland an
excellent opportunity to understand all phases of country
life. He has expressed his observations in description of
boys' games, the labor on the farm, the work of the rural
school, and the varied activities of the rural community. He
knew that the work of the farm in an early day furnished as
much opportunity for the display of resistance and the
determination to use the last bit of strength to win as does
the game of the present. The work of binding the wheat after
a reaper became a game requiring honesty as well as skill and
rapidity. Perhaps no boy of today shoots a basket, makes a
touch-down, or hits out a home run with more pride than did
the youth of this pioneer life retire from the harvest field
at noon or night with the consciousness that he had bound all
his "tricks" without being caught once by the machine as it
made its successive rounds of the field.
Hamlin Garland knew the joys of these contests on the pioneer
farm, and he also knew the sordid side of the narrow and
cramped life of the early settler. He describes both with
equal vividness and sympathy. Wisconsin owes him much for the
work he has done in preserving pictures of her early pioneer
life. His hero and heroine are those ancestors who travelled
forth into the new regions in covered wagons, and by the use
of axe and plow conquered a seemingly unconquerable forest or
a stubborn prairie sod. In his book of short stories, "Main
Travelled Roads," he makes the dedication of it to his heroic
parents in these words:
"To my father and mother, whose half-century pilgrimage on
the main travelled road of life has brought them only toil
and deprivation, this book of stories is dedicated by a son
to whom every day brings a deepening sense of his parents'
silent heroism."
To illustrate Mr. Garland's ability to picture the joyous and
the irksome in the life of the pioneer two selections are
given at this place. The first sets forth the joy of farm
activity, the second, the disheartening influence of abject
toil.
[Illustration: HAMLIN GARLAND]
HAYING TIME
From "BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE." Published by permission of
Harper Bros.
Haying was the one season of farm work which the boys thoroughly
enjoyed. It usually began on the tame meadows about the twenty-fifth
of June, and lasted a week or so. It had always appealed to
Lincoln,[1] in a distinctly beautiful and poetic sense, which was not
true of the main business of farming. Most of the duties through which
he passed needed the lapse of years to seem beautiful in his eyes, but
haying had a charm and significance quite out of the common.
At this time the summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality,
and it was not strange that even the faculties of toiling old men,
dulled and deadened with never ending drudgery, caught something of
exultation from the superabundant glow and throb of Nature's life.
The corn fields, dark green and sweet-smelling, rippled like a sea
with a multitudinous stir and sheen and swirl. Waves of dusk and green
and yellow circled across the level fields, while long leaves upthrust
at intervals like spears or shook like guidons. The trees were in
heavy leaf, insect life was at its height, and the air was filled
with buzzing, dancing forms and with the sheen of innumerable gauzy
wings.
The air was shaken by most ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sailed and
sang in the sensuous air, now sinking, now rising, their exquisite
notes ringing, filling the air like the chimes of tiny silver bells.
The kingbird, ever alert and aggressive, cried out sharply as he
launched from the top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and
the plover made the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast
purple-and-white clouds moved like bellying sails before the lazy
wind, dark with rain, which they dropped momentarily like trailing
garments upon the earth, and so passed on in stately measure with a
roll of thunder.
The grasshoppers moved in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the
luxurious stagnant marshes came the ever thickening chorus of the
toads and the frogs, while above them the kildees and the snipe
shuttled to and fro in sounding flight, and the blackbirds on the
cattails and willows swayed with lifted throats, uttering their subtle
liquid notes, made mad with delight of the sun and their own music.
And over all and through all moved the slow, soft west wind, laden
with the breath of the far-off prairie lands of the west, soothing and
hushing and filling the world with a slumbrous haze.
The weather in haying time was glorious, with only occasional showers
to accentuate the splendid sunlight. There were no old men and no
women in these fields. The men were young and vigorous, and their
action was swift and supple. Sometimes it was hot to the danger point,
especially on the windless side of the stack (no one had haybarns in
those days) and sometimes the pitcher complained of cold chills
running up his back. Sometimes Jack flung a pail full of water over
his head and shoulders before beginning to unload, and seemed the
better for it. Mr. Stewart kept plenty of "switchel" (which is
composed of ginger and water) for his hands to drink. He had a notion
that it was less injurious than water or beer, and no sun strokes
occurred among his men.
Once, one hot afternoon, the air took on an oppressive density, the
wind died away almost to a calm, blowing fitfully from the south,
while in the far west a vast dome of inky clouds, silent and
portentous, uplifted, filling the horizon, swelling like a great
bubble, yet seeming to have the weight of a mountain range in its
mass. The birds, bees, and all insects, hitherto vocal, suddenly sank
into silence, as if awed by the first deep mutter of the storm. The
mercury is touching one hundred degrees in the shade.
All hands hasten to get the hay in order, that it may shed rain. They
hurry without haste, as only adept workmen can. They roll up the
windrows by getting fork and shoulder under one end, tumbling it over
and over endwise, till it is large enough; then go back for the
scatterings, which are placed, with a deft turn of the fork, on the
top to cap the pile. The boys laugh and shout as they race across the
field. Every man is wet to the skin with sweat; hats are flung aside;
Lincoln, on the rake, puts his horse to the trot. The feeling of the
struggle, of racing with the thunder, exalts him.
Nearer and nearer comes the storm, silent no longer. The clouds are
breaking up. The boys stop to listen. Far away is heard the low,
steady, crescendo, grim roar; intermixed with crashing thunderbolts,
the rain streams aslant, but there is not yet a breath of air from the
west; the storm wind is still far away; the toads in the marsh, and
the fearless king-bird, alone cry out in the ominous gloom cast by the
rolling clouds of the tempest.
"Look out! here it comes!" calls the boss. The black cloud melts to
form the gray veil of the falling rain, which blots out the plain as
it sweeps on. Now it strikes the corn-field, sending a tidal wave
rushing across it. Now it reaches the wind-break, and the spire-like
poplars bow humbly to it. Now it touches the hay-field, and the caps
of the cocks go flying; the long grass streams in the wind like a
woman's hair. In an instant the day's work is undone and the hay is
opened to the drenching rain.
As all hands rush for the house, the roaring tempest rides upon them
like a regiment of demon cavalry. The lightning breaks forth from the
blinding gray clouds of rain. As Lincoln looks up he sees the streams
of fire go rushing across the sky like the branching of great red
trees. A moment more, and the solid sheets of water fall upon the
landscape, shutting it from view, and the thunder crashes out, sharp
and splitting, in the near distance, to go deepening and bellowing off
down the illimitable spaces of the sky and plain, enlarging, as it
goes, like the rumor of war.
In the east is still to be seen a faint crescent of the sunny sky,
rapidly being closed in as the rain sweeps eastward; but as that
diminishes to a gleam, a similar window, faint, watery, and gray,
appears in the west, as the clouds break away. It widens, grows
yellow, and then red; and at last blazes out into an inexpressible
glory of purple and crimson and gold, as the storm moves swiftly over.
The thunder grows deeper, dies to a retreating mutter, and is lost.
The clouds' dark presence passes away. The trees flame with light, the
robins take up their songs again, the air is deliciously cool. The
corn stands bent, as if still acknowledging the majesty of the wind.
Everything is new-washed, clean of dust, and a faint, moist odor of
green things fills the air.
Lincoln seizes the opportunity to take Owen's place in bringing the
cattle, and mounting his horse gallops away. The road is wet and
muddy, but the prairie is firm, and the pony is full of power. In full
flower, fragrant with green grass and radiant with wild roses,
sweet-williams, lilies, pinks, and pea-vines, the sward lies new
washed by the rain, while over it runs a strong, cool wind from the
west. The boy's heart swells with unutterable joy of life. The world
is exaltingly beautiful. It is good to be alone, good to be a boy, and
to be mounted on a swift horse.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The name of a boy in the story.
AMONG THE CORN ROWS
From "MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS." Printed by permission of Harper
Bros.
A corn-field in July is a sultry place. The soil is hot and dry; the
wind comes across the lazily murmuring leaves laden with a warm,
sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad-flung banners of
the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light
upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat
seem the more intense.
Julia Peterson, faint with hunger, was toiling back and forth between
the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn plow,
while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart was
full of bitterness, her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching
with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders,
and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the noon
mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico
dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with
perspiration it soiled her till with a woman's instinctive
cleanliness, she shuddered. Her head throbbed dangerously. What
matter to her that the king bird flitted jovially from the maple to
catch a wandering blue bottle fly, that the robin was feeding her
young, that the bobolink was singing. All these things, if she saw
them, only threw her bondage to labor into greater relief.
Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her
father--a big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian--at work also with
a plow. The corn must be plowed, and so she toiled on, the tears
dropping from the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet she wore. Her shoes,
coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet; her hands, large and strong,
were browned, or, more properly, burnt, on the backs by the sun. The
horse's harness "creak-cracked" as he swung steadily and patiently
forward, the moisture pouring from his hide, his nostrils distended.
The field bordered on a road, and on the other side of the road ran a
river--a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point--and the eyes of
the girl gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each time
that she turned at the fence.
This same contrast is expressed by Hamlin Garland in two
poems presented here. The first, "Ploughing," sets forth the
irksome toll to which the undeveloped boy was subjected. The
second, "Ladrone," portrays the joy which the youth in the
country acquires from association with the animals of the
farm. These poems and all the following selections are taken
from "Boy Life on the Prairie," and are here published by
permission of the Macmillan Company.
PLOWING
A lonely task it is to plough!
All day the black and clinging soil
Rolls like a ribbon from the mould-board's
Glistening curve. All day the horses toil
Battling with the flies--and strain
Their creaking collars. All day
The crickets jeer from wind-blown shocks of grain.
October brings the frosty dawn,
The still, warm noon, the cold, clear night,
When torpid insects make no sound,
And wild-fowl in their southward flight
Go by in hosts--and still the boy
And tired team gnaw round by round,
At weather-beaten stubble, band by band,
Until at last, to their great joy,
The winter's snow seals up the unploughed land.
LADRONE
And, "What of Ladrone"--do you ask?
Oh! friend. I am sad at the name.
My splendid fleet roan!--The task
You require is a hard one at best.
Swift as the spectral coyote, as tame
To my voice as a sweetheart, an eye
Like a pool in the woodland asleep,
Brown, clear, and calm, with color down deep,
Where his brave, proud soul seemed to lie--
Ladrone! There's a spell in the word.
The city walls fade on my eye--the roar
Of its traffic grows dim
As the sound of the wind in a dream.
My spirit takes wing like a bird.
Once more I'm asleep on the plain,
The summer wind sings in my hair;
Once again I hear the wild crane
Crying out of the steaming air;
White clouds are adrift on the breeze,
The flowers nod under my feet,
And under my thighs, 'twixt my knees,
Again as of old I can feel
The roll of Ladrone's firm muscles, the reel
Of his chest--see the thrust of fore-limb
And hear the dull trample of heel.
We thunder behind the mad herd.
My singing whip swirls like a snake.
Hurrah! We swoop on like a bird.
With my pony's proud record at stake--
For the shaggy, swift leader has stride
Like the last of a long kingly line;
Her eyes flash fire through her hair;
She tosses her head in disdain;
Her mane streams wide on the air--
She leads the swift herd of the plain
As a wolf-leader leads his gaunt pack,
On the slot of the desperate deer--
Their exultant eyes savagely shine.
But down on her broad shining back
Stings my lash like a rill of red flame--
Huzzah, my wild beauty! Your best;
Will you teach my Ladrone a new pace?
Will you break his proud heart in a shame
By spurning the dust in his face?
The herd falls behind and is lost,
As we race neck and neck, stride and stride.
Again the long lash hisses hot
Along the gray mare's glassy hide--
Aha, she is lost! she does not respond.
Now I lean to the ear of my roan
And shout--letting fall the light rein.
Like a hound from the leash, my Ladrone
Swoops ahead.
We're alone on the plain!
Ah! how the thought at wild living comes back!
Alone on the wide, solemn prairie
I ride with my rifle in hand,
My eyes on the watch for the wary
And beautiful antelope band.
Or sleeping at night in the grasses, I hear
Ladrone grazing near in the gloom.
His listening head on the sky
I see etched complete to the ear.
From the river below comes the boom
Of the bittern, the thrill and the cry
Of frogs in the pool, and the shrill cricket's chime,
Making ceaseless and marvelous rhyme.
But what of his fate? Did he die
When the terrible tempest was done?
When he staggered with you to the light,
And your fight with the Norther was won,
Did he live a guest evermore?
No, friend, not so. I sold him--outright.
What! sold your preserver, your mate, he who
Through wind and wild snow and deep night
Brought you safe to a shelter at last?
Did you, when the danger had end,
Forget your dumb hero--your friend?
Forget! no, nor can I. Why, man,
It's little you know of such love
As I felt for him! You think that you feel
The same deep regard for your span,
Blanketed, shining, and clipped to the heel,
But my horse was companion and guard--
My playmate, my ship on the sea
Of dun grasses--in all kinds of weather,
Unhorsed and hungry and sometimes, he
Served me for love and needed no tether.
No, I do not forget; but who
Is the master of fortune and fate?
Who does as he wishes and not as he must?
When I sold my preserver, my mate,
My faithfulest friend--man, I wept.
Yes, I own it. His faithful eyes
Seemed to ask what it meant.
And he kept them fixed on me in startled surprise,
As another hand led him away.
And the last that I heard of my roan,
Was the sound of his shrill, pleading neigh!
Oh magic west wind of the mountain,
Oh steed with the stinging main,
In sleep I draw rein at the fountain,
And wake with a shiver of pain;
For the heart and the heat of the city
Are walls and prison's chain.
Lost my Ladrone--gone the wild living--
I dream, but my dreaming is vain.
Hamlin Garland's parents were of Scotch Presbyterian descent
and were strict in their management of their children, but
their lives were most wholesome and they were withal
companionable. Their sacrifice and toil have been rewarded by
the response their son has made to the opportunities they
could offer him.
Besides the rural school training at Burr Oak, Iowa, Mr.
Garland received additional education at Cedar Valley
Seminary at Osage, where he attended school during the winter
seasons. He graduated from this school in 1881 and then for a
year travelled through the eastern states. His people later
settled in Brown county, Dakota, and he visited them there in
1883.
In 1884 he went to Boston, where he came under the influence
of Professor Moses True Brown of the Boston School of
Oratory, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Edward
Everett Hale, and Edwin Booth.
Mr. Garland began his career as an author with the
publication of his poem, "Lost in a Norther," in Harper's
Weekly. For this poem he received twenty-five dollars. His
work has been unusually remunerative. He has been a popular
contributor to the Century Magazine, the Youth's Companion,
the Arena, and other magazines. His first book was published
in 1890. Mr. Garland enjoys social life and outdoor sports
very much. He was the founder and is still the president of
the Cliff Dwellers' Club in Chicago. He is especially fond of
the outdoor sports of swimming, skating, and riding the trail
on the plains and the mountains. The joy in this last is
expressed in a poem which is given later.
Mr. Garland's publications include short stories, novels,
essays, and poems. These book publications began with the
short stories, Main Travelled Roads, in 1890. Since then have
appeared Jason Edwards, 1891; A Member of the Third House, an
exposure of political corruption, 1892; A Spoil of Office,
1892; Prairie Folks, Prairie Songs and Crumbling Idols, a
series of critical essays, 1893; Rose of Dutcher's Coolly, a
novel, 1895; Wayside Courtships, 1897; a Biography of Ulysses
S. Grant, 1898; the Trail of the Gold Seekers and Boy Life on
the Prairie, 1899; the Eagle's Heart, 1900; Her Mountain
Lover, a novel, 1901; The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop,
another novel, 1902; Hesper, 1903; The Tyranny of the Dark, a
study in psychic research, 1905; The Long Trail, 1907; the
Shadow World, another study in the psychic field, 1908; The
Moccassin Ranch, 1909; Cavanagh, Forest Ranger, a study in
forest preservation, 1911; Victor Olnee's Discipline, 1911;
The Forest Daughter, 1913; and They of the High Trails, 1916.
THE TOIL OF THE TRAIL
What have I gained by the toil of the trail?
I know and know well.
I have found once again the lore I had lost
In the loud cities' hell.
I have broadened my hand to the cinch and the axe,
I have laid my flesh to the rain;
I was hunter and trailer and guide;
I have touched the most primitive wildness again.
I have threaded the wild with the stealth of the deer,
No eagle is freer than I;
No mountain can thwart me, no torrent appall.
I defy the stern sky.
So long as I live these joys will remain,
I have touched the most primitive wildness again.
THE BLUE JAY
His eyes are bright as burnished steel,
His note a quick, defiant cry;
Harsh as a hinge his grating squeal
Sounds from the keen wind sweeping by.
Rains never dim his smooth blue coat,
The cold winds never trouble him,
No fog puts hoarseness in his throat,
Or makes his merry eyes grow dim.
His call at dawning is a shout,
His wing is subject to his heart;
Of fear he knows not--doubt
Did not draw his sailing-chart.
He is an universal emigre,
His foot is set in every land;
He greets me by gray Casco Bay
And laughs across the Texas sand.
In heat or cold, in storm and sun,
He lives undauntedly; and when he dies,
He folds his feet up one by one
And turns his last look on the skies.
He is the true American. He fears
No journey and no wood or wall--
And in the desert, toiling voyagers
Take heart or courage from his jocund call.
POM-POM PULL-AWAY.
Out on the snow the boys are springing,
Shouting blithely at their play;
Through the night their voices ringing,
Sound the cry "Pom, pull-away!"
Up the sky the round moon stealing,
Trails a robe of shimmering white:
While the Great Bear slowly wheeling
Marks the pole-star's steady light.
The air with frost is keen and stinging,
Spite of cap and muffler gay;
Big boys whistle, girls are singing--
Loud rings out, "Pom, pull-away!"
Oh, the phrase has magic in it,
Sounding through the moon-lit air!
And in 'bout a half-a-minute
I am part and parcel there.
'Cross the pond I once more scurry
Through the thickest of the fray,
Sleeve ripped off by Andy Murray--
"Let her rip--Pom, pull-away!"
Mother'll mend it in the morning
(Dear old patient, smiling face!)
One more darn my sleeve adorning--
"Whoop her up!"--is no disgrace.
Moonbeams on the snow a-splinter,
Air that stirred the blood like wine--
What cared we for cold of winter?
What for maiden's soft eyes' shine?
Give us but a score of skaters
And the cry, "Pom, pull-away!"
We were always girl beraters--
Forgot them wholly, sooth to say!
O voices through the night air ringing!
O, thoughtless, happy, boist'rous play!
O silver clouds the keen wind winging;
At the cry, "Pom, pull-away!"
I pause and dream with keenest longing
For the starlit magic night,
For my noisy playmates thronging,
And the slow moon's trailing light.
THE OLD FASHIONED THRESHING IN GREEN'S COOLLY, WISCONSIN
From "BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE." Published by permission of
Harper Bros.
Life on a Wisconsin farm, even for the older lads, had its
compensations. There were times when the daily routine of lonely and
monotonous life gave place to an agreeable bustle for a few days, and
human intercourse lightened toil. In the midst of the dull, slow
progress of the fall's ploughing, the gathering of the threshing crew
was a most dramatic event.
There had been great changes in the methods of threshing since Mr.
Stewart had begun to farm, but it had not yet reached the point where
steam displaced the horse-power; and the grain, after being stacked
round the barn ready to be threshed, was allowed to remain until late
in the fall before calling in a machine.
Of course, some farmers got at it earlier, for all could not thresh at
the same time, and a good part of the fall's labor consisted in
"changing works" with the neighbors, thus laying up a stock of unpaid
labor ready for the home job. Day after day, therefore, Mr. Stewart
and the hired man shouldered their forks in the crisp and early dawn
and went to help their neighbors, while the boys ploughed the
stubble-land.
All through the months of October and November, the ceaseless ringing
hum and the bow-ouw, ouw-woo booee-oom of the great balance wheel of
the threshing-machine, and the deep bass hum of the whirling cylinder,
as its motion rose and fell, could be heard on every side like the
singing of some sullen and gigantic autumnal insect.
For weeks Lincoln had looked forward to the coming of the threshers
with the greatest eagerness, and during the whole of the day appointed,
Owen and he hung on the gate and gazed down the road to see if the
machine was coming. It did not come during the afternoon--still they
could not give it up, and at the falling of dusk still hoped to hear
the rattle of its machinery.
It was not uncommon for the men who attended to these machines to work
all day at one place and move to another setting at night. In that
way, they might not arrive until 9 o'clock at night, or they might
come at 4 o'clock in the morning, and the children were about starting
to "climb the wooden hill" when they heard the peculiar rattle of the
cylinder and the voices of the McTurgs, singing.
"There they are," said Mr. Stewart, getting the old square lantern and
lighting the candle within. The air was sharp, and the boys, having
taken off their boots, could only stand at the window and watch the
father as he went out to show the men where to set the "power," the
dim light throwing fantastic shadows here and there, lighting up a
face now and then, and bringing out the thresher, which seemed a
silent monster to the children, who flattened their noses against the
window-panes to be sure that nothing should escape them. The men's
voices sounded cheerfully in the still night, and the roused turkeys
in the oaks peered about on their perches, black silhouettes against
the sky. The children would gladly have stayed up to greet the
threshers, who were captains of industry in their eyes, but they were
ordered off to bed by Mrs. Stewart, who said, "You must go to sleep in
order to be up early in the morning." As they lay there in their beds
under the sloping rafter roof, they heard the[2] hand riding furiously
away to tell some of the neighbors that the threshers had come. They
could hear the cackle of the hens as Mr. Stewart assaulted them and
wrung their innocent necks. The crash of the "sweeps" being unloaded
sounded loud and clear in the night, and so watching the dance of the
lights and shadows cast by the lantern on the plastered wall, they
fell asleep.
They were awakened next morning by the ringing beat of the iron sledge
as the men drove stakes to hold the "power" to the ground. The rattle
of chains, the clang of iron bars, intermixed with laughter and
snatches of song, came sharply through the frosty air. The smell of
sausages being fried in the kitchen, the rapid tread of their busy
mother as she hurried the breakfast forward, warned the boys that it
was time to get up, although it was not yet dawn in the east, and they
had a sense of being awakened to a strange, new world. When they got
down to breakfast, the men had finished their coffee and were out in
the stock-yard completing preparations.
This morning experience was superb. Though shivery and cold in the
faint frosty light of the day, the children enjoyed every moment of
it. The frost lay white on every surface, the frozen ground rang like
iron under the steel-shod feet of the horses, the breath of the men
rose up in little white puffs while they sparred playfully or rolled
each other on the ground in jovial clinches of legs and arms.
The young men were anxiously waiting the first sound which should
rouse the countryside and proclaim that theirs was the first machine
to be at work. The older men stood in groups, talking politics or
speculating on the price of wheat, pausing occasionally to slap their
hands about their breasts.
Finally, just as the east began to bloom and long streamers of red
began to unroll along the vast gray dome of sky, Joe Gilman--"Shouting
Joe," as he was called--mounted one of the stacks, and throwing down
the cap-sheaf, lifted his voice in a "Chippewa warwhoop." On a still
morning like this his voice could be heard three miles. Long drawn and
musical, it sped away over the fields, announcing to all the world
that the McTurgs were ready for the race. Answers came back faintly
from the frosty fields, where the dim figures of laggard hands could
be seen hurrying over the ploughland; then David called "All right,"
and the machine began to hum.
In those days the machine was a J. I. Case or a "Buffalo Pits"
separator, and was moved by five pairs of horses attached to a power
staked to the ground, round which they travelled to the left, pulling
at the ends of long levers or sweeps. The power was planted some rods
away from the machine, to which the force was carried by means of
"tumbling rods," with "knuckle joints." The driver stood upon a
platform above the huge, savage, cog-wheels round which the horses
moved, and he was a great figure in the eyes of the boys.
Driving looked like an easy job, but it was not. It was very tiresome
to stand on that small platform all through the long day of the early
fall, and on cold November mornings when the cutting wind roared over
the plain, sweeping the dust and leaves along the road. It was far
pleasanter to sit on the south side of the stack, as Tommy did, and
watch the horses go round. It was necessary also for the driver to be
a man of good judgment, for the power must be kept just to the right
speed, and he should be able to gauge the motion of the cylinder by
the pitch of its deep bass hum. There were always three men who went
with the machine and were properly "the threshers." One acted as
driver; the others were respectively "feeder" and "tender"; one of
them fed the grain into the rolling cylinder, while the other, oil-can
in hand, "tended" the separator. The feeder's position was the high
place to which all boys aspired, and they used to stand in silent
admiration watching the easy, powerful swing of David McTurg as he
caught the bundles in the crook of his arm, and spread them out into a
broad, smooth band upon which the cylinder caught and tore like some
insatiate monster, and David was the ideal man in Lincoln's eyes, and
to be able to feed a threshing machine, the highest honor in the
world. The boy who was chosen to cut bands went to his post like a
soldier to dangerous picket duty.
Sometimes David would take one of the small boys upon his stand, where
he could see the cylinder whiz while flying wheat stung his face.
Sometimes the driver would invite Tommy on the power to watch the
horses go round, and when he became dizzy often took the youngster in
his arms and running out along the moving sweep, threw him with a
shout into David's arms.
The boys who were just old enough to hold sacks for the measurer, did
not enjoy threshing so well, but to Lincoln and his mates it was the
keenest joy. They wished it would never end.
The wind blew cold and the clouds were flying across the bright blue
sky, the straw glistened in the sun, the machine howled, the dust
flew, the whip cracked, and the men worked like beavers to get the
sheaves to the feeder, and to keep the straw and wheat away from the
tail-end of the machine. These fellows, wallowing to their waists in
the chaff, did so for the amusement of the boys, and for no other
reason.
They were always amused by the man who stood in the midst of the thick
dust and the flying chaff at the head of the stacker, who took and
threw away the endless cataract of straw as if it were all play. His
teeth shown like those of a negro out of his dust blackened face, and
his shirt was wet with sweat, but he motioned for more straw, and the
feeder, accepting the challenge, motioned for more speed, and so the
driver swung his lash and yelled at the straining horses, the pitchers
buckled to, the sleepy growl of the cylinder rose to a howl, the wheat
rushed out in a stream as "big as a stove-pipe," and the carriers were
forced to trot back and forth from the granary like mad, and to
generally "hump themselves" in order to keep the grain from piling up
around the measurer where Ellis stood disconsolately holding sacks for
old man Smith.
When the children got tired of wallowing in the straw, and with
turning somersaults therein, they went down to help Rover catch the
rats which were uncovered by the pitchers when they reached the stack
bottom. It was all play to Lincoln, just as it had once been to the
others. The horses, with their straining, outstretched necks, the loud
and cheery shouts, the whistling of the driver, the roar and hum of
the machinery, the flourishing of the forks, the supple movements of
the brawny arms, the shouts of the threshers to one another, all
blended with the wild sound of the wind overhead in the creaking
branches of the oaks, formed a splendid drama for his recording
brain.
But for the boy who was forced to stand with old Daddy Smith in the
flying dust beside the machine, it was a bad play. He was a part of
the machine--of the crew. His liberty to come and go was gone. When
Daddy was grinning at him out of the gray dust and the swirling chaff,
the wheat beards were crawling down his back, scratching and rasping.
His ears were stunned by the noise of the cylinder and the howl of the
balance-wheel, and it did not help him any to have the old man say in
a rasping voice, "Never mind the chaff, sonny--it ain't pizen."
Whirr--bang! Something had gone into the cylinder, making the feeder
dodge to escape the flying teeth, and the men seized the horses to
stop the machine. The men then hailed such accidents with delight, for
it afforded them a few minutes' rest while the crew put some new teeth
in the "concave." They had time to unbutton their shirts and get some
of the beards out of their necks, to take a drink of water, and to let
the deafness go out of their ears.
At such times also some of the young fellows were sure to have a
wrestling or a lifting match, and all kinds of jokes flew about. The
man at the straw-stack leaned indolently on his fork and asked the
feeder sarcastically if that was the best he could do, and remarked,
"It's gettin' chilly up here. Guess I'll have to go home and get my
kid gloves."
To this David laughingly responded, "I'll warm your carcass with a
rope if you don't shut up," all of which gave the boys infinite
delight.
But the work began again, and Ellis was forced to take his place as
regularly as the other men. As the sun neared the zenith, he looked
often up to it--so often in fact that Daddy, observing it, cackled in
great amusement, "Think you c'n hurry it along, sonny? The watched
pot never boils, remember!"--which made the boy so angry he nearly
kicked the old man on the shin.
But at last the call for dinner sounded, the driver began to shout,
"Whoa there, boys," to the teams and to hold his long whip before
their eyes in order to convince them that he really meant "Whoa." The
pitchers stuck their forks down in the stack and leaped to the ground;
Billy, the band-cutter, drew from his wrist the string of his big
knife; the men slid down from the straw-pile and a race began among
the teamsters to see who should be first unhitched and at the watering
trough and at the table.
It was always a splendid and dramatic moment to the boys as the men
crowded round the well to wash, shouting, joking, cuffing each other,
sloshing themselves with water, and accusing each other of having
blackened the towel by using it to wash with rather than to wipe with.
Mrs. Stewart and the hired girl, and generally some of the neighbors'
wives (who changed "works" also) stood ready to bring on the food as
soon as the men were seated. The table had been lengthened to its
utmost and pieced out with the kitchen table, which usually was not of
the same height, and planks had been laid for seats on stout kitchen
chairs at each side. The men came in with noisy rush and took seats
wherever they could find them, and their attack on "biled taters and
chicken" should have been appalling to the women, but it was not. They
smiled to see them eat. A single slash at a boiled potato, followed by
two motions, and it disappeared. Grimy fingers lifted a leg of chicken
to a wide mouth, and two snaps laid it bare as a slate pencil. To the
children standing in the corner waiting, it seemed that every smitch
of the dinner was going and that nothing would be left when the men
got through, but there was, for food was plentiful.
At last even the "gantest" of them filled up. Even Len had his limits,
and something remained for the children and the women, who sat down at
the second table, while David and William and Len returned to the
machine to put everything in order, to sew the belts, or take a bent
tooth out of the "concave." Len, however, managed to return two or
three times in order to have his jokes with the hired girl, who
enjoyed it quite as much as he did.
In the short days of October only a brief nooning was possible, and as
soon as the horses had finished their oats, the roar and hum of the
machine began again and continued steadily all afternoon. Owen and
Rover continued their campaign upon the rats which inhabited the
bottom of the stacks and great was their excitement as the men reached
the last dozen sheaves. Rover barked and Owen screamed half in fear
and half from a boy's savage delight in killing things, and very few
rats escaped their combined efforts.
To Ellis the afternoon seemed endless. His arms grew tired with
holding the sacks against the lip of the half bushel, and his fingers
grew sore with the rasp of the rough canvas out of which the sacks
were made. When he thought of the number of times he must repeat these
actions, his heart was numb with weariness.
All things have an end! By and by the sun grew big and red, night
began to fall and the wind to die down. Through the falling gloom the
machine boomed steadily with a new sound, a sort of solemn roar,
rising at intervals to a rattling yell as the cylinder ran empty. The
men were working silently, sullenly, moving dim and strange; the
pitchers on the stack, the feeder on the platform, and especially the
workers on the high straw-pile, seemed afar off to Lincoln's eyes. The
gray dust covered the faces of those near by, changing them into
something mysterious and sad. At last he heard the welcome cry, "Turn
out!" The men raised glad answer and threw aside their forks.
Again came the gradual slowing down of the motion, while the driver
called in a gentle, soothing voice: "Whoa, lads! Steady, boys, Whoa,
now!" But the horses had been going on so long and so steadily that
they checked their speed with difficulty. The men slid from the
stacks, and seizing the ends of the sweeps, held them; but even after
the power was still, the cylinder went on, until David, calling for a
last sheaf, threw it in its open maw, choking it into silence.
Then came the sound of dropping chains and iron rods, and the thud of
the hoofs as the horses walked with laggard gait and down-falling
heads to the barn. The men were more subdued than at dinner, washing
with greater care, brushing the dust from their beards and clothes.
The air was still and cool, the wind was gone, the sky deep, cloudless
blue.
The evening meal was more attractive to the boys than dinner. The
table was lighted with a kerosene lamp, and the clean white linen, the
fragrant dishes, the women flying about with steaming platters, all
seemed very dramatic, very cheering to Lincoln as well as to the men
who came into the light and warmth with aching muscles and empty
stomach.
There was always a good deal of talk at supper, but it was gentler
than at the dinner hour. The younger fellows had their jokes, of
course, and watched the hired girl attentively, while the old fellows
discussed the day's yield of grain and the matters of the township.
Ellis was now allowed a place at the first table like a first-class
hand.
The pie and the doughnuts and the coffee disappeared as fast as they
could be brought, which seemed to please Mrs. Stewart, who said,
"Goodness sakes, yes; eat all you want. They was made to eat."
The men were all, or nearly all, neighbors, or hands hired by the
month, and some were like members of the family. Mrs. Stewart treated
them all like visitors and not like hired help. No one feared a
genuine rudeness from the other.
After they had eaten their supper it was a great pleasure to the boys
to go out to the barn and shed (all wonderfully changed now to their
minds by the great new stack of straw), there to listen to the stories
or jolly remarks of the men as they curried their tired horses
munching busily at their hay, too weary to move a muscle otherwise,
but enjoying the rubbing down which the men gave them with wisps of
straws held in each hand.
The light from the kitchen was very welcome, and how bright and warm
it was with the mother's merry voice and smiling face where the women
were moving to and fro, and talking even more busily than they worked.
Sometimes in these old-fashioned days, after the supper table was
cleared out of the way, and the men returned to the house, an hour or
two of delicious merry making ended the day. Perhaps two or three of
the sisters of the young men had dropped in, and the boys themselves
were in no hurry to get home.
Around the fire the older men sat to tell stories while the girls
trudged in and out, finishing up the dishes and getting the materials
ready for breakfast. With speechless content Lincoln sat to listen to
stories of bears and Indians and logging on the Wisconsin, and other
tales of frontier life, and then at last, after beseeching, David
opened the violin box and played. Strange how those giant hands became
supple to the strings and bow. All day they had been handling the
fierce straw or were covered with the grease and dirt of the machine,
yet now they drew from the violin the wildest, weirdest strains,
thrilling Norse folk songs, Swedish dances and love ballads, mournful,
sensuous, and seductive.
Lincoln could not understand why those tunes had that sad, sweet
quality, but he could sit and listen to them all night long.
Oh, those rare days and rarer nights! How fine they were then--and how
mellow they are growing now as the slow-paced years drop a golden mist
upon them. From this distance they seem so near that my heart aches to
relive them, but they are so wholesome and so carefree that the world
is poorer for the change.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The hired man.
GENERAL CHARLES KING.
General Charles King is no doubt Wisconsin's most voluminous
writer. He was born in Albany, New York, in 1844; was
graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1866:
was made captain of a company of cavalry engaged in Indian
warfare in 1879, and was retired on account of wounds in June
of that year. He came to Wisconsin in 1882 as inspector and
instructor of the Wisconsin National Guard.
Besides serving in Indian warfare, he has also seen action in
the Philippine Islands. His military life has been active
enough to consume the energies of most men, but not so with
this soldier. He is the author of more than fifty books, most
of which deal with exciting and dramatic episodes, which come
from his pen with the conviction and clarity that result only
from actual knowledge and observation.
Perhaps the best known of all his many books are "The
Colonel's Daughter" and its sequel, "Marion's Faith." The
first selection here given is one frequently quoted from the
latter book, but the second is from one of his more recent
volumes, entitled, "The Real Ulysses S. Grant," and it is
characterized by crisp, clear statement and by a feeling of
intense sincerity and conviction.
General King is a familiar figure both on the streets of
Milwaukee and in every town in Wisconsin that boasts a
company in the National Guard. His erect carriage and his
whole bearing indicate youth and strength. He is a delightful
lecturer, and a talk with him is an experience that one does
not readily forget. He practically never mentions his own
exploits, though they were many; but his accurate memory and
his excellent powers of description are brought into play
when the deeds of others are concerned.
[Illustration: GENERAL CHARLES KING]
RAY'S RIDE FOR LIFE
From "MARION'S FAITH." Chap. 14. By Gen. Charles King, U.S.A.
Copyright, 1887, by J. B. Lippincott Co.
Darkness has settled down in the shadowy Wyoming valley. By the light
of a tiny fire under the bank some twenty forms can be seen stretched
upon the sand,--they are wounded soldiers. A little distance away are
nine others, shrouded in blankets: they are the dead. Huddled in
confused and cowering group are a few score horses, many of them
sprawled upon the sand motionless; others occasionally struggle to
rise or plunge about in their misery. Crouching among the timber,
vigilant but weary, dispersed in a big, irregular circle around the
beleaguered bivouac, some sixty soldiers are still on the active list.
All around them, vigilant and vengeful, lurk the Cheyennes. Every now
and then the bark as of a coyote is heard,--a yelping, querulous
cry,--and it is answered far across the valley or down the stream.
There is no moon; the darkness is intense, though the starlight is
clear, and the air so still that the galloping hoofs of the Cheyenne
ponies far out on the prairie sound close at hand.
"That's what makes it hard," says Ray, who is bending over the
prostrate form of Captain Wayne. "If it were storming or blowing, or
something to deaden the hoof-beats, I could make it easier; but it's
the only chance."
The only chance of what?
When the sun went down upon Wayne's timber citadel, and the final
account of stock was taken for the day, it was found that with
one-fourth of the command, men and horses, killed and wounded, there
were left not more than three hundred cartridges, all told, to enable
some sixty men to hold out until relief could come against an enemy
who encircled them on every side, and who had only to send over to the
neighboring reservation--forty miles away--and get all the cartridges
they wanted. Mr. ---- would let their friends have them to kill
"buffalo," though Mr. ---- knew there wasn't a buffalo left within
four hundred miles.
They could cut through, of course, and race up the valley to find the
--th, but they would have to leave the wounded and the dismounted
behind,--to death by torture,--so that ended the matter. Only one
thing remained. In some way--by some means--word must be carried to
the regiment. The chances were ten to one against the couriers
slipping out. Up and down the valley, out on the prairie on both sides
of the stream, the Cheyennes kept vigilant watch. They had their hated
enemies in a death-grip, and only waited the coming of other warriors
and more ammunition to finish them--as the Sioux had finished Custer.
They knew, though the besieged did not, that, the very evening before,
the --th had marched away westward, and were far from their comrades.
All they had to do was to prevent any one's escaping to give warning
of the condition of things in Wayne's command. All, therefore, were on
the alert, and of this there was constant indication. The man or men
who made the attempt would have to run the gauntlet. The one remaining
scout who had been employed for such work refused the attempt as
simply madness. He had lived too long among the Indians to dare it,
yet Wayne and Ray and Dana and Hunter, and the whole command, for that
matter, knew that some one must try it. Who was it to be?
There was no long discussion. Wayne called the sulking scout a damned
coward, which consoled him somewhat, but didn't help matters. Ray had
been around the rifle-pits taking observations. Presently he returned,
leading Dandy up near the fire,--the one sheltered light that was
permitted.
"Looks fine as silk, don't he?" he said, smoothing his pet's glossy
neck and shoulder, for Ray's groom had no article of religion which
took precedence over the duty he owed the lieutenant's horse, and no
sooner was the sun down than he had been grooming him as though still
in garrison. "Give him all the oats you can steal, Hogan; some of the
men must have a hatful left."
Wayne looked up startled.
"Ray, I can't let you go!"
"There's no helping it. Some one must go, and who can you send?"
Even there the captain noted the grammatical eccentricity. What was
surprising was that even there he made no comment thereon. He was
silent. Ray had spoken truth. There was no one whom he could order to
risk death in breaking his way out since the scout had said 'twas
useless. There were brave men there who would gladly try it had they
any skill in such matters, but that was lacking. "If any man in the
company could 'make it,' that man was Ray." He was cool, daring, keen;
he was their best and lightest rider, and no one so well knew the
country or better knew the Cheyennes. Wayne even wished that Ray might
volunteer. There was only this about it,--the men would lose much of
their grit with him away. They swore by him, and felt safe when he was
there to lead or encourage. But the matter was settled by Ray himself.
He was already stripping for the race.
"Get those shoes off," he said to the farrier, who came at his
bidding, and Dandy wonderingly looked up from the gunny-sack of oats
in which he had buried his nozzle. "What on earth could that
blacksmith mean by tugging out his shoe-nails?" was his reflection,
though, like the philosopher he was, he gave more thought to his
oats,--an unaccustomed luxury just then.
There seemed nothing to be said by anybody. Wayne rose painfully to
his feet. Hunter stood in silence by, and a few men grouped themselves
around the little knot of officers. Ray had taken off his belt and was
poking out the carbine cartridges from the loops,--there were not
over ten. Then he drew the revolver, carefully examined the chambers
to see that all were filled; motioned with his hand to those on the
ground, saying, quietly, "Pick those up. Y'all may need every one of
'em." The Blue Grass dialect seemed cropping out the stronger for his
preoccupation. "Got any spare Colts?" he continued, turning to Wayne.
"I only want another round." These he stowed as he got them in the
smaller loops on the right side of his belt. Then he bent forward to
examine Dandy's hoofs again.
"Smooth them off as well as you can. Get me a little of that sticky
mud there, one of you men. There! ram that into every hole and smooth
off the surface. Make it look just as much like a pony's as you know
how. They can't tell Dandy's tracks from their own then, don't you
see?"
Three or four pairs of hands worked assiduously to do his bidding.
Still, there was no talking. No one had anything he felt like saying
just then.
"Who's got the time?" he asked.
Wayne looked at his watch, bending down over the fire.
"Just nine fifteen."
"All right. I must be off in ten minutes. The moon will be up at
eleven."
Dandy had finished the last of his oats by this time, and was gazing
contentedly about him. Ever since quite early in the day he had been
in hiding down there under the bank. He had received only one trifling
clip, though for half an hour at least he had been springing around
where the bullets flew thickest. He was even pining for his customary
gallop over the springy turf, and wondering why it had been denied him
that day.
"Only a blanket and surcingle," said Ray, to his orderly, who was
coming up with the heavy saddle and bags. "We're riding to win
tonight, Dandy and I, and must travel light."
He flung aside his scouting hat, knotted the silk handkerchief he took
from his throat so as to confine the dark hair that came tumbling
almost into his eyes, buckled the holster-belt tightly round his
waist, looked doubtfully an instant at his spurs, but decided to keep
them on. Then he turned to Wayne.
"A word with you, captain."
The others fell back a short distance, and for a moment the two stood
alone speaking in low tones. All else was silent except the feverish
moan of some poor fellow lying sorely wounded in the hollow, or the
occasional pawing and stir among the horses. In the dim light of the
little fire the others stood watching them. They saw that Wayne was
talking earnestly, and presently extended his hand, and they heard
Ray, somewhat impatiently, say, "Never mind that now," and noted that
at first he did not take the hand; but finally they came back to the
group and Ray spoke:
"Now, fellows, just listen a minute. I've got to break out on the
south side. I know it better. Of course there are no end of Indians
out there, but most of the crowd are in the timber above and below.
There will be plenty on the watch, and it isn't possible that I can
gallop out through them without being heard. Dandy and I have got to
sneak for it until we're spotted, or clear of them, then away we go. I
hope to work well out towards the bluffs before they catch a glimpse
of me, then lie flat and go for all I'm worth to where we left the
regiment. Then you bet it won't be long before the old crowd will be
coming down just a humping. I'll have 'em here by six o'clock, if,
indeed, I don't find them coming ahead tonight. Just keep up your
grit, and we'll do our level best, Dandy and I; won't we, old boy?
Now, I want to see Dana a minute and the other wounded fellows," and
he went and bent down over them, saying a cheery word to each; and
rough, suffering men held out feeble hands to take a parting grip, and
looked up into his brave young eyes. He had long known how the rank
and file regarded him, but had been disposed to laugh it off. Tonight
as he stopped to say a cheering word to the wounded, and looked down
at some pale, bearded face that had stood at his shoulder in more than
one tight place in the old Apache days in Arizona, and caught the same
look of faith and trust in him, something like a quiver hovered for a
minute about his lips, and his own brave eyes grew moist. They knew he
was daring death to save them, but that was a view of the case that
did not seem to occur to him at all. At last he came to Dana lying
there a little apart. The news that Ray was going to "ride for them"
had been whispered all through the bivouac by this time, and Dana
turned and took Ray's hand in both his own.
"God speed you, old boy! If you make it all safe, get word to mother
that I didn't do so badly in my first square tussle, will you?"
"If I make it, you'll be writing it yourself this time tomorrow night.
Even if I don't make it, don't you worry, lad. The Colonel and
Stannard ain't the fellows to let us shift for ourselves with the
country full of Cheyennes. They'll be down here in two days, anyhow.
Good-by, Dana; keep your grip and we'll larrup 'em yet."
Then he turned back to Wayne, Hunter, and the doctor.
"One thing occurs to me, Hunter. You and six or eight men take your
carbines and go up-stream with a dozen horses until you come to the
rifle-pits. Be all ready. If I get clear through you won't hear any
row, but if they sight or hear me before I get through, then, of
course, there will be the biggest kind of an excitement, and you'll
hear the shooting. The moment it begins, give a yell; fire your guns,
go whooping up the stream with the horses as though the whole crowd
were trying to cut out that way, but get right back. The excitement
will distract them and help me. Now, good-by, and good luck to you,
crowd."
"Ray, will you have a nip before you try it? You must be nearly used
up after this day's work." And he held out his flask to him.
"No. I had some hot coffee just ten minutes ago, and I feel like a
four-year-old. I'm riding new colors; didn't you know it? By jove!" he
added, suddenly, "this is my first run under the Preakness blue." Even
then and there he thought too quickly to speak her name. "Now then,
some of you crawl out to the south edge of the timber with me, and lie
flat in the prairie and keep me in sight as long as you can." He took
one more look at his revolver. "I'm drawing to a bob-tail. If I fail,
I'll bluff; if I fill, I'll knock spots out of any threes in the
Cheyenne outfit."
Three minutes more and the watchers at the edge of the timber have
seen him, leading Dandy by the bridle, slowly, stealthily, creeping
out into the darkness; a moment the forms of man and horse are
outlined against the stars: then are swallowed up in the night. Hunter
and the sergeants with him grasp their carbines and lie prone upon the
turf, watching, waiting.
In the bivouac is the stillness of death. Ten soldiers--carbines in
hand--mounted on their unsaddled steeds are waiting in the darkness at
the upper rifle-pits for Hunter's signal. If he shouts, every man is
to yell and break for the front. Otherwise, all are to remain quiet.
Back at the watch-fire under the bank Wayne is squatting, watch in one
hand, pistol in the other. Near by lie the wounded, still as their
comrades just beyond,--the dead. All around among the trees and in the
sand pits up- and down-stream, fourscore men are listening to the
beating of their own hearts. In the distance, once in a while, is
heard the yelp of coyote or the neigh of Indian pony. In the distance,
too, are the gleams of Indian fires, but they are beyond the positions
occupied by the besieging warriors. Darkness shrouds them. Far aloft
the stars are twinkling through the cool and breezeless air. With
wind, or storm, or tempest, the gallant fellow whom all hearts are
following would have something to favor, something to aid; but in this
almost cruel stillness nothing under God can help him,--nothing but
darkness and his own brave spirit.
"If I get through this scrape in safety," mutters Wayne between his
set teeth, "the --th shall never hear the last of this work of Ray's."
"If I get through this night," mutters Ray to himself, far out on the
prairie now, where he can hear tramping hoofs and guttural voices, "it
will be the best run ever made for the Sanford blue, though I do make
it."
Nearly five minutes have passed, and the silence has been unbroken by
shot or shout. The suspense is becoming unbearable in the bivouac,
where every man is listening, hardly daring to draw breath. At last
Hunter, rising to his knees, which are all a-tremble with excitement,
mutters to Sergeant Roach, who is still crouching beside him,--
"By Heaven! I believe he'll slip through without being seen."
Hardly had he spoken when far, far out to the southwest two bright
flashes leap through the darkness. Before the report can reach them
there comes another, not so brilliant. Then, the ringing bang, bang of
two rifles, the answering crack of a revolver.
"Quick, men. Go!" yells Hunter, and darts headlong through the timber
back to the stream. There is a sudden burst of shots and yells and
soldier cheers; a mighty crash and sputter and thunder of hoofs up the
stream-bed; a few of the men at the west end, yelling like demons,
dash in support of the mounted charge in the bed of the stream. For a
minute or two the welkin rings with shouts, shots (mainly those of the
startled Indians), then there is as sudden a rush back to cover,
without a man or horse hurt or missing. In the excitement and darkness
the Cheyennes could only fire wild, but now the night air resounds
with taunts and yells and triumphant war-whoops. For full five minutes
there is a jubilee over the belief that they have penned in the white
soldiers after their dash for liberty. Then, little by little, the
yells and taunts subside. Something has happened to create discussion
in the Cheyenne camps, for the crouching soldiers can hear the
liveliest kind of a pow-wow far up-stream. What does it mean? Has Ray
slipped through, or--have they caught him?
Despite pain and weakness, Wayne hobbles out to where Sergeant Roach
is still watching and asks for tidings.
"I can't be sure, captain; one thing's certain, the lieutenant rode
like a gale. I could follow the shots a full half-mile up the valley,
where they seemed to grow thicker, and then stop all of a sudden in
the midst of the row that was made down here. They've either given it
up and have a big party out in chase, or else they've got him. God
knows which. If they've got him, there'll be a scalp-dance over there
in a few minutes, curse them!" And the sergeant choked.
Wayne watched some ten minutes without avail. Nothing further was seen
or heard that night to indicate what had happened to Ray except once.
Far up the valley he saw a couple of flashes among the bluffs; so did
Roach, and that gave him hope that Dandy had carried his master in
safety that far at least.
He crept back to the bank and cheered the wounded with the news of
what he had seen. Then another word came in ere long. An old sergeant
had crawled out to the front, and could hear something of the shouting
and talking of the Indians. He could understand a few words only,
though he had lived among the Cheyennes nearly five years. They can
barely understand one another in the dark, and use incessant
gesticulation to interpret their own speech; but the sergeant gathered
that they were upbraiding somebody for not guarding a coulee, and
inferred that someone had slipped past their pickets or they wouldn't
be making such a row.
That the Cheyennes did not propose to let the besieged derive much
comfort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the
stream came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled
with the vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy
neighbors, and all the frontier slang in the Cheyenne vocabulary.
"Hullo! sogers; come out some more times. We no shoot. Stay there: we
come plenty quick. Hullo! white chief, come fight fair; soger heap
'fraid! Come, have scalp-dance plenty quick. Catch white soldier; eat
him heart bime by."
"Ah, go to your grandmother, the ould witch in hell, ye
musthard-sthriped convict!" sings out some irrepressible Paddy in
reply, and Wayne, who is disposed to serious thoughts, would order
silence, but it occurs to him that Mulligan's crude sallies have a
tendency to keep the men lively.
"I can't believe they've got him," he whispers to the doctor. "If they
had they would soon recognize him as an officer and come bawling out
their triumph at bagging a chief. His watch, his shoes, his spurs, his
underclothing, would all betray that he was an officer, though he
hasn't a vestige of uniform. Pray God he is safe!"
Will you follow Ray and see? Curiosity is what lures the fleetest deer
to death, and a more dangerous path than that which Ray has taken one
rarely follows. Will you try it, reader--just you and I? Come on,
then. We'll see what our Kentucky boy "got in the draw," as he would
put it.
Ray's footfall is soft as a kitten's as he creeps out upon the
prairie; Dandy stepping gingerly after him, wondering but obedient.
For over a hundred yards he goes, until both up- and down-stream he
can almost see the faint fires of the Indians in the timber. Farther
out he can hear hoof-beats and voices, so he edges along westward
until he comes suddenly to a depression, a little winding "cooley"
across the prairie, through which in the early spring the snows are
carried off from some ravine among the bluffs. Into this he
noiselessly feels his way and Dandy follows. He creeps along to his
left and finds that its general course is from the southwest. He knows
well that the best way to watch for objects in the darkness is to lie
flat on low ground so that everything approaching may be thrown
against the sky. His plain-craft tells him that by keeping in the
water-course he will be less apt to be seen, but will surely come
across some lurking Indians. That he expects. The thing is to get as
far through them as possible before being seen or heard, then mount
and away. After another two minutes' creeping he peers over the
western bank. Now the fires up-stream can be seen in the timber, and
dim, shadowy forms pass and repass. Then close at hand come voices and
hoof-beats. Dandy pricks up his ears and wants to neigh, but Ray grips
his nostrils like a vise, and Dandy desists. At rapid lope, within
twenty yards, a party of half a dozen warriors go bounding past on
their way down the valley, and no sooner have they crossed the gulley
than he rises and rapidly pushes on up the dry sandy bed. Thank
heaven! there are no stones. A minute more and right in front of him,
not a stone's throw away, he hears the deep tones of Indian voices in
conversation. Whoever they may be they are in the "cooley" and
watching the prairie. They can see nothing of him, nor he of them.
Pass them in the ten-foot-wide ravine he cannot. He must go back a
short distance, make a sweep to the east so as not to go between those
watchers and the guiding fires, then trust to luck. Turning stealthily
he brings Dandy around, leads back down the ravine for some thirty
yards, then turns to his horse, pats him gently one minute; "Do your
prettiest for your colors, my boy," he whispers; springs lightly,
noiselessly to his back, and at cautious walk comes up on the level
prairie, with the timber behind him three hundred yards away.
Southward he can see the dim outline of the bluffs. Westward--once
that little arroyo is crossed--he knows the prairie to be level and
unimpeded, fit for a race; but he needs to make a detour to pass the
Indians guarding it, get away beyond them, cross it to the west far
behind them, and then look out for stray parties. Dandy ambles lightly
along, eager for fun and little appreciating the danger. Ray bends
down on his neck, intent with eye and ear. He feels that he has got
well out east of the Indian picket unchallenged, when suddenly voices
and hoofs come bounding up the valley from below. He must cross their
front, reach the ravine before them, and strike the prairie beyond.
"Go, Dandy!" he mutters with gentle pressure of leg, and the sorrel
bounds lightly away, circling southwestward under the guiding rein.
Another minute and he is at the arroyo and cautiously descending, then
scrambling up the west bank, and then from the darkness comes savage
challenge, a sputter of pony hoofs. Ray bends low and gives Dandy one
vigorous prod with the spur, and with muttered prayer and clinched
teeth and fists he leaps into the wildest race for his life.
Bang! bang! go two shots close behind him. Crack! goes his pistol at a
dusky form closing in on his right. Then come yells, shots, the uproar
of hoofs, the distant cheer and charge at camp, a breathless dash for
and close along under the bluffs where his form is best concealed, a
whirl to the left into the first ravine that shows itself, and despite
shots and shouts and nimble ponies and vengeful foes, the Sanford
colors are riding far to the front, and all the racers of the
reservations cannot overhaul them.
THE FINAL BLOW
From "THE TRUE ULYSSES S. GRANT." Chapter XXXVIII. Copyright,
1914, by J. B. Lippincott Co.
Long months before the melancholy failure of that ill-omened bank, the
General had told Badeau of the fabulous profits the firm was
realizing, and Badeau went to their old comrade of the war and White
House days--to Horace Porter--and asked that reticent but experienced
soldier-citizen his opinion, and Porter solemnly shook his head. Such
profits, he said, were impossible in a business honestly conducted.
But Grant saw on every side men by the dozen who had started with less
than his modest capital and had gathered fortunes in Wall Street. He
was so confident in the sagacity and judgment of Ulysses, Jr., that he
invested his every dollar with the firm and reinvested every penny of
the profits which he did not lavish on his loved ones or on his
followers and friends. Like Thackeray's most lovable hero, Colonel
Newcome, he thought to share his good fortune with many of his kith
and kin and urged their sending their savings to be invested for them
by brilliant young "Buck" and his sagacious partner--that wonderful
wizard of finance, Mr. Ward. Aside from the chagrin of seeing some of
his recommendations disregarded, and certain of his opponents regarded
first by Mr. Garfield and later by Mr. Arthur, General Grant was
living in those years a life of ease, luxury, and freedom from care as
never before he had enjoyed. Julia Dent was as ever first and foremost
in his world, but the children were the source of pride and joy
unmistakable. Devoted, dutiful, and loyal they unquestionably were,
but Grant believed of his first born that he was destined to become
renowned as a general, and of "Buck" and Jesse that they were born
financiers and business men. As for Princess Nellie, the father's love
and yearning for that one daughter of his house and name was beyond
all measure. No man ever loved home, wife, and children more tenderly,
more absorbingly.
Although widely scattered at the time, this heart-united household had
been anticipating a blithe and merry Christmas at the close of the
year 1883. When he was alighting from his carriage just before
midnight, with the welcoming chimes pealing on the frosty air, the
General's foot slipped on the icy pavement, he fell heavily, a muscle
snapped in the thigh, possibly one of those injured twenty years
earlier, the day of that fateful stumble at Carrollton, and he was
carried into the house, never thereafter to leave it in health or
strength.
Crutches again, and later a cane, long were necessary. In March, they
took him to Fortress Monroe so that he could hobble about in the soft
air and sunshine. In April he was back again in Gotham, able to drive
his favorite team, but not to walk. On Sunday, the 4th day of May, the
wizard partner, Ward, came into their home and quite casually
announced that the Marine Bank of New York, in which Grant & Ward had
large deposits, needed perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
to tide them over a temporary difficulty. If General Grant could
borrow that much over Monday, Grant & Ward would not have to lose a
cent; otherwise they stood to lose perhaps fifty or sixty thousand. Of
course the lender would lose nothing, said Ward, as there was a
million, at least, of securities in the vaults.
The world knows the rest--how unsuspiciously our General called on his
friend and fellow horseman, Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, said that he
needed one hundred and fifty thousand for a day or so, and came away
with a cheque for that amount. For no other man probably would Mr.
Vanderbilt have parted unsecured with such a sum. The cheque was
promptly endorsed and turned over to Mr. Ward, who took it
unconcernedly and then his leave.
Tuesday morning, May 6th, believing himself a millionaire and the
brief indebtedness to Vanderbilt already cancelled, Grant alighted at
the Wall Street office to find an ominous gathering. "Father, you had
better go home--the bank has failed," said Ulysses, Jr., with misery
in his eyes, but Grant stayed to investigate. Badeau, the faithful,
hastening in at noon, found the old chief seated in the rear office,
calm in the midst of stress and storm. "We are all ruined here," he
simply said. Ward had vanished, the key of the vaults with him, and
when they were finally opened, the boasted "securities" were found to
be but shadows. The ruin was complete.
Everything they had--all the beautiful gifts, trophies, souvenirs,
even the little houses owned by Mrs. Grant in Washington, and the
repurchased Dent property about St. Louis--had to be sold. Grant
insisted, though it left them, for the time at least, absolutely
penniless. It had dragged down others with them; it involved his
honored name in a whirlpool of censure, criticism, and calumny that
well-nigh crushed him. Fallen from such supremely high estate, the
insults and indignities that beset him now far outweighed the slights
and sneers that had been his portion in the days of his earlier
humiliation. Over the depths of the misery that had come to him in his
old and recently honored age let us draw the curtain. No man on earth
could know the suffering it cost him. Only one woman could faintly
see. Helping hands there were outstretched to him instanter, and money
to meet the immediate need. Then, as the storm subsided and the extent
of Ward's villainy and Grant's innocence became known, new measures
were taken to provide against absolute want. A trust fund had already
been raised. A measure was speedily set on foot to restore to Grant
the rank and pay which he had surrendered on assuming the presidency,
and a modest competence would thus be insured him and those he loved.
There was a home in which to live. They could even spend the summers
at the seashore. There were offers of congenial occupation that might
have proved mildly lucrative. There was measurable return to hope and
possible health. There had never been complaint or repining. To all
about him he had been gentleness, consideration, kindliness itself.
There was just one cause of new, yet slight anxiety:
All through that summer of '84, while at Long Branch, his throat had
been giving him pain, and a Philadelphia physician, examining it for
the first time late in September, advised, even urged, says Badeau,
his consulting a specialist on returning to town. For a time he took
no heed. He was writing now, long hours each day, but at last he
called, as further urged by his own physician, upon that distinguished
expert, Dr. J. H. Douglas, and that evening calmly admitted that the
trouble in his throat was cancerous in tendency. And that this was
true, the fact that he suddenly dropped the luxury of all the days
that had followed Donelson--his cigar--and the sufferings that
followed in November and December proved beyond possibility of
doubt....
And meanwhile a nation stood with bated breath and watched and prayed.
Crowds gathered about the house and importuned the physicians for
tidings. Congress had passed amid scenes of emphatic popular approval
a bill restoring him again to the generalship of old--almost the last
act signed by Mr. Arthur before leaving, as it was almost the first
commission signed by Mr. Cleveland after entering, the White House.
Then presently, for quiet and for better air, as all remember, they
bore him to the Drexel cottage at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga
Springs, and here, his voice utterly gone, compelled to make his
wishes known by signs, compelled to complete the pages of his Memoirs
with pad and pencil, our stricken soldier indomitably held to his
self-appointed task, once more "fighting it out on this line if it
took all summer." Never even at Shiloh, in front of Vicksburg, or in
the fire-flashing Wilderness was he more tenacious, determined,
heroic, for now intense suffering accompanied almost every move and
moment. Physicians were constantly at hand; Fred, the devoted son,
ever at his side. Here there came to see him and to sympathize old
comrades--even old enemies--of the war days, all thought of rancor
buried now. Here, just as thirty years earlier he had hastened to
offer aid, came Buckner (and this time unprotesting) in unconditional
surrender; for beneath the shadow of that hovering wing the last
vestige of sectional pride gave way to fond memories of the old and
firm friendship. Here, almost as the twilight deepened into the gloom
of night eternal, they bore him the tribute of honor and respect from
men whom he had vehemently opposed--foeman-in-chief to the Union,
Jefferson Davis, and soldier-candidate and political foe, Winfield S.
Hancock. Here they read him letters, telegrams, editorials from every
corner of the Union he had striven to weld and secure, every line
telling of worldwide sympathy, honor, and affection. Here, almost at
the last, he penciled those farewell pages of those fruitful volumes,
which, whatever his earlier defects in style, have been declared
classic in modern literature. Here, ere the light went out forever, he
wrote the pathetic missive, his final words of love, longing, and
devotion to the wife whom he held peerless among women, to the
children whom he loved with infinite tenderness, and for whose future
comfort, even in the face of such persistent torment and impending
death, he had labored to the very last.
And then, as he completed the final paragraph--the story of his
soldier-life and services--and with faltering hand signed the final
letter, he closed his wearied eyes upon the group that hovered ever
about him, eager to garner every look and whisper, and so the long
fight ended, even as it had begun, almost without a sigh. Apparently
without consciousness of pain, certainly without struggle or
suffering, surrounded by that devoted household--wife, sons, and only
daughter--the greatest of our warriors passed onward into the valley
of shadows, and to immortality.
Thirty years have passed since that which struck from our muster rolls
the name of our first and foremost general--thirty years, as these
pages are given to the light, since that summer day on which, with the
highest honors and the greatest retinue ever accorded to American
citizen or soldier, the flag-enshrouded casket was borne almost the
length of all Manhattan; Hancock, the superb on many a battlefield,
heading the league-long procession of soldiery, the world-garnered
dignitaries from every state and clime. Amidst the solemn thunder of
the guns of the warships moored along the Hudson, the farewell volleys
of the troops aligned along the heights, in the presence of the
President and cabinet, the supreme court and the diplomatic corps, the
governors of nearly every commonwealth, eminent soldiers, sailors,
veterans of the Civil War, the gray mingling with the blue, and all
engulfed in a vast multitude of mourners, the final prayers were said,
the last benediction spoken, and under the shadow of the beloved flag
he had served with such fidelity and to such eminent purpose, they
laid to rest the honored soldier whose valiant service had secured to
them and to their posterity the blessings of union, progress, and
tranquility, and whose crowning message to the nation he had restored
was the simple admonition, "Let us have peace."
And in those thirty years the people of our land have had abundant
time to study and to reflect. Each succeeding year adds to their
reverence for their greatest friend, leader, and statesman, Abraham
Lincoln. Each succeeding year seems to increase their appreciation of
their greatest soldier, Ulysses Grant, and yet it sometimes seems as
though in the magnitude of the obstacles overcome, the immensity of
the military problems solved, the supreme soldiership of the man has
blinded us for the time to the other virtues, less heroic, perhaps,
yet not less marked and true, virtues as son, as husband, father, and
friend, not often equalled in other men, if ever excelled....
And was not his a marvelous career? Cradled in the cottage, he spoke
for years from the seat of the mightiest. Chosen and trained for his
country's wars, he loved best the arts of peace. Schooled as a
regular, he to the fullest extent and from the very first believed in
the volunteer. Ignored by book and bureau soldiers at the start,
despite the fine record of the Mexican campaigns, indebted to a
Western governor for the opportunity refused him by the War
Department, he held his modest way, uncomplaining, asking only to be
made of use. One year had raised him from the twilight of a Western
town to the triumph of Donelson; two years made him the victor of
Vicksburg, the head of the armies of the West; three had set him in
supreme command, deferred to even by those who late as '62 had sought
to down him; four and the sword of the chivalric Lee was his to do
with as he would--the rebellion crushed, the war ended--and then, with
our martyred Lincoln lying in the grave ever watered by a nation's
tears, small wonder was it that twice the people held Grant long years
at their head, and when he had returned, from that globe-circling
triumphal progress, in large numbers would again have called him to
the White House, an uncrowned monarch, the chosen of sovereign
citizens. Was he greater then than in the chain of ills that followed?
Tricked by those he trusted, himself unskilled in guile, ruined
financially by those he had been taught to hold infallible, and
finally confronted by the dread conviction that, though barely beyond
the prime of life, his days were numbered--was he ever amid the
thunder of saluting cannon and the cheers of countless multitudes so
great as when, with the grim destroyer clutching at his throat, he
fought for life that through those matchless Memoirs he might earn the
means to wipe out every possible obligation and provide in modest
comfort, at least, for those he loved and must soon leave to mourn
him? In those last heroic days at Mt. McGregor he stood revealed in
his silent suffering, the ideal of devotion, endurance, and
determination, until, his great work done, his toil and trials ended,
his sword long since sheathed, his pen now dropping from the wearied,
nerveless hand, he could turn to the Peace Ineffable and sink to
rest--our greatest soldier--our honored President--our foremost
citizen. Aye, soldier, statesman, loyal citizen he was; and yet more,
for in purity of life, in love of home and wife and children, in
integrity unchallenged, in truth and honor unblemished, in manner
simplicity itself--though ever coupled with that quiet dignity that
made him peer among the princes of the earth--in speech so clean that
oath or execration never soiled his lips, unswerving in his faith, a
martyr to his friendships, merciful to the fallen, magnanimous to the
foe, magnificent in self-discipline, was he not also, and in all that
the grand old name implies, Grant--the gentleman?
JOHN MUIR.
John Muir was born at Dunbar, Scotland, April 21, 1838, and
died at Los Angeles, California, December 24, 1914. He
attended school before he had completed his third year of
age, but even before this time his grandfather had taught him
the letters of the alphabet upon the signs in the vicinity.
He remained in the Scotch schools until he was eleven and
made most valuable use of his time, as may be judged by his
progress, especially in Latin. At the age of eleven he had to
leave school to accompany his father to the new home in the
forests of Wisconsin.
Upon their arrival in America after a voyage which was to
John and his brother one constant round of happy experiences,
there was no further opportunity for elementary schooling.
His education became that of the toiler and he stored his
mind with knowledge acquired from the observation of the
plants and animals of the woods and lakes and from the
association and study of the animals of the farm. He found
opportunity to read the few books which came into his
possession, but the strict regulation of the home made him
read largely by snatches. His fertile brain was employed
almost constantly in the matter of inventions. His duties on
the farm comprised all activities from that of cultivating
the fields to the building of houses and barns and the
digging of wells. In his recent book "The Story of My Boyhood
and Youth," he has graphically described his work of digging
a well by chiselling for nearly eighty feet through the solid
granite.
Muir remained on the farm until he had attained his majority.
He then went to the capitol of the state to exhibit some of
his wonderful inventions at the State Fair. This experience
led to his employment in a shop in Prairie du Chien, where he
worked part of the year. He then went to the University,
where he earned his way during the four years of his course.
He completed his course of study there with the class of
1864, and then, according to his own statement, he plunged
immediately into the work of geologist, explorer, and
naturalist. His work was quite largely in the Yosemite region
of California and among the glaciers of the Sierras and
Alaska. In the latter region during the year of 1881 he
explored the glacier named after him. It was, however, his
description of the Yosemite Valley that first brought him
into prominence. He made an extended search for the De Long
Arctic exploring party, which was lost in its effort to reach
the far North. Later he travelled, part of the time in
company with John Burroughs, through Hawaii, Russia,
Siberia, Manchuria, India, Australasia, and South America.
No place, however, furnished him with such rich material
about which to tell his thoughts as did his adopted home,
California, and the newer Alaska. In the later years of his
life his residence was at Martinez, California. He was
married to Louise Strenzel in 1880. To them was born a
daughter, Helen, who still lives in California and who was
with her father at the time of his death.
While John Muir's experience as a pioneer in the forests of
Wisconsin, reveals the severe hardships of that life, it
reveals many of the joys as well, and shows that his active
brain was open to all the avenues of self education. Field,
forest, and lake were full of opportunities for him to
observe and study, and as a result John and his brother,
David, were fine naturalists, irrespective of books upon the
subject. John's home life was rich in the companionship of
brothers and sisters, and his mother was most sympathetic and
helpful to him in his aspirations to know and to become the
scholar.
The Scotch schools had given him such training as enabled him
to use books as tools throughout his life. The necessities of
the farm and home drove him to inventing means for getting
things done. The result was that he soon became known as a
genius, and this inventive work finally opened the way for
his entrance into the University. So keen was John's desire
to know and to invent that it became necessary for his father
to drive him to bed too frequently, so he told the boy that
if he wished to study, he should get up in the morning. John
took his father at his word and managed to rise at two
o'clock morning after morning to work upon his inventions. As
a result of such efforts there was made a model of
self-setting saw mill, a thermometer, clocks, an apparatus to
get him up at the time desired, and later at the University a
machine to make visible the growth of plants and the action
of sunlight, a barometer, and a desk which automatically
threw up, from a rack underneath, each book in the order of
his studies during the day and withdrew it again when the
time allotted for this study had expired. To accompany this
wonderful invention, he furnished his bed with an adjustment
that set him on his feet at the morning rising hour and at
the same instant lighted his lamp. These seemingly incredible
inventions are fully explained in "The Story of My Boyhood
and Youth," Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913. So eagerly did he
pursue knowledge for its own sake while he was in the
University that the old janitor was proud to point out Muir's
room to visitors many years after his departure.
So valuable has been the work of this investigating mind that
Wisconsin, Harvard, and Yale Universities have deemed it a
pleasure to confer upon John Muir honorary degrees. With his
entire life devoted to research, he may truthfully be said
to have been one of America's best educated men.
He contributed extensively to the organization of scientific
clubs and to scientific magazines. He was much interested in
forest reservation and did much towards the plans which the
government now employs. His work in connection with
government regulated parks has been invaluable.
As a writer Muir is one of the most interestingly instructive
we have had. His language is clear and lucid and he has a
message which he carries directly to the heart and mind of
his reader. Besides his many magazine articles he has written
the "Mountains of California," 1894; "Our National Parks,"
1901; "Stickeen, the Story of a Dog," 1909; "My First Summer
in the Sierra," 1911; "The Yosemite," 1912, and the "Story of
My Boyhood and Youth," 1913. This last is one of the most
interesting and inspiring books for young people that we have
today.
The Muir homestead is twelve miles from Portage, Wisconsin.
There were two farms, the Spring Fountain farm and the
Hickory Hill farm. It is upon the latter that is found the
well 90 feet deep, eighty feet of which John chiselled
through solid granite.
To illustrate Muir's interesting manner of presenting his
observations we are adding the following selections from "The
Mountains of California," published by the Century Co.
SNOW BANNERS
Copyrighted by the Century Co., 1894.
The most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy
grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods, or avalanches,
was the peaks of the High Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated
with snow-banners. Many of the starry snow-flowers, out of which these
banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that
do attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe
against one another in their fall through the frosty air, and are
broken into fragments. This dry, fragmentary snow is still further
prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. For,
instead of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the
tranquil depths of the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten
against rock-ridges, and swirled in pits and hollows, like boulders,
pebbles, and sand in the pot-holes of a river, until finally the
delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and the whole mass is
reduced to dust. And whenever storm-winds find this prepared snow-dust
in a loose condition on exposed slopes, where there is a free upward
sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky, and borne onward
from peak to peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according
to the velocity of the wind and the conformation of the slopes up or
around which it is driven. While thus flying through the air, a small
portion makes good its escape, and remains in the sky again as vapor.
But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky again and
again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of
glaciers, some of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before
it is finally melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the
sea.
Yet, notwithstanding the abundance of winter snow-dust in the
mountains, and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the
dust remains loose and exposed to their action, the occurrence of
well-formed banners is, for causes we shall hereafter note,
comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of this kind that
seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873, when the
snow-laden summits were swept by a wild "norther." I happened at the
time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra temple
where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet even here the
wild gala-day of the north seemed surpassingly glorious. I was
awakened in the morning by the rocking of my cabin and the beating of
pine-burs on the roof. Detached torrents and avalanches from the main
wind-flood overhead were rushing wildly down the narrow side canyons,
and over the precipitous walls, with loud resounding roar, rousing the
pines to enthusiastic action, and making the whole valley vibrate as
though it were an instrument being played.
But afar on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in
the sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters,
which I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to
study some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed
every winter at the foot of the upper Yosemite fall, but blinding
spray by which it is invested had hitherto prevented me from making a
sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire body of the fall
was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of
the cliff, leaving the cone dry; and while making my way to the top of
an overlooking ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to examine
the interior of the cone, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight
over the shoulder of the South Dome, each waving a resplendent banner
against the blue sky, as regular in form, and as firm in texture, as
if woven of fine silk. So rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course,
overbore all other considerations, and I at once let the ice-cone go,
and began to force my way out of the valley to some dome or ridge
sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main summits,
feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more
gloriously; nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Canon, through
which I climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in
avalanches from the high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent
difficult; but inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing
brought no fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge
above the valley, 8,000 feet high. And there in bold relief, like a
clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable peaks,
black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set
in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like
ocean rocks with foam; and from every summit, all free and unconfused,
was streaming a beautiful, silky, silvery banner, from half a mile to
a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then widening
gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about 1,000 or
1,500 feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of
peaks called the "Crown of the Sierra," at the head of the Merced and
Tuolumne rivers,--Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, Maclure, Ritter,
with their nameless compeers,--each had its own refulgent banner,
waving with a clearly visible motion in the sun glow, and there was
not a single cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy
yourself standing on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward. You notice
a strange garish glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead
with a fierce, tempestuous roar, but its violence is not felt, for you
are looking through a sheltered opening in the woods as through a
window. There, in the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a
majestic forest of silver fir blooming in eternal freshness, the
foliage yellow-green, and the snow beneath the trees strewn with their
beautiful plumes, plucked off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over
all the middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge
swelling ridges and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the
monarchs of the High Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are
twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for every
feature is distinct, and the whole glorious show is seen in its right
proportions. After this general view, mark how sharply the dark,
snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of the peaks are defined,
excepting the portions veiled by the banners, and how delicately their
sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to rest in narrow
flutings and gorges. Mark, too, how grandly the banners wave as the
wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each is attached
to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a masthead; how
smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their fading
fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque they
are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent toward
the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though you
were looking through ground glass. Yet again, observe how some of the
longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all
the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to peak, while
others overlap and partly hide each other. And consider how keenly
every particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of
light. These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible
picture as seen from the forest window; and it would still be
surpassingly glorious were the fore and middle grounds obliterated
altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners and the
blue sky.
Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow-banners, we
find that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of
those we have been contemplating were the favorable direction and
great force of the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the peculiar
conformation of the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that
the wind should move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a
sufficiently copious and continuous stream of snow dust, but that it
should come from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the
Sierra peaks by a south wind. Had the gale that day blown from the
south, leaving other conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused,
fog-like drift would have been produced; for the snow, instead of
being spouted up over the tops of the peaks in concentrated currents
to be drawn out as streamers, would have been shed off around the
sides, and piled down into glacier wombs. The cause of the
concentrated action of the north wind is found in the peculiar form of
the north sides of the peaks, where the amphitheaters of the residual
glaciers are. In general, the south sides are convex and irregular,
while the north sides are concave both in their vertical and
horizontal sections; the wind in ascending these curves converges
toward the summits, carrying the snow in concentrating currents with
it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the peaks, from
which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction.
This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks
was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity
of the glaciation to which they have been subjected, the north sides
having been hollowed by residual shadow-glaciers of a form that never
existed on the sun-beaten sides.
It appears, therefore, that shadows in a great part determine not
only the forms of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the
snow-banners that the wild winds hang on them.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
"If you haven't what you like, try to like what you have."
In this quotation is found the philosophy of life during many
severe trials of one whose girlhood and early career as a
writer were spent entirely within the confines of Wisconsin.
Ella Wheeler was born at Johnstown Center, Wisconsin,
sometime in the '50's, and the family moved to a farm near
Madison when she was a year old. The discussion of her life
given here is derived quite largely from her own statements
in an article, "My Autobiography," published in the
Cosmopolitan magazine for August, 1901.
Mrs. Wheeler, Ella's mother, was a woman of some literary
inclinations and was very fond of reading. She loved not only
the good society of books, but she longed also for the
pleasures of the social life of a cultured community such as
she had known in her Vermont home. Pioneer life was
especially irksome to her, and she found herself unable to
meet patiently the many hardships that the change of fortune
had brought her, and her attitude in the home was not always
buoyant.
Some time after the home was established in Wisconsin, there
was born to these parents their fourth child, Ella, the
future poetess. It may not be too much to say, since Mrs.
Wilcox seems to think it herself, that from the struggles of
the father to meet the hardships that his new life brought
him, may have sprung that bit of wholesome philosophy which
stands at the head of this discussion. It is evident that she
found many opportunities to test it to the utmost. From the
suppressed literary desires of the mother may have come the
intense longing of the daughter to achieve helpfulness
through writing.
From the standpoint of language training this home was far
from limited, and Ella had opportunities here accorded to the
minority of children even at the present time. She says: "My
mother was a great reader of whatever came in her way, and
was possessed of a wonderful memory. The elder children were
excellent scholars, and a grammatical error was treated as a
cardinal sin in the household." That Ella profited from this
inheritance and training may be seen from the following
statements. At school she found the composition exercises the
most delightful of all her school duties. As early as eight
she was excelling in the expression of her thoughts in essay
form. By the age of fourteen she had become the neighborhood
celebrity because of her stories and her poetry. Naturally
these pioneer people would criticise the mother for allowing
Ella to scribble so much when she might have been doing
household or farm tasks; but their criticism was silenced,
and they learned to praise her efforts when they found that
there was a market with the magazines and papers for Ella's
"scribblings."
At the age of fourteen Ella Wheeler's education, "excellent
in grammar, spelling and reading, but wretched in
mathematics," was completed so far as the rural school was
concerned. Sometime later, through great sacrifice on the
part of her people, she was placed for one term in the
University of Wisconsin. Of this experience she says: "I was
not at all happy there; first, because I knew the strain it
put upon the home purse; second, because I felt the gulf
between myself and the town girls, whose gowns and privileges
revealed to me for the first time, the different classes in
American social life; and third, because I wanted to write
and did not want to study." Thus her school work ended and
her acquisition of knowledge necessary to furnish details for
her emotional poems has been made through her individual
study since the University experience.
Ella Wheeler's struggle to become a writer is one of the most
inspiring stories among Wisconsin writers. A weekly paper
came to the home and besides this there was an old red chest
in their upstairs wherein there was kept the often-read
copies of Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, John Gilpin's
Ride, and a few of Shakespeare's plays. In addition to these,
friends had sent the family the New York Ledger and the New
York Mercury. The serial stories of these papers furnished
not only pleasing reading, but models of plots and of forms
of expression which became the guide to her in the art of
story writing.
When Ella was thirteen years old the Mercury ceased to come
to her home, and she regretted the loss of the stories so
much that she determined to write something for the paper
with the hope that the publisher would pay for her article
through subscription. After some delay this brought the much
coveted subscription and she says: "Perhaps the most
triumphant and dramatic hour of my life was when I set forth
and announced to the family that my literary work had
procured the coveted Mercury for our united enjoyment."
This experience led her to write extensively for the
magazines and papers, a list of which a University friend had
sent her. The articles which they accepted soon enabled her
to supply the home with many periodicals and books and other
articles of home use. She was not content with writing essays
very long, but soon undertook the production of verse. Her
first poem was rejected by the Mercury with some degree of
scorn, but she soon offered it to other papers and so
continued until she found a publisher. Very frequently some
of her articles would be returned as many as nine times
before she found a publisher.
The Wheeler family were enthusiastic advocates of total
abstinence, and Ella used her pen to advance this cause. Her
first collection of poems into book form was entitled "Drops
of Water." A poem with temperance as its theme is given as
the first illustration of her efforts in the collection
published here.
Ella Wheeler's training tended to make her the lyric rather
than the narrative poetess. She wrote largely of the emotion
that played through her passing experiences. "Everything in
life," she says, "was material for my own emotions, the
remarks or experiences of my comrades and associates,
sentences from books I read, and some phases of Nature." In
general three things may be said to characterize these short
poems and her own life as revealed by them, for her life
itself is a poem. First, she is convinced that the supreme
thing in life is love. In one poem she asserts that love is
the need of the world. In another, "The Kingdom of Love,"
which is given later, she truthfully proclaims that love is
the very essence of the home.
The second characteristic is her spirit of buoyancy which has
enabled her to surmount the many crushing deprivations and
disappointments in her life. She was born with an
unquenchable hope and an unfaltering trust in God and
guardian spirits. "I often wept myself to sleep after a day
of disappointment and worries," she says, "but woke in the
morning singing aloud with the joy of life." It was such
experiences as these that enabled her to say:
"Laugh and the world laughs with you;
Weep and you weep alone."
Her faith in the better things to be is well expressed in the
little poem, "The Tendril's Fate." Trials to her are
frequently the means by which the soul's true worth is
tested. This thought is expressed in the poem, "Three
Friends." She bears trials not merely for her own sake, but
for the sake of those about her. We are illustrating this
quality with the poem "Ambition's Trail." Her faith that life
has still much that is better than the present may be
illustrated by her Morning Prayer.
The third characteristic manifest in her poetry is that of
the spirit of helpfulness that manifests itself in every new
phase of life that she assumes. This attitude is illustrated
with respect to mankind in general and also with respect to
her own sex. The poems used are "I Am" and "Which Are You?"
With love and helpfulness as the bond which unite mankind,
Mrs. Wilcox feels there is no place for strife and warfare.
She assails war and expresses her conviction that womankind
shall have much to do with the final disarmament of nations.
She believes implicitly in the mutual helpfulness of man and
woman in solving the great problems of the world. Her own
home life is one of constant happiness and of constant useful
activity. When asked to express what life means to her she
wrote an article for the Cosmopolitan which began thus:
"Exhilaration, anticipation, realization, usefulness,
growth--these things life has always meant and is meaning to
me. I expected much of life; it has given, in all ways, more
than I expected. Love has been more loyal and lasting,
friendship sweeter and more comprehensive, work more
enjoyable, and fame, because of its aid to usefulness, more
satisfying than early imagination pictured." Of one whose
ideals of life are so high the state should be justly proud
and its people should delight to hear her sing:
"I know we are building our heaven
As we journey along by the way;
Each thought is a nail that is driven
In structures that cannot decay,
And the mansion at last shall be given
To us as we build it today."
It was not until after her return from the University that
Ella Wheeler discovered that her poems had a money value. She
sent Frank Leslie's Publishing House three little poems
written in one day. These were accepted and a check sent her
for ten dollars. She now bent every effort towards making her
literary efforts return substantial aid to herself and her
family. It was all her own effort and the worth of her
productions that brought her success, for she had no one to
aid her in securing publication. She sent her poems to
various magazines,--a practise she still continues. During
the years 1912 and 1913, she had poems and prose productions
listed in the following periodicals: Current Literature,
Everybody's, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal,
Collier's Magazine, New England Magazine, The Bookman,
Lippincott's, Forum, Cosmopolitan, Musician, Current Opinion,
and Hearst's magazine.
Mrs. Wilcox has attempted only one long narrative poem,
"Maurine." In this she endeavors to set forth the doctrine of
what she regards as the highest type of friendship. Her
collections of poems bear the following titles: Drops of
Water, Shells, Poems of Passion, Three Women, An Ambitious
Man, Everyday, Thought in Prose and Verse, Poems of Pleasure,
Kingdom of Love and Other Poems, An Erring Woman's Love, Men,
Women and Emotions, The Beautiful Land of Nod, Poems of
Power, The Heart of the New Thought, Sonnets of Abelard and
Heloise, Poems of Experience, Yesterday, Poems of Progress,
Maurine, and Poems of Problems.
Some time after a brief venture in editorial work, she was
married, 1884, to Robert M. Wilcox, a business man of New
York City. Their home life in the city and by the seashore at
Granite Bay, Short Beach, Connecticut, has been most
delightful to them. They have been able to travel extensively
and in this manner to realize many of Mrs. Wilcox's early
dreams. The following poems are from "The Kingdom of Love"
and "Poems of Power."
[Illustration: ELLA WHEELER WILCOX]
THE TWO GLASSES
The following poems of Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox are reprinted
here by permission of the publishers from her copyrighted
books, of which W. B. Conkey Co., Chicago, are the exclusive
American publishers.
There sat two glasses filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table, rim to rim.
One was ruddy and red as blood,
And one was clear as the crystal flood.
Said the glass of wine to his paler brother:
"Let us tell tales of the past to each other.
I can tell of a banquet, and revel, and mirth,
Where I was king, for I ruled in might;
For the proudest and grandest souls on earth
Fell under my touch, as though struck with blight.
From the heads of kings I have torn the crown;
From the heights of fame I have hurled men down.
I have blasted many an honored name;
I have taken virtue and given shame;
I have tempted the youth with a sip, a taste,
That has made his future a barren waste.
Far greater than any king am I
Or than any army beneath the sky.
I have made the arm of the driver fail,
And sent the train from the iron rail.
I have made good ships go down at sea,
And the shrieks of the lost were sweet to me.
Fame, strength, wealth, genius before me fall;
And my might and power are over all!
Ho, ho! pale brother," said the wine,
"Can you boast of deeds as great as mine?"
Said the water glass; "I can not boast
Of a king dethroned, or a murdered host,
But I can tell of hearts that were sad
By my crystal drops made bright and glad;
Of thirst I have quenched, and brows I have laved;
Of hands I have cooled, and souls I have saved.
I have leaped through the valley, and dashed down the mountain,
Slept in the sunshine and dripped from the fountain.
I have burst my cloud-fetters, and dropped from the sky,
And everywhere gladdened the prospects and eye;
I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain;
I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain.
I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill,
That ground out the flour, and turned at my will,
I can tell of manhood debased by you,
That I have uplifted and crowned anew.
I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid;
I gladden the hearts of man and maid;
I set the wine-chained captive free,
And all are better for knowing me."
These are the tales they told each other,
The glass of wine and its paler brother,
As they sat together, filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table rim to rim.
THE KINGDOM OF LOVE
In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth
Reflected the sun-rise above,
I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth
To seek for the Kingdom of Love.
I asked of a poet I met on the way
Which cross-road would lead me aright.
And he said: "Follow me, and ere long you shall see
Its glittering turrets of light."
And soon in the distance the city shone fair.
"Look yonder," he said; "how it gleams!"
But alas! for the hopes that were doomed to despair,
It was only the "Kingdom of Dreams."
Then the next man I asked was a gay cavalier,
And he said: "Follow me, follow me;"
And with laughter and song we went speeding along
By the shores of Life's beautiful sea.
Then we came to a valley more tropical far
Than the wonderful vale of Cashmere,
And I saw from a bower a face like a flower
Smile out on the gay cavalier.
And he said: "We have come to humanity's goal:
Here love and delight are intense."
But alas and alas! for the hopes of my soul--
It was only the "Kingdom of Sense."
As I journeyed more slowly I met on the road
A coach with retainers behind.
And they said: "Follow me, for our lady's abode
Belongs in that realm, you will find."
'Twas a grand dame of fashion, a newly-made bride,
I followed encouraged and bold;
But my hopes died away like the last gleams of day,
For we came to the "Kingdom of Gold."
At the door of a cottage I asked a fair maid.
"I have heard of that realm," she replied;
"But my feet never roam from the 'Kingdom of Home,'
So I know not the way," and she sighed.
I looked on the cottage; how restful it seemed!
And the maid was as fair as a dove.
Great light glorified my soul as I cried:
"Why, home is the 'Kingdom of Love.'"
THE TENDRIL'S FATE
Under the snow in the dark and the cold,
A pale little sprout was humming;
Sweetly it sang, 'neath the frozen mold,
Of the beautiful days that were coming.
"How foolish your songs," said a lump of clay,
"What is there," it asked, "to prove them?"
"Just look at the walls between you and the day,
Now have you the strength to move them?"
But under the ice and under the snow,
The pale little sprout kept singing,
"I cannot tell how, but I know, I know,
I know what the days are bringing.
"Birds and blossoms and buzzing bees,
Blue, blue skies above me,
Bloom on the meadows and buds on the trees,
And the great glad sun to love me."
A pebble spoke next. "You are quite absurd,"
It said, "with your songs' insistence;
For I never saw a tree or a bird,
So of course there are none in existence."
"But I know, I know," the tendril cried
In beautiful sweet unreason;
Till lo! from its prison, glorified,
It burst in the glad spring season.
THREE FRIENDS
Of all the blessings which my life has known,
I value most, and most praise God for three:
Want, Loneliness, and Pain, those comrades true,
Who masqueraded in the garb of foes
For many a year, and filled my heart with dread.
Yet fickle joy, like false, pretentious friends,
Has proved less worthy than this trio. First,
Want taught me labor, led me up the steep
And toilsome paths to hills of pure delight,
Trod only by the feet that know fatigue,
And yet press on until the heights appear.
Then Loneliness and hunger of the heart
Sent me upreaching to the realms of space,
Till all the silences grew eloquent,
And all their loving forces hailed me friend.
Last, Pain taught prayer! placed in my hand the staff
Of close communion with the over-soul,
That I might lean upon it to the end,
And find myself made strong for any strife.
And then these three who had pursued my steps
Like stern, relentless foes, year after year,
Unmasked, and turned their faces full on me.
And lo! they were divinely beautiful,
For through them shown the lustrous eyes of Love.
AMBITION'S TRAIL
If all the end of this continuous striving
Were simply to attain,
How poor would seem the planning and contriving,
The endless urging and the hurried driving
Of body, heart and brain!
But ever in the wake of true achieving,
There shines this glowing trail--
Some other soul will be spurred on, conceiving
New strength and hope, in its own power believing,
Because thou didst not fail.
Not thine alone the glory, nor the sorrow,
If thou dost miss the goal;
Undreamed of lives in many a far to-morrow
From thee their weakness or their force shall borrow--
On, on! ambitious soul.
MORNING PRAYER
Let me today do something that shall take
A little sadness from the world's vast store,
And may I be so favored as to make
Of joy's too scanty sum a little more.
Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed
Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend;
Nor would I pass, unseeing, worthy need,
Or sin by silence when I should defend.
However meagre be my worldly wealth
Let me give something that shall aid my kind,
A word of courage, or a thought of help,
Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find.
Let me tonight look back across the span
'Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say
Because of some good act to beast or man--
"The world is better that I lived today."
I AM
I know not whence I came,
I know not whither I go;
But the fact stands clear that I am here
In this world of pleasure and woe.
And out of the mist and murk
Another truth shines plain:
It is my power each day and hour
To add to its joy or its pain.
I know that the earth exists,
It is none of my business why;
I cannot find out what it's all about,
I would but waste time to try.
My life is a brief, brief thing,
I am here for a little space,
And while I stay I should like, if I may,
To brighten and better the place.
The trouble, I think, with us all
Is the lack of a high conceit.
If each man thought he was sent to this spot
To make it a bit more sweet,
How soon we could gladden the world,
How easily right all wrong,
If nobody shirked, and each one worked
To help his fellows along.
Cease wondering why you came--
Stop looking for faults and flaws,
Rise up today in your pride and say,
"I am a part of the First Great Cause!
However full the world,
There is room for an earnest man.
It had need of me or I would not be--
I am here to strengthen the plan."
WHICH ARE YOU?
There are two kinds of people on earth today;
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.
Not the sinner and saint, for 'tis well understood,
The good are half bad, and the bad are half good.
Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man's wealth,
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.
Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span,
Who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man.
Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.
No; the kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.
Wherever you go, you will find the earth's masses
Are always divided in just these two classes.
And, oddly enough, you will find too, I ween,
There's only one lifter to twenty who lean.
In which class are you? Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters, who toil down the road?
Or are you a leaner, who lets others share
Your portion of labor, and worry and care?
RAY STANNARD BAKER.
(David Grayson.)
Ray Stannard Baker was born in 1870 at Lansing, Michigan, and
came to St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, with his parents at the
age of five. Here he spent his boyhood and youth. He returned
to the Agricultural College of his native state for study,
and received his degree from that institution, afterwards
attending the University for a short time. He then went into
business with his father at St. Croix Falls, but the desire
to write was strong upon him, and he began his career of
authorship. During recent years his residence has been in
Amherst, Massachusetts, but he visits Wisconsin every summer.
He is one of the state's most voluminous writers. He has the
habit of keen and sympathetic observation, and this quality,
when combined, as it has been in his case, with extensive and
judicious travel and reading, usually results in a
considerable literary output. Those of us who have read Mr.
Baker's magazine articles and books feel that the writer has
seen a great many things,--that he has seen them with his own
eyes, and that he has seen them intelligently. Aside from the
fact that nearly all of his works grow rather from
observation of men and things than from a study of philosophy
or metaphysics, Mr. Baker's range of interest has been
exceedingly wide. Perhaps he is best known as a writer on
social, political, and economic subjects, but the selections
given here from "The Boys' Book of Inventions," (I and II),
indicate a field of interest that is entirely apart from
politics.
The editors feel bound, in justice to Mr. Baker, to say that
he feared that our readers would think that we had erred in
choosing the accounts of inventions which have progressed so
immeasurably since his articles were written. The editors, on
the other hand, desired to do precisely the thing that Mr.
Baker feared to have them do. They desire to show what a
keen, well-trained observer saw in these inventions, which
now play so vital a part in our lives, when the inventions
were new. Further, it is our desire that the name of
Professor Langley, of Washington, D. C., should be properly
honored in connection with the advance of the science of
aviation. Indeed, but recently, when tried by an experienced
aviator, his machine flew successfully. Professor Langley
died as an indirect result of his untiring, unselfish, and
heroic efforts in this then new cause. In spite of ridicule
and contempt, in spite of lack of support, he went
courageously ahead; and it is right that the boys of
Wisconsin should know that a young man of their state has
given due credit in his book to this heroic soul.
[Illustration: RAY STANNARD BAKER]
THROUGH THE AIR
From "THE BOYS' BOOK OF INVENTIONS," Chapter IX, by Ray
Stannard Baker. Copyright, 1899, by Doubleday, Page & Co.
Probably no American inventor of flying machines is better known or
has been more successful in his experiments than Professor S. P.
Langley, the distinguished secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at
Washington. Professor Langley has built a machine with wings, driven
by a steam-engine, and wholly without gas or other lifting power
beyond its own internal energy. And this machine, to which has been
given the name Aerodrome (air-runner), actually flies for considerable
distances. So successful were Professor Langley's early tests, that
the United States Government recently made a considerable
appropriation to enable him to carry forward his experiments in the
hope of finally securing a practical flying machine. His work is,
therefore, the most significant and important of any now before the
public (1899).
The invention of the aerodrome was the result of long years of
persevering and exacting labor, with so many disappointments and
set-backs that one cannot help admiring the astonishing patience which
kept hope alive to the end. Early in his experiments, Professor
Langley had proved positively, by mathematical calculations, that a
machine could be made to fly, provided its structure were light enough
and the actuating power great enough. Therefore, he was not in pursuit
of a mere will-o'-the-wisp. It was a mechanical difficulty which he
had to surmount, and he surmounted it.
Professor Langley made his first experiments more than twelve years
ago at Allegheny, Pennsylvania.... Professor Langley formed the
general conclusion that by simply moving any given weight in plate
form fast enough in a horizontal path through the air it was possible
to sustain it with very little power. It was proved that, if
horizontal flight without friction could be insured, 200 pounds of
plates could be moved through the air and sustained upon it at the
speed of an express train, with the expenditure of only one
horse-power, and that, of course, without using any gas to lighten the
weight.
Every boy who has skated knows that when the ice is very thin he must
skate rapidly, else he may break through. In the same way, a stone may
be skipped over the water for considerable distances. If it stops in
any one place it sinks instantly. In exactly the same way, the plate
of brass, if left in any one place in the air, would instantly drop to
the earth; but if driven swiftly forward in a horizontal direction it
rests only an instant in any particular place, and the air under it at
any single moment does not have time to give way, so to speak, before
it has passed over a new area of air. In fact, Professor Langley came
to the conclusion that flight was theoretically possible with engines
he could then build, since he was satisfied that engines could be
constructed to weigh less than twenty pounds to the horse-power, and
that one horse-power would support two hundred pounds if the flight
was horizontal.
That was the beginning of the aerodrome. Professor Langley had worked
out its theory, and now came the much more difficult task of building
a machine in which theory should take form in fact. In the first
place, there was the vast problem of getting an engine light enough
to do the work. A few years ago an engine that developed one
horse-power weighed nearly as much as an actual horse. Professor
Langley wished to make one weighing only twenty pounds, a feat never
before accomplished. And then, having made his engine, how was he to
apply the power to obtain horizontal speed? Should it be by flapping
wings like a bird, or by a screw propeller like a ship? This question
led him into a close study of the bird compared with the man. He found
how wonderfully the two were alike in bony formation, how curiously
the skeleton of a bird's wing was like a man's arm, and yet he finally
decided that flapping wings would not make the best propeller for his
machine. Men have not adopted machinery legs for swift locomotion,
although legs are nature's models, but they have, rather, constructed
wheels--contrivances which practically do not exist in nature.
Therefore, while Professor Langley admits that successful flying
machines may one day be made with flapping wings, he began his
experiments with the screw propeller.
There were three great problems in building the flying machine. First,
an engine and boilers light enough and at the same time of sufficient
power. Second, a structure which should be rigid and very light.
Third, the enormously difficult problem of properly balancing the
machine, which, Professor Langley says, took years to solve....
Professor Langley established an experimental station in the Potomac
River, some miles below Washington. An old scow was obtained, and a
platform about twenty feet high was built on top of it. To this spot,
in 1893, the machine was taken, and here failure followed failure; the
machine would not fly properly, and yet every failure, costly as it
might be in time and money, brought some additional experience.
Professor Langley found out that the aerodrome must begin to fly
against the wind, just in the opposite way from a ship. He found that
he must get up full speed in his engine before the machine was allowed
to go, in the same way that a soaring bird must make an initial run on
the ground before it can mount into the air, and this was, for various
reasons, a difficult problem. And then there was the balancing.
"If the reader will look at the hawk or any soaring bird," says
Professor Langley, "he will see that as it sails through the air
without flapping the wing, there are hardly two consecutive seconds of
its flight in which it is not swaying a little from side to side,
lifting one wing or the other, or turning in a way that suggests an
acrobat on a tight-rope, only that the bird uses its widely
outstretched wings in place of the pole."
It must be remembered that air currents, unlike the Gulf Stream, do
not flow steadily in one direction. They are forever changing and
shifting, now fast, now slow, with something of the commotion and
restlessness of the rapids below Niagara.
All of these things Professor Langley had to meet as a part of the
difficult balancing problem, and it is hardly surprising that nearly
three years passed before the machine was actually made to fly--on
March 6, 1896.
"I had journeyed, perhaps for the twentieth time," says Professor
Langley, "to the distant river station, and recommenced the weary
routine of another launch, with very moderate expectation indeed; and
when, on that, to me, memorable afternoon the signal was given and the
aerodrome sprang into the air, I watched it from the shore with hardly
a hope that the long series of accidents had come to a close. And yet
it had, and for the first time the aerodrome swept continuously
through the air like a living thing, and as second after second passed
on the face of the stop-watch, until a minute had gone by, and it
still flew on, and as I heard the cheering of the few spectators, I
felt that something had been accomplished at last; for never in any
part of the world, or in any period, had any machine of man's
construction sustained itself in the air before for even half of this
brief time. Still the aerodrome went on in a rising course until, at
the end of a minute and a half (for which time only it was provided
with fuel and water), it had accomplished a little over half a mile,
and now it settled, rather than fell, into the river, with a gentle
descent. It was immediately taken out and flown again with equal
success, nor was there anything to indicate that it might not have
flown indefinitely, except for the limit put upon it."
MARCONI AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS--NEW EXPERIMENTS IN WIRELESS
TELEGRAPHY
From "SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS," Chapter VII, by Ray
Stannard Baker. Copyright, 1903, by Doubleday, Page & Co.
At noon on Thursday (December 12, 1901), Marconi sat waiting, a
telephone receiver at his ear, in a room of the old barracks on Signal
Hill. To him it must have been a moment of painful stress and
expectation. Arranged on the table before him, all its parts within
easy reach of his hand, was the delicate receiving instrument, the
supreme product of years of the inventor's life, now to be submitted
to a decisive test. A wire ran out through the window, thence to a
pole, thence upward to the kite which could be seen swaying high
overhead. It was a bluff, raw day; at the base of the cliff 300 feet
below thundered a cold sea; oceanward through the mist rose dimly the
rude outlines of Cape Spear, the easternmost reach of the North
American Continent. Beyond that rolled the unbroken ocean, nearly
2,000 miles to the coast of the British Isles. Across the harbor the
city of St. John's lay on its hillside wrapped in fog; no one had
taken enough interest in the experiments to come up here through the
snow to Signal Hill. Even the ubiquitous reporter was absent. In Cabot
Tower, near at hand, the old signalman stood looking out to sea,
watching for ships, and little dreaming of the mysterious messages
coming that way from England. Standing on that bleak hill and gazing
out over the waste of water to the eastward, one finds it difficult
indeed to realize that this wonder could have become a reality. The
faith of the inventor in his creation, in the kite-wire, and in the
instruments which had grown under his hand, was unshaken.
"I believed from the first," he told me, "that I would be successful
in getting signals across the Atlantic."
Only two persons were present that Thursday afternoon in the room
where the instruments were set up--Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp.
Everything had been done that could be done. The receiving apparatus
was of unusual sensitiveness, so that it would catch even the faintest
evidence of the signals. A telephone receiver, which is no part of the
ordinary instrument, had been supplied, so that the slightest clicking
of the dots might be conveyed to the inventor's ear. For nearly half
an hour not a sound broke the silence of the room. Then quite suddenly
Mr. Kemp heard the sharp click of the tapper as it struck against the
coherer; this, of course, was not the signal, yet it was an indication
that something was coming. The inventor's face showed no evidence of
excitement. Presently he said:
"See if you can hear anything, Kemp."
Mr. Kemp took the receiver, and a moment later, faintly and yet
distinctly and unmistakably, came three little clicks--the dots of the
letter S, tapped out an instant before in England. At ten minutes past
one, more signals came, and both Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp assured
themselves again and again that there could be no mistake. During this
time the kite gyrated so wildly in the air that the receiving wire was
not maintained at the same height, as it should have been; but again,
at twenty minutes after two, other repetitions of the signal were
received. Thus the problem was solved. One of the great wonders of
science had been wrought.
THE ROPING AT PASCO'S
By Ray Stannard Baker, McClure's Magazine, VOL XIX. p. 152.
Copyright, 1902, by S. S. McClure Company.
... Little groups of people were drifting by to the grand stand. Here
and there, from the corner of his eye, as he bent to adjust the
saddle-cinches, Turk McGlory caught the glint of a white skirt or of a
flowing ribbon. Sometimes the girls stopped to discuss the
contestants; he heard them talking of Bud Oliver, and Mason, and
Buster Graham. Suddenly, as he tightened a latigo strap, a saucy,
smiling face looked up at him. Her sister was evidently trying to pull
her away, but she said, half teasingly:
"I'm wearing your colors, Mr. Texas. You must win."
He saw nothing but deep black eyes, and he felt the blood in his face.
He couldn't have spoken if he had known that it was to save his life,
and he knew that he was smiling foolishly....
"We're betting on you, Bud Oliver," came other shouts. The Texas men
were not over-popular in Arizona, and yet it was a sportsmanlike
crowd.
The babel of voices ceased sharply. A wiry little steer, red and
white, shot into the field as if catapulted. Turk McGlory observed how
like an antelope it ran--long-legged and as easily as the wind blows.
The flag fell, and Bud was off; the judges riding after him were
blurred in his dust. There was no roper like Bud. He waited long
before raising his rope, bending close to his saddle and riding hard;
then in what curious, loose, slow coils he swung it! Would he ride
clean over his steer? There! he had reached out as if to catch the
steer by the tail, and the rope had gone over his head like a hoop,
horns and all. Now he was paying out to trip up the steer. How they
were running! Turk McGlory rose suddenly in his saddle.
"Look out for the fence," he roared.
But Bud had seen it, too, and the little roan squatted like a rabbit.
The steer, reaching the rope's end, doubled up and fell--but fell
against the fence. There had not been quite room enough. Bud was off
saddle, and the little roan, knowing well what was going on, walked
away like a man, pulling hard on the rope to keep the steer down. If
it had been a larger steer or a fatter one, there would have been no
trouble; but this one fought like a cat, now on its knees, now on its
feet. Bud seized it by the tail, and with a single fierce toss he laid
it flat, then he tied--and arms up. Turk McGlory waited with hands
clenched to hear the time.
"Fifty seconds."
So Bud was beaten by a second, and beaten because he didn't have a
fair field. How the crowd howled for the Arizona champion. Bud came up
smiling and unconcerned.
"Now, McGlory," he said, "you must make a showing for Texas."
"What am I offered on Turk McGlory against the field?" shouted the
pool-seller. "Now's your last chance."
"Hurrah for the kid from Texas!" shouted other voices.
Turk McGlory was at the line, astonished to find himself coiling his
rope with so much ease. He felt that he wasn't doing it himself, but
that some one else was working in him. The sun blazed hot on the
field, but everything seemed dim and indistinct. To him all the voices
kept shouting:
"Turk McGlory, Turk McGlory, Turk McGlory."
"Hurrah for Texas and the calico horse," came a shout from the grand
stand.
"Wait till they see you run, Pinto," Turk said between his teeth, and
the pinto stirred nervously under him.
"Ready," called Turk McGlory, though not in Turk McGlory's voice. He
gave one glance behind him. The grand stand was a picture of a girl in
blue and white; she was the picture, all the rest was frame.
There was a clatter at the pen, and the steer shot past him. Instantly
he saw all its points--horns, legs, tail--and they spoke to him with
the meaning of familiarity. So might the old knight have looked for
the points of his adversary's armour. Now that he was off, Turk's
head cleared to his work. The steer ran with hind feet swinging
sideways, hog-like. He remembered a steer in the Lazy A outfit that
had the same habit, and a bad one it was, too. How strange that he
should think of such things at such a time! The steer was swerving
swiftly to the left. The pinto, nose forward and dilating, instantly
slackened pace, swerving in the same direction and cutting off
distance. It was much to have a horse, pinto though he be, that knew
his business. Turk's rope began to swing, but he was wholly
unconscious of it. He seemed now to see only the legless body of a
steer swimming on a billow of dust. The fence! He saw it with a throb,
and he was yet too far off to throw. And there was the grand stand
above it, the men rising, half in terror, and a color of women. The
steer had swung almost round. It was a low rail fence, and between it
and the grand stand lay the racing track. Dimly McGlory heard shouts
of warning. Would the steer plunge into the stand? Dimly, too,
glancing back, he saw the other cow-men charging after him to the
rescue. There was a crash; the steer had gone through the fence as if
it were pasteboard, and the pinto was now close behind. There was all
too little room here in the track. The steer would evidently plunge
full into the crowd. Turk McGlory's arm shot forward and the rope
sped. The pinto sat sharply back, throwing McGlory well over the
pommel. To those in the grand stand it seemed as if the steer, all
horns and eyes, was plucked out of their faces. When they looked
again, McGlory was tying, and the judges and the other punchers were
swarming through the gap in the fence. Hands up; and the pinto easing
away on the rope! It was all lost, McGlory felt. The fence had been in
the way. Why couldn't they provide an open field, as in Texas? These
Arizona men couldn't conduct a contest. The timer lifted his hand, and
the shouting stopped.
"Thirty-six seconds," he announced.
"What a fool of a timer," thought Turk McGlory. "It can't be so."
Then he saw Bud Oliver stride up with outstretched hand, and a lump
came in his throat.
"Good boy!" said Bud. "You've saved the day for Texas."
And then the crowd pounced on him and hooted and shouted, "McGlory!
McGlory!" until he was dizzy with it all. It was not as he thought it
would be. Two hundred dollars won! And he, Turk McGlory!
And then a saucy, flushed face looking up at him.
"I knew you would do it, Mr. Texas," she said.
And with that she pinned a blue and white ribbon on his vest, and he
looked off over her head, and trembled.
"DAVID GRAYSON."
Surprised as many of our readers will no doubt be to find how
wide has been the field of interest covered by Mr. Baker
under his own name, the surprise of most of them will be
still keener when they know that the delightful pastoral
sketches in prose which have appeared in our magazines from
time to time under the name of "David Grayson," are all
written by this same young son of Wisconsin. Who would have
thought that the author of "Adventures in Contentment,"
"Adventures in Friendship," "The Friendly Road," and the
novel called "Hempfield," was the same as the frequently
truculent writer of social and political exposures?
One likes Mr. Baker better knowing this fact. One sees that
his interests and ideals are wide, tolerant, and kindly. The
editors of this book are proud to be among the first to
introduce David Grayson and Ray Stannard Baker publicly as
one and the same man. Mr. Baker has also written under the
pen name of Sturgis B. Rand.
AN ARGUMENT WITH A MILLIONAIRE
From "ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT," Chapter VII, by David
Grayson. Doubleday, Page & Co.
An Argument With a Millionaire.
"Let the mighty and great
Roll in splendour and state,
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chicken and ham,
I shear my own sheep and wear it.
I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers,
The lark is my morning charmer;
So you jolly dogs now,
Here's God bless the plow--
Long life and content to the farmer."
--Rhyme on an old pitcher of English pottery.
I have been hearing of John Starkweather ever since I came here. He is
a most important personage in this community. He is rich. Horace
especially loves to talk about him. Give Horace half a chance, whether
the subject be pigs or churches, and he will break in somewhere with
the remark: "As I was saying to Mr. Starkweather--" or, "Mr.
Starkweather says to me--" How we love to shine by reflected glory!
Even Harriet has not gone by unscathed; she, too, has been affected by
the bacillus of admiration. She has wanted to know several times if I
saw John Starkweather drive by: "The finest span of horses in this
country," she says, and "did you see his daughter?" Much other
information concerning the Starkweather household, culinary and
otherwise, is current among our hills. We know accurately the number
of Mr. Starkweather's bedrooms, we can tell how much coal he uses in
winter and how many tons of ice in summer, and upon such important
premises we argue his riches.
Several times I have passed John Starkweather's home. It lies between
my farm and the town, though not on the direct road, and it is really
beautiful with the groomed and guided beauty possible to wealth. A
stately old house with a huge end chimney of red bricks stands with
dignity well back from the road; round about lie pleasant lawns that
once were cornfields; and there are drives and walks and exotic
shrubs. At first, loving my own hills so well, I was puzzled to
understand why I should also enjoy Starkweather's groomed
surroundings. But it came to me that after all, much as we may love
wildness, we are not wild, nor our works. What more artificial than a
house, or a barn, or a fence? And the greater and more formal the
house, the more formal indeed must be the nearer natural
environments. Perhaps the hand of man might well have been less
evident in developing the surroundings of the Starkweather home--for
art, dealing with nature, is so often too accomplished!
But I enjoy the Starkweather place and as I look in from the road, I
sometimes think to myself with satisfaction: "Here is this rich man
who has paid his thousands to make the beauty which I pass and take
for nothing--and having taken, leave as much behind." And I wonder
sometimes whether he, inside his fences, gets more joy of it than I,
who walk the roads outside. Anyway, I am grateful to him for using his
riches so much to my advantage.
On fine mornings John Starkweather sometimes comes out in his
slippers, bare-headed, his white vest gleaming in the sunshine, and
walks slowly around his garden. Charles Baxter says that on these
occasions he is asking his gardener the names of the vegetables.
However that may be, he has seemed to our community the very
incarnation of contentment and prosperity--his position the acme of
desirability.
What was my astonishment, then, the other morning to see John
Starkweather coming down the pasture lane through my farm. I knew him
afar off, though I had never met him. May I express the inexpressible
when I say he had a rich look; he walked rich, there was richness in
the confident crook of his elbow, and in the positive twitch of the
stick he carried: a man accustomed to having doors opened before he
knocked. I stood there a moment and looked up the hill at him, and I
felt that profound curiosity which every one of us feels every day of
his life to know something of the inner impulses which stir his
nearest neighbor. I should have liked to know John Starkweather; but
I thought to myself as I have thought so many times how surely one
comes finally to imitate his surroundings. A farmer grows to be a part
of his farm; the sawdust on his coat is not the most distinctive
insignia of the carpenter; the poet writes his truest lines upon his
own countenance. People passing in my road take me to be a part of
this natural scene. I suppose I seem to them as a partridge squatting
among dry grasses and leaves, so like the grass and leaves as to be
invisible. We all come to be marked upon by nature and dismissed--how
carelessly!--as genera or species. And is it not the primal struggle
of man to escape classification, to form new differentiations?
Sometimes--I confess it--when I see one passing in my road, I feel
like hailing him and saying:
"Friend, I am not all farmer. I, too, am a person, I am different and
curious. I am full of red blood, I like people, all sorts of people;
if you are not interested in me, at least I am intensely interested in
you. Come over now and let's talk!"
So we are all of us calling and calling across the incalculable gulfs
which separate us even from our nearest friends!
Once or twice this feeling has been so real to me that I've been near
to the point of hailing utter strangers--only to be instantly overcome
with a sense of the humorous absurdity of such an enterprise. So I
laugh it off and I say to myself:
"Steady now: the man is going to town to sell a pig; he is coming back
with ten pounds of sugar, five of salt pork, a can of coffee and some
new blades for his mowing machine. He hasn't time for talk"--and so I
come down with a bump to my digging, or hoeing, or chopping, or
whatever it is.
Here I've left John Starkweather in my pasture while I remark to the
extent of a page or two that I didn't expect him to see me when he
went by.
I assumed that he was out for a walk, perhaps to enliven a worn
appetite (do you know, confidentially, I've had some pleasure in times
past in reflecting upon the jaded appetites of millionaires!), and
that he would pass out by my lane to the country road; but, instead of
that, what should he do but climb the yard fence and walk over toward
the barn where I was at work.
Perhaps I was not consumed with excitement: here was fresh adventure!
"A farmer," I said to myself with exultation, "has only to wait long
enough and all the world comes his way."
I had just begun to grease my farm wagon and was experiencing some
difficulty in lifting and steadying the heavy rear axle while I took
off the wheel. I kept busily at work, pretending (such is the
perversity of the human mind) that I did not see Mr. Starkweather. He
stood for a moment watching me; then he said:
"Good morning, sir."
I looked up and said: "Oh, good morning!"
"Nice little farm you have here."
"It's enough for me," I replied. I did not especially like the
"little." One is human.
Then I had an absurd inspiration: he stood there so trim and jaunty
and prosperous. So rich! I had a good look at him. He was dressed in a
woolen jacket coat, knee-trousers and leggings; on his head he wore a
jaunty, cocky little Scotch cap; a man, I should judge, about fifty
years old, well-fed and hearty in appearance, with grayish hair and a
good-humored eye. I acted on my inspiration:
"You've arrived," I said, "at the psychological moment."
"How's that?"
"Take hold here and help me lift this axle and steady it. I'm having a
hard time of it."
The look of astonishment in his countenance was beautiful to see.
For a moment failure stared me in the face. His expression said with
emphasis: "Perhaps you don't know who I am." But I looked at him with
the greatest good feeling and my expression said, or I meant it to
say: "To be sure I don't: and what difference does it make, anyway!"
"You take hold here," I said, without waiting for him to catch his
breath, "and I'll get hold here. Together we can easily get the wheel
off."
Without a word he set his cane against the barn and bent his back; up
came the axle and I propped it with a board.
"Now," I said, "you hang on there and steady it while I get the wheel
off"--though, indeed, it didn't really need much steadying.
As I straightened up, whom should I see but Harriet standing stock
still in the pathway half way down to the barn, transfixed with
horror. She had recognized John Starkweather and had heard at least
part of what I said to him, and the vision of that important man
bending his back to help lift the axle of my old wagon was too
terrible! She caught my eye and pointed and mouthed. When I smiled
and nodded, John Starkweather straightened up and looked around.
"Don't, on your life," I warned, "let go of that axle."
He held on and Harriet turned and retreated ingloriously. John
Starkweather's face was a study!
"Did you ever grease a wagon?" I asked him genially.
"Never," he said.
"There's more of an art in it than you think," I said, and, as I
worked, I talked to him of the lore of axle-grease and showed him
exactly how to put it on--neither too much nor too little, and so that
it would distribute itself evenly when the wheel was replaced.
"There's a right way of doing everything," I observed.
"That's so," said John Starkweather, "if I could only get workmen that
believed it."
By that time I could see that he was beginning to be interested. I put
back the wheel, gave it a light turn and screwed on the nut. He helped
me with the other end of the axle with all good humor.
"Perhaps," I said, as engagingly as I knew how, "you'd like to try the
art yourself? You take the grease this time and I'll steady the
wagon."
"All right," he said, laughing, "I'm in for anything."
He took the grease box and the paddle--less gingerly than I thought he
would.
"Is that right?" he demanded, and so he put on the grease. And oh, it
was good to see Harriet in the doorway!
"Steady there," I said, "not so much at the end; now put the box down
on the reach."
And so together we greased the wagon, talking all the time in the
friendliest way. I actually believe that he was having a pretty good
time. At least it had the virtue of unexpectedness. He wasn't bored!
When he had finished, we both straightened our backs and looked at
each other. There was a twinkle in his eye; then we both laughed.
"He's all right," I said to myself. I held up my hands, then he held
up his; it was hardly necessary to prove that wagon-greasing was not a
delicate operation.
"It's a good, wholesome sign," I said, "but it'll come off. Do you
happen to remember a story of Tolstoi's called, 'Ivan the Fool?'"
("What is a farmer doing quoting Tolstoi!" remarked his
countenance--though he said not a word.)
"In the kingdom of Ivan, you remember," I said, "it was the rule that
whoever had hard places on his hands came to table, but whoever had
not must eat what the others left."
Thus I led him up the back steps and poured him a basin of hot
water--which I brought myself from the kitchen, Harriet having
marvelously and completely disappeared. We both washed our hands,
talking with great good humor.
When we had finished I said: "Sit down, friend, if you've time, and
let's talk."
So he sat down on one of the logs of my woodpile: a solid sort of man,
rather warm after his recent activities. He looked me over with some
interest and, I thought, friendliness.
"Why does a man like you," he asked finally, "waste himself on a
little farm back here in the country?"
For a single instant I came nearer to being angry than I have been for
a long time. _Waste_ myself! So we are judged without knowledge. I had
a sudden impulse to demolish him (if I could) with the nearest
sarcasms I could lay hand to. He was so sure of himself! "Oh, well," I
thought, with vainglorious superiority, "he doesn't know." So I said:
"What would you have me be--a millionaire?"
He smiled, but with a sort of sincerity.
"You might be," he said; "who can tell!"
I laughed outright; the humor of it struck me as delicious. Here I had
been, ever since I first heard of John Starkweather, rather gloating
over him as a poor suffering millionaire (of course millionaires _are_
unhappy), and there he sat, ruddy of face and hearty of body, pitying
_me_ for a poor unfortunate farmer back here in the country! Curious,
this human nature of ours, isn't it? But how infinitely beguiling!
So I sat down beside Mr. Starkweather on the log and crossed my legs.
I felt as though I had set foot in a new country.
"Would you really advise me," I asked, "to start in to be a
millionaire?"
He chuckled: "Well, that's one way of putting it. Hitch your wagon to
a star; but begin by making a few dollars more a year than you spend.
When I began--"
He stopped short with an amused smile, remembering that I did not know
who he was.
"Of course," I said, "I understand that."
"A man must begin small"--he was on pleasant ground--"and anywhere he
likes, a few dollars here, a few there. He must work hard, he must
save, he must be both bold and cautious. I know a man who began when
he was about your age with total assets of ten dollars and a good
digestion. He's now considered a fairly wealthy man. He has a home in
the city, a place in the country, and he goes to Europe when he likes.
He has so arranged his affairs that young men do most of the work and
he draws the dividends--and all in a little more than twenty years. I
made every single cent--but, as I said, it's a penny business to start
with. The point is, I like to see young men ambitious."
"Ambitious," I asked, "for what?"
"Why, to rise in the world; to get ahead."
"I know you'll pardon me," I said, "for appearing to cross-examine
you, but I'm tremendously interested in these things. What do you mean
by rising? And who am I to get ahead of?"
He looked at me in astonishment, and with evident impatience at my
consummate stupidity.
"I am serious," I said. "I really want to make the best I can of my
life. It's the only one I've got."
"See here," he said, "let us say you clear up five hundred a year from
this farm--"
"You exaggerate--" I interrupted.
"Do I?" he laughed; "that makes my case all the better. Now, isn't it
possible to rise from that? Couldn't you make a thousand or five
thousand or even fifty thousand a year?"
It seems an unanswerable argument: fifty thousand dollars!
"I suppose I might," I said, "but do you think I'd be any better off
or happier with fifty thousand a year than I am now? You see, I like
all these surroundings better than any other place I ever knew. That
old green hill over there with the oak on it is an intimate friend of
mine. I have a good corn-field in which every year I work miracles.
I've a cow and a horse and a few pigs. I have a comfortable home. My
appetite is perfect, and I have plenty of food to gratify it. I sleep
every night like a boy, for I haven't a trouble in this world to
disturb me. I enjoy the mornings here in the country; and the evenings
are pleasant. Some of my neighbors have come to be my good friends. I
like them and I am pretty sure they like me. Inside the house there I
have the best books ever written and I have time in the evenings to
read them--I mean _really_ read them. Now the question is, would I be
any better off, or any happier, if I had fifty thousand a year?"
John Starkweather laughed.
"Well, sir," he said, "I see I've made the acquaintance of a
philosopher."
"Let us say," I continued, "that you are willing to invest twenty
years of your life in a million dollars." ("Merely an illustration,"
said John Starkweather.) "You have it where you can put it in the bank
and take it out again, or you can give it form in houses, yachts, and
other things. Now twenty years of my life--to me--is worth more than a
million dollars. I simply can't afford to sell it for that. I prefer
to invest it, as somebody or other has said, unearned in life. I've
always had a liking for intangible properties."
"See here," said John Starkweather, "you are taking a narrow view of
life. You are making your own pleasure the only standard. Shouldn't a
man make the most of the talents given him? Hasn't he a duty to
society?"
"Now you are shifting your ground," I said, "from the question of
personal satisfaction to that of duty. That concerns me, too. Let me
ask you: Isn't it important to society that this piece of earth be
plowed and cultivated?"
"Yes, but--"
"Isn't it honest and useful work?"
"Of course."
"Isn't it important that it shall not only be done, but well done?"
"Certainly."
"It takes all there is in a good man," I said, "to be a good farmer."
"But the point is," he argued, "might not the same faculties applied
to other things yield better and bigger results?"
"That is a problem, of course," I said. "I tried money-making once--in
a city--and I was unsuccessful and unhappy; here I am both successful
and happy. I suppose I was one of the young men who did the work while
some millionaire drew the dividends." (I was cutting close, and I
didn't venture to look at him.) "No doubt he had his houses and yachts
and went to Europe when he liked. I know I lived upstairs--back--where
there wasn't a tree to be seen, or a spear of green grass, or a hill,
or a brook; only smoke and chimneys and littered roofs. Lord be
thanked for my escape! Sometimes I think that Success has formed a
silent conspiracy against Youth. Success holds up a single glittering
apple and bids Youth strip and run for it; and Youth runs and Success
still holds the apple."
John Starkweather said nothing.
"Yes," I said, "there are duties. We realize, we farmers, that we must
produce more than we ourselves can eat or wear or burn. We realize
that we are the foundation; we connect human life with the earth. We
dig and plant and produce, and, having eaten at the first table
ourselves, we pass what is left to the bakers and millionaires. Did
you ever think, stranger, that most of the wars of the world have been
fought for the control of this farmer's second table? Have you thought
that the surplus of wheat and corn and cotton is what the railroads
are struggling to carry? Upon our surplus run all the factories and
mills; a little of it gathered in cash makes a millionaire. But we
farmers, we sit back comfortably after dinner, and joke with our wives
and play with our babies, and let the rest of you fight for the crumbs
that fall from our abundant tables. If once we really cared and got up
and shook ourselves, and said to the maid: 'Here, child, don't waste
the crusts; gather 'em up and tomorrow we'll have a cottage pudding,'
where in the world would all the millionaires be?"
Oh, I tell you, I waxed eloquent. I couldn't let John Starkweather, or
any other man, get away with the conviction that a millionaire is
better than a farmer. "Moreover," I said, "think of the position of
the millionaire. He spends his time playing not with life, but with
the symbols of life, whether cash or houses. Any day the symbols may
change; a little war may happen along, there may be a defective flue
or a western breeze, or even a panic because the farmers aren't
scattering as many crumbs as usual (they call it crop failure, but
I've noticed that the farmers still continue to have plenty to eat)
and then what happens to your millionaire? Not knowing how to produce
anything himself, he would starve to death if there were not always,
somewhere, a farmer to take him up to the table."
"You're making a strong case," laughed John Starkweather.
"Strong!" I said. "It is simply wonderful what a leverage upon society
a few acres of land, a cow, a pig or two, and a span of horses gives a
man. I'm ridiculously independent. I'd be the hardest sort of a man to
dislodge or crush. I tell you, my friend, a farmer is like an oak, his
roots strike deep in the soil, he draws a sufficiency of food from the
earth itself, he breathes the free air around him, his thirst is
quenched by heaven itself--and there's no tax on sunshine."
I paused for very lack of breath. John Starkweather was laughing.
"When you commiserate me, therefore" ("I'm sure I shall never do it
again," said John Starkweather), "when you commiserate me, therefore,
and advise me to rise, you must give me really good reasons for
changing my occupation and becoming a millionaire. You must prove to
me that I can be more independent, more honest, more useful as a
millionaire, and that I shall have better and truer friends!"
John Starkweather looked around at me (I knew I had been absurdly
eager and I was rather ashamed of myself) and put his hand on my knee
(he has a wonderfully fine eye!).
"I don't believe," he said, "you'd have any truer friends."
"Anyway," I said repentantly, "I'll admit that millionaires have their
place--at present I wouldn't do entirely away with them, though I do
think they'd enjoy farming better. And if I were to select a
millionaire for all the best things I know, I should certainly choose
you, Mr. Starkweather."
He jumped up.
"You know who I am?" he asked.
I nodded.
"And you knew all the time?"
I nodded.
"Well, you're a good one!"
We both laughed and fell to talking with the greatest friendliness. I
led him down my garden to show him my prize pie-plant, of which I am
enormously proud, and I pulled for him some of the finest stalks I
could find.
"Take it home," I said, "it makes the best pies of any pie-plant in
this country."
He took it under his arm.
"I want you to come over and see me the first chance you get," he
said. "I'm going to prove to you by physical demonstration that it's
better sport to be a millionaire than a farmer--not that I am a
millionaire; I'm only accepting the reputation you give me."
So I walked with him down to the lane.
"Let me know when you grease up again," he said, "and I'll come over."
So we shook hands; and he set off sturdily down the road with the
pie-plant leaves waving cheerfully over his shoulder.
ZONA GALE.
Among the various types of literature, the short story has
become very popular in recent years. Numerous writers are
fond of the principles involved in its construction, and are
developing this form beyond many others. The short story is
not new, for it has been developed in many lands throughout
the past centuries. However, there has been a marked revival
in its production recently and Wisconsin writers have been
interested in developing this type. Among these we have
already noticed Hamlin Garland. There will be several others
mentioned in these selections, among whom the subject of this
sketch is one of the most notable.
Zona Gale, who has made her imaginative "Friendship Village"
one of the real places in Wisconsin life, was born at
Portage, Wisconsin, August 26, 1874. This city continues to
be her home; and the study of its home life, its school life,
its social, industrial, and religious life has afforded her
the basis for generalizing upon what is true of the life of
our time. Her characters are not necessarily Portage people,
for they are Wisconsin people and people of other states as
well. However, Portage and its life has furnished her many
interesting starting points for her comments upon life in
general. She has attempted to repay her community for this
material furnished her by becoming an integral part of its
community life. In its civic improvements, in its home life,
in its schools and in its churches, she has had her work and
has aspired to do her best towards making her home city
beautiful and wholesome.
Zona Gale remembers much of the play life and the school life
in her home town during the eighties and early nineties of
the last century. She has recently set forth her idealized
remembrance of these early experiences in her book entitled
"When I Was a Little Girl." One of these is chosen as an
illustration of her work.
Besides the school training afforded her by Portage, Zona
Gale attended Wayland Academy at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and
later she entered the University of Wisconsin, from which
institution she received the Bachelor of Literature degree in
1895, and four years later the Master's degree.
After graduation Miss Gale was employed for a time on staffs
of Milwaukee and New York papers. Since 1904 she has devoted
herself to writing for magazines. She spends some time in New
York and the East, but most of her work is done at her
beautiful home, which overlooks the Wisconsin river at
Portage.
Miss Gale writes an occasional poem for some magazine. We
give "The Holy Place," published in the Bookman some years
ago, as an illustration of her poetry. However, it is not as
a poet, but rather as a short story writer that we are
remembering Zona Gale.
Miss Gale's stories have appeared in the Atlantic,
Appleton's, the Cosmopolitan, Everybody's, the Outlook, the
Bookman, and other magazines. Her first arrangement of
stories in book form, "Romance Island," appeared in 1906. A
year later she published "The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre."
The two characters mentioned are an old couple of seventy or
more, who, under the protecting care of an old servant,
Nichola, live a sort of child life. Their pranks, if such
they may be called, are the kindly deeds of making others
happy. The stories purport to be told by Etarre, who would
have us believe that there is quite as much romance in the
lives of two old people busily engaged in breaking the rules
of the crabbed old nurse as there is in the lives of much
younger people. They are constantly on the alert for the
romance in the lives of those about them, and it would seem
that no love match in their neighborhood could be a success
without their assistance. The spirit that pervades the book
is that of thoughtful helpfulness.
We are sure to lay aside these stories with the wish that the
kindly spirit and the rich enjoyment of Pelleas and Etarre
might be true for all old people. We wish every aged couple
might stand at the window at Christmas time and send such
telegrams of bequest as these which they send to the world:
"And from my spirit to yours I bequeath the hard-won
knowledge that you must be true from the beginning. But if by
any chance you have not been so, then you must be true from
the moment you know."
To this sentiment of Pelleas shall Etarre reply: "From my
spirit to your spirit, I bequeath some understanding of the
preciousness of love, and the need to keep it true."
Stories must happen somewhere, and the capital of Zona Gale's
character world is "Friendship Village." Here occur the loves
of her youthful romances, the gossips of the older worldly
wise. Here her clubs originate and accomplish their tasks. In
this village occur the struggles for social and industrial
reform in which Zona Gale is so much interested, and here,
too, takes place all that great conflict for civic
righteousness which brings "Friendship Village" slowly nearer
the goal of perfection as she understands it. "Friendship
Village" is probably located nowhere, but still Miss Gale has
been so successful in writing about it that we are most sure
it is our town, and some one has suggested that another good
name for this place would be "Our Home Town."
Two of Miss Gale's books derive their titles from this
village of hers. They are "Friendship Village" and
"Friendship Village Love Stories." A short description of her
"Friendship Village" will follow later. Another book based
upon the village life deals with the lesson of Christmas
time. It shows how the older people who have come to feel
that they could not afford the expense of Christmas are
brought to realize the real significance of Christmas giving.
Another series of stories is linked into book form through
the narrator, Calliope Marsh. It is entitled "Mothers to
Men," and is an account of life at "Friendship Village."
Miss Gale writes beautiful stories of how to make the better
community; but what is more, she does with her own hands many
things which bring about the realization of her plans.
Women's club of her own city and of many other cities enjoy
her aid in their plans for better conditions. Civic
federations of statewide influence have her help as member
and officer. Further, her own county fair has enjoyed her
presence and her efforts to advance civic improvement through
her friendly counsel to those who pause to talk with her.
Her writing is here illustrated in part from her recent book,
"When I Was a Little Girl." Two of the little girls of the
neighborhood had been shut up in their rooms one fine summer
day as punishment for the infraction of some home regulation,
whereupon a discussion among the free playmates arose as to
the reason for punishment. As the discussion waxed
perplexing, the little girls happened upon Grandmother Beers,
who took up the discussion and enlightened the children. What
she had heard of their conversation caused her to break in
with the statement, "Wicked? I didn't know you knew such a
word." The following discussion then takes place:
[Illustration: ZONA GALE]
WHY?
From "WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL." Copyright, 1913, by the
Macmillan Co.
"It's a word you learn at Sunday School," I explained importantly.
"Come over here and tell me about it," she invited, and led the way to
the Eating Apple tree. And she sat down in the swing! Of course,
whatever difference of condition exists between your grandmother and
yourself vanishes when she sits down casually in your swing.
Well, Grandmother Beers was one who knew how to play with us, and I
was always half expecting her to propose a new game. But that day, as
she sat in the swing, her eyes were not twinkling at the corners.
"What does it mean?" she asked us. "What does wicked mean?"
"It's what you aren't to be."
I took the brunt of the reply, because I was the relative of the
questioner.
"Why not?" asked grandmother.
"Why not?" Oh, we all knew that. We responded instantly, and out came
the results of the training of all the families.
"Because your Mother and your Father say you can't," said Betty
Rodman.
"Because it makes your mother feel bad," said Calista.
"Because God don't want us to," said I.
"Delie says," Betty added, "it's because, if you are, when you grow up
people won't think anything of you."
Grandmother Beers held her sweet-peas to her face.
"If," she said, after a moment, "you wanted to do something wicked
more than you ever wanted to do anything in the world--as much as
you'd want a drink tomorrow if you hadn't had one to-day--and if
nobody ever knew--would any of those reasons keep you from doing it?"
We consulted one another's look, and shifted. We knew how thirsty that
would be. Already we were thirsty, in thinking about it.
"If I were in your place," grandmother said, "I'm not sure those
reasons would keep me. I rather think they wouldn't--always."
We stared at her. It was true that they didn't always keep us. Were
not two of us "in our rooms" even now?
Grandmother leaned forward--I know how the shadows of the apple leaves
fell on her black lace cap and how the pink sweet-peas were reflected
in her delicate face.
"Suppose," she said, "that instead of any of those reasons somebody
gave you this reason: That the earth is a great flower--a flower that
has never really blossomed yet. And that, when it blossoms, life is
going to be more beautiful than we have ever dreamed, or than fairy
stories have ever pretended. And suppose our doing one way, and not
another, makes the flower come a little nearer to blossom. But our
doing the other way puts back the time when it can blossom. Then which
would you want to do?"
"Oh, make it grow, make it grow," we all cried; and I felt a secret
relief: Grandmother was playing a game with us, after all.
"And suppose that everything made a difference to it," she went on,
"every little thing--from telling a lie, on down to going to get a
drink for somebody and drinking first yourself out in the kitchen.
Suppose that everything made a difference, from hurting somebody on
purpose, down to making up the bed and pulling the bedspread tight so
that the wrinkles in the blanket won't show."
At this we looked at one another in some consternation. How did
grandmother know?
"Until after awhile," she said, "you should find out that
everything--loving, going to school, playing, working, bathing,
sleeping, were all just to make this flower grow. Wouldn't it be fun
to help?"
"Yes. Oh, yes." We were all agreed about that. It would be great fun
to help.
"Well, then suppose," said grandmother, "that as you helped, you found
out something else: that in each of you, say, where your heart is, or
where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom through!
And that only as you help the earth flower to blossom could your
flower blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower
droop its head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other
way would make it grow, and turn beautiful colors--so that, bye and
bye, every one of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower.
Which way then would you rather do?"
"Oh, make it grow, make it grow," we said again.
And Mary Elizabeth added longingly: "Wouldn't it be fun if it was
true?"
"It is true," said Grandmother Beers.
She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at
her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me
to be somehow light within. May be it was her flower showing through!
"Grandmother!" I cried, "is it true--is it true?"
"It is true," she repeated. "And whether the earth flower and other
people's flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is
about. And everything makes a difference. Isn't that a good reason for
not being wicked?"
We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to
what she said. And I know that we understood.
"Oh," Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, "hurry home and
tell Margaret Amelia. It'll make it so much easier when she comes out
to her supper."
That night, on the porch, alone with Mother and Father, I inquired
into something that still was not clear.
"But how can you tell which things are wicked? And which ones are
wrong and which things are right?"
Father put out his hand and touched my hand. He was looking at me with
a look that I knew--and his smile for me is like no other smile that I
have ever known.
"Something will tell you," he said, "always."
"Always?" I doubted.
"Always," he said. "There will be other voices. But if you listen,
something will tell you always. And it is all you need."
I looked at Mother. And by her nod and her quiet look I perceived that
all this had been known about for a long time.
"That is why Grandma Bard is coming to live with us," she said, "not
just because we wanted her, but because--that said so."
In us all a flower--and something saying something! And the earth
flower trying to blossom ... I looked down the street: at Mr.
Branchett walking in his garden, at the light shining from windows, at
the folk sauntering on the sidewalk, and toward town where the band
was playing. We all knew about this together then. This was why
everything was! And there were years and years to make it come
through.
What if I, alone among them all, had never found out.
THE HOLY PLACE
At silver of gray lines; at look of lace
About a woman's throat; at little feet,
Curled close in hand that clings; at stir of sweet
Old gardens; at the flow and dip and grace
Of sweeping fabric; at the phantom race of shadow ripples in
the tides of wheat,
Where great, still spirits murmur as they meet--
Souls see Their God as in a holy place.
What of the wrinkled face, the poor, coarse hands,
Dead leaves and ruined walls in fields that stand,
Rattling sharp husks? Of little feet that stray
From clinging hands, and never find the way?
He knows no holy place for whom the clod
Stands not an altar to the living God.
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
Published by Permission of The Macmillan Co., New York.
We are one long street, rambling from sun to sun, inheriting traits of
the parent country road which we unite. And we are cross streets,
members of the same family, properly imitative, proving our
ancestorship in a primeval genius for trees, or bursting out in
inexplicable weaknesses of Court-House, Engine-House, Town Hall, and
Telephone Office. Ultimately our stock dwindled out in a
slaughter-house and a few detached houses of milk men. The cemetery is
delicately put behind them, under a hill. There is nothing mediaeval
in all this, one would say. But then see how we wear our rue:
When one of us telephones, she will scrupulously ask for the number,
for it says so at the top of every page. "Give me 1-1," she will put
it, with an impersonality as fine as if she were calling for four
figures. And central will answer:
"Well, I just saw Mis' Holcomb go 'crost the street. I'll call you, if
you want, when she comes back."
Or, "I don't think you better ring the Helman's just now. They were
awake 'most all night with one o' Mis' Helman's attacks."
Or, "Doctor June's invited to Mis' Syke's for tea. Shall I give him to
you there?"
The telephone is modern enough. But in our use of it, is there not a
flavor as of an Elder Time, to be caught by Them of Many Years from
Now? And already we may catch this flavor, as our Britain
great-great-lady grandmothers, and more, may have been conscious of
the old fashion of sitting in bowers. If only they were conscious like
that! To be sure of it would be to touch their hands in the margin of
the ballad books.
Or we telephone to the Livery Barn and Boarding Stable for the little
blacks, celebrated for their self-control in encounters with the
Proudfits' motor car. The stable-boy answers that the little blacks
are at "the funeral." And after he has gone off to ask his employer,
who in his unofficial moments is our neighbor, our church choir bass,
our landlord even, comes and tells us that, after all, we may have the
little blacks, and he himself brings them round at once--the same
little blacks that we meant all along. And when, quite naturally, we
wonder at the boy's version, we learn: "Oh, why, the blacks was
standin' just acrost the street, waitin' at the church door, hitched
to the hearse. I took 'em out an' put in the bays. I says to myself:
'The corpse won't care.'" Some way the Proudfits' car and the stable
telephone must themselves have slipped from modernity to old fashioned
before that incident shall quite come into its own.
So it is with certain of our domestic ways. For example, Mis'
Postmaster Sykes--in Friendship Village every woman assumes for given
name the employment of her husband--has some fine modern china and
much solid silver in extremely good taste, so much, indeed, that she
is wont to confess to having cleaned forty, or sixty, or seventy-five
pieces--"seventy-five pieces of solid silver have I cleaned this
morning. You can say what you want to, nice things are a rill care."
Yet, surely this is the proper conjunction, Mis' Sykes is currently
reported to rise in the night preceding the day of her house cleaning,
and to take her carpets out in the back yard, and there softly to
sweep and sweep them so that, at their official cleaning next day, the
neighbors may witness how little dirt is whipped out on the line.
Ought she not to have old-fashioned silver and egg-shell china and
drop-leaf mahogany to fit the practice instead of dazzling and
wild-rose patterns in "solid and art curtains, and mission chairs and
a white-enameled refrigerator, and a gas range?"
We have the latest funeral equipment--black broadcloth-covered
supports, a coffin carriage for up-and-down the aisles, natural palms
to order, and the pulleys to "Let them down slow"; and yet our
individual funeral capacity has been such that we can tell what every
woman who has died in Friendship for years has "done without": Mis'
Grocer Stew, her of all folks, has done without new-style flat-irons;
Mis' Worth had used the bread pan to wash dishes in; Mis' Jeweler
Sprague--the first Mis' Sprague--had had only six bread and butter
knives, her, that could get wholesale, too ... and we have little
maid-servants who answer our bells in caps and trays, so to say; but
this savour of jestership is authentic, for any one of them is likely
to do as of late did Mis' Holcomb--that was Mame Bliss's maid--answer
at dinner-with-guests, that there were no more mashed potatoes, "or
else, there won't be any left to warm up for your breakfast."... And
though we have our daily newspaper, receiving Associated Press
service, yet, as Mis' Amandy Toplady observed, it is "only very lately
that they have mentioned in the Daily the birth of a child, or any
thing that had anything of a tang to it."
We put new wine in old bottles, but also we use new bottles to hold
our old wine. For, consider the name of our main street: is this Main
or Clark or Cook or Grand Street, according to the register of the
main streets of town? Instead, for its half-mile of village life, the
Plank Road, macadamized and arc-lighted, is called Daphne Street.
Daphne Street! I love to wonder why. Did our dear Doctor June's father
name it when he set the five hundred elms and oaks which glorify us?
Or did Daphne herself take this way on the day of her flight, so that
when they came to draught the town, they recognized that it was Daphne
Street, and so were spared the trouble of naming it? Or did the Future
anonymously toss us back the suggestion, thinking of some day of her
own when she might remember us and say, "Daphne Street!" Already some
of us smile with a secret nod at something when we direct a stranger,
"You will find the Telegraph and Cable Office two blocks down, on
Daphne Street." "The Commercial Travelers' House, the Abigail Arnold
Home Bakery, the Post Office and Armory are in the same block on
Daphne Street." Or, "The Electric Light Office is at the corner of
Dunn and Daphne." It is not wonderful that Daphne herself, at seeing
these things, did not stay, but lifted her laurels somewhat nearer
Tempe--although there are those of us who like to fancy that she is
here all the time in our Daphne-Street magic: the fire bell, the tulip
beds, and the twilight bonfires. For how else, in all reason, has the
name persisted?
Of late a new doctor has appeared--one may say, has abounded: a
surgeon who, such is his zeal, will almost perform an operation over
the telephone and, we have come somewhat cynically to believe, would
prefer doing so to not operating at all.
* * * * *
Thus the New shoulders the Old, and our transition is still swift
enough to be a spectacle, as was its earlier phase which gave our
Middle West to cabins and plough horses, with a tendency away from
wigwams and bob-whites. And in this local warfare between Old and New
a chief figure is Calliope Marsh. She is a little rosy, wrinkled
creature officially--though no other than officially--pertaining to
sixty years; mender of lace, seller of extracts, and music teacher,
but of the three she thinks of the last as her true vocation.
* * * * *
With us all the friendship idea prevails: we accept what Progress
sends, but we regard it in our own fashion. Our improvements, like our
entertainments, our funerals, our holidays, and our very loves, are
but Friendship-Village exponents of the modern spirit. Perhaps, in a
tenderer significance than she meant, Calliope characterized us when
she said:
"This town is more like a back door than a front--or, givin' it full
credit, anyhow--it's no more'n a side door, with no vines."
EBEN EUGENE REXFORD.
The subject of this sketch has lived in Wisconsin since the
seventh year of his life. He was born
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