Whole book · 78 sections
JACOB K. HUFF
Deceased
(Late JACOB K. HUFF)
SELECTED FROM THE COLUMNS OF
THE READING TIMES, READING, PENNSYLVANIA
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
BY HIS FRIEND
Henry W. Shoemaker
(President of Reading Times)
“A link is broken that bound us to the infinite.”
Copyright, 1911
The Reading Times Publishing Company
READING, PA.
The Reading Times Publishing Company
Sudden death, in the midst of productive work, throws into bolder relief a career destined for immortality. The cessation of a train of brilliant and helpful ideas creates a want, and causes a careful examination of all that has been previously done, and a just estimate of its worth. These alone can be the consolations for the taking off of a genius like the late Jacob K. Huff, known to his readers as “Jake Haiden,” “Faraway Moses,” and “Finnicky Finucane.” After a long struggle against obscurity and adverse circumstances he had emerged into an open country where kind words of appreciation and growing fame greeted him on every side. His message, which the modern life in this country, with its growth of class distinctions, a self-constituted aristocracy, a rapidly developing governing class, a contempt for the lowly born, a forgetfulness of gentleness, a striving for self-advancement, and the train of kindred evils, rendered imperative, was checked, but its echoes will be felt through the years. He seemed to be the one voice strong enough and fearless enough to do battle with the injustices of the big world, yet he viewed it all from the porch of a modest cottage in a hamlet where there was no railroad, no trolley, and few strangers ever penetrated. His vision entered palaces of the supercilious rich, into the inner sanctums of capitalists, of cringing editors; into the homes of neglectful parents, undutiful children, designing wives, white slavers, and other evildoers. His kindly words soothed the tired spirits of the unfortunate, and as he never preached, and seldom condemned, he offered a loophole for improvement, rather than promising punishment to the so-called “wicked.” He was always ready to forgive, to lend a helping hand, and though his infinite mind grasped all the depths of sin and sorrow in the world, he believed in the innate goodness of his fellow beings. The modern world was learning to walk along cleaner and better pathways, and he acted like the careful parent, assisting the unsteady youngster in its course. His writings do not contain a single word of rancor; it is amazing that a man who fought so much oppression and crime could do so without descending to invective or abuse. That was the secret of his success. If clergymen could follow in his footsteps many an empty tabernacle would be crowded on the Sabbath.
In a sense, the biography of a writer discloses the hidden springs and motives for the development of his career. It would be difficult for a writer not springing from the people to fight the people’s battles with the pen. A man of the people like Abraham Lincoln represented them thoroughly because he was of them, and at no time in his life did his opportunities or tendencies cause him to forget his original environment. Jacob Huff was born among the “great mass of humanity” and his development came like Lincoln’s through struggles and disappointments, aided by perseverance and hard work, until his voice, clear and sympathetic, was heard above the multitude. Some day an appreciative state will seek out and mark the lowly cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains where he first saw the light. Like Plato and many another wise man of the past, his message will live in his disciples, and grow brighter, and more necessary with the advancement of time. It was in such a cabin that Lincoln was born in the Kentucky wilds that Jacob Huff was ushered into being in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, on January 31, 1851. His father was John Huff, a typical backwoodsman, sturdy, brave, and good natured. His mother was a German girl, Eve Kalmbach, whose parents had left the Rhine country and cleared a homestead high among lonely Pennsylvania hills. His father’s mother was Elizabeth Walker, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and from her came the strain of humor, and perseverance that did so much to weld his destiny into a successful whole. His mother is described as kindly and intelligent, with a mystic side to her nature, observable in her distinguished son’s traits of sentiment and tenderness. From earliest youth Jacob Huff knew little but the most grinding toil. His first occupation, however, was rather pleasurable, and he always liked to reminisce on the subject. In 1864, Colonel James Williams Quiggle, of McElhattan, directly across the Susquehanna from Jacob’s mountain home, had conceived the idea of starting an “American Tea Industry.” It is a known fact that the Pennsylvania mountains produce a tea plant that rivals in flavor the choicest product of Japan. Thousands of acres of wild lands were either bought or optioned, and a tea house after a Japanese design was erected on a plateau back of the smaller of the two McElhattan mountains. Men and boys in considerable numbers were engaged to pick, sort, and dry the leaves, and little Jacob hearing of the work, tramped down from the high mountains and started for the “tea camp,” his first situation away from home. Darkness had come on soon after he reached McElhattan, and he spent the night with a family who lived at the “X Roads,” there meeting the black-haired, black-eyed young girl with the cameo face who played such an important part in the life of his dear, though older friend in years, the gifted poet, Montgomery Quiggle. He was given a chance at the tea camp, which was often visited by the genial Col. Quiggle. This was probably the first man of education he had met at close range, and his interest and politeness to the small tea-picker lingered as one of the pleasantest of his earlier memories. Col. Quiggle, it may be said, was a fine type of the old fashioned gentleman of Scotch-Irish stock, always brimming over with good humor, but with that undercurrent of seriousness inherent to his race. Winter coming on, the work was suspended, and the merry company back of McElhattan mountain was forced to separate. Once on his own responsibility, the desire to earn money and see the world led the young lad to occupations of various kinds. Once he trudged many miles to Leetonia, having heard of work in a lumber camp, but was rejected because he was too young. He did not idle around the shanties, but immediately started for home. A snowstorm began, and evening closed in on him. He saw what he thought was a huge blackened stump, and leaned against it for much needed rest. There was a grunt and a growl, and a four hundred pound bear shook him off, and he sprawled in the snow. Another time he had worked in a logging camp at the head of Young Woman’s Creek, and with his purse of savings, was on his way to Youngwomanstown, now misnamed North Bend. It was sunset, and he heard a screech like a tormented woman, far up on the steep slope of one of the denuded mountains. His quick eye showed it to come from a panther, skulking along in search of its evening meal. Jacob walked faster, and as he did so the animal quickened its pace. For miles it seemed to trail him, but lacked the courage to come down from the ridge. Finally with the lights of the settlement in sight, it uttered a despairing yell, and was heard from no more. At other times he worked in lumber camps, bark jobs, on railroads, highways, farms, and gardens. Every man or woman he met had a life story that interested him, these were the romances he read. His retentive mind became stored with a mass of unusual facts and impressions, which he thought over and over, figuring out the whys and wherefores when his companions were asleep. He had not gone to school a full term in his life, but his teachers, Charles Hamilton and Benjamin Langdon, were worthy men and he absorbed much from them. Despite his brief schooling he could feel the harmonies of words and sentences like a trained rhetorician. He longed to express himself, but he was too shy for general conversation, and there seemed no opportunity to write. In Lock Haven, the county seat of Clinton County, was a local paper called “The Enterprise.” It had a correspondent in Gallauher Township where Jacob was living, but he fell sick, and the editor looked about for a substitute. Jacob applied for the position, and in February, 1876, in his twenty-fifth year he had the pleasure of seeing his first communications in print. They were well done, even for an old correspondent, and later he made bold to intersperse them with jokes, and pathetic little verses. He was so satisfactory that the regular correspondent never resumed the work, and he continued with increasing reputation, until in 1880 he took up the same task for the “Clinton Democrat,” a Lock Haven paper, which is still a power in the county. About this time love had entered his life, and he married Clara Bryan, a frail, pretty girl of sixteen, of Scotch-Irish stock, the ceremony taking place September 25, 1881. But the happy romance was to be short-lived, a girl baby, whom they called Rena, was born on April 7, 1883, and the young mother’s health failed rapidly afterwards. She died on July 26, the same year, and the motherless infant followed her to the grave on October 7. Jacob Huff never spoke much of this early bereavement, but some of his verses on taking Myron, his son, by his second marriage, to the graves of the first wife and child, are as beautiful and touching as exist in our language. In 1885 that enterprising and widely-read newspaper “Grit,” published in Williamsport, having long noted the humor and pathos of his work, engaged him to write weekly articles. He adopted the nom de plume of “Faraway Moses,” and the results were overwhelmingly successful.
He was a clever artist, like so many writers, and drew the sketches each week for the illustrations. These were “worked up” by the staff illustrators and engravers, and became an important feature of the stories. Jacob Huff as a humorist was inimitable, but his immortality will rest with his serious work, his “human interest” articles. The popularity of “Faraway Moses” soon passed the bounds of the State, and his trite and witty sayings were quoted by staid farmers in their shacks in Kansas and the Dakotas. Meanwhile he established a modest “syndicate” and furnished short stories, verses, and jokes to a number of rural publications under various pen names. He conceived the idea of going West, and his travels took him into many States, where his experiences were varied, though he finally settled in Colorado. The results of this change of abode, which did not last long, found immortality in a small book of verses, published in 1895, by the Grit Company, entitled “Songs of the Desert.” Unfortunately the little book was not fully appreciated at the time, though it is destined to rank with the choicest productions of Eugene Field or James Whitcomb Riley. Meanwhile a great and ennobling influence had come to him, his romance and marriage with Charlotte Crawford, the brilliant daughter of Captain William H. and Priscilla Brown Crawford, of Chatham Run, Clinton County, who also for a short while resided in Colorado. The Crawfords were among the earliest settlers in the West Branch Valley, where they ranked high in social and political life. They had intermarried with the Whites, Allisons, Stewarts, and Quiggles, and each generation had added fresh lustre to the name. Jacob Huff’s marriage to Charlotte Crawford occurred at Grand Junction, Colorado, on October 11, 1892, and soon afterwards the happy couple returned to their beloved Pennsylvania. The influence of his devoted wife was broadening and inspiring, leading him into a wider sphere, and to the association with persons of distinction and rank. He had tasted life in all its bitterness, had mingled with the lowly, henceforth he was to see the brighter phases of existence. He never forgot the past, it had burned itself in too deeply. He saw the injustices and wrongs with an even clearer vision now that he understood how happily it was possible to live.
One son, Myron Reed Huff, named after the great liberal preacher, Myron Reed, whom Jacob warmly admired, was born on June 22, 1895, to bless the union. This boy, who is a happy blend of his talented parents, is himself an artist and author, and now contributes articles to the Reading Times under the name of Jake Haiden, Jr. And now comes the story of his connection with the Reading Times, the last important event of his life, in whose service he was at the time of his untimely demise. Early in May, 1908, the writer of this article received an autograph copy of “Songs from the Desert,” and it quickened the desire, which he later learned was mutual, to meet the famous philosopher. At McElhattan on Memorial Day, of that year, he waded across a muddy road in front of the home of a mutual friend, Mrs. Anna S. Stabley, since deceased, and shook the hand of “Faraway Moses,” Jacob Huff. A long conversation ensued, and they became warm friends. The writer at that time was President of the Daily Record, at Bradford, Pa., and soon after his new associate began contributing short articles of timely interest to that paper. In September of that year, he assumed the same position with the Times, of Reading, and with the first issue under the new management began the celebrated “Jake Haiden” articles. They were instantly successful, and their appeal to all classes, their liberality, their toleration, their humanity, their pathos, made them noted and quoted all over the State. It is pleasant to recollect that Jacob Huff paid several visits to Reading while contributing to the Times. He was there on New Year’s Eve, 1909, and for New Year’s Day prepared an exceptionally strong editorial, for he also wrote many editorials, called simply “1910,” which attracted widespread attention. His last visit was late in January, 1910, when the management of the Times entertained him as guest of honor at a dinner at the Wyomissing Club. The guests included the Times staff, the publishers of the Reading Telegram, Capt. Henry D. and Herbert R. Green, who were always appreciative of his work, John D. Mishler, and others of equal note. There were after dinner speeches of a brief character, and the guest of honor closed the evening with a few remarks which seemed to come directly from his heart. With the early summer, the Times conceived the idea of sending “The Reading Times Philosopher,” as he was becoming generally known, to the far west in order to gain fresh impression for his powerful articles. Accompanied by his loving wife and son, and a close friend Prof. Betts, he started away gaily. From letters and postcards he must have enjoyed himself, and his note-book shows he had jotted down ideas for five hundred and fifty new articles or editorials. The party returned to Chatham Run on July 20, where the philosopher maintained a comfortable home, and on the night of July 31, 1910, he was seized with heart failure and died a few hours later. Prompt medical aid from Dr. Joseph M. Corson, his friend and neighbor, was of no avail, and the giant intellect and friendly spirit returned to its original source. His funeral was the occasion of a tremendous outpouring of people, interment being made at Jersey Shore. The press of the entire State echoed the grief of his relatives and friends and the great loss to the literary world. The religious beliefs of such a man are always interesting. His can be summed up in the final sentence of the little speech he delivered at Reading, “We look around and in everything we see God.” It was the religion of humanity, the creed of helpfulness and good cheer. He lived up to the letter of his faith, for when he died he left a host of friends and no enemies. He had steered his bark through the perilous waters of life without hurting anyone, or sullying himself. It was a beautiful life, but to those who knew him comes the ever recurring regret “Why could not he have been spared a few years longer?” There was so much to do, the world was crying for his help. Maybe the publication of this book containing some of his most characteristic opinions will give renewed energy to his disciples and send them into the thickest of the fight for the betterment of mankind. If he had a motto it must have been “I want to leave the world a little brighter, a little better, a little happier than when I came in it.” Who knows, to what extent he succeeded! Time alone will measure the fulness of his fame, but he should rank as a nature lover with Henry D. Thoreau, as a humanitarian with Theodore Parker, and as a poet with Eugene Field.
It is hoped his friends will get together and erect a memorial fountain or statue to his memory in Lock Haven, Jersey Shore or Williamsport, in the West Branch Valley whose people and scenery he loved so well.
Henry W. Shoemaker.
September 4, 1911.
Before the law I stand a confessed criminal; before God I am only a weak man trying to do good toward my fellow man. I am guilty of helping a convicted man escape the clutches of man-made law. I couldn’t help it. The love I bear humanity welled up, when the young man told his story, and flooded my reason with the sunshine of sympathy; and I helped him get away.
Early one morning I went to my wood shed to get kindling to build the kitchen fire. In the dim light I thought I saw a man crouching in one corner. A second look convinced me that it was true—there was a man crouching there.
At first I was frightened, and thought of flight. It’s the first impulse that comes over me at sight of possible danger. And a strange man, in a strange place for that man to be, is danger enough to startle even a brave man, like my wife, for instance.
But on looking closer, and catching a full glance of the startled eyes, that looked up to me in fear and wild, beseeching hunger for something his heart yearned for, I changed my mind. Fear gave way to curiosity and sympathy. I said, “Good morning, brother—can I do anything for you this morning?”
At the sound of friendly words he stood up, and I recognized in him the young man who was tried and found guilty of forgery, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
“I’ve escaped from jail, you see,” he said with a quiver in his voice, while his boyish blue eyes looked away down into my soul (if I still had it with me).
“So I see,” I replied. “And now, what are you going to do?”
“You heard me telling my story on the witness stand last week, didn’t you?” I nodded in the affirmative, and he went on. “Well, nobody believed me. They thought I was lying to save myself from prison. I told the court that in my confession, when first arrested and sent to jail, I had plead guilty to the charge of forgery, to save another man, because the father of that other man promised to get me out of prison if I would assume the crime and save the honor of his family.
“Before God that story is true. But the family I was bribed to save has no honor. From the moment that confession was wheedled out of me, I was forsaken, and left to the mercy of a jury whom I could not convince that I was innocent. Not one amongst them would believe that I had honor enough in my soul to assume the crime of another, because I am a cobbler’s son. Neither could I convince them that the rich merchant on B—d street had played false to me.
“I do not blame them. I could not believe it of that merchant myself, were I not the victim of his perfidy.
“This morning I concealed myself in a barrel of ashes and other trash and was hauled out of the jail yard by the darkie who drives the refuse cart. When we got safely away from the jail I rose up out of the trash barrel and scared that black man half to death. I took advantage of his fright and told him if he informed the officials of my escape I would swear that he was guilty of helping me away, for a price, and because I couldn’t pay him he would not let me off. He promised to keep quiet, so I ran through the fog and came here.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Because I know you appreciate life and love humanity. I knew you would believe my story, or at least believe enough of it to awaken your sympathy and think of the long time fifteen years must be—fifteen years taken out of my life! The time is too long, even if I were guilty. Won’t you try to think of how long fifteen years must seem to one so young as I, and then hide me for a day, and then help me get away tonight? Won’t you, for the love you bear humanity? Won’t you do so for my mother’s sake?”
“For God’s sake, stop!” I cried; and then I sat down on the chopping block and buried my face in my arms and tried to think. “Fifteen years is a long, long time to take out of a boy’s life! Fifteen years, without sight of a mother’s face, without flowers or the songs of birds; without sunshine and the dews that fall from heaven for all. Fifteen years shut up between black walls, and away from the smiles of women and little children. God, the sentence is too hard, the punishment too great! We can’t reform men by treating them as wild animals.”
I looked into his frank blue eyes and asked: “Tell me once more, truthfully, are you innocent?” And he answered: “Before God I swear that the story I told you is true!”
I plead guilty to helping a prisoner escape, and I feel no pangs of regret. Fifteen years between black walls is a long, long time, and the boy had a mother.
Near my home lived a poor, hard-working, but improvident man. He had a wife and seven children. The oldest was thirteen, and the baby but ten months old. They were poor. The husband and father was working only half time. There is a cause for the dull times, but the man did not know what it was. Those who do know are afraid to tell, for fear it may injure their business. “Great is Diana!”
One month ago the wife and mother was taken suddenly ill, and died in less than twenty-four hours. Everybody was shocked. It seemed so cruel and hard of Providence to remove that poor woman at a time when she was needed most. Many would have blamed Providence of cruelty, but they are afraid to do so.
No one knew the reason why this death was ordered. Some thought it was even a sin to make a study of the case, “lest they offend Providence.”
I was made to feel very sad when I heard of the sudden bereavement. Little eyes of helpless children looked out of the night shadows and made my sleep a nightmare. I looked down a long dark vista leading out into future years, and I saw barefooted and ragged children plodding hopelessly along, bearing burdens that should be carried by full grown men and women. I saw cruel winter lurking only a few weeks off, generating chill blasts of wind to pinch little brown legs and chapped hands, and I wondered what the people would do about it.
While I was wondering what was to be done, my wife and her near neighbor were already solving the problem. Old chests and boxes were ransacked for cast-off clothing—for clothes the children had outgrown, but which were almost as good as new. Neighbors were set to work ransacking chests and boxes and bureau drawers, and many little dresses and pantaloons that brought back tender memories were dug up and cast into the common fund of collected goods.
To this collection was added a few dollars’ worth of new goods, and thread, and the work of reconstruction began. The work was done in my home, while I worked in an adjoining room, and I never heard a more cheerful and happy set of women. Their hearts, their charity, their mother love were all in the work, and these are the tender forces that give inspiration to men and women who believe in the religion of humanity.
In my mind’s eye I could see those orphan children feasting their eyes on the warm flannel petticoats, the bright gingham dresses, the soft underwear and little aprons. I felt that it was good to be near this working gang in the great cause of living humanity, and I seemed to share the inspiration that gave such happiness to the ladies.
The minister’s wife came out and joined the workers, but suggested that they open each sewing session with prayer; to which a majority objected, saying they only had limited time to spare, and they believed the children would be clothed much sooner if the sewing continued uninterrupted.
These good women worked all day cheerfully, and reconstructed a big pile of children’s clothes, and when the meeting was about to break up the minister’s wife suggested that they kneel and return thanks.
“God will accept my weariness of body and contentment of soul,” replied the busiest woman in the bunch. “Prayer is a private business between two—between God and the worshipper; and between these two there are no secrets,” she continued. “Public prayer is the work we do in public, and for the people—for God’s creatures. We have been praying, tenderly and seriously all afternoon, while many who could have joined us in the good work, but refused, will be offering up worded prayers tonight and thanking their God—for what? for escaping real work? for the squandering of a few hours that might have been spent with religious profit in this work of charity? So long as I believe in the religion of humanity, just so long will I believe that a work for the bettering of humanity goes ahead of worded prayer.”
“You may be right, Mary,” replied the minister’s wife. “If all women prayed as cheerfully and willingly with their hands, as you have done this afternoon, humanity would be the better for it. Perhaps, after all, the uplifting of the human race is the greatest work we can perform. Perhaps the bringing of joy and happiness to hearts that have been filled with hopelessness and gloom, is the dearest work we can do for God. I am not a bigot, Mary; only I believe in both work and prayer.”
For a long time after the women left I sat and pondered. The little hungry eyes of the shivering orphans looked out of the gloaming, and I knew what their decision would be. Their hearts would go out to the workers. When the warm skirts and petticoats and little trousers shut out the winter’s blast, the work of the workers would be appreciated.
People who enjoy all the great improvements of the age have not the least idea of the inconvenience and the hardships people endured previous to the discoveries of the telegraph and the telephone. As an illustration of the conditions prevailing previous to the above discoveries, I will relate the story of Joe Bailey’s dangerous trip down the river on an ice floe, and his brother’s exciting ride on horse back from Jersey Shore, Pa., to Northumberland, a distance of fifty miles, to alarm the people and bring them to the rescue of his brother Joe.
The Baileys owned the island just southeast of Jersey Shore, which is still in the hands of the descendants of the Bailey family—Mrs. John S. Tomb, and Mrs. Carrothers. I do not know whether McGinnis, the historian of the West Branch Valley, mentioned this famous ride or not. I got the story from Captain William H. Crawford, who died several years ago at the age of seventy-seven years, and who was a boy at the time Joe Bailey went adrift on the ice floe. Crawford then lived with his father, Hon. George Crawford, two miles west of Jersey Shore.
It was in the spring, when a sudden rise in the river threatened to take the ice out of the streams. The Baileys had a small flat boat in the river which they plied between the island and Jersey Shore. It was still in the river when the early spring freshet came, and was in danger of being carried away with the heavy floe of ice. To save the flat, Joe Bailey and another man took a team of oxen and went to haul the flat out of the stream. While Joe was on the flat fastening a chain to a ring the ice suddenly broke up and crowded down upon the place, tearing the boat from the landing and sending the young man adrift on the ice.
His brother on the Jersey Shore side of the river stood horrified for a moment, and then fully realizing the importance of imminent action, borrowed a fast running horse and set out for Williamsport on a dead run. It was a race for life. Night was setting in and the weather turned suddenly bitter cold.
With horse and rider panting for breath, young Bailey reached Williamsport and alarmed the town. Many rushed to the bridge, but none were prepared to render service to the man going adrift on the ice. They could hear him shouting for assistance, but the flood bore him down upon them before they could secure a rope to drop down for Bailey to lay hold of and be lifted to the bridge.
Knowing that rescue was impossible, one thoughtful man removed his overcoat and dropped it down into the rushing boat, and received the freezing man’s grateful thanks.
Nothing daunted, young Bailey secured a fresh horse and struck out for Muncy, where another bridge spanned the Susquehanna river.
Again young Bailey reached the long bridge too late to secure help. Joe passed under the bridge before the men could lower a rope. But the undaunted brother would not give Joe up to the horrible death that awaited him somewhere down the roaring, rushing, grinding gorge. No human aid could reach him until he came to the bridge at Northumberland, so the brother secured a third horse and dashed away to the rescue again. No other ride through darkness and danger equalled that ride, except the ride of Paul Revere. And poor Joe’s awful ride in the rushing ice gorge could not be surpassed for danger and loneliness by any of the dangerous rides noted by historians and sung of by the poets.
During the ice floe in the West Branch of the Susquehanna river the current is extremely rapid and the brother dashing away on horseback knew full well that no time must be lost if he reached the Northumberland bridge in time to save Joe. This was the last chance. No other bridge could be reached on horseback in time for a rescue. There was no railroad then, no telegraph line, and the most rapid means of communication was by horseback.
Can you blame young Bailey then for urging the horse to the utmost speed? When the animal slowed up young Bailey laid on the lash and urged it to even faster speed. He and the horse could alone rescue the frantic man adrift on the ice floe. All those who knew of Joe Bailey’s peril were left far behind. The people of Northumberland would know nothing until young Bailey arrived. On and on he dashed, arriving at the town exhausted and sore from his long, hard ride.
The town was alarmed, and a score of boatmen and old river men rushed to the bridge, but not forgetting long ropes with nooses prepared at the end. Thank God he had not passed yet! They could hear him calling for help far up the stream. When near the bridge they called to him to be ready and slip the nose of the rope under his arms. Quick! Joe Bailey is safely tied in the loop! Up with the poor fellow! Safe! Thank God! The two brothers clasp each other in their strong arms, the one softly whispering: “Joe! Oh, Joe!”
It’s a very easy matter to give away the other man’s baby, but not so easy when it comes to parting with our own. Organized charity does a whole lot for the unfortunate, but often does it in the wrong way. The mothers who are active in organized charity are too ready to separate parents from their children, never thinking for a moment what a loss it is to both parents and children to be thus separated. The only excuse for separating parents from charity children, is the economy. It is cheaper. Charity using painful economy to a painful extent.
I believe it is better, where it is possible, to allow parents the society of their children, and children the society of their parents, even if charity is asked to step in and keep the wolf from the door. It’s better for the parents, I’m sure. If anything will make a man or woman better, the society of their own children must surely come first in the elevating influence.
In my own individual case I can notice the self-improvement since I have a child to look up to me with trusting eyes and feel the tight clasp of his little hand. “A child shall lead them.” The man who wrote this line had the love and power of a child’s influence in his mind. We are all benefitted and made kindlier and more loving in the society of children—and especially our own children.
Only a few weeks ago an old school-mate of mine lost his wife, leaving him with a family of seven small children, including a baby girl of only ten months. The charitable mothers of the neighborhood took an interest in the poor man’s affairs, and began to collect clothing for the little motherless orphans and fit them out for school. They all thought the bereaved man could get a housekeeper much easier if the baby were out of the way, and they began to look around to secure a good home for her. They all agreed on that point—it was to be a good home for the baby, with kind people.
I was present when the committee of charitable women met at the poor man’s house to inform him that they had found a home for Baby Ruth. I shall never forget the look of pain that flashed into his eyes at the mention of finding a home for his baby. He was too full for words, but he picked the baby up from where she was playing at his feet with a yarn ball and string, and as he pressed her to the bosom of his coarse blouse I saw the tears overflow from his grief stricken eyes and run unrestrained down his rough cheeks.
After a few moments of silence he mastered his feelings and thanked the ladies for taking an interest in his children, but hugged the baby again and said: “But little Ruth is my baby! She was Mary’s baby! The last kisses and caresses of my poor dead wife were given to our baby—her baby. How can I put her away so soon after Mary’s death? She’s so small and dependent—must I begin the separation of my family away down at the bottom—away down with the weakest and smallest—with the baby—the one dearest to the mother who is now dead?”
The spokeswoman of the crowd told him how it would be best for the baby, and for him, to find it a good home, with kind people, who would care for it “and give it all the comforts of life.”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, “I know you mean it all for the best, and I could agree with you if—if it were some other father’s baby we were discussing, and not my baby—Mary’s baby—the last of our family to feel the loving caress of her embrace.
“Is it a crime that I am poor and wifeless, and my children are orphans? Can I cease to love my children because I am poor and they are motherless? They have been a great comfort and pleasure to me. I love their prattling voices; the sound of the little toy cart, as baby drags it across the floor, is sweeter music than the tones of the pipe organ down in the fashionable church.
“Shut your eyes to the squalor and rags you see here, and let your minds go back to your own homes, and recall the sound of the little tin wagon, loaded with tin soldiers and rag dolls, your own children used to pull through the house; and picture yourself standing at the gate after parting with your favorite child. Picture the scene, as the strange person carries your baby away, with her child face turned appealingly towards you, and you make no effort to bring her back to your arms and your heart.
“Would you, my good and kind women, who mean only good towards me and my children—would you call this a picture of civilization—a scene amongst enlightened people, or would you dream of it forever afterward as a picture of hell?”
The average reader of newspapers and magazines imagines that humorous writers are always funny, and always saying funny things. Nothing could be farther from the real facts. The humorous side of humanity while wading through every day events, likewise sees the pathetic side. The pathos of life makes the shade and shadow of life’s picture, while the funny features make the humorous pictures—the cartoons and exaggerations.
I know a little story connected with the work of a humorous writer, so full of pathos that one can but wonder how he could write of the humorous side of life while sitting in the very presence of death.
During the days of his severest struggles for recognition (and bread) his wife’s aged father was taken ill, and the doctor said it was only a matter of a few weeks or days with the kind old man, and then his struggles on the earth would be over. And through all the nursing and watching the young author was obliged to grind out his “stuff” for the publishers who kept the wolf from his door.
One night the faithful daughter could endure the strain and loss of sleep no longer, and was obliged to go to bed, leaving only her author husband to watch at the bedside of the dying father, and to grind out his sketch for the next issue of the paper.
It was hard to forget the man who was passing over the dark stream and concentrate his mind on some ridiculous phase of life, but this he must do, for he needed yet a humorous anecdote to round out the line of argument he was introducing—that men are more truthful than their dreams. He was attempting to prove that men, while in the act of dreaming a lie, would tell the truth, if subject to speaking out loud in their sleep.
But humorous ideas were slow about coming, and he leaned over, with his face buried deep in his hands, and tried to think. All of a sudden he recalled an incident of real life, that would serve to complete his story, but before he could take up his pencil the sick man brightened up and remarked:
“Pretty hard to write scenes from the funny side of life, while waiting on some one to die!”
“’Tis that, father,” replied the young man tenderly; “but I just now recall an incident from the life of old Jim McGrabber that will finish the sketch.”
“Poor fellow!” softly exclaimed the dying man. “I pity you, my boy. It is more than most men are obliged to do. But don’t mind me. Even if I pass away while you are working, I will know that you are only doing your duty. Besides, my boy, it softens death to me to feel that others can forget it while it hovers so near. And in encouraging you to go on with your work, I hope to leave the impression behind that dying men can remain interested in the triumphs and achievements of life, even though they are old and feeble and their heart liable to stop forever without a moment’s warning. Go on with your work, and I will try to sleep.”
And then, after giving the old man a cool sip of water, and fixing his pillow more comfortable, he sat down and wrote the anecdote that was to complete his sketch.
“Timothy McGrabber always kept a private jug in his cellar, but was only allowed two jiggers of whiskey a day. If detected in taking a third or fourth drink, by his good old wife, she proceeded at once to pull his gray hair vigorously until he would promise to do so no more.
“One Sunday morning in mid-summer the good old wife went to church very early, leaving Tim to follow when ready to do so. This was Tim’s opportunity, so instead of two jiggers from the beloved jug, he took four—four big ones, and then followed the old lady to the church, singing softly and gleefully to himself as he walked cheerfully along.
“Arrived at church he sat down near the open window, and his system cleared of waste material and a painful conscience, he soon dropped off to sleep. A young kitten climbed in the window, took an exploring expedition out along the back of the seat, climbed up Tim’s passive arm and began to smell his whiskers. Scenting nothing dangerous, the kitty jumped to the top of his bald head and sat down to observe the house.
“A wasp flew by, and kitty attempted to catch it, lost her equilibrium and was falling backwards when she grabbed at Tim’s straggling locks of hair with both front feet and began to climb back to her lofty perch again; then the congregation was startled by Tim’s loud expostulations:
“‘Hey, Nora! that’s anuff! Pon me sowl oi only tuck four little nips from th’ joog, and bedad yee’r pulling all th’ hair out av me head! And how the divil did yee’s foind it out, anyhow, because oi wint down cellar in th’ dark and drank wid me oyes shut!’”
The author smiled at the bit of humor, and turned to the bed with a sigh of relief—only to discover that the old man had died while he wrote.
Love in a lumber camp is as full of romance as love in a king’s court; for wherever love sets up her throne the world must bow down and recognize the Queen of Hearts. Jack Cleveland had been Rhoda Carson’s accepted lover ever since she came to be cook’s assistant in the big camp run by Reuben Harris, and this was her second winter in the camp. They expected to get married when they went back to civilization in the spring.
In January Walter Jackson, of Maine, came to work on the job, and Rhoda was fairly hypnotized by his manly beauty and robust health. Before the first week was out Jack saw how things were going, but still hoped Rhoda would get over her infatuation and come back to her old love. But Rhoda quarreled with Jack deliberately and after due meditation. She even insinuated that she would be happier if he left the job.
Poor Jack was awfully broken up over the affair, and would have gone away with his broken heart, but he was foreman and couldn’t leave his employer until after the drive was out of the creek. For two months previous to the spring flood Rhoda did not speak to Jack, but spent a great many Sundays playing checkers with Walter in the big dining room, and her merry laughter went straight to poor Jack’s heart. He had given her up, but his love for her was greater than ever before.
The day the flood came, and they were starting the big jams of logs far up the creek, Rhoda stood on the high bank near the camp to watch the logs sluice through the narrow channel; for at this point the creek cut through a rise of ground, with banks of red clay on both sides rising as much as twelve feet above the water. It was very exciting to watch the great logs dart through this narrow channel and pitch over the falls 200 feet further down the stream.
While she watched, a great mass of logs came sweeping down the stream and jammed at the head of the narrow channel. Other logs piled up against the jam. Then the men came and boldly walked out on the tumbled jam and tried to pry it loose with their cant hooks. All at once the great jam started, and the men ran back over the logs to a low place in the bank and came ashore. No, not all the men came ashore, for Walter Jackson made a mis-step and fell with one leg pinned between two logs.
It was lucky for Walter that the jam stopped before reaching the falls, for he was unable to extricate himself, and would surely have gone over and lost his life. Even now he must have assistance before the jam started again, which was sure to occur, for the water was rising so fast behind the logs that it must surely break loose in a few minutes. The danger was so great that none of the men would venture on the jam again, and Walter was given up by those who stood helplessly on the bank and waited for the end.
At this moment Jack Cleveland came upon the scene and saw his rival lying helplessly out on the logs. Did a gleam of triumph flash through his heart? No one will ever know, for Rhoda came up to him and shouted in his ear: “Can you save him, Jack?” Ah, did he catch a gleam of the old time love in her blue eyes? And was it this that urged him on?
Taking a cant hook from one of the men, he leaped down upon the creaking and surging logs and carefully walked down to where Walter lay. With a strong pry on the log that pinned his rival fast, he parted the logs, then took hold of the prostrate man and lifted him to his feet. But his leg was injured so badly that Walter could not walk. Dropping his cant hook, Jack picked Walter up and staggered with his heavy load toward the bank. The men reached down and took Walter by the arms and were lifting him to safety when the great jam started. They saved Walter, but Jack was moving on with the logs!
Rhoda saw his danger and ran a few rods further down the stream, threw herself on the ground and reached far down to give Jack her hands. In his desperation he lay hold of them with a firm grasp and Rhoda braced herself for a mighty pull. But she was now too far over the bank to gain her poise again, and, with a scream that sounded above the roar of the water, she pitched down upon the head of her jilted lover, and together they went over the falls. He was holding her in his arms when they went over, and then the terrible jam of logs dashed down upon them, while the horrified men on the bank looked helplessly into each other’s eyes and groaned with mental pain.
In the village graveyard there are two stones standing side by side, where an old woodsman, now bent with age, visits every spring and places a bunch of flowers between the two. It is Walter Jackson. When he goes away the curious people go to the spot and read the card attached to the flowers: “Jack and Rhoda—They died for me. Even the gods could do no greater thing.”
Foster surely knew what it was to be homesick when he wrote those lines. He knew the heart-aches of a homesick boy. What difference whether the homesick boy is white or black? The heart-aches are just the same; the longings just as sad, the memories just as sweet, the absent parents just as sacred, the absent brothers and sisters just as dear. That song makes the greatest appeal to human hearts for sympathy of any song ever sung—sympathy for the black or white boy obliged to go away from home and leave those he loves best on earth.
In my mind’s eye I see Foster’s little black boy who is sold into slavery and driven far away from the banks of the Suanee river to the cotton fields of the Southwest. Perhaps not one soul in all the world, besides his mother and little brothers, ever gave the poor slave boy a single thought after he was driven out of sight of the old cabin home. Other boys going away from home—white boys of those days, had all the world before them; but the poor slave boy had only his chains and his broken heart.
I see him lying in his hard bed of straw at night, with the storms howling around the cabin and the fading fire sending out only a few feeble rays of light—I see the homesick lad lying with his face buried in his hands and threading the old paths that lead up to his mother’s cabin through his mind. He sees the dear old river and the wild fowls resting on the bosom of the water. He sees his dear old mother sleeping in the old familiar bed where he lay when a baby. He sees his younger brother sleeping on the bed of straw near the hearth, his black face turned up for the moon beams to write lines of tenderness and love on each well remembered cheek. Outside the humble door the shaggy watchdog watches over the family that owns nothing but their wrongs.
And, with my mind on that homesick boy, I hear him sobbing, while the coarse sleeve of his soiled shirt absorbs the bitter tears that are known only to the great God who has commanded every one to love his neighbor as himself. In his ears the hum of the bees is still heard, and the music of his father’s banjo comes back on the wings of memory, like the odor of funeral-smelling flowers coming back from the grave of his buried hopes. The darkie boy at his saddest best.
The homesick boy of Foster’s song is not the bad nigger, full of nigger gin and hatred and evil intentions. The slave boy in whom you see only centuries of wrongs and oppressions is the picture in Foster’s immortal song.
Oh, the world would be better if every one had experienced a season of homesick longings, and cried themselves to sleep with the image of absent loved ones painted on their mind with the brush of tenderness. Better if all had wrongs to remember, and oppressions to leave scars on their souls that would make them feel kinship towards all the unfortunate who must suffer and bear their burdens alone.
It is a well known sociological fact that those who suffer hardships and privations have more tender feelings for the poor and unfortunate, than those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and never intermingled with the people of the lower world. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few. When you find a wealthy person who feels charitable and kind towards all the world, that person has suffered heart-aches, too. He wants the sympathy of those who have suffered like he has. There is a fraternal feeling in his heart for the unfortunate, planted there by his own heart-aches and watered with his own tears. A man who has never known a heart-ache, never gives a single thought to the homesick boy who longed for his Suanee river home.
Of late I have found a very good and sincere friend who has, since then been an actual inspiration to me. For many years we knew of each other’s existence, but we did not move in the same orbit, one might say, so we never met to touch and smile as we passed each other in the busy pursuits of life. We seemed to pass each other in the dark, and so far apart that our binnacle lights could only be dimly seen away off in the gloom of the night.
And all the time we were dreaming the same dreams, cultivating the same love, nourishing the same hope, fanning the same laudable ambition, admiring the same poems, worshipping the same God of Nature. And we continued to pass in the dark. I had my struggles and deferred hopes and pinching poverty and unsatisfied desires, mellowed and made smooth, however, with the love of friends and companions who lived with me in the broad daylight of recognition and mental appreciation; and he had his friends and hopes and dreams and slights and heart-affecting episodes and burning ambition and love of humanity—and thus we continued to pass and repass in the dark.
Dimly and intermittingly the thought began to develop and dangle before our mental eyes that some day the lights would grow brighter in our binnacles, the shadows become less opaque and the distance diminish when passing by. The thought waves we were setting in motion as we moved around in our orbits, came together and intermingled and blended in mutual harmony, and moved us together in our wake, drawing us closer together, even when passing in the dark. And our binnacle lights grew brighter and finally dispelled the darkness so much that we no longer passed unrecognized, but too far apart to hail each other on the social sea.
What strange and subtle influence was it that planted the seeds of a mutual desire in each heart, that some day in passing, we could call across the narrow sea and hear the sound of each other’s voice? Was it caused by the thought waves that came over the mysterious dream sea and beat softly on the sides of our spiritual ship? Mutual confessions afterwards revealed the fact that our final meeting was not by accident, but through the individual, independent, unknown designs of each other. We felt the approach of each other’s frail boat while still in the dark distance, and realized that we were soon to meet and touch, with a hand-shake and a heart-ache that would never cease nor diminish until we have accomplished something to light the darkness where other poor mariners on the stormy sea of life pass each other, with no binnacle lights shining out over the troubled water, and no friendly call coming out of the darkness to those in distress.
No man can do successful work alone. We need the help and the moral support and the sincere appreciation of all those whom we know to be in sympathy with souls who are still pulling against the stream and through the darkness of obscurity and neglect. Every one of us have friends who pass us in the dark—friends that we could sincerely love and respect, and who could aid us and cheer us as we pull against the streams of life with the sad realization that sooner or later, we shall all be washed away.
Let us get closer together. Let us flash the binnacle light of love and God speed and good cheer as we pass in the dark. Too often we turn down the light at the approach of an unknown ship, and use our utmost endeavors to pass unseen and unknown. Is it because our mutual thoughts are out of tune?
And would it be thus if we were all mutually working for the uplifting of humanity? Would it be thus if we were all willing to throw out a line to the human boats drifting, without a rudder, down the rapids of poverty and want?
We are all ultimately going out on the unknown sea—why not sail closer together on the sea of life? Soon we will drift so far apart that absolute darkness will hide us from the living world; so, while we live let us avoid passing friends without calling to them over the water.
Passing through a country graveyard one day last summer, and reading the sad stories engraved on the many head stones, I was attracted by the silent voice of one particular stone, erected over the grave of a six-year-old boy: “How Many Hopes Lie Buried Here!” Was it an exclamation, or an interrogation? How many hopes? Only the fathers and mothers can truly tell who have buried hopes in similar graves.
These bereaved parents had pictured their baby boy as a man, going out into the world to accomplish great things and fill their declining years with pleasure and delight.
Often they had pictured their boy in his manly beauty, able to defend himself from the enemies that always cross the path of the successful, and attempt to retard their progress. They had pictured him on the stage of life swaying men with the power of his logic and his persuasive voice. Men were cheering at the bare mention of his name, for he had taught the people to love him and believe in him.
They saw him holding high positions in the social and political world, and always going higher, always gaining more and more, always accomplishing greater things—ah, perhaps holding the highest office in the land—President of the United States!
Or they may have been more modest in their hopes. They may have seen their boy, grown to sturdy manhood, following the plow and reaping the golden grain; and, instead of going out into the world to win glory and fame, they may have pictured him contented in the old home, sitting with them in the evening under the vine clad porch and discussing the modest hopes of the village people.
Great hopes are not always dreams of future glory and fame. The modest life and unostentatious efforts of the humble worker bring greater joys to some hearts than all the glories of political success. So the hopes that are buried with a favorite child are as many and as varied as the flowers of the hills and meadows.
But, whatever the hopes, the heart-aches are ever as deep and pathetic, and the tears as bitter with regret.
Ingratitude is the crime of weak, inferior intellects. The man who will eagerly accept favors of another, and not feel grateful towards the donor afterwards, displays the coarse inferiority of the brute. The savages and barbarians are noted for their spirit of gratitude. They never forget a kindness. The genuine superlative ingrate is generally the spectacular white man. The man in whom vanity and self-interest predominates all the finer feelings of the soul.
Very often he is a self-sainted molder of public opinion, standing high in the church and political circles, with an inordinate appetite for public position where he can be observed by the passing world. He is the self-stuffed hypocrite who pretends to love humanity—for the profit it will bring him.
I have in my mind a parasitical vampire in human form who had a friend moving in political circles where railroad passes where supposed to be gifts of friendship. This was before the anti-free pass law came into effect. The parasite begged his friend to secure a pass for him, and it was secured and given to him, midst a shower of profound thanks and pledges of eternal gratefulness. The pass was used to a gluttonous extent, and renewed at its expiration, and again accepted with many obsequious bows and renewed pledges of everlasting friendship.
A few years ago the friend died, and his relatives expected words of kindly remembrance from the parasite. Even the dead man’s enemies spoke kindly of him after death had silenced his tongue and put the eternal chill upon his warm heart. It is one feature of our higher civilization to always speak well of the dead—to overlook the dead man’s faults and remember only his good qualities. To spurn the dead body of one’s fellow man is considered cowardly, dastardly and inhuman. But when a supposed friend turns on the body of one whom he made a victim of his hypocrisy and deceit while living, and stings the dead with the venom of a treacherous viper, the world looks on and blushes for very shame.
This was the case with the parasite I have referred to. No sooner had the breath left the body of the man who had so often befriended him, than he began circulating stories that told how corrupt his dead friend had always been during life.
Did the public applaud the ungrateful parasite? Did he gain favor from even the dead man’s most bitter enemies? Far from it! Those who remembered how the fawning sycophant had groveled at the feet of the dead man for the favors so lavishly bestowed while life lasted, had only feelings of contempt for the cowardly traducer of a dead friend’s character.
The world said: “If the dead man was as bad and corrupt as this false friend paints him, why did he wait until after death has sealed his tongue with the lock of eternal silence? Why did he court the dead man’s society as long as there was a favor within reach? Was it not his sacred duty to reform the corrupt man, instead of sharing gluttonously all the good things with him, with the greed of a vampire sucking the life’s blood from a sleeping child?”
The story he now tells of his dead friend is but the flapping wings of the vampire fanning his new victims to sleep while he sucks favors from the veins of their unsuspecting generosity. Once a parasite, always a parasite, and the attempt to build a character out of abuse heaped upon the memory of a dead friend, is but wasted energy. The public is a pretty good judge of humanity, and the human vampire can not paint his wings and pass for a dove, no odds how saint-like he may “coo” to the other birds of prey.
Another case of ingratitude came to me just the other day: One man asked another for a loan of $200. It was taking great risks to loan the fellow anything, but the friend took chances and loaned him half as much as he asked for. Now the fellow hasn’t a single kind word to speak of the generous lender. This is not only injuring the man who so kindly befriended him, but the abuse may sour the lender against humanity in general, as some day some other honest but unfortunate man may be turned away empty handed, on account of the wound made by the ingratitude of the human parasite.
Those who are not thankful for small favors, are absolutely barren of gratitude, and deserve no favors at all. And where there is no gratitude there are no generous impulses, no spirit of charity, no love for humanity, either dead or alive. And the world is full of them. I have only referred to two cases—two of the most common cases—every reader knows of a dozen other cases. Ingratitude is the white man’s great sin against humanity.
Sitting at the window one cold frosty morning I saw little Eva Yarnell passing the house with a bundle of clothes under each arm. Eva is a girl of twelve years, and an orphan. Her mother died when she was but six years old. I’ve always been interested in the child because she had been shifted from pillar to post, as the saying goes, one relative keeping the little girl as long as their means lasted, when she would be moved on to another aunt or uncle or cousin or grandmother. Her relatives were all poor, and it seemed as though Providence was forcing little Eva to share all the poverty and want of her relatives.
She has at times been a schoolmate of my boy, so when he came into the room I asked him where little Eva was moving to.
“Oh, she’s all right now, papa!” the boy exclaimed. “She’s going to live with Bingman’s, just above town, on a farm. She’s such a good worker, and I believe Mrs. Bingman will appreciate Eva and make it pleasant for her. The poor child is just about naked, and I’m sure Mrs. Bingman will dress her better than she was ever dressed in her life.”
I caught my boy’s hopeful feeling and inwardly rejoiced over little Eva’s good fortune. But after sitting for a time thinking about the life of orphan Eva, it struck me forcibly about the child’s recommendation. “She’s such a good worker,” my boy said. Working her way through life “at the age of twelve.” “What an age! What a stern life for a girl of twelve! God help you, child, and send you a kind mistress!” I said aloud, as I turned to my desk with a queer sad feeling tugging at my heart.
Lately I had written a sketch describing the heart-aches of Foster’s colored boy, of whom he sang in the tender words of “The Old Folks at Home,”—the far off home on the Suanee river; and I had cried over the boy I had pictured in my mind, because I, too, have suffered with heart-aches and loneliness and soul hunger. But here was a little homeless girl who could never more dream of a mother back in the old home. There was no one at home to wish her back again, not even a home. There was no one waiting with heart-aches to see her, unless there are heart-aches beyond the grave.
I opened the door to catch a last glimpse of the little orphan and saw her bravely trudging up the wet street, occasionally shifting the bundles from one arm to the other, for one of the bundles was much larger than the other—so large that it cramped her chubby arm while holding it close to her body.
“Such a good worker!” The words persisted in coming back to me, leaving a sadness at my heart that could not be shaken off. How long has she been a good worker? When did she first learn how to work? Such an age for such a grand reputation!
I thought of the drones all over the country who never win such a reputation, though they live on the fat of the land, and feel as far above little Eva Yarnell as the gods are supposed to feel above a toad. In whom, I wonder, do the gods feel the most interest—in Eva Yarnell, or in the fat and sleek drones who sit in upholstered chairs and try to mold the opinions of the world.
I do not know—I can not believe that this world is ruled by the hand of love, no odds whether that hand is divine or not. Law is stern, severe and unrelenting; the one side padded with the down of mercy, but the reverse side rough with cruel thorns and painful projections. And the reverse side seems always turned towards the weak and the helpless—towards the motherless orphan I had in my mind—little Eva Yarnell.
“Such a worker!” Such an age! God send her kind mistress and a sheltering home!
There is a difference between loving the world for the world’s wealth’s sake, and loving the world for the sake of humanity. There is often this difference between the patriotism of men. Some patriots love the surface of the world where they are located far more than they love the people who share it with them. Some patriots love the wealthy of their neighboring countries, while they are totally indifferent towards the toiling poor of that same country. In America the people who love humanity for humanity’s sake, give their sympathies to the plundered and outraged peasantry of Russia, while those who love the world for wealth’s sake give their sympathies to Emperor Nicholas and the parasitical royalty of that unhappy country.
This is why the United States are not unanimously in sympathy with the oppressed people of all other countries—the reason why the people of this country are not unanimously in sympathy with the toilers of our own land—the difference between loving the world’s wealth, and the world’s people. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is possible only where worldly interests are mutual and agreeable. Where two men are striving for the dirty dollar in sight, love is sure to dodge out of sight and silently steal away.
Even where men love the world for humanity’s sake, there is a difference in the intensity of that love. Some men love with a hopeful optimistical fervor, dreaming of a day when there shall be no oppression or plundering of the weak by the powerful. They see the millennium of earthly tranquillity and peace in the near future, when all men shall be brothers, and co-operation shall take the place of bitter competition, and motherhood and childhood shall be the great care and protection of the nation, and no one shall go to bed and cry themselves to sleep to forget the pangs of hunger and drown the memory of personal wrongs.
In most cases these hopeful altruists never suffered real hunger or bitter wrongs. They have always had enough of the world’s material wealth to drive the wolf of hunger away from their door, and only see the real poor through their dreams. Once in my life I cried for bread when there was not a crumb in my mother’s house, nor even a single penny to buy bread. It was only for one day, but the horror of that one day pictured poverty to my youthful mind in all its horrible and unrelenting want and squalor. And the old gloom-blistered memory of that one day of unsatisfied hunger haunts me still, like the recollections of the most poignant pain.
I firmly believe that that recollection of absolute poverty in my childhood days is what makes my love for humanity so hopeless and moist with despondent tears. I can not even dream of a day when love and justice will rule the world. Greed, greater than all else, human greed predominates over all the world. “For what will a man not give in exchange for his own life?” This can be carried still lower and made to read, “For what will a man not sacrifice for his own comfort?” And when it comes to a sacrifice, who so easy to offer up as the “helpless poor?”
Abraham hadn’t the remotest idea of offering himself up on the altar he had built. Helpless Isaac would have been the victim, had not the more helpless ram appeared tangled in the bushes, and was substituted for the lad.
The primitive originators of the sacrificial altar had only the weak and helpless and defenseless in mind as the intended sacrifice to their God. The innocence of the lamb and the dove did not appeal to their calloused hearts. They were intent on saving themselves, even though the whole world must be sacrificed.
That spirit is still prevailing where the weak and the strong meet in the struggle for existence, and the weak and innocent do not appeal to sympathetic hearts when they ask for mercy. The business and commercial altars must have a sacrifice for the benefit of the strong. This picture is always before me. My love for the world is like the love of a despondent mother for her sick child.
No one who has never lived near an Indian school has any idea of the loneliness and homesickness that fills the poor little hearts of the Indian youths who have been torn away from the rude Indian home and herded together between gloomy brick walls, so different from the teepee of their semi-savage parents. The government department in charge of these schools talk of abolishing the schools located at a distance from the reservations, and building school houses right in the village, retaining only four such schools as that of Carlisle, Pa., to serve as high schools for the larger youths.
I believe there is much sense and good judgment in this. Civilization should not force painful conditions upon the children of our copper-skinned wards.
I recall to mind the desertion of five little Indian boys from a school near which the writer spent several years, and a more pathetic tale never was told. Like the instinct of bees and animals, these Indian boys knew that their native village lay to the southwest of the school, and when homesickness felt so unbearable that it could not be endured, they stole from their dormitory one dark night in November, swam the river and started to climb the rugged side of the great Rocky Mountains.
Little Jake Hargison was but six years old, and the baby of the deserters, but he struggled through the dark and up the rocky side of the towering mountain with courage stimulated by the hope of seeing home and parents within a few days. Being only boys, they had not provided food for the journey, each lad carrying only a small lunch in his pockets.
At daylight they were far up on the mountain side, half frozen; for they had come to an impassable cliff and so were obliged to wait until the daylight came, not daring to build a fire lest it be seen from the valley where the school buildings were located.
It was past noon when they finally reached the top of the mountain and struck out boldly to cross the broad mesa extending far to the southwest. Far in the distance they could see the mountain range at whose foot nestled the Indian village they called home. They knew it was seventy-five long miles away, but they never flinched or thought of turning back.
Late in the afternoon the sky grew gray with bleak clouds, and the northeast wind chilled them to the bone. There were already four inches of snow on the mesa, and the eldest of the boys knew instinctively that another snow storm was in the air. But they had on stout government shoes, and did not fear the snow.
By dark the snow storm burst on them in all the fury of a Rocky Mountain blizzard, and the boys began to search for a sheltering rock. Fortunately they came to the brow of a great range of mountains, and down below the rim rock they knew there would be shelter from the storm and the winds. Slowly and tortuously the boys climbed down through a crevice in the great rim rock, and 200 feet below they came to a level plateau, where they gathered wood and built a fire close up to the perpendicular wall.
Sitting by the warm fire they ate their lunch, having saved it all through the weary day, and they could hear the storm king howling through the spruce trees and shrieking through the canyons on either side.
And where they had camped the snow was drifting over the cliff and falling upon them very fast. They knew the history of these snow drifts—knew that the snow sometimes stacked up to the depth of fifty feet on the lee side of the rim rock, but it was too late to retreat now.
At midnight their fuel became exhausted, and the snow drift was so deep that they could not get more. Little Jake complained of being sleepy, and his older brother sang an Indian song to keep him awake. The little fellow began to repeat the prayer his teacher taught him, and fell asleep with the words still on his lips. The others soon followed him into dreamland, and all night long the merciless snow drifted over the tall rock and buried them under many feet of spotless robes. The winds howled, the storm shrieked and groaned and higher the snow drift grew upon them.
Late in July a prospecting party found them, the elder brother holding little Jake in his stiffened arms.
In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, and in the name of Him who died for men, I would make a plea for the little children who are born into the world to be landless and homeless through life. Does it seem possible to the thickest headed thinker that a just God would send children into a world already privately owned by previous generations? Are God’s laws similar to the European laws of primogeniture, giving the best of all to the first born—to the first generations, and to be handed down from father to son, to hold and own forever?
I can’t believe that there is any priority handed down to a special few from the God of All. Every sense of common justice rebels at such an idea. If it is our God, and our heaven, and our eternity, it must then surely be our earth, our land, and our oceans, and our mountains, and our air. Will a higher civilization recognize this picture of simple justice? And will we reach a higher state of civilization without giving all an equal share in God and the earth?
I do not know. It might create serious complications to remove the priority claim of the selected few who now claim the natural wealth of the world. The present state and condition of the social world and the industrial world may be exactly as God wishes it to be. Every one must answer this question for himself; for while it is true that God created man, every individual creature has a peculiar way of forming the character and attributes of his God. Men still quote scripture to prove that God believed in human slavery. If this is true, then God surely allowed little innocent babes to be born into slavery, and to be driven by the lash from the cradle to the grave.
If this is true, then child labor in our mills and factories for wages, is not nearly so horrible as chattel slavery, and God must look with approbation at the little consumptive boy or girl dying by inches while watching the shuttles fly back and forth in the loom, of which they are part of the machinery.
These questions each one must settle for himself; but doesn’t it seem more natural and human to decide in favor of the children? When you look into the innocent eyes of the child sitting in its mother’s arms, can you consign that child to the slavery of the factories and mills, and then wash your conscience clean with the wet sponge of tearful prayer? Sit right up straight in your chair at this very minute and decide the case between yourself and the children and your God—did God, or did he not send these helpless and dependent children into the world to become mere slaves, and to live landless and homeless until he calls them hence? Yes?
I do not know; yet the longings and yearnings of my soul cry out always for immortality. I seem to hope always that somewhere in the universe there is stored away a great pity that responds to the longings and yearnings of my soul, and stands ready to help me when the earth fades away from sight and the shadows fall thick and deep around me. I do not know. The desire in my soul is father to my trembling hope, and hope may pass away when life goes out into the unknown and my body of clay is left to crumble and decay and disintegrate and go back to the original elements.
There will be a physical change, the light and heat and movement will go out of my body, like the light blown out in a vacant house when the inhabitants move away. But whither goes the inhabitants that now dwell within me when the lights are blown out and the doors locked and sealed with the eternal lock that will not open to the key of time, I do not know.
In my sober contemplation of all that lies before, it seems to me that love and justice and mercy and hope are of ephemeral existence if they last only while the light is in the body. And I ask myself: “Is there no life and light and mercy and hope and pity beyond these things we feel and hear and see? Are we to suffer injustice during life that will never be righted for us? Are we to love, and lose the object of our love, and never find it again? Are these bright minds of ours, so capable of dreaming such beautiful dreams, to be brought to the very highest possible heights of intelligence, and then suddenly be snuffed out, like blowing the lighted flame from a candle, leaving all in darkness and gloom?”
I do not know. The prophets and philosophers were only men, with yearnings and longings like my own, and as weak and helpless to pull aside the curtains and peep into the future as I find myself. And yet I am not satisfied to die forever; for I do know that there is an eternity for all these things existing in space. Space is eternity itself. The human mind can not picture a condition when worlds and planets and space will be no more. Nothing can come from nothing, neither can matter pass into nothing and leave no trace behind. The length of the universe is eternity, and so is the width and the breadth. It can not pass away and leave but a hole, for even a hole must have sides and dimensions.
I do not know; perhaps the ox in the field knows more about immortality than man, perhaps less, perhaps nothing at all. It would not need to know much about it to outstrip me in knowledge on this one particular subject. He may have longings and yearnings, the same as me, for how shall the ox receive his share of justice and equity if he passes away with this life and is known no more?
I do not know; justice must surely mean the same rewards for the ox as it means for man, for how can simple justice discriminate between animals, and still remain simple justice? And the man who is willing to grasp an immortality that discriminates between him and the ox, is neither merciful, charitable, nor just. Immortality must surely embrace all the living creatures, or part of life would be left behind, and immortality would be incomplete and imperfect. God must be the God of all. If the ox is an inferior creature, the fault lies with the creator and not with the created thing. If there is no justice and mercy for the ox, then justice and mercy have limits, and God is not so powerful to save his creatures as he is to create them.
I do not know; my faith in immortality may be the child of my hopes and longings. If I am always to be I always was in existence somewhere. I am positively certain that I know of no evidence to prove a past existence, for hope does not lead backward. Hope points always ahead, from where the winds of the future are always blowing. I know that I desire to live always, to think always, to hope always, to love on and on forever and ever.
Sentiment is a creature of education. A child will naturally imitate its parents. If they are unfeeling and cruel, the child will be the same, at least until it falls under a different influence. Sentiment is not inherited. The average child is cruel and heartless until old enough to imitate the sentimental spirit of old people. Therefore, it should be the first lesson impressed upon the child mind that cruelty and wanton heartlessness is brutal, and does not belong to civilized man.
In my own case I have always been opposed to keeping pet animals or birds confined in a cage—no, not always: When a boy I was always catching birds and squirrels and rabbits to start a menagerie. I remember one time of keeping a red squirrel in a cage for two years. I hadn’t then learned that kindness to the weakest of God’s creatures shows a largeness of the human heart. I was then a lad of fifteen years.
But one day while watching the red squirrel leaping from one side of the cage to the bottom, then bounding to the other side and back again, and on to the opposite side and back again, over and over again, all through the day, and day after day, for the exercise it needed to keep its health—one day while watching the poor imprisoned animal at its daily exercise, the thought came to me that the little animal would be so much happier outside the cage. Then it dawned on me that I was simply keeping the poor thing imprisoned to gratify my own selfish pleasure. Simply to look at and enjoy its efforts to make life tolerable under such distressing conditions. I had actually been enjoying the restless efforts of the squirrel to make prison life healthful; for had the animal sat down to mourn and pout and sorrow for the freedom it once enjoyed, it would have died in a few weeks.
My heart smote me. I saw what a cruel jailor I had been. It’s bad enough to imprison bad men and shut them away from the sunlight and flowers and the smiles of good women and children, just as though darkness and heartaches and misery would make a human being better. But here I was imprisoning an innocent animal simply for the selfish pleasure that comes from the possession of things not justly my own. Like the millionaire who gets a monopoly on the necessaries of life, and forces the people to pay tribute into his coffers for the sole and only pleasure of possessing more dollars than his neighbors.
If he has sentiment enough to use those dollars for the benefit of civilization and to relieve the distress of the people, it is not so bad, but hoarding up for the pleasure that comes from sheer possession, is worse than brutal—it is maniacal.
Well, my conscience smote me on the educated end of my sentiment, and one day I opened the cage and let the squirrel go back to the woods. I had learned a lesson I never forgot. The awakened sentiment in my soul never slumbered again.
Sentiment is contagious. My boy caught the happy mental disorder much earlier than his father did. A few weeks ago, he, too, started a menagerie. He caught two mice and put them in a cage. At the end of two weeks his young heart felt the sentimental pangs of conscience, and he liberated his unwilling prisoners.
The world is growing better. The boy’s sentiment did as much for him in two weeks as mine did for me in two years. The two liberated mice may do me a trifle of damage while at large, but when I consider that the boy let his heart out at the same time he liberated the mice, I knew the world would be the gainer in the end.
Sorrow is not always gruesome and heart-breaking. It has a lifetime influence, providing the fiber of the soul is strong enough to withstand the strain. Not long ago there was a musical contest in a Pennsylvania city, and one of the young ladies to take part in it had given up the thought of going into the contest, because her mother lay at the point of death the day previous to the departure of the companies who were going to the distant city to show what their town could do in a musical way.
But during the night the mother’s condition changed for the better, and she urged her daughter to go; for on her the town depended to bring back some of the prizes to be given to the sweetest singers of the state.
And so she went, her heart very much lighter since the happy change in her mother’s condition. Anyhow, going out into the world to compete for a prize, with some hope of winning, has a buoyant effect on the heart. Oh, if all the world could but feel a slight hope of winning a prize when starting out in the world, how much happier the world would be! But to most of the average people the world’s prizes are hanging up so distressingly high that only the well prepared have any chance of winning them.
The parents who carelessly or helplessly send their children out into the world uneducated, to compete with college graduates, are sending them into a hard proposition. And the state government that will sleep while one portion of the people are being educated to take care of themselves, and a larger number are growing up in helpless ignorance and sent out into the world to compete with the few educated ones—the state or public that can sleep while such an injustice is being perpetrated on the weakest and most helpless of its subjects, needs to have its conscience touched with the awakening finger of justice. The boasting cry that in this country everybody’s child has an equal opportunity to gain a livelihood, is as false as hell. There are colleges in our so-called free land where the son of a ditch digger or a washerwoman could no more enter than a miserly rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven.
But I have drifted. I can’t help but drift. Every time I try to paint a picture, the injustice of the unjust crowd in and fill the distant perspective, and get painted into the sunset and change the gold into blackened lead.
Just one hour before the young lady was to go on the stage to sing her solo, a dispatch brought the sad and shocking news that her mother was dead. Nobody who knew of the sad news thought for a moment that the bereaved and heartbroken girl would attempt to sing. They were all disappointed, of course, but who could ask her to go on the stage with a sorrow as deep as hers? But she did not break down. Oh, she had been so confident of winning the prize, and her town’s people would be so greatly disappointed if she failed!
She told the manager she would try, providing he would tell the audience of her great sorrow. She wanted the sympathy of the people—it would give her strength, while it would give them patience and tolerance.
After the manager had gone before the footlights and told the sad story the people waited in silence for the young singer to appear. There was no applause. The people felt the presence of death, or sorrow and heart aches. The accompanist struck the first note and the brave girl commenced to sing. The song was suitable for a sad heart to sing. She could sing her sorrow from the depths of her soul.
The crowded house sat spellbound. That song from her soul of sorrow thrilled every heart as it had never been thrilled before. The notes, clear and sweet, came laden with the tears her brave soul was holding back. The people sat in deep silence, but with beating and throbbing hearts and active minds. They pictured the dead mother in that distant town, sleeping silence—ah, never again, never to awaken to greet her daughter on her return.
And the singer pictured that angeled mother listening from that far off shore, and she sang to her while the audience listened. For as much as a minute the people sat in silence after the singer had left the stage, and then the cheers and tears told of the prize she had won.
My last visit to the home of my childhood filled me with gloomy thoughts. Nothing remained of the old home but the ruins of the cellar walls. The house had been torn down and removed from the spot. I had expected to wander through the deserted rooms and try to recall the old hopes and memories that filled my soul when I lived in the old log cottage. These memories came back but slowly, because the old landmarks had been removed and there was nothing to suggest the old incidents that filled my life when a boy.
The location of the house was in a deep, narrow valley, with hills on three sides and a dense woods in front, with no other human habitation in sight. It was in this secluded spot I dreamed the dreams of dissatisfied youth. And yet these dreams are very dear to me now, as I dig them out of memory, clothed in their old rags and hunger and famished ambition. The memories of the pain I suffered in this dreamy spot came back to me like old friends who suffered with me in those days.
It was here that I held my dear old father’s hand while he passed over the bar and drifted out on the Sea of Death. How plainly the scene comes back to me as I stand on the crumbling walls and recall every feature of the room in which he passed away. He asked for me in the last hour and requested me to stay with him. Perhaps he understood me better than the older boys, or he may have believed that I understood him best of all the family.
It was not his desire to go. He had hoped for ten more years of life, but now he realized that the end was near at hand. He spoke not a word of being prepared to go nor did he ask me to meet him in heaven. He belonged to the class of thinkers who do not know, and, realizing that he knew nothing of the future, did not speculate on possibilities. The last words he said were: “You may look upon men when dying, but ah, my son, you will never know what death is until you come to die yourself!”
These words have haunted me all through life, and I often think of the dreaded experience he prophesied for me. At that hour I could have gone away with him contentedly, and I really wished then, while I held his hand, that we two could go out together, and I never, never return.
But I could not keep my mind on death even then; for I noted the droning of a bumble bee that beats its head against the window and tried to escape from the room. And while looking at the bee I noted the voice of a catbird out in the orchard, singing his sweetest notes. I tried to locate him, and did finally detect him sitting on the branch of an apple tree father had planted for me when I was yet a child. Then a bluebird lit on a tall weed just outside the window: the weed bent and the winds caused the bird to dance and sway up and down, and from right to left.
And there was sobbing and crying in the outer room. My old mother was heartbroken at the parting and my older brother was trying to console her. When the catbird flew away, followed by the blue one—the bumble bee found the raised window and flew away. Then I turned to the bed—father had likewise gone away. Only the cold clay remained.
Standing on the ruins of the old home I recalled it all once more as vividly as though it happened but yesterday.
How strangely we live, how strangely we die, how strangely we live on after loved ones have gone from us. How strangely we recall the old scenes when they are suggested to us by a chain of memories passing through our mind. Ah, many of my old hopes and ambitions lie now in ruins more complete than the old walls of my childhood’s home. Many of the people I met in this old home were closely connected with those old hopes that have crumbled into gloomy dreams. Still I live on and hope on—new hopes and a new life.
Today I want to talk to the boys who neglect their mother. They are not all bad boys, but all are careless and thoughtless boys. At an early age these wayward boys go away from home and leave a fond mother to worry and fret and grieve over their absence. Some times they neglect to write home for years and years, leaving the dear old mother to nurse her lonely and hungry heart and hug the old, old memories when her boy was but a child. If any wayward and wandering young man should chance to read these lines—any wayward boy who knows of a mother waiting at home—won’t he sit down this very day and write her a few lines?
I have for a neighbor a loving mother who is wasting her life in grieving for her wayward son. He went away two years ago, and has never written her a single line. He is a wanderer on the earth, working a few weeks at one place, then jumps a freight train and rides to new scenes. About a year ago the mother dreamed an awful dream about her boy. In that vision she was in a strange land sitting under a large tree on a sloping hill, around whose base a railroad curved and stretched out for miles on either side. She looked away to the east, and saw the smoke of an approaching train. It was coming like the wind.
Then she heard the whistles of a locomotive in the west, and looking in that direction she beheld another train sweeping down the track to meet the one coming from the east.
There was only a single track. One of the trains must pull into a switch, or there would be a collision. The trainmen could not see around the curve, and were not aware of the other train’s existence. She rushed to the brow of the hill where she could look down upon the track and took off her skirt and waved it aloft to signal the on-coming trains. Neither engineer saw her, and the trains came rushing onward to their inevitable doom. As the train from the east passed where she stood she saw a man sitting on the bumpers between two red cars. He looked up and waved his hand to her. She recognized the face—it was her son Edward!
Then came the shrill whistles of the two locomotives. The engineers had discovered their danger when too late to save the trains. She stood fascinated and watched the two iron monsters come together with an awful crash. They stood up on end like two angry animals in deadly combat, and the sound of crashing, tumbling cars drowned the noise of the escaping steam. The two locomotives tumbled over, tearing and wrenching iron bars from each other as they fell and then lay with heads together like two giants of the woods who had fought to the death and lay with tooth and claws imbedded in each other’s body. A few freight cars that were standing on end fell over with a crashing sound, a cloud of dust arose from the awful wreck, a hissing sound of escaping steam continued for a few minutes, and then all was still. The hand of death seemed to grasp trains and crews, and silence settled down with an awful significance. She felt herself fainting, just as the moans and cries of human beings in distress reached her ears.
When she came to and looked down upon the wreck it was night, but lanterns flitted here and there on both sides of the dead engines, and a voice asked: “Have we found all the men belonging to the ill-fated crews?” and a voice just below where she stood replied: “Yes, all of the two crews, and the body of a hobo besides—they are all dead but two brakemen, and they are still unconscious.”
She looked down the embankment and saw the dead stretched out upon the ground and at the east end of the line she recognized her son Edward—dead and covered with his own blood.
She screamed aloud and her daughter came into the room to see what was the cause of her alarm. That was a year ago. Her boy has never written since, and she firmly believes her Edward was killed just as she saw in her dream. If he is still alive somewhere in the world, think of the joy he could send her in just a short letter—just enough to show her that he is still alive. Boys, write to your mother. She may be dreaming of you.
Across the river from where I now live stands the old, old house where the man of the wasted life was born. I did not know him as a boy, but the old people of the neighborhood spoke of him as the handsomest boy on the McElhattan side, and the place was noted for handsome people. He was a full grown man when I first saw him, while I was yet a boy. How handsome he was, standing six feet tall, with eyes and hair coal black and a face that showed the brain force seething behind the beautiful mask.
His discontent was transparent to every reader of the human face. Even the droop of his dark mustache reminded one of the weeping willow branches hanging disconsolate over the tomb where sleeps the beloved dead.
When I first met him I was only just awakening to the hopeless condition of my future life. Weak of body and with an untrained intellect, his broad education and power of deep meditation made him to tower above me like a mountain towering above a mouse; but he stooped to meet me half way, showing me the interior of his disappointed soul and receiving my sincere sympathy in exchange. At the hotel, where we many nights slept together in the same bed, the people complained of us talking all night long, to the annoyance of the other lodgers. And it was true. Many the night we lay in the dark and discussed everything on top of the earth, even going out of our sphere to discuss the orthodox dream of heaven.
One night he spoke of the words that should some time decorate his tomb, and I still regret that I never mentioned his request to his relatives and family, and that now his marker does not display these solemn words:
“I am what was, what is, and what is to be; and no living man shall ever roll away the stone that closes the door to the mystery into which I go. What is, is right or else the whole universe is wrong. I am not lost or wasted, for the economy of Nature hoards all the wealth of the world in a grasp that crushes life to get back her own.”
What made this sublime thinker a bit of flotsam on the sea of Time? He told me once when in a confidential mood that the loss of the one woman he loved darkened his life and drove him to drink. The woman married another, and was still living when he told me his story, but he did not tell me who she was, nor whose fault it was that she became lost to him.
How I pitied the big man, whose heart was as tender as that of a refined woman. What a power he could have been in the intellectual world if mated to the one woman he loved. When he lost her his grasp on ambition and enthusiasm weakened and he folded the desires of his soul into a shapeless mass and sat down upon them to brood over his loss.
Poor M——! Chained to his early disappointment, and intellectually so far removed from his plodding neighbors that none thought it necessary to offer him their sympathy. How little the average man knows the average human heart. Education only strengthens the soul’s hunger for sympathy, love and fellowship, and because I sympathized with the man of the wasted life, and he sympathized with me in my almost hopeless struggles, a warm friendship grew up between us, and he allowed me to see farther into the shadows that shrouded his disappointed soul than any of his family ever penetrated.
He was one of those retentive minds that could not forget, and he tried to dull the pain at his heart with drink. Sometimes he would make a strong effort to reform and rebuild his wasted resolutions, and for several months he would toil on the farm like a hired man. But his mind was too active for such a vegetable existence, and his books would take him out of the fields of physical labor. Then the old discontent, the memory of the old love would fill his soul and again he would drown everything in liquor, like a second Edgar Allen Poe. In one of these sprees he died, and his wasted life ended in a death that shocked his many friends.
My boy expressed a fear to go up on to the attic one day recently, and when I asked him what he found to fear up in a dusty old garret, he said there was so much old stuff up there that belonged to people who were dead, and if these old things had memories they must surely be thinking of the old days and the old friends, and had no welcome for the boys of the present generation.
Well, wife and I know the old garret has many memories, or at least articles that suggest old memories, and we seldom make a trip to the old store house of family heirlooms without coming away with a queer feeling of loneliness tugging at our hearts. No doubt the boy has often detected the subdued and solemn expression on our sobered faces; and learned his lesson of awe and veneration from reading the lines and shadows he has so often seen there.
The last time we were up on the garret, the three of us, we set about digging up old memories, because a lady’s side saddle hanging to a rafter started us to digging up some old family lore. The saddle belonged to wife’s great-grandmother, and is almost a century old. It was on this saddle her great-grandmother made the ride of nine miles through the dark to warn her father that burglars were trying to break into their house.
It seems her father sold some cattle and hogs a few days previously and had the money locked up in the bureau of his room. It was for this reason that the daughter and the hired girl were told to take the twins, and the four of them sleep in this particular room every night, while the parents attended camp meeting. Some great revivalist on the style of Peter Cartright was stirring up the people and everybody for miles around flocked to the camp meeting and pitched their tents and were prepared to spend several days on the camp ground.
There were several bad characters in the neighborhood and they knew the old squire had money in the house because he hadn’t been to town since selling the cattle and would hardly carry it with him to camp meeting. On the second night after the squire and his wife had left home three men broke through a kitchen window and began a search of the first floor rooms, knowing the hired man and the boys slept up stairs.
When they discovered that some one inside the squire’s room was holding the bolt in place they threatened to kill everybody inside the room if they didn’t let them in. The twins (girls of six) screamed aloud on hearing this threat, and their older sister called to the hired man up stairs to come to their assistance. But no answer came from the upper precincts. The hired man and the boys were too much scared to even make any reply.
Then it was that the sister unbolted the window and crawled through and dropped to the ground, ran quietly to the stable and saddled her horse, with this very saddle, and rushed off to the distant camp ground through a darkness that would frighten women of less nerve. Almost breathless she reached the camp meeting just when the shouting hilarity was the highest, and was told that her father was at the altar seeking salvation.
Without stopping to ask permission of anybody she walked swiftly up the aisle to where her father was kneeling, recognizing him by the green coat he wore, stooped and whispered in his ear: “Come home, father, at once; there are burglars trying to break into the house!”
“Hell!” he exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the mourner on either side of him, and said no more until he had saddled his own horse just back of the camp ground, and the two galloped back home in time to prevent the robbery. The burglars had taken their own good time to cut a hole through the door, through which they could reach a hand and pull back the wooden bolt; but the brave hired girl had stabbed the hand with a pair of scissors every time it was thrust through, and thus protected the house until the arrival of the squire and his fearless daughter.
The burglar on watch outside the house heard the approaching horses, and warning his two pals inside, they all escaped. Next day the burglar with the scissors wounds on his hands was arrested, and finally confessed and gave the names of his pals, and the trio served two years in prison.
No, the family history doesn’t enlighten us as to whether the old squire went back to camp meeting to resume his prayers for salvation, or not. Quite likely the saving of his cattle and hog money satisfied him for that particular season. Men weren’t as greedy in those days as they are now, and he may have left the great supply of saving grace for others to enjoy.
A short time ago an old schoolmate friend wrote me that they had lost their darling—a baby boy of ten months, and the mother was grieving herself sick over her great loss. “Couldn’t you write something to console her—something to make a bright spot out in the future to look ahead to with hope?” he wrote. How easy to ask this, but how hard to comply. How impossible to wipe away the sorrow from a bleeding heart and persuade the heart to cease bleeding and the bereaved soul to cease its grieving.
After a little thought it struck me forcibly that the memories and recollections of a dead child must always picture the child as it was when death took it away. And I sat down and put myself in that mother’s place and wrote as though I were writing the words of hope that sometime would surely fill her loving soul. I print them now for the hundreds of other sorrowing mothers who see before them, day and night, the dear face of their darling who sleeps out in the church yard, the land where babies never grow old.
I could write out of that mother’s heart, because I, too, have a baby sleeping in the land of perpetual youth. Had she lived she would now be a grown woman—perhaps today weeping over a little grave where her own darling lay sleeping.
I wish I were a Jew. The more I study the situation, the more I wish to be a Jew. I have found fault with the Jews, from the Christian point of view, and I would like to turn around and fire a few broadsides into my delinquent Christian friends from the Hebrew standpoint. Not that I would condemn Jesusism, but to show the Christian world how far they are off the track of the meek and lowly Jesus, when he commanded his followers with a new commandment. Did Jesus mean anything when he said: “A new commandment I give unto you; that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
If I were a Jew I would ask my fellow Christians whether they believe that Christ only loves them after the style and fashion of their love for one another? I would ask them if these great navies and mighty armies of armed men, trained to kill each other in new and improved style, are imitations of Christ’s great love for men? Are England and Germany and France and Russia and the United States and Spain and Italy and all the South American republics loving each other as Christ loved the world? If these are truly Christian nations, then the Jews must take it for granted that they are imitating the love of Jesus, as ordered in the “New Commandment.” If these so-called Christian nations are not obeying the “New Commandment,” then they are not Christian nations, and their pretense is sheer hypocrisy.
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself is poorly displayed in taxing him to build navies for the purpose of killing a lot of other people Christ loved and died for. Christ died to establish universal peace, but to judge him through the work of those who pretend to be his followers, he died for the purpose of ordaining priests and preachers to bless the armies and navies of civilization.
As a boy I was taught to look upon the Jews as the rejecters, betrayers and crucifiers of Christ, the man sent of God to establish peace and good will. I was taught to look upon Judas Iscariot as the meanest of all men—the man who pretended to love Jesus, but who betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. If I were a Jew, I would point to the Christian churches, pretending to love the people as Christ loved them, but openly turning the blessings of Christ from their natural channels of peace, to blessing the armies and navies that go out to do violence. Judas only betrayed Christ once, and was sorry for it, while the Christians betray him every day in the year, and boast of it. They boast of their armies and navies and sing their praises, feeling more secure in the ability of their armed forces than they do in the love of their Christ.
Did the Jews do worse in rejecting Christ, then the Christians do in accepting him, and then disobey the newest commandment that came from his lips? They preach his gospel of peace and then organize for the purpose of destroying peace. If the Christian church turned against militarism, and abandoned the war departments in their efforts to enforce commercialism and the extension of trade, the war-loving people would not contribute their thirty pieces of silver.
If I were a Jew I would set up the character of Judas against the work of the Christians in the betrayal of business.
Judas was part of the original plan—to establish a living example of the perfidy attached to the work of treachery. Have the Christians profited by the example? Have they not deceitfully handed the gospel of Christ over to the enemies of peace? Have they loved one another similar to the love Christ died for? Are the slums of our large cities examples of Christ’s love for the lowly and the oppressed? Is the treatment of the Jews in Christian Russia an example of “Love your neighbor as yourself?” The more I think over the situation, the more I regret that I am not a Jew.
The old people had been living in their village home long before I went there to become their neighbor. They had reared their family of five children in the old house, and they had all married and gone elsewhere to live. The old people were now past 65, and rather old for transplanting in a new home, but the death of a relative brought to their door a small fortune, and the children insisted that they must remove to the city and live in better style, as becomes people in affluent circumstances.
We called on them in the evening of their last day in the old home and found them sitting on the front porch, resting and dreaming after a day of packing up goods for the removal. The old lady had been silently weeping, and her heart was so full of going away that she broke down and tearfully assured us that going away was breaking ties that affect her heart for all time to come.
“Jim and me are too old to be torn up by the roots and transplanted to a town lot. We’ve lived here so long that we can’t ever make ourselves believe that a grander house and a stylish lot of neighbors is to become our home for all time.
“Why, every nook and corner of this old place is peopled with loving memories. The house seems to be a store-house filled with the echoes of our children’s happy voices and their merry laughter. I sometimes even imagine that I hear the prattling echo of little Ruth’s baby voice, the child who died when four years old.
“It may be foolish, Mr. Haiden, but no other house can ever produce the same pleasant illusions. I hear them all, when I listen, just as I heard their real voices in the long ago. But it won’t be so in the new home. They ain’t going to let me take any of the old furniture along—the chairs and the sideboard and the bureau that are all scratched with the hands of the children. And the old pictures of George Washington crossing the Delaware, and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Soldier’s Dream, and the Soldier’s Farewell—they say they’re out of date, and must be packed away on the garret.
“If these old things are out of date, what’s to be said of Jim and me? We love those old pictures and scratched pieces of furniture better than anything that’s new and has no history connected with it. We don’t want to be separated from the past so ruthlessly and violently. It’s bad enough to be torn away from our old friends and acquaintances, and taken so far away and stored away in such a grand house that none of the old neighbors will ever come to see us, and will finally grow indifferent toward us, and blame us for being stuck up and proud, and declare we were glad and willing to move away and sever the ties of love and friendship between us and our rustic neighbors.
“And if our money leaves us as suddenly as it came, and we are obliged to come back here, it will be like a spirit forced to come back to its dead and deserted body. For all these old memories and childish echoes must surely die after we are no longer here to hear them, and the house will become as dead to us as the memories that died of loneliness after we went away.
People who suffer in the slow fire of sorrow are purified from many of the weaknesses and faults of humanity. Perfection comes only after we have paid the price. Men are always better and kinder to their second wife than they were to their first, for in the loss of the first wife sorrow opened the door to a wider vision and a broader view. Sorrow is part of our education. The giddy young have not yet been purified in sorrow’s flames, and they are blind to many things that must be learned before they win the hearts of the people.
The kindest man I ever knew was the saddest looking when his face was in repose. He had a good word for everybody. He seemed to know why men and women go wrong and could find an excuse for all their short-comings and evil doings. He came into our village life as though by accident, setting up housekeeping with his white-haired mother and two hired servants on the little farm just west of the town. They farmed only a little bit, keeping but one horse and two cows. The postmistress said he sent some large packages of first-class mail matter to a certain publishing house in the city, and we guessed that the man was an author or journalist.
I met him afterwards when we sat together at the old stone bridge fishing in the deep pool at the mouth of the little creek. It was a good place to catch the fish when gathering there previous to their migrating up the creek for the season. Bit by bit, I learned his story, for he was hungry for sympathy. A woman had broken his heart. She had married him for his money. He had been a business man in the big city—a banker, but occasionally writing for a newspaper in which he held some stock.
A family moved into the neighborhood where the bank was located, and he met the daughter at the house of a friend. A mutual admiration began from the first. She was of a literary turn, and was in sympathy with his ambition and hopes, and showed in many ways that she admired him. She was pretty and intelligent, and he was recovering from a love disappointment and was hungry for love and sympathy. He proposed, was accepted, and in a few months after the first meeting they were married. He was only twenty-five then, frivolous and happy and without a care.
Six weeks after the wedding he discovered by sheer accident that the woman had a living husband from whom she was not divorced, and whom she met clandestinely and gave him money with which to gamble. She wasn’t his wife at all, but an unscrupulous adventuress who associated with criminals.
He sold out his interest in the bank and came out into the country with his widowed mother to live a quiet life and try to forget.
That same summer a strange woman came to the village to spend a few months in this quiet retreat, and one night I sat with my melancholy friend in church when the strange lady sang a solo. She had the sweetest voice I ever heard—mournfully sweet, with a peculiar cadence that filled one’s eyes with moisture and sent thrills of unknown feelings tingling through every nerve. And oh, how beautiful was her face when she sang. I turned to my companion at the conclusion of the song and remarked: “God only bestows a voice like that upon a very few women.”
“Yes,” he replied sadly, “upon the few women who involuntarily pay the great price.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“No woman can sing so sweetly who has not suffered. Somebody has broken that frail woman’s heart. She has suffered in the slow fire of deep sorrow. A man is driven into great philanthropy; music, or literary work that touches the heart, through deep sorrow, but the woman who has a voice for singing pours all her sorrow out through the channel of sweetened song.”
I glanced at him and knew he had learned the story that can only come to a man whose heart has been broken; and I knew that he had guessed whence came the sweet cadence in the singer’s voice. Somehow it struck me forcibly that these two people who had been made sweet and lovable in the fire of sorrow would make life companions, if they could be brought together. I told my wife all I had on my mind and she fell in with my views at once. She is a chronic matchmaker.
She courted the woman’s society and learned her story. Her husband had been a defaulter, embezzler, bigamist and scoundrel. He had since been killed by a woman. She was making her living singing on the stage. I told her, when better acquainted, of how my friend had guessed of her sorrow, and she became greatly interested in my sad friend’s history. We finally brought the two strangers together. She sang for us and he read his latest poem. The sweetness of sorrow touched us all. She sang again and we all cried together. The charm of sorrow was over us all—over the entire house.
That was two years ago. They are now happily married. The sweetness of sorrow is in their love for each other, and life is filled with love’s sweet song.
In the lonesomest road I travelled while homeward bound from Reading, I stopped at a little faded cottage to inquire the way and the distance to the nearest town. An old white haired woman came to the door and gave as much information as she possessed, but she confessed she hadn’t been to town for more than sixteen years.
“And do you live all alone in this dreary place the year ’round?” I inquired. “No, not always alone,” she replied, with a peculiar smile. “Once a month the groceryman sends the boy out with my store goods and flour, and a neighbor living just over the hill comes over every week to see if I have any wood chopped, and to fix the pasture field fence so that my cow can’t get away. Besides this one or two neighbor women call sometimes and do their sewing while telling me the news from the outside world.”
“But at night you are alone, and that is the dreariest time of all,” I suggested.
“No, I’m not alone even during the night, stranger. I have very realistic dreams while I sleep. During the year I am visited by all of my old friends and schoolmates. Not all at one time, to be sure, but every night one or the other of them will call on me, and we’ll all be young again and play the dear old games we loved so well when we were boys and girls. And the boy who was killed in the mines away back in ’78 comes back once a week and in my dreams I mend his clothes and wash his shirts, the same as I used to do in the long ago.”
“Sort of a sad dream,” I remarked.
“No, not at all! Why should it make one sad to dream of those we loved, and who loved us long ago? Last night my husband came back to see me, and he was killed in the mines away back in ’67. He was just like he appeared to me the morning he went to the mine and to his death.”
“Were you glad to see him?” I asked, for she stopped short and was looking out toward the wooded hills with a glad smile on her face.
“Glad to see him? Why, I was just as glad as I was when he used to come courting me down in Lebanon a half century ago! He always puts his arms around me and gives me a gentle embrace, and kisses me on the lips, just as he did when he was my lover and I was his girl sweetheart. And then he sits at the chimney and lights his pipe and smokes in silence, and I mend his clothes. By and by I fill his dinner pail, and before he starts away he asks me to the door, where he embraces me once more, and I hold up my lips for his farewell kiss; and then I stand there in the early morning light and watch him pass down the road and around the bend and disappear behind the bunch of laurels, just as I used to watch him long ago.”
“And your dreams make you feel happy during the next day, I suppose,” I remarked, for she was again looking dreamily towards the hills.
“Not always,” she sadly replied. “For when my dead baby comes back in the night and begins to feel with his dead hands all over my bosom, and with his dead mouth tries to find my breast, I then recall that many and many the time that same baby groped for my breast when he was starving for the want of proper food; for in those days John was drinking hard; and did not provide for his family, and my half-starved body furnished but poor watery food for my baby boy; and all night long his baby hands reached for the fountain that had run dry. The doctor said he was so nearly starved that he could not stand the pneumonia and recover, so he died.”
“Could you forgive your husband after baby died?” I asked.
“Yes, after a manner. You see he straightened up for a time after baby died, and wasn’t drinking so very hard when he was killed. And he is always young and sober and industrious in my dreams, the same as he was when we were married, but baby is always hungry and groping with his dead mouth for my shriveled breast.”
The home was located in an isolated and lonely spot, with hills on two sides of it and a ragged woodland in the rear, and the front side leading into a deep ravine that grew wider as it neared the valley far below. The road came up the steep ravine, passed the house and wound over the hill in the rear. It was so steep that few people traveled the road unless going to call on the owner of the home, Jack Wier.
Jack was sitting on the porch as we drove up to the house, and looked the picture of despair. Children came running out of the house to see who was coming, and the open doorway was filled with frowsy heads, besides the bolder ones who hung over the rail of the porch and gazed at us like so many startled rabbits. We counted nine, and Jack said the youngest was sleeping in the cradle.
“Ten children, after a marriage of twelve years!” he said, with a melancholy tinge in his voice.
“Surely there is no race suicide here!” I exclaimed.
“No, there is no race suicide, but there has been a mother sacrificed,” he said, and there was a sob in his throat. “Two days after the birth of our last baby girl the poor worn-out mother died. Nature could not sustain her frail body after so many years of torture. Common sense should have taught me that my wife was making a sacrifice of herself, but I was blind. Suddenly I was awakened. I was left with a family of ten children, and the eldest only eleven years old. Of course, I am fond of the children, but the price paid was too much—twelve years of painful sacrifice, and then an eternal rest in the bosom of mother earth.
“And what am I to do with my children? We have been getting along, after a manner, but the children are now showing the effects of neglect. It may require another sacrifice before the children are all pulled through. Bessie, my eldest girl, has never had any childhood. She has been forced into womanhood before she fairly tasted the joys of happy girlhood, and she is growing into that peculiar condition where the overburdened body takes on the appearance of age, and the dream-light no longer shines in the hopeless eyes.”
“You take things too seriously,” I said, by way of cheering him up.
“That may be,” he replied, “but God knows how seriously things are taking me! I love my children and would educate them all, if possible, but it looks now as though I will never be able to educate any of them. This poor hillside farm is all I have in the world, and debts accumulate much faster than crops grow. When a man gets so far in debt that release seems hopeless, the future looks uninviting to that man.
“And it’s all owing to my blind ignorance! So long as my wife lived I was proud to be called the father of ten children. It put me in a class with those patriarchs of old, who gloried in their many offspring. I forgot that these same old patriarchs gloried in their many wives, as well.”
Then pointing down the valley he asked: “Do you see that white house over yonder? That man has two children. They are now attending high school over in the city. He is able to give them both a good education, and no doubt the two will accomplish more good in the world than my ten, who must grow up in ignorance and be fit to only perform menial and poorly paid labor.
“And that’s not all, nor the worst: Growing up without a mother’s care and loving hand to guide them, I often tremble for their safety. The pitfalls and traps set to catch the unsophisticated girls are numerous and temptations lurk in every dark corner. Race suicide may be a sin, but mother sacrifice is a barbarous outrage. Outraged nature is taking revenge out of me. I painted this picture myself, with living pictures, but the face of a martyred mother is in the background.”
Just across the river lives the old toy maker, an old bachelor who has been living the life of a hermit for many years. He is now almost seventy years old, but works at his bench as vigorously as he did when I first knew him. He will not discuss his past life, but avoids it as though old memories give him pain. But his relatives say he was once disappointed in love—jilted on what was to be his wedding day. Some pretend to know of a wedding suit still preserved and packed away in a trunk, but never to be worn by a bridegroom while the old toy maker lives and has the clothes in his possession.
He avoids women, and doesn’t want to be bothered with children, yet he devotes his life to making wagons and sleds for boys. Somewhere down in his unsatisfied heart there is a love for the children still, though it was denied him to have children to bear his name.
There is something tender and affectionate about the picture of a toy maker, and how could this be so, unless the toy maker himself is tender and affectionate? It is safe to say that this particular toy maker can weave more heartaches into the toy he is making for some happy, careless boy, than he could pound into a large farm wagon for men. There is a peculiar sentiment in working for the children, which people feel, even though their education is so barren that they do not know what the word “sentiment” means. The old toy maker may think he hates boys, but his work contradicts him. He does not manufacture his wagons for profit, for the price is so low that he scarcely earns fifty cents a day at the work.
The truth is, the old toy maker loves children in spite of his studied seclusion. He avoids them because they are so closely in touch with women, and to a woman he owes his cheerless life. How foolish to turn against the whole world because one woman proved false. There are true women all around us, and a man should be strong enough to pull the false woman out of his heart and forget her in the society of the good and true. The strong man is made wiser and better through disappointment and the deception of a false woman, and it teaches him how to value a true woman when he finds her waiting to be loved.
The man who gives up at one defeat is to be pitied. His acknowledgment of defeat shows that he is a man of tender nature, preferring to go out of the crowd and live alone, to renewing the contest and do battle with the false and cruel. Every time I see the old toy maker bending over his work, which he does so carefully and perfect, I realize that a loving, trusting heart throbs under his soiled coat. Somehow I can’t help but love the toy makers, because they unconsciously love children. They can’t help it. They may scold and frown and threaten punishment for any trifling offense, but deep down in their soul they do, and can not help but love children.
During the last fifteen years of President Cleveland’s life I was not his friend. I believed that he had gone back on the common people and given his support to plutocracy. I said many bitter things about him, and called him a Judas and a betrayer of his friends. But soon after his death I saw a picture of the ex-President sitting at a table mending toys for his little son.
When I looked upon that picture I could not believe the man was false to his friends. I had only misunderstood him and his motives while serving his country. A false leader of men, or a tyrant, would not stoop to become a toy mender.
He would have no time for sentiment and tender paternal feelings.
Here was a man upon whom the eyes of the world had rested, whose name was familiar to millions, sitting at a table mending broken toys. I was won back to him before I had looked upon the picture two minutes. I could overlook all his faults, because his faults were human, just the same as his love for children was human. The simplicity of the picture showed the man and the father and the companion, mutely telling the story of his great love for the boy whom he never hoped to see when grown to manhood. He fully realized that when the boy became a full-grown man he would not be there to see him and help him and guide him with his great love.
There never was a woman who made a more loving mother, nor a mother more proud of her son than Mrs. Taylor. Tom was a boy that any mother might be proud of, so obedient and affectionate. But Tom was going to get married and bring his wife to the old home, and the widow Taylor assured me that she was going to be such a model mother-in-law that there would be never a cloud of discontent hover over the Taylor home. Tom’s girl was such a sweet little soul that anybody could get along with her; and even if she was not, Tom would not let his mother be abused or slighted or made discontented in her own home.
I didn’t return to the Taylor home for ten years, but I noticed at once a change in the Widow Taylor. There was a look of sadness in her white face and she seemed to have grown old very fast since I saw her last. I knew she couldn’t be more than sixty, but she looked to be easily seventy-five years old. When I found myself alone on the wide porch with the sad faced woman I made bold to inquire: “Well, Mrs. Taylor, did you succeed in playing the part of a model mother-in-law?”
She smiled at me with a look of pain in her face, and slowly said: “I don’t believe there could be such a thing. Perhaps a mother could be a model mother-in-law to a son-in-law, but she couldn’t be one to her son’s wife, and live in the old home. When Tom brought Bessie to this house it was my home. My word was law. You well know that I couldn’t be a tyrant if I tried, yet it was a satisfaction to arrange the house to suit my taste and run things after the style I had practiced for years.”
Then, in answer to my startled look, she continued: “No, Bessie and I have never quarreled. I wouldn’t allow myself to do so. She is Tom’s wife, and he loves her to devotion. If I quarreled with Bessie Tom would have to take one side or the other. I wouldn’t want him to decide against his wife, and if he turned against me it would break my heart. So I try to bear my lot without complaining, but I can hardly help the feeling that I am a stranger in my own home. I have no longer any authority about the house. The pictures are no longer arranged as they were ten years ago. The portraits of the family no longer grace the walls of the downstairs rooms. Bessie says it is not fashionable, so the pictures of Tom’s father and my own, are banished to the narrow confines of my own bed room.
“And my bedroom has been changed, too. I no longer sleep over the parlor, facing the public road. Bessie thought it would make such a pleasant spare room for visitors, so I was removed to the east room over the kitchen. When Bessie’s mother visits her she occupies my old room, while I must go off to my den over the kitchen. I may be selfish, though I pray God to keep me from thoughts that are narrow; but it does hurt an old woman to be thus set aside in her own home.
“And no longer any callers or visitors come to see me. I’m a back number. Even you came to see Tom, and not me. I am a deposed ruler. My kingdom has been handed over to another and my own son is a subject of the new ruler. I never complain to Tom, because he does not understand. He thinks that I ought to be satisfied with things as they are, and maybe I should, for I have nothing to do. Well, nothing to do is the hardest life a person can live. I can go and come at will, but that is not enough to satisfy a woman. I long for the old home in which I was once an entity, a moving force, a working energy.
“Where nothing is expected of the mother-in-law, she can expect nothing in return. I am reduced to an eating, drinking, sleeping non-entity. I once overheard Bessie tell a caller that I was getting queer. Maybe I am, for I certainly feel queer under present conditions. Neither responsibility nor authority rests on me. I am on the scrap pile, an unwilling supernumerary.
“But oh, Mr. Haiden, I am so much more fortunate than some mothers-in-law I know of! I know a poor old mother who is obliged to live with her son’s wife in the home that belongs to the daughter-in-law. And the poor old mother is told of this every day. The daughter-in-law is an unnatural, ungrateful tyrant, and she plays tyrant all the year ’round. And the son is obliged to take sides with his wife, for the sake of peace. When I talk to that poor old mother I feel that I ought to be thankful, and that my daughter-in-law is a saint; but she ought to consult me now and then on household matters. She ought to give me some of the responsibilities and cares. She should at least make me vice-president of the home, since she usurped the presidency. Two women can not live happily in the same house unless they share the cares and responsibilities, and the honors. Every young woman going into her mother-in-law’s home should be taught this fact. It would save many a tear and heartache on the part of the poor old mothers.”
Passing by a country graveyard one day last summer I noticed an old man throwing stones at a bird. When I asked him why he did so he stammered: “I—I thought it was a Bob White, but it was only a thrush. There is a Bob White comes here every day through the summer time and calls the one name I so bitterly despise, and I chase him away. I don’t want the dead to hear him call that name.”
I passed on, but at the first house west of the old country graveyard, where I stopped to get a drink, a woman told me the old man’s story. He was engaged to a beautiful young girl, but an Englishman came into the neighborhood, pretending to be very wealthy, and turned the girl’s head. She was attracted by his supposed wealth, and eloped with him to New York. Less than a year afterward her dead body was sent home for burial in the old home graveyard, her husband having deserted her a few months after their unholy marriage.
The Englishman’s name was Robert White. The old man I saw stoning the birds, had never married after losing his promised bride, and the neighbors say he acted very queerly from the day the girl ran away with the Englishman, and has been watching her grave ever since her body was brought home for burial. He imagines the quail is mocking him, or taunting the dead woman with the repetition of the man’s name who wronged both in the long ago.
In spite of the fact that Solomon advised whipping the child, I question the benefits of giving pain. I never struck my boy but once, and that was when he was a child in kilts. God forgive me, I was angry at the time. We were out in the fields gathering dandelions for greens, and the lad persisted in throwing clods into the vessel in which the dandelions were. I told him several times to desist, but he laughed in childish glee and did it again and again. He did not intend to be bad. It was a child’s estimation of fun—to have somebody scolding. I do not know what ailed me that morning, but I soon became so angry that I broke off an elder sprout and struck the child a cruel blow across his little back. One blow—that was all, and then my heart smote me. When I felt the little form writhing in pain, as I held him by one arm, it dawned on me that I was a brute.
I can shut my eyes still and see that little child sitting on a bank of coarse grass and weeping bitter tears. How I despised myself! I would have taken him in my arms and begged his forgiveness, but I felt sure the child would not think my remorse sincere, and might think me a hypocrite. No, I thought it best to let the child think me a brute, rather than believe me a hypocrite. He must have faith in my honesty, even though I was an honest brute.
I resolved right then and there that I never would strike my child again. My paternal heart told me that Solomon was wrong—that if he had but one boy he would try love, and not the lash. Solomon had so many children and so many wives, that he couldn’t love any of them truly and sincerely. I would not take advice from any man who made women slaves to his animal passion, and who encouraged the brutal act of inflicting pain on the tender flesh of a helpless child. The child that is beaten must surely grow hard of heart, as well as calloused of back, where the rod leaves welts and scars.
I asked my boy only the other day—he is fourteen now—whether he still remembered the cruel blow I struck him, and when he replied that he did, my head fell and my heart felt a peculiar pain. Oh, to recall that one brutal blow, or have it forgotten by the boy who was once that quivering, sobbing child!
I am certain that the boy is just as obedient as any other boy in the neighborhood, and would be just the same if never struck that one blow. I still tell him how sorry I am that I once lost my head and beat a child. I want him to feel and know that love is a better ruler than the rod. And after I am gone, and the boy recalls my face, I want him to think kindly of me and realize how that one blow has pained me all through life, and made one shadow of paternal shame.
Not long ago I heard a mother boasting of how she conquered her thirteen-year-old daughter. For some trivial disobedience she struck the child with a rod, which stung the child to anger, and roused her rebellious spirit. She refused to beg her mother’s pardon until deep red scars and seams lined her back, through which the red blood was seeping, and then pain forced her to break down and ask pardon. But was the girl sincere? Was she conquered, subdued? Was her spirit broken?
I hope not. A child with a broken spirit is a pitiable object. Her pride is forever injured. And the child that fears her mother can never love her in the true sense of filial affection. And if she was not sincere in begging her mother’s pardon, if it was only to escape the awful pain, then the first seeds of hypocrisy have been sown, and the child will never be truthful again.
I know a father who imagines that it is his paternal prerogative to punish his child whenever required, and he is to be the judge and jury to decide when the child needs punishment, and the extent of that punishment. He quotes Solomon to prove his position.
Not long ago his boy of five years refused to repeat a word dictated by his father, and for this disobedience the boy was made to stand on the floor erect, until conquered. The father didn’t try moral suasion or coaxing or petting. He was not in favor of arbitration between father and child. It was war to the finish. The boy’s rebellious spirit must be broken, at any cost. It was the father’s duty to conquer the child. The big strong man must triumph, because might is right. Solomon advised this.
It was 7 P. M. when the boy was first stood up on the floor. The father demanded obedience of the child when anger filled the child’s heart. It aroused the rebellious spirit—the boy would not be conquered. It was the courage and will that is to make the man a doer and a worker when childhood is gone, but the father didn’t realize it. At 10 o’clock the child fell over in a faint—unconquered and unsubdued—and was critically ill for many days.
That father may be right, but I do not believe it. I would give much to recall the one cruel blow I struck when my boy was a helpless child.
Some men fail to win the woman they love, because they are physically too strong and powerful. Some women love to cling, as a vine, to the man who resembles the sturdy oak, but not all of them do—not even half the women do the clinging act. I know of a case where a strong man proposed to a beautiful girl who had entered a hospital to become a nurse. She did not appear quite strong enough to endure the strenuous duties of a nurse, but she insisted that she loved the work and would stick to it. Her lover sought to turn her from her chosen profession and become his wife, but she frankly told him that she did not love him enough to become his wife.
People without imagination and without a proper conception of what true love really is, wondered why the girl did not marry the man, for he was quite wealthy, handsome, and of good character. Some even alluded to his good family, but the nurse declared that a man was good through education, and not through inheritance. She referred to the case of a child taken from a large family of children and placed in the home of a rich man who gave her many educational advantages. She outgrew the daughter even in intelligence and beauty, while all the other brothers and sisters left in the home nest grew up in ignorance and immoralities and did not resemble their educated sister at all. It was all the effect of education and not of blood or inheritance.
And the strong man gave up the girl and went away to a distant town to go into business. Bad investments swept his fortune away and he fell ill. His last dollar was gone and his health so bad that he no longer resembled the physical giant of former years.
At last he became so ill that he was taken to the hospital for treatment, where in his delirium he called for “Agnes, Agnes!” all the time. The physician declared that this Agnes must be found, or the man would surely die. His old town was located and old acquaintances consulted, and the Agnes called for was the girl in the hospital learning to become a trained nurse.
When told who it was that was calling for her she said she would go to him. All her nature seemed changed. Harry was no longer the physical giant inviting her to cling to his sturdy frame for support. He was now lying helpless on his back, his fortune and physical strength all gone. She would be the strong uplifter and the inspiration that would bring him back to health. She was now in her proper sphere. She was all woman, all sympathy and affection. She who could not cling to the strong man, now gave her strength to assist the weak.
“Agnes, Agnes!” he called one night, and when she went to him and placed her cool hand on his feverish brow and asked tenderly: “What is it, Harry? I am your Agnes—don’t you know me?” He looked up with a world of joy in his eyes and exclaimed: “Thank God, Agnes! I have wanted you so badly! I was going to die. I shall now get well!”
And he fell asleep while she watched. Was it strange that she now loved the man better than her own life? How weak and helpless he was; only the shadow of his former physical strength and beauty. And yet, as she looked upon his helplessness, and realized that his fortune was gone, and that he was now even poorer than herself, her heart and soul went out to him, and all missions in life narrowed down to a resolve to nurse him back to health and happiness.
When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, and noticed the changed look in her beautiful eyes, he one day asked: “Agnes, dear Agnes, is it possible that since my health and wealth are gone you can love me?” She dropped her head and remained silent. “Forgive me,” he said sadly, “I was foolishly mistaken in what I saw in your eyes. I was looking through my love. Nobody could love a wreck like me.”
She looked up with a world of love in her eyes and cried: “You were not mistaken, Harry! I do love you! and all the more because you need me now. I could not be a vine, but I can be your support and guide!”
I simply judge from what I’ve seen. When I moved to this backwoods village, six years ago, the hotel was the only industry in town—turning out “skates.” One of the daily patrons of the hotel bar was brother to a millionaire of Central Pennsylvania. I asked him one day if he didn’t envy his brother the great wealth he had piled up, but “Uncle Enoch” gave me a little dance on the flag stone in front of the post office and remarked: “Phil never had the good time in life that I am having. Besides this, he’s twenty years older than I am, which are good for at least five hundred jolly times. Without a sou or a picayune in my pockets, I’m as happy as a king, so long as I can work the crowd for a drink.”
Well, who can say how much “Uncle Enoch’s” light-hearted manner cheered the plodding people, who worked year in and year out for a bare existence? I have seen men laugh at his drunken pranks who hadn’t given birth to a pleasant smile for weeks.
But somewhere in the world a deserted wife ekes out her own living at slavish toil, because of Enoch’s love of the cup that cheers. And in his sober hours I have heard “Uncle Enoch” lament the loss of his companion, declaring that she was a good wife, and that the fault was all his own.
This country hotel made a splendid stopping place for the sporting lawyers and business men of the nearest city, and no questions were asked when several automobile loads of sports and loudly dressed females stopped and engaged the ball room for a dance. “Uncle Enoch” would join them and dance in a corner, while the set was going through the whirling waltz, and sometimes stop the dance while he sang “My Bonny Black Bess.”
Several other local characters patronized the bar and thought they were having a good time, but when seen next day in their homes, where poverty and squalor and ragged children predominated, one could easily see that their “good time” for one night cut a great gash into the bare comforts of life during the next two weeks. And the wife and children, who had no good time at all, were obliged to share in his regrets and poverty even longer than he; for he went out to work amongst the farmers, and was well fed, while the children and mother ate the scant supply of food in the neglected home.
The second year after my arrival in the village the new Methodist minister took sick and his wife ran over to my house to borrow some brandy. I had none, but said I would go down to the hotel and get my private bottle filled, and lend it to them. The landlord said he was out of brandy, but had some extra good whiskey for fifty cents a pint. Knowing the minister had severe cramps, I took the substitute and hurried home, leaving the bottle at the minister’s house, and telling his wife to use all the liquor she needed, and when the bottle was empty, I would have it refilled.
Next day the minister was up and around again, and his wife brought the flask home. It was almost full. The new minister was, no doubt, a good judge of whiskey, and preferred to take chances with death, rather than drink much of the vile stuff masquerading as whiskey.
After that time I was not very friendly to the hotel man. I had gone on his petition to the court for a license to sell whiskey and beer, and the stuff he sold me to save the minister’s life was neither. Afterwards a neighbor’s wife took sick and we doped her with the contents of that bottle, and she got well. Being no judge of liquor, she thought it was all right, and her faith cured her.
Towards fall business became slack, the stock of whiskey became so low in the jugs that there was spontaneous combustion, the insurance policy took fire, and the hotel, with all its contents, except the most valuable things which were stored in trunks and left near the door, were consumed by fire.
Since then the town has been dry; “Uncle Enoch” is satisfied with an occasional jag on hard cider, the wives and mothers look happier, the children are better clothed, and we buy our medicinal liquor at the city drug stores and pay five times more than it is worth.
My honest belief is, that the saloon could be easily dispensed with, if the government would place on sale sealed bottles of genuine rye whiskey for medicinal purposes, at a fair price. I do not believe in prohibition to the full letter of the law. Whiskey is a medicine, and we need it just as badly as we need any other poisonous drug. I am subject to chills, and whiskey is the best remedy I ever discovered for chills. The only bad effect is that the more whiskey I have in the house, the more frequent are my attacks of chills. I use more caution, too—I take a jigger occasionally to prevent the very first symptoms of a chill.
It was in the cool of a summer evening that I saw the child leaning over the railing of the river bridge and looking through her tears toward the opposite side of the stream. I knew intuitively that the tears in her eyes were sad ones, because sorrowful tears seem to stand in pools and only gush out at intervals. Tears of joy well out as fast as generated, for the eyelids stiffen under the influence of gladness and eject the tears automatically. In sorrow the eyes seem to recede and the eye-lids grow flabby and helpless, and the tears stand in pools around the corners of the eyes, as though lacking the courage to gush out and part with the aching heart beneath.
“Are you sick, little girl?” I asked. She tried to answer, but the words would not come. She only sobbed, and the pool of tears gushed out under the new disturbance and ran down her pale cheeks. “Don’t talk, if you don’t care to, child, but if you are in trouble I may be able to assist you. Have you a home?”
“Oh yes, sir!” she burst out, as though the word “home” opened the door to her heart. “My home is far out over this river and beyond those hills you see in the west!”
“And why are you here?” I asked kindly.
“Oh, I’m out at service. I’m working in Sheriff Barker’s kitchen, helping the misses with her work. I’m earning my own living, besides giving some money to papa for the other children. There’s so many of us, you see.”
“How old are you?” I asked, not out of curiosity, but out of sympathy.
“Oh, I’m twelve years old! There are four younger than me, and three older. We all go out at ten years and rustle for ourselves.”
“Dear God, what an age! What trials for such little bodies! But what were you crying about when I first came here?” I asked.
“Oh, sir, I was so homesick! I often get that way through the day, and at evening I come out here to the bridge and look out toward the dear old home and cry to see the children, and it really makes me feel better. It takes that heavy feeling out of my heart and I can look away ahead and feel hopeful.”
“What is your father’s name?” I asked.
“Papa’s name is John Deer—I’m Jennie. Mamma calls me Jean, and the boys call me Jen. The Barkers call me Jane. I like to be called Jean, because that’s what mamma calls me. I love my mamma so well, so well! and my heart is aching to see Willie and Bessie and the others tonight!”
“Why, Jean, I know your father well, and I remember your mother. I worked in the lumber woods with your father in 1884. He would write letters to his sweetheart every Sunday, and every Wednesday he would always get one from his girl. How glad he would be after reading her letters. She was a little school teacher in those old days.”
“Go on,” she cried. “Oh, I love to hear you talk of my papa and mamma as they were before they were married! I wonder if they loved each other like the people we read about in the story books?”
“I believe they did, Jean. At least your father loved Carrie Green just as fondly as young men love in story books. I had a best girl, too, in those days, and we often spoke of them, and what we would do after we got married.”
“And did you marry your best girl, too?” she eagerly inquired.
“No, Jean,” I said, and a wave of memory flashed over my mind and I paused to look down through that memory to the vista away off in the distance.
“Did you quarrel?” she asked, her eyes showing how much she was interested.
“No, Jean—she died.”
“You poor man!” she cried. “Did it almost break your heart? Oh, I can feel all you felt when your sweetheart died, for there can be no greater sorrow than to be homesick—to wish so earnestly for the ones you love best on earth—to long for your mother’s breast—that you may lay your aching head down and close your eyes and think only of how dear she is to you. Oh, I’m so glad you told me of your dead sweetheart, for you know how it feels to be sad and sorrowful, and can sympathize with a homesick girl!”
My friend Stevenson visited me a few weeks ago, and during our conversation I asked him what luck he had during the last hunting season. He looked at me shame-faced and said: “I don’t hunt any more. I gave it up two years ago. I don’t believe it’s the kind of pleasure a civilized man needs. I prefer to live for other things—for joys that give pain to no other living thing. I’ll tell you about that last hunt. We were out on the Hogback mountain and three of us had been standing at the head of the Cramer Hollow while one went down along the point and drove the game into the ravine. While we were standing there looking down the hollow I noticed something moving through the brush far down the ravine. I whispered to the others and we all watched the thicket closely with eager, alert eyes.
“Pretty soon two small deer stepped into view—a spike buck and a little doe. Silently we drew up our guns and all aimed at the unsuspecting little creatures. How eager we were to kill. Every man tingled with eagerness and excitement. Not a shadow of mercy flitted across our souls. We were savages and barbarians eager for blood! Why? We had gone hunting for the pleasure of killing something. We needed a change. We had been tied to our business for several months and felt worn-out and low spirited, so we went out to the woods to take on new life by taking the life of some innocent creature that loved life as well as we. The sight of blood would appeal to the old savage nature that still lingers in the human heart like typhoid germs in an old well.
“‘Crack, crack, crack!’ went the three rifles, and our victim fell to his knees. He struggled to his feet and started to run up the hill. We could see that he was wounded badly. How our souls rejoiced and exalted. Some one’s bullet had gone tearing through his little body and his life’s blood was flowing away. Again our guns cracked and belched forth the death dealing lead, and the animal fell to the earth without a cry or appeal for mercy. Did instinct, or reason, teach the poor creature that it need not appeal to man for mercy?
“We all rushed down the hollow to where our victim lay. There was no more mercy in our hearts than there is charity in the heart of a rattle snake. The deer had tried to get up again and was on its knees when we came upon it. I was in the lead. As I approached, the dying animal turned its hopeless eyes full upon me, and the pain and the fear and the horror, all mingled into one last dying appeal, went straight to my heart. I stopped dead still and allowed the others to pass me. They grabbed the animal by the head with eager, cruel hands and turned it over on its side. I shut my eyes, but I could hear the ugly rasping sound of the knife as it was drawn viciously back and forth across that helpless throat, and heard the life blood gushing out upon the dead leaves.
“I felt sick at heart. A wave of regret and remorse swept over me—of guilt and shame and humiliation, and the sweat stood on my forehead like animated grains of corn. I had helped kill the innocent creature for pleasure—for the mere pleasure of killing; for I did not even like the taste of venison.
“I was too sick to assist in the job, but the others cut through the abdominal walls and tore out the steaming entrails like savages. Not a thought entered their mind that this poor animal loved life as well as they. They came to kill, and they were exultant over the killing. The life blood went coursing through their veins in a happy, exultant stream, and their hearts beat in tune with the song of their souls. And on the ground the stains of red showed where the innocent blood had seeped into the earth. If the earth is part of God, then God was absorbing the evidence of our guilt.
“We shouldered our victim and struggled down the ravine. We tied the animal’s legs together and had a pole between them, and put the ends on our shoulders. I managed to take the lead, so that I need not look upon the body of our slain friend. But with all my care I got blood on my hands and on my clothes! While my companions took delight in displaying the dried blood stains on their hands when we reached home, I felt guilty of mine and washed them several times before I went to bed.
“But I couldn’t sleep for many hours after I had gone to bed—not until I made a solemn vow that I would never willingly shed innocent blood again.”
Few people pity the circus people when they are in hard luck. So long as they can amuse and entertain they are applauded, but when they fail to do this, people turn from them as they would from a bundle of old clothes, forgetting that heartaches and sorrows and disappointments sink as deep into their hearts as they do into the hearts of the unsuccessful people in any other calling or profession. Dyke Dingleman had been a successful clown and funny man for ten years. The audience had fairly whooped and yelled at some of his funny sayings and antics, and the managers paid his salary cheerfully and praised him for his successful work. But one night in a large city he failed to win a smile from the large audience. He went through his stunts in such a stiff and listless way that nobody could see any fun in him or his bad attempts at humor. After the show was out the senior proprietor of the show scolded him for his poor playing and threatened to discharge him if it ever occurred again. He said nothing, but pulled a telegram from his pocket and handed it to the proprietor. It read: “Bessie is dying—can’t you come home?—Edith.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had trouble, Dyke? Forgive me for what I have said to you. Go home to your wife and dying child at once. Billings can take your place until you join us again.”
Dyke didn’t seem like his old self after Bessie died. He joined the show at Lima, Ohio, but he was no good as a clown. All the fun had gone out of his soul, and the audience hissed him. The people did not understand. He had to give up the situation and take the part of assistant, and wear a red coat. Carrying mats and other fixtures into the ring was very humiliating, and the wages were very low for such work. He couldn’t support his wife on the salary, and she went home to her folks and refused to write to him. She thought there was a chance to please his other women, or for booze.
One day the man who gave the outside entertainment was ill, and the proprietor wanted a substitute. Dyke used to perform on the tight rope, and he thought here was a chance to please his employer. He felt that he could do the clown stunts again, if he had another trial. Sorrow had sweetened his bitter life, and he thought he knew better what genuine humor should be than ever before. He would perform the old stunts on the high rope in a more ridiculous manner than any man dared. It was all pantomime, and he need not use his broken voice at all.
And the audience did enjoy the performance. They never saw such a daring, desperate man before. He was playing for reputation and his wife’s love and sympathy. The last jump on the rope was higher and wilder and more daring than any before. When he landed on the rope something gave away, the rope slipped through the pulley so rapidly that Dyke couldn’t grasp any of the stays in his fall. He landed with one leg on a stake and the bone was snapped above the knee. His poor shoulder was also dislocated and his head bruised. The roustabouts picked him up and carried him into the tent, and the crowd jammed closer to see his blood on the ground. A few women had screamed when they saw him fall, and several men groaned, but he was only a showman, and they all went away and soon forgot him.
The afternoon performance was just as good, and the clowns were just as funny, as though poor Dyke Dingleman did not lie unconscious at the hospital. In the morning the circus left town, but not before the proprietors of the circus had made arrangements at the hospital for the care of the injured actor.
Two weeks after the accident Dyke told his nurse all about his misfortunes and about his wife leaving him. He said he had nothing to live for and might as well die. The nurse was a romantic soul and set about to win Dyke’s wife back to him. She wrote a long letter, telling her husband’s story of hard luck just as he had told it to her, and begged her to come at once to his bed and give him love and hope and sympathy, so that he would have something to live for.
There never was a happier set of hospital nurses than there was in that particular hospital when Dyke’s wife came to his bed and threw her loving arms around his wasted body and asked him to forgive her for leaving him when his heart was heavy with sorrow from grieving over Bessie’s death.
And then she embraced the nurse who had told Dyke’s story so beautifully and pathetically, and the doctor assured them all that the patient was going to recover rapidly now. He could see signs of health and love of life coming back to the haggard face of the hard-luck showman.
The story was written up by the same romantic nurse and sent to a paper, and the whole town was in sympathy with Dyke Dingleman and his wife. Next day when another big circus came to town the nurse wrote the manager, inclosing Dyke’s story, and advised a benefit exhibition. The city turned out and Dyke’s share of the net profits was $300.
He was a cripple, without education or any accomplishments, and it was wrong in Mary Mackey to encourage the boy in falling head over heels in love with her, but she was only a school girl, with a desire for romance and excitement, and Lyndal Mason, with his boyish adoration and loyalty was just what she wanted to make life tolerable. In a way she liked Lyndal, because he was full of romantic and heroic tales of adventure, most of the tales being coined to suit the occasion.
I often wonder why boys, without future prospects or opportunity to make life a success, are always falling seriously in love, with thoughts of matrimony in the near future.
Looking back to my own early boyhood days, I can see myself in love with girls who only laughed at my grotesque aspirations. I never once thought of the responsibilities that go with matrimony. I only knew that there was one girl on earth I could not live without possessing her love. But I did live through it all, after discovering that she did not care a fig for me. I always took consolation by falling in love with some other girl. By the time I was eighteen years old, I had been slighted and jilted so often that I began to realize my worth—or worthlessness, rather.
It was different with Lyndal, because Mary encouraged him and led him on. She even sent him an invitation to her graduation at the high school where she attended, and where Lyndal often called on her. I remember now that he came to me and asked for a job to earn some money to buy Mary a graduation present. I remember still how hard he worked and how pleased he was at sight of the money he had earned. He bought her a pretty little pin, and the superstitious told him it would prick the love bubble and let out all her affections.
He sent his present by mail, for Mary’s parents were trying to break up the youthful flirtation, and had forbidden her to encourage the young man any longer. He sat away back in the school room on the commencement night, but not too far back to notice the fact that she was not wearing the pin he gave her as a graduation present. No, but at her throat she wore the gold pin Oliver Birdsall had given her. He knew the pin because he saw young Birdsall buy it. This young man was the son of wealthy parents, and would be very acceptable to Mary’s parents. Lyndal saw his rival throw a bouquet of carnations at the feet of Mary at the conclusion of her address. She picked it up and smiled her thanks back to Oliver, and Lyndal read his fate in that smile—Mary Mackey was forever out of his reach.
Oh, the agony of the moments that followed that revelation. Had Mary ever dreamed of the sorrow she was creating for the poor boy when she led him on, would she have done so?
Playing with human hearts is a very dangerous game, yet some heartless, thoughtless people take great delight in love conquests. They find a morbid pleasure in the pain suffered by others. To have some one plainly longing to possess them, satisfies their vanity. Youth is cruel and heartless. To feel that hearts are aching for their smiles is food for their ambition. They want to be heart breakers and the destroyers of peace. The triumphant look Mary glanced at Lyndal as she passed out of the school room on Birdsall’s arm, brought comfort to her giddy soul.
Did she ever regret it? It is hard to tell. Some people love notoriety and to have some one die for them is the climax to earthly triumph. I have often tried to picture in my mind the feelings of poor crippled Lyndal Mason as he walked home through the darkness of the night, with a denser darkness falling like a pall of gloom all around his throbbing heart.
In the morning he did not come downstairs at the usual hour, and when his mother went to his room, she noticed a peculiar odor of laudanum on the air. With a wail of injured mother love she fell upon his stiffened form and kissed his white face in a frenzy of despair. Could Mary Mackey have seen this sad picture, would she have been sorry? I do not know. They say she looked stunned when presented with the message written by Lyndal on that fatal night. It was written with an unsteady hand, and said: “Good-bye Mary—your plaything is at rest.”
True friendship never changes, never grows weary of serving, never dies. I have in my mind two men I once knew in Colorado, Barney Kennedy and Fred Gordon—“Little Fred Gordon.” Kennedy was a big, robust son of the Emerald Isle, standing six feet in his shoes, and strong as an ox; Gordon a puny little fellow, born in Iowa, and weighing scarcely 140 pounds. I expected everything of Kennedy, but Gordon was only a little, common place man who would not attract attention.
When the gold excitement in Alaska was raging in 1897 these two men left home together, for they had been both friends and companions for many long years, and struck out for the promised land in hopes of finding the delusive metal. But hunting gold in Alaska is full of danger, privations and hardships, and before the first year had passed away these two friends found themselves 200 miles from a doctor, and Kennedy dying of scurvy. The giant was helpless, and dependent on his little friend. Gordon tried to get some one to assist him in taking his sick friend back to Skagway, but these men had come out to dig for gold, and had no time to waste on dying men who were strangers to them.
But Gordon’s friendship was of the true sort—the kind that never fails, and only dies with the possessor. He started out alone to drag his friend 200 long, weary, horrible, soul-depressing miles through the trackless snow to a physician.
Think of such an undertaking, for friendship’s sake—to drag a 200-pound man on a sledge, with provisions enough to feed them for fifteen days.
Kennedy was unable to stand alone, and was awed by his comrade’s bravery and daring courage. Could he succeed? The sick man was frightened at the gloomy prospect. Two hundred miles over the virgin snow, and dragging three times his weight on a clumsy sled. All day trudging along, and at night camping on the dreary waste of unfriendly ice and snow. How far it seemed back to civilization and a warm room. How cold the moon and the stars appeared away up in the blue sky. God was supposed to be up there, too, but he seemed to be farther away than the remotest star on these lonely nights. But the undaunted Gordon refused to give up. His optimism never failed. He must reach civilization and a physician, for Kennedy’s sake.
One hundred miles are successfully, though painfully trudged over; then twenty added—140 traversed, when one night Gordon camped to await the morning. Weary and worn out with many days of exertion, he slept soundly, dreaming of home and friends, wife and children. When he awoke the stillness of the frozen north seemed more depressing than ever before. There were many weary miles to travel yet; but he got up with resolutions as strong as ever. He prepared the morning meal before he attempted to wake Kennedy. But Kennedy would never awaken again.
Gordon was shocked and heart-broken on making the awful discovery. His big-hearted Irish friend was beyond the aid of an earthly physician.
Perhaps it was the loneliness and the utter helplessness of the big man that took away his courage and caused him to give up and die; for he had seemed very much depressed before Gordon went to sleep that night.
But Gordon’s friendship did not die, and for four wearisome days he tugged at the sledge dragging the dead body of his friend over the crunching snow, too true a friend to desert an old companion even after death had robbed the body of all that was loving and lovable, and the generous Irish heart was silenced forever.
Who but Gordon could picture those last days and lonely nights, when he labored so hard at his task, and camped alone on the dreary snow at the side of his friend. He must sleep close to the body at night to prevent the hungry wolves from devouring all that was left of his friend.
Alone with the dead and the awful dreariness and bitter cold, and the realization that the trip had been a failure. Friendship had done all that friend could do for the living, and all that friend could do for the dead. The town was reached and Kennedy given decent burial, and Gordon returned to the States.
Little Fred Gordon. To look at him one would never dream of such friendship and courage. When I knew him he was keeping a feed store at the corner of Fifth and Main streets, Grand Junction, Colorado, with no thought of that awful experience in the land of delusive gold.
To me there is something fascinating about an old deserted house standing near a lonely country road. The sashless windows and open doorways always remind me of some strange animal gasping in the agonies of death. And I fall to wondering whether the people were happy who once occupied the home when it was new. What were their hopes and ambitions? Did they love some one, and were they loved in return? Did children once play around that damaged door and look out through those windows and long to go out in the world and accomplish great things?
A few Sundays ago I rode out over the country roads near my home, and finally came to a road on which I had never traveled before. It led down a valley that extended to the creek a few miles below. We drove down this road after inquiring and learning that it connected with the creek road. We knew our bearings when safely on the creek highway. We had not driven a mile before we came to the ideal fascinating deserted house. All around it rank weeds and briars were growing. The one door facing the road was very low, and on closer examination we discovered that two of the lower logs had rotted away, allowing the house to settle down two feet or more. The windows were small and warped out of shape, and not a single sash in place. The mortar and packing were gone from the crevices between the logs, and the old stone chimney was ragged and battered at the top.
But the wonder was that the shingles were in pretty good condition. They had been hewn from the virgin pine and shaved by the man who built the house some eighty years ago.
It was a story-and-a-half house, the upper half-story consisting of the garret only. The upper floor was missing and one could see to the rafters when looking in the open door.
While we were sitting in the buggy and looking with a peculiar awe upon the old home, an old man came along and we asked him who had built the house. He stopped and walked over to the fence, put one foot on the second rail to rest his leg, and pointing to the old ruins with his crooked cane, said:
“This is the Fred Beaver home. He came here from Germany in 1824, and settled on this piece of land. He had only been married six weeks before he sailed for the new world. He had barely enough money to bring him and his young wife to America. He had a cousin living near here at the time, and that is how he came to locate here in the woods. His wife was never contented, but kept longing and longing for the dear old home across the sea. They were very poor, so my father told me, often not having enough to eat, and this made life still more dreary for the homesick wife.
“At the end of five years, they had two children—Frederick and Elizabeth—Elizabeth is still living down in the town, a very old woman. After the children were born, Mrs. Beaver realized that she could never go back to her home across the sea. She would never have the money to pay her passage. She felt like a caged lion pining behind iron bars. Before the babies came she hoped to save money enough to go back and take her husband along—providing he would go. If not, she would go alone. He was a hunchback and not really kind to her, though he loved her after the manner of a wild animal loving its mate.
“One day Beaver came home and found the children crying with hunger. They were only four and two years old. The boy could talk enough to inform his father that his mother had gone up to the loft and would not come down. The man climbed up the ladder and was horrified to find his wife hanging to a rafter—dead. She had taken the rope out of the bed to hang herself with. Her longing and longing for the home across the sea had ceased forever. If you will come to the door I can show you the rafter on which she was hanging. No? Don’t care to?
“Yes, the father lived right here with the children after that. He got a house keeper from somewhere in the neighborhood. He was young and the love of life was still in his soul, but he never married another woman. Years afterward the children would find him sitting under the rafter on which his wife died, weeping like a child.
“Yes, the son, young Fred, built the new house over yonder, after he got married, and took his father there to live. But the old man would come back daily and sit in the open door and sing the German hymn that was the favorite with his wife when they were courting across the sea.
“Yes, they say the house is haunted, since the old man died. People passing on moonlight nights insist that they see Beaver and his wife sitting in the open door, and hear a low crooning song. Me? Oh, I think the noise is the sighing of the pines over yonder.”
“Do horses think?” asked a lady of my acquaintance, and I hastened to assure her that they did. I told her of the horse my boy drives every Saturday evening to sell newspapers to the farmers near our home. Just so soon as the horse sees that the boy is delivering papers he turns into the gate of every regular customer and stops. If strangers get into the buggy old “Vinci” turns his head to see who it is and what they look like.
“Yes,” replied the woman, “and they have melancholy thoughts, and become home-sick, like human beings, too. The saddest thing I recall from my farm life happened when I was a girl of twelve years. We had a little team of bay horses named Colonel and Rock. When they were seven years old father sold them to a man who lived away back on the mountains. I cried when the man drove them away—cried because I hated to part with them, and because the poor horses did not realize that they were sold and were being driven away, never to return to the old barn and eat from the old manger. And every time I met the horses on the road I noticed how lean they were getting, and how melancholy and dejected they appeared. I could see sorrow written all over their faces.
“I used to lie in bed and think of the long weary trips they were obliged to make out over the rough mountain roads, and always pictured them leaning in their collars and drawing the heavy load to their new home. I don’t believe they were ever satisfied and contented with their new master, but always dreamed of returning to the old home some glad day.
“Two years after they were sold they were turned out into the pasture field for the night. Somehow I went to sleep thinking of Colonel and Rock that same night. Were they thinking of me? Some believe in the transmission of thought waves, and if this is true, why not the transmission of animal thoughts, as well as human thoughts that go out unspoken to distant friends?
“At midnight a storm came up and the fence surrounding the pasture field was blown down in several places. After the storm was over both horses found a broken panel in the fence and walked out of the inclosure. It was ten miles back to their old home. I can see them look a ray of intelligence into each other’s eyes, and then mutually start southward over the lonely mountain road. They could hear the sound of the locomotive whistle coming out through the night air, and they knew that near the old barn there was a railroad track where these iron monsters passed many times every day.
“And I was at home dreaming of just such a trip as they were making, only I dreamed that I was with them and talking to them and telling them how much I missed them since they were taken away.
“Early in the morning I awoke from my dreams and rushed to the back window and looked toward the barn. ‘Mother!’ I shouted, ‘out yonder at the barn stand dear old Colonel and Rock! They have come back home!’ She came to the window and looked and gave a glad shout of surprise, for she, too, felt sorry ever since the horses were driven away. How glad I was to see them! but how my heart smote me when I saw how lean and dejected they looked. I would put on my clothes and go out to feed them out of their old manger.
“But while I looked a man came dashing up on a big black horse. It was the owner of Colonel and Rock. He had gone out early in the morning and saw that the horses were gone. He found the place where they left the field and saw that their tracks turned toward the river. Did he, too, realize that Rock and Colonel were never satisfied, and were always longing for the old home?
“Mother went out and begged that the horses might be fed in their old stalls before taken away, but the man was angry, and cursed Rock and Colonel, and jerked at their bridles viciously and cut them severely with a wicked whip as he lashed them into a trot and started back over the old home-sick mountain road. At the bend of the road both horses turned and looked back longingly, and I burst into bitter tears.”
Riding into the city one day on the overland stage I looked far ahead and there I saw a man coming down the middle the road. The highway was ankle deep with dust, and I surely thought the man was drunk. I remarked to the stage driver: “There comes a blind man;” and then I laughed, for I still thought the man was intoxicated.
As we drew near I could see the man feeling his way with a heavy cane. He was blind, and I had laughed at his blindness! But, as God is my judge, I did not know it until after we drew so near to him that I could see his cane.
The blind man heard the stage approach and stepped to the side of the road for us to pass. And then I recognized the poor fellow—it was Peter Paul. I knew him thirty years ago, when his diminishing eyesight warned him that total blindness was near at hand.
Mentally Peter is far below the average, but he realizes that society owed him sufficient brotherly love to make an attempt to save him from the awful calamity of total blindness. He was a poor cigarmaker, and barely earned a livelihood. He had no money to pay for treatment that would help his poor eyes.
Think of it, in a land of Christian civilization a man is left to walk in literal darkness right at our door, while zealous men and women send thousands of dollars to so-called heathen lands, to save the people there from so-called mental blindness. Justice and common sense should teach us to save the literally blind man at our door first, and then go out to enlighten the blinded mental eyes of the heathen. Charity begins at home: if charity jumps over human suffering at home, and goes far abroad to do spectacular work in the name of religion, both charity and religion are misplaced.
I spoke to the blind man as the stage passed, and the response came so very promptly that any one could see how gladly he received the greetings of a human voice. And then came the words that showed so plainly that the blind always feel a sense of danger when walking alone: “Am I near the river bridge?” I told him how far it was to the bridge as the stage whirled by, and then I turned and watched the poor fellow feeling his way down the dusty road.
He carried a big box strapped to his shoulders in which he took cigars to the town to sell, or trade for goods. He long ago married a widow who lived in a village twenty miles north of the city, where he had been born and reared. He still manufactured a poor variety of domestic cigars, and when a stock accumulated beyond the local trade he would load a dozen boxes on his back and start for the city, stopping to peddle his goods in every little hamlet along the road.
Many good people ridiculed the idea of Peter Paul enjoying the society of a wife. They thought it an extravagant idea. He should be denied all this, because of his calamity. Men who value woman’s love next to nothing, simply laughed at Peter. He could get along so easily without such a luxury. But I tell you, dear reader, the man who puts no value on woman’s love has more of the animal in him than true manhood. He makes the poorest citizen of all men. And Peter Paul, though stone blind, has as much right to value woman’s love as any other living man. His world is dark enough, God knows, without denying him the one ray of light and happiness that falls across his midnight road.
Perhaps the stage driver wondered why I was so silent during the rest of the ride into town, but I could not erase blind Peter Paul from my mind. Not only Peter, but in the city he had a brother and sister who were blind. These two lived and kept house, being assisted by good neighbors to obtain the necessaries of life. They inherited weak eyes from their maternal parent, and through poverty and neglect they were allowed to drift into absolute blindness without a single effort on the part of society to save them from the awful calamity.
Seems to me that whatever knowledge science has gained in the treatment of human eyes should be a free gift to humanity. If ever a public fund was needed to save the unfortunate from such a calamity of darkness, surely the treatment of the eyes should be as free as the salvation of Jesus Christ.
I shut my eyes and see poor old Peter feeling his way down the dusty road, with a big box strapped to his back, and I can not help but believe that God is holding society guilty of brutal neglect. Seems to me that when blind Peter Paul goes feeling his way to the gates of heaven many of his sins will be taken from his back and charged up to society.
Montgomery Quiggle once said: “The world’s population is divided into three classes—those who have forged ahead of accepted theories, those who have only reached the level of accepted theories, and those who are slowly trudging along behind the march of progress without any theories at all. And the strange thing of it all is, the middle class rule, instead of those in advance.”
In fact, those in advance are punished for their advanced ideas, are ostracised, maligned, mobbed and often imprisoned at the dictates of the middle class, while the rear class of mere thoughtless plodders cheer the proceedings when an advanced thinker is thus caught and punished.
It has always been thus. Galileo was an early victim, so was Bruno, Savanarola, and a thousand other bright mental lights who threw beams of illumination far in advance of the thick-headed middle class. The thinker has always been a martyr to truth and justice. The man who would remove the mental fetters that chain the human mind, has always been treated as a heretic and traitor to good government and morality.
And the mobs that are chained to the old fogyism are always ready to crucify the thinker who would dare devise means of setting them at liberty.
The middle class are always insisting that they have arrived at the top of advanced ideas, and that it is an unpardonable sin to advance one single step farther. Whatever form of government is accepted by them is the right form, and the “crank” who would suggest anything different, is a bad man.
And the unthinking plodders take up the cry and shout “Bad man!” at everybody who accepts the new theory. In fact, the plodding mob is used as a tail to the middle class kite, and as of material assistance in helping to hold the kite in proper position to catch the breeze. And it is because the advanced class refuse to serve as a tail to the conservative kite that they are persecuted. They may in time persuade the mob of plodders to cease playing tail-piece to the middle class kite, and let the kite come down with a bang and break up its stock of old exploded theories and decayed ideas, and so leave them floundering in the mud of mental stagnation.
Read up the history of the old martyrs, men who died on the scaffold and at the stake for truth’s sake, and you will find in every instance that they were men of advanced ideas—men who had broken away from conservative fogyism and had made some attempt to break the fetters that bind the minds of men and set them free.
In the eyes of the middle class there can be no greater crime than to make an attempt to break the fetters of the mental slaves and stir the minds of the plodding, unthinking mob and set them to thinking real thoughts and evolving new theories.
Go back a few years previous to the abolition of human slavery and notice how the advanced thinkers were treated. History tells how Thompson narrowly escaped the mob at Concord, for teaching that human slavery is a crime against God and man. Whittier was pelted with mud and stones, and Garrison was often mobbed in Boston.
At one time a subscription to a fund was asked of the Norfolk people to pay for the heads of Thompson, Garrison and Zappan, and many Southern cities threatened to boycott all cities in the North that allowed men to teach the abolition of slavery. And the plodding mob who were little better than slaves themselves were ready to cast the first stone or brickbat at the advanced thinkers who could see human slavery from the human side.
I know a woman in Colorado who had once been a Mormon. She had been born and reared in Mormondom. But she began to doubt the whole institution when asked to become the fourth wife of a wealthy Mormon elder. Her ideas had advanced beyond the pagan idea of such gross immorality. It was lucky for this woman that just outside of Utah there were thousands of people advanced beyond pagan morals. She fled from home one night in a covered wagon, and outside the city she met her lover, the young Gentile who had taught her the sham and pretentions of her father’s religion.
In Colorado they found safety and happiness. She was an old woman when I met her, but she said she still trembled when she looked back to her early experience. Had all the world believed in Mormonism she could not have escaped the lust of the Mormon elder and a life of misery.
I saw him when he first came out of the Sisters’ hospital. He had been with the Sells Brothers’ Circus, but was taken with mountain fever while the show was in Grand Junction, Colorado. His wife was a tight rope dancer and trapeze performer, and went on with the show. She may have regretted to go, and she may not have cared at all. She had never written to him after she went away. He told me confidentially that he suspected her of being infatuated with one of the acrobats, but hoped to win her back when he got on his feet again.
Somehow or other, every man with a pain at his heart came to me in that faraway town. Was it because I was homesick and kept longing, longing for the valleys of old Pennsylvania, and the unfortunate could read something in my face that encouraged them to unburden their souls to me? Even my wife was drawn into some of the unfortunate love affairs of the young men and women, and we listened to the tales of woe, like martyrs, and gave advice which we knew would never be followed; for who can advise a young man or woman in love?
One poor fellow had been jilted by a young woman who visited at our home very often, and he came around almost every evening to try and have a last interview with her. But she never came back after treating the young man so badly, for she knew our feelings in the matter. The man she jilted was a handsome boy—a young French Canadian, and the man she intended to marry was a boasting Yankee from Michigan.
Finally we persuaded George to go over into Wyoming, as he intended to do if the girl married him; where he fell in love with a Western girl and was happily married in less than a year. Emma married young Lane, and deserted him in less than two years, and we never saw her again.
And the poor showman came likewise to me and told his tale of sorrow and financial troubles. A relative of mine was organizing a little circus in the town, and proposed going on the road after the summer fair. I secured a situation for my new friend, but when the opening day came the poor fellow had not gained sufficient strength to perform on the bars, or ride bareback, as he had been doing before he was taken down with fever.
But he could sing a song, so on the first night he came out before an unappreciative and unsympathetic audience and tried to sing. He did not know that weakness of the body interfered with the voice. The audience laughed at first, for they thought he was imitating an old man; but when they discovered that the poor emaciated fellow was giving them the best he had, they hooted him and hissed him, and called to him to take the frog out of his throat, and to get more wind, and to go and hire out as a nurse and sing to the baby.
Oh, how I pitied the poor fellow. The refrain of his song was: “But I will say nothing, not I!” I went around to the dressing room to console the poor man, for there was a look on his face when he left the ring which I did not like to see. He had been despondent and dejected before, but when he left the ring there was a look of desperation on his thin face. I found him sitting on a trunk taking a fond look at the photo of his absent wife. I tried to start a conversation with him, but he only looked at me and asked: “Did you catch the refrain of the song I tried to sing? Well ‘I will say nothing—not I’ tonight. You have been kind to me, and some day it will come back to you, like bread cast upon the waters, but nothing will ever come back to me. My heart is broken—I am no good. I am deserted and alone. The woman I loved has left me, and my luck will go with her—good bye—I’m going out.”
He shook hands and I said, “Wayne, I will see you in the morning.”
“Yes, in the morning,” he replied, as he lifted the flap of the tent and passed out into the night, while I returned to the big tent and tried to become interested in the performance.
Next morning the body of my despondent friend was found in the Grand river, just below the bridge, lodged on the middle island.
When the ringmaster announced to the audience that the man who had been hissed from the ring on the previous night had drowned himself, there were a few “Oh’s!” from the women, but the men who hissed him were not there. One man said if they had known the real facts, they would not have hissed; but when people do not know the real facts, is when they should be merciful—always.
If all wars were once abolished, and universal peace established, don’t think for a moment that the age of conquests and triumphs would be absolutely past forever. Those who argue that war and conquest bring out man’s best energy and build up strong manhood, can turn their guns against themselves and find all they care to fight. A man at war with his appetite and passions and human frailties and weakness finds his match. The man will not always be on top. At some careless hour a man will forget his vigilance and watchfulness and will fall before the onslaught of his passion or appetite, and it will require many days for him to regain his former position and place human weakness under his feet.
I have seen strong men bowed down to the lowest notch of humiliation, with all their courage and hope gone, yet no one did them a wrong. It was only their own appetite and passion that dealt them the crushing blow. No use to sit down and grieve over the fall. Grieving only adds to the first defeat. A man’s own appetite and passion and lust and hate and fear and weakness are his worst enemies, if once they get the upper hand. And in our youth we are apt to receive our first defeat; before we know the subtle strength of our weakness, we often become its victim.
Ninety per cent. of all the suicides come through man’s battle with self, and his defeat. After a man has become a slave to appetite and passion there isn’t much in life worth living for, and he falls a victim to the worst of all weaknesses—the fear to go on with life to its natural end. And how often the criminal, against whom every hand is raised in condemnation, is only the victim of his own weakness.
Theodore Radden became the victim of self before he was sixteen years old. His appetite began to rule him before he was twenty, and passion began to ruin him at the same time. He found congenial company in the lowest dives of his native town, where the fallen men and women collected, like buzzards, to feast on each other’s fallen condition. Several times he fought successfully with himself and broke away from his evil associates, only to fall back again when temptation laid her snares to catch his uncertain feet.
Once he held out for two years, and during that time he met and loved and married a beautiful girl. In her eyes he found a new world, and for over a year he lived in the only earthly paradise known to man—the world of love.
How proud his wife was when she contemplated his physical strength and manly beauty, never dreaming that the moral man within had been many times conquered by temptation, and was absolutely unqualified to conquer himself. She was but a weak and frail body, but morally she was a giant of strength, while he was but a pigmy in the grasp of former defeats. She was a country girl, and in marrying her he, too, lived out in God’s beautiful country and far away from the influence of old associates.
But one unfortunate day he was obliged to go to the city. By chance he met an old associate and was invited to take a social glass. And while in the saloon he met a bad woman who had much influence over him in past days. She knew that he had married and left the gang, and she set about to bring him back. It was her weakness to lead men astray. She was not all bad, nor had she always been bad. Once she had been a good girl, full of hope and happy dreams; but her own weakness gained a victory over her, and she fell. Even then she was not all bad. Many the poor woman and half starved hobo had eaten at her expense, and on many occasions she stooped and kissed a weeping child on the street and tried to soothe its sorrowing heart.
Did she love Theodore Radden? No one will ever know, but many thought she did, and that her love knew no moral code of honor, nor cared anything for public opinion. She already knew what opinion the world entertained for her—what need she care for public opinion?
And Theodore Radden fell a victim to his own weakness. He blamed the woman for it all, just the same as Adam did; but nobody took Adam seriously, nor will they take Theodore Radden’s word for it. A week later the woman crawled to the street from a tenement house, bleeding from several ugly wounds in her breast. Before she died she told them that Theodore Radden had shot her in a drunken brawl, accusing her of parting him from his wife; to which accusation she confessed her guilt, and said she deserved to die at his hands.
Inside the house the police found Theodore Radden—dead. He had shot himself through the head, after shooting the woman who tempted him from the paradise where now only a brokenhearted woman was leaving to go out into the shadows of sorrow and live her lonely life to the end. She had never fallen, and she knew not how to forgive the woman who had led her husband to his death.
Returning home from Reading on a Sunday not long ago, I was forced to lie over at Pottsville for three long hours. I was angry with myself for leaving Reading on Sunday, for the trains are so infernally chaotic and uncertain on this day of mental distress. I must reach Williamsport in time to catch the evening train on the Pennsy at 7.10, or be obliged to lie over until Monday morning. Everybody in the station was feeling about as blue as I was, for we were all travelers, and opposed to three hours of monotonous delay. I walked the station outside and inside for about an hour, and once as I passed the door leading into the toilet room I heard a plaintive voice at my feet. I looked down and beheld a small body—a wee boy sitting flat on the floor. He was looking up to me and speaking, but I could not distinguish the words. I stooped down and asked the boy to repeat his words: “Won’t you help a poor cripple?”
“Sure!” I exclaimed, as I caught sight of the poor twisted legs doubled up under his body, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a couple of coins. He reached out his hand and took my donation, and while he was looking at them I sat down in a nearby seat. He then looked up into my face with gratitude in his eyes and exclaimed: “Oh, thank you!” Then he caught the arms of the seat and pulled himself into the adjoining seat with his stout arms, looked into my face again and repeated: “Oh thank you.”
I was interested in the boy, so I asked: “How did you become so helplessly crippled?” “Born that way,” he replied carelessly, and then whistled to a boy across the station room. The boy shouted back: “Hello Joe, what luck today?” “Good!” the cripple replied, jingling several coins in his pocket. Just then a red faced man came in through the south door and Joe caught sight of him and called: “Hello, Charley!” Charley didn’t turn his face our way, so the boy gave a shrill little whistle, and the man turned toward us. “Hello, Charley! Come over here.”
The red faced man crossed the room hurriedly and Joe held out his hand, pulled it back and removed his soiled glove, then extended the hand again, saying: “It’s awfully muddy, and I get my gloves soiled crawling around on the floor.”
The red faced man took Joe’s hand in his and greeted the cripple warmly, but was called away before he could say more. While the red faced man was talking to the man who called him away from us, I turned to Joe and inquired: “Is he your brother?” The boy laughed and replied: “Oh, no; he’s a showman—gave a show here last night—a good one, too—I met him up at the opera—”
He stopped talking and whistled in a high key, like steam escaping under high pressure. The red faced man came back to us again and the boy said, in accusing tones: “Say, Charley, you went back on me—you weren’t as good as your word. You promised to pass me into the show, and you didn’t show up, so I had to cough up fifteen cents of my money.”
“Well, that’s too bad!” the man said. “I’ll just pay you back right here.”
He began to search through his pockets carefully, and finally exclaimed: “I haven’t got a cent of change in my pockets now, but you wait here until I buy my ticket, and I’ll have some change then. I’m going away on the 1.50 train.”
“You’re foolin’, ain’t you, Charley? You’re goin’ away without livin’ up to your promise, ain’t you, Charley?”
“Bet your life I ain’t Joe! I’m going to get change when the ticket window opens and then——”
He went off to talk to his friend again at the opposite end of the room, but every five minutes lame Joe would just whistle to him and say, “You won’t forget, Charley!”
I became interested. Would the showman prove true to his promise? He surely would. No man who could deliberately deceive a poor little cripple like Joe could possibly possess enough sentiment in his soul to please an audience. Once when Joe wasn’t looking, Charley winked at me and smiled. What did he mean? Was he amused at Joe’s doubts, or was he tasting the joke he was going to play on the poor boy later on? So certain was I of this that I began to look at the man more closely. His face was a puzzle. Not a bad face, but no doubt a lover of a practical joke. Maybe he thought it a great joke that any one should expect to have his entrance money refunded after the show was over.
I began to hate the man for what he intended to do, and pitied the boy more and more, as so many people passed by unheeding his petition, “Won’t you help a poor cripple?” They couldn’t help but hear, but so many people have grown calloused to the appeals of the unfortunate that they can pass through a shower of appeals without even putting up an umbrella.
One man even declared to me, on the side, that Joe’s begging should be prohibited. He said it encouraged begging in other boys who were not cripples. He said the town of Pottsville should support the boy in comfort, and not drive him to begging for a living. In his own city he paid an annual poor tax for the support of the indigent people, and stopped at this. He was opposed to begging.
I suggested that maybe the sound of a beggar’s voice kept our hearts mellow and our charity warm toward the world and God’s miserable poor. He gave me a look of contempt and passed on. I do not know his profession. He might have been a lawyer or a minister or a doctor. Anyhow, he was no worse than the showman who was going to fool poor Joe.
Then the ticket window went up and there was a rush of people. I heard Joe’s voice above the noise of tramping feet: “Don’t forget, Charley!”
I felt like crying. Poor crippled Joe! The crowd was rushing for the train. I saw Charley stop and drop several coins into Joe’s outstretched hand, and heard his “Oh, thank you, Charley! I’ll go to your show every time you come back to Pottsville.”
During the last ten years race suicide has been one of the leading problems of life, and on several occasions I have written my views on this subject. I have not changed my views at all after hearing the many arguments of the old conservative “stand patters” who try to imitate Solomon and the other prolific polygamists of long ago. There is no such a thing as race suicide. When big families are necessary, the big family will be fashionable. There is an ebb and flow to everything. Just now the pendulum of progress is swinging out toward the small, healthy, educated family of two to six children.
In pioneer days in this country, when it was desirable to have many children born to the new soil, and thus populate the wild country with people who knew of no other land, and would more likely live contented in the American wilderness than in the over-populated, lord-laden countries beyond the seas, the big family was a safeguard against the encroachments of the Indian and was desirable.
So, too, when Mormonism was a weak doctrine, and grown men would not accept it as a religion, the pioneers of that faith removed to Utah and built a city on the parched desert by the inland sea known as Salt Lake. From here they sent out missionaries to foreign countries, making converts among the women and families that were prolific in bearing children. It shows the wisdom of Brigham Young.
He preached to the women that every child born to them added a new star to their crown of glory. Those who believed the doctrine were anxious to add to the population of Utah and add a few stars to their future crown. This is one reason why the unmarried women accepted polygamy. The one great desire, fired by religious enthusiasm, was to bear children who would fight for the new doctrine.
It was a matter of wisdom on one side and sheer deception on the other. It was cheaper to rear Mormon recruits than to secure them full grown. And the child Mormon would never renounce the faith imbibed at the mother’s knee.
And thus you will find the situation in all cases where the race was made to believe that God loved the prolific woman better than the barren maid. Women will submit to anything, if made to believe it is their religious duty to do so. But men now realize that there is a psychological problem connected with the rearing of children, and the question is asked: Is it the wisest thing to bring into the world many children who cannot obtain a practical education, and therefore over-populate the nation with ignorant and dependent creatures? Do we not need quality rather than quantity?
Is Germany any better off with its prolific families than France with reduced numbers? Or take your own village or town—who is the best prepared for the battles of life, the child belonging to a family of fifteen members, or the child who is one of three or four offsprings?
In my own neighborhood the small families are the best educated or at least have the best opportunities to educate the children. I know of two families within a day’s travel of my home that have fifteen children each. Thirty children in two poor families! And not a single child obtained a common school education. They were obliged to go out to service before they were fifteen years old, and many at even a younger age. They are good citizens for the single reason that they were raised in the country, where few temptations are found. Had they been born in the city slums, what could have saved them from a life of crime? As it is, not a single child will stand any chance to make the world better for their having lived in it; for they belong to parents who came from prolific families, and where education was only a luxury to be handed over to the wealthy.
If Nature intended men and women to be as helpless in the reproduction of their kind as the fruit tree or the wild animals, the knowledge of reducing the crop would have been withheld from them. And until men gained this knowledge Nature was obliged to step in and reduce the population by famine, disease or earthquake and flood. It was an object lesson against over-population, and to show men that there was no hurry about God’s work. If God is love, he certainly does not desire the job of removing an over-population through the means of some awful calamity or a visitation of disease.
Don’t you suppose the God of nature loves to see men live in comfort and plenty? The Meat Trust and the Kaiser want large families, but the Meat Trust and the Kaiser have motives far removed from bringing happiness into the world. The one wants children to consume more benzoated meat, and the other wants to turn children into soldiers and human butchers.
The man who cries for overgrown families of children, to be brought up in rags and ignorance and slavery, has not the happiness of the race in his heart. He wants them for a selfish, barbarous purpose—for profit and for plunder.
She was a beautiful woman and her costumes were magnificent, but there seemed to be a lack of soul in her acting. There was applause from the house every time she came on the stage, and seldom she escaped after singing a song in her entrancing voice without returning and singing to an encore. There was the sweetness of despair in her voice, but made a trifle harsh by a spirit of defiance. A trained ear could distinguish the lack of harmony in her soul. The man at my side turned to me as she left the stage and said:
“That poor girl has a history, and a sad one. It is one thing to have a sorrow or an adventure that is absolutely located in the past, but still another thing to have a sorrow and a regret that follows one through life like a shadow.”
I looked at him in wonderment and he continued: “I have met her and she told me of her mistaken life. She was so full of her sorrow and regret that she simply had to talk of it to some one, and I am always a willing listener when a troubled soul opens the secret door and invites me to walk in and sit in the shadow.
“She told me that from the time she first took a leading part in a school entertainment she had a desire for a stage career. She grew up with this desire burning in her soul, at which fire she toasted her mental shins every night before going to sleep. She never missed an opportunity to take part in any entertainment given by the local talent of her village. At seventeen she fell deeply in love with a young carpenter and they became engaged to marry. Of course, the wedding was not to take place for several years, since her young man was poor and must first set aside a few hundred dollars to start with.
“After this engagement she went to attend school in the city, where she met the son of a very wealthy business man. He fell desperately in love with her, though many years older. One evening while out riding he proposed to her, and she told him of her ambition. ‘Promise me a stage career, and I will marry you,’ she told him. He readily agreed to this, and the engagement and contract was entered into at that hour. He sent her to a training school immediately, from where she wrote to her village lover that their engagement must be declared a thing of the past, since she had resolved to go on the stage, and give up the old life and the old friends.
“The year following her debut on the professional stage she married the man who made a stage career possible, but the face of the young carpenter looked out of the shadows and reproached her as the train that took her on her wedding tour went flying through the night. Only then it dawned on her that she did not love the man who was to give her a stage career—did not love him enough to become his bride, because her heart was still back in the village with the broken-hearted carpenter to whom she gave her most sincere and innocent love.
“And ever since this ambitious marriage there is the ghost of a wrong follows her and looks with reproachful eyes from the dark corners of every opera house. Her husband is kind to her, and follows her wherever she goes, and is proud of her success; but always this truth is before her—she sold her body to secure a stage career, but her heart was never a partner in the deal. How much happier she could be in the humble home of the poor carpenter, had not ambition so blinded her unsophisticated soul.
“What is life and success and the applause of the world when love’s first and only idol lies broken at one’s feet? Happiness must be shared with those we love best, and when we are obliged to share everything the heart holds sacred with some one we can never love, the pleasures of life crumble in our hands like an image that has been reduced to ashes. And the ashes are always being blown into our eyes, and into our mouth, and the taste is bitter, bitter; and the unloved lips that touch ours are tainted with the bitterness of all life’s regrets and mistakes, though we are tied to them with pledges and promises that must never, never be broken.”
Below I publish some verses I wrote thirty years ago, and while I worked as a common laborer in the lumber woods of Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In a religious discussion with a pious comrade he quoted Scripture to prove that the earth and sea shall ultimately give up their dead, and each individual shall be punished, or blest, according to the deeds committed while they lived. The more I thought over this horrible picture, the more I doubted that a God of Love would be so revengeful toward any of his poor creatures, who are born into ignorance and superstition, and must go mentally creeping through a life of hunger and pain.
Are dreams but idle things, or is there a land where all our happy dreams come true? Dreams are queer freaks of the intellect. We dream of the dead whom we have not seen for so long, that we can scarcely recall the picture of their face in our wakeful hours, but in our dreams we walk with them and talk with them and see them just as they were while living. The picture printed on our brain cells never fades away, and when the brain is held under the proper light, the old picture comes to view. Do these pictures fade away absolutely at death, or is there a land where all these brain pictures are stored away, to be given to us when we are called back?
I do not know; but it is a pleasant dream to half-believe that this is true; for without these memory pictures being restored to us, how shall we know our loved ones in the beyond when we meet them again? If the grave swallows all our happy visions and dreams, the new life will find us as babes, beginning to learn the very things we forgot at death. Then all our present individuality would be lost, and the immortal part of us would be a stranger to the mortal creature that died. God might as well call new beings into existence, as an unknown and unknowable part of the original creature. Without a memory we would not be able to recognize our own soul, should we meet him in the spirit world.
Hence a recollection of our dreams and our visions must go with us into the spirit world, or we must go as strangers without knowledge or a consciousness of the past. No use to be of immortal material, if the changes squeeze out memory pictures, for they are the tender chords that bind the two conditions together. Heaven must be a land where our dreams come true, or it would have no connection with this earth and this life.
I once wrote a few verses on this subject, that have never yet been published. They fit in here very nicely:
“No,” said my companion, as the train dashed on, “it is not true that men love but once. I believe that a man loves more sensibly and truly after he has had two or three infatuations and suffered as many disappointments. I believe, too, it is the same with the sensible woman, only she sometimes does not have the opportunity to love so often as a man.
“The other day I met an old sweetheart on the train in company with her mother. Once I would have married the woman, for I thought she was the only one in the world, but her mother objected to the match. My blood wasn’t blue enough. She was a good, warm-hearted girl, but she lacked courage. Had she been a girl of spirit, she would have married me in spite of all opposition. But she gave me up and broke her own heart over the affair.
“I’ll admit that I was pretty well broken up at first, but my pride came to my rescue. I made up my mind that I needed a wife of more individuality and character, and I soon found her. In a little while I was deeper in love than ever before. She was brighter, deeper and more resolute. Her parents objected at first to her choice, but she told them it was not they who were making the match. She said if a girl had no choice in selecting a husband, the natural selection of sex was ignored, and love was seen only from a financial view.
“Honest and true, I believe now it would have been very unfortunate had the first sweetheart married me, though I believe I could have loved her always, had her mother not broken up the match. Truly, I believe her life has been blighted by that disappointment. She never married. Perhaps she never had another chance. I do not know. They are poor now, and her mother has lost much of her pride. She has confessed lately that she made a mistake when she broke up Mary’s love affair.
“The day I met them on the train they were going to ignore my presence, but I would not have it that way. I respect them too much to drop absolutely out of their world. I simply took a seat behind them and called their attention to my presence. It was the first time in twenty years we had met. The mother was greatly confused at first, and Mary blushed like a school girl; but after the ice was broken, we had a very pleasant two hours’ ride. Mary asked all about my wife and children, and expressed a desire to see them.
“I pitied the woman I once loved, for she looked very unhappy and discontented with life. Her mother is growing quite feeble and she is devoting her life to her parents. I pitied her. This was all there was left of my love. As I looked at the disappointed woman, I thought of how I once held her in my arms and we both swore eternal loyalty to each other. How we had lied to each other. She cast me off as a duty and I forgot her in retaliation. How foolish it would be then to cork ourselves up and never love another.
“Once she was the idol of all my youthful dreams, the queen of my children. Now I love another woman more fondly than I ever loved before, because she is worthy of it. She gave up home and friends for me, and proved her great love for me, and, after all, this is the true test of our love. A man can’t long love a woman who has not the courage to love him in spite of the oppositions of friends. She sinks out of sight and some one else is sure to take her place, if he only waits. There is no occasion to commit suicide if jilted by one woman. She never was worthy of the fellow’s love, or she would not have jilted him. She never loved him. The woman who loves a man truly will give up all the world for him.
“Still, I pity Mary. I would feel just a little more happy if she were married to a good man. A man can’t help but pity any woman he once loved, if he thinks her unhappy. His mind will insist on going back occasionally to the days when that woman was the only woman in the world to him; when it might have ended just as he had dreamed. It might have been otherwise than it has turned out to be. His present love is a flower of a later growth, even though of sweeter odor.”
It was no fault of his own that caused a separation between Walter Clark and his young wife. She took a dislike to him after a short matrimonial voyage, simply because she had never sincerely and truly loved him. She was one of those impulsive girls who are determined to have their own way in everything, and when they can’t have things just as they want them, they become unreasonable. They never admit that they are in the wrong. They are always right, and all the world is wrong. Walter Clark’s demonstrations of love and affection became disagreeable to his cold and frivolous wife. She preferred to sit down and pout rather than go with her husband to the theatre, or on an excursion. Perhaps there had been a previous lover whom she lost, and no man could fill his place in her heart.
When Walter discovered that his wife was determined to disagree with him in everything, and to grow more disagreeable every day, he let her pass the time as best she could without his presence, which had become so annoying to her. One day she bundled up her belongings and went home to her mother. Maybe she thought Walter would come after her and plead with her to go back to the old life. But, God knows, Walter had enough of the old life and felt relieved when the change came into his life. Every tender feeling he had once felt toward his wife had been destroyed, and by her own disagreeable conduct. In his heart he had deified the girl he married, but she proved to be an idol of miserable clay. Three years after the separation he went on a visit to the Middle West. He met a beautiful young woman and felt himself drawn toward her by her loveliness and most charming manner. He was hungry for the love of a good and true woman, and in his heart he believed he had found her at last. His attentions were encouraged, and he felt love growing deeper and fonder every day.
He despised traveling under false colors, and frankly went to the girl’s mother and told her that he was a married man, but hoped to be freed from his wife before long. He told of everything that led up to the separation, and confessed that he loved her daughter fondly and truly, and would try to make her a good husband.
The mother was shocked. A married man making love to her daughter! All her orthodox prejudice and provincial suspicion rebelled against Walter, and she turned him out of the house, as though he were a criminal of the lowest type. She could not see that he had played fair—that he sailed under his true colors and could give her references as to his good character from the people of his own home city. No, she didn’t want references—a married man was an outlaw in the realms of love and courtship. In her eyes Walter was forever damned.
The honorable, but heart-broken young man left the town, and the incident was closed. He would not tread on that mother’s rights, even though he realized that she was playing tyrant, and wrecking her daughter’s happiness.
Dazed and unhappy, the young girl could not realize whether she had been wronged by the mother’s decision, or by the presumption of Walter Clark, who won her love while he was married to another. The whole world seemed to be deceptive and false.
She was aroused from this condition of despair a few months later when a young “unmarried” traveling man came to town. He had all the dash and brilliancy of the gay world, and the disappointed girl, and her misguided, ambitious and unsuspecting mother were captivated. He spent many of his evenings at the girl’s home, and the mother was pleased to see her daughter sitting in the parlor with such a promising young man. The daughter had been in disgrace since her love affair with a horrid married man, but now the mother was pleased.
Soon after captivating the mother the young man persuaded the girl to elope with him. Having lost the love of one man she was willing to listen to any proposal the lover might make, so she consented. There could be nothing wrong about the elopement, for her mother believed the young man was perfect. It was only a bit of romance, and every girl is romantic when in love.
Six months later the agonized mother received a tear-stained letter from her daughter, written in the city of San Francisco. The daughter was deserted, penniless and without a friend, and must end it all in suicide unless her mother forgave her and took her back home.
Reluctantly the disillusioned mother sent money to bring her daughter back to the old home, but she did not know all until the daughter’s return in charge of a trained nurse. She was suffering from a loathsome disease contracted from the libertine who had dragged her from her home; and is today a miserable invalid in her mother’s house, scolded and abused daily for her miserable condition. The misguided mother will not confess that she ruined her daughter’s life when she turned the honorable lover away, and took the human vampire into her parlor. No, she blames everything on the poor, ruined girl. Poor, blind mother—your prejudice drove the honorable lover away.
So many of the world’s inhabitants are going through life mentally blind. The greatest education does not always guarantee mental sight. It takes real wisdom to open the human intellect, and education is not always wisdom. A man may be able to solve great mathematical problems, diagram an intricate sentence in grammatical form, name all the capitals and great cities of the big world geographically and historically—but still be blind to human justice.
Without geological knowledge a man goes blindly through the world, stepping on valuable specimens of minerals and precious stones without realizing their value or worth.
And just so, in like manner, do men who are blind to the justice that belong to their neighbors, go tramping on human hearts and human principles without knowing the real value and worth of the objects on which they tread.
It is painful to see a blind man go feeling his way with a cane, but he never creates the sorrows that are created by the man who is blind to human justice and the rights of the people below his station.
I know a man who loves a beautiful woman. He was once engaged to marry her, but friends who are blind to the rights of humanity, no odds how poor or rich the individuals may be, interfered and separated the loving couple. They trampled on their young hearts and crushed them until they bled from the bruises, and made love appear as a criminal and outlaw.
They love each other still, though both are married to another. There is a pain in each heart that will never cease aching, but the wealthy friends who separated them are blind to the wrong they perpetrated against these disappointed souls. They crushed two ideals in the soul of two loving people, but the ideals will never die in their souls. That first dream of love will ever remain the sweetest, dearest dream that ever took possession of their young souls—a dream that died and was buried there and left a grave that is always bleeding.
And yet the blind friends do not realize that the ghost of a great wrong stalks through their hearts during the silent hours of the night, when the world imagines they are sleeping without a shadow to obscure the sunlight of human happiness and hope.
And this is only one case out of a million. And through the blindness of friends and relatives our divorce courts do a big business. Young people who are denied the companionship of the one they love best, and are induced to marry some one else for convenience sake, soon find the matrimonial bands galling, and a separation is inevitable. This is the main cause of so many divorces amongst the rich. They marry for convenience when they find it impossible to marry the one they love.
How unfortunate for parents who no longer care for each other to bring unwelcome children into a loveless world. The children find their environment one of cold speculation and fashionable hypocrisy, and they grow up believing that all the world is like their own domestic relations. Where there is no display of affection between the parents, the child grows up believing that love and affection are unnecessary, and passion is cultivated as a substitute. These are the sons who make the white slave business prosperous. They come from loveless homes, and do not realize that there is any such thing as genuine companionship love. Father and mother lived so independently of each other, spending most of their time at their clubs and at card parties, or visiting abroad with strangers, that the name of wife does not suggest a companion, nor does the name mother suggest the dearest friend on earth to the child.
And thus the fashionable world goes staggering blindly on, grasping at wealth and power and notoriety as the only prizes worth winning.
As far back as the mind of man can trace the history of the race we see bleeding Right on the scaffold and triumphant Wrong sitting on the throne. If this is contrary to God’s plan, he is slow to correct error. Cain slew his brother Abel because he was the stronger and most brutal. The meek and humble Abel gave up his life to the violence of wrong, and Cain’s punishment was rather mild. He was allowed to hunt a wife and marry her and raise a family, while the name of his victim was wiped from the face of nature.
Again, was it right that Jesus Christ should be crucified on a cross? This is the most horrible death any living animal can die—nailed alive to a cross of wood with cruel nails driven through feet and hands, and left to die of terrible pain and anguish of soul. The good book says God planned it. If so, then God himself indorses the rule of wrong and the sufferings of right.
Socrates was forced to drink the deadly hemlock, for the crime of teaching men the right. Socrates knew that the system taught by the ruling spirits of his country was a wrong theory. It kept the people in darkest ignorance and darkest slavery. He strove to lift them up and free them from their mental and physical slavery. The men who fattened on the spoils of the wrong system realized that Socrates would ultimately rob them of their slaves and half-fed servants, by teaching them the truth, and their natural rights, so they put Socrates to death. God did not interfere or intervene; so he must surely indorse the violent rule of wrong.
Almost every one knows of King Leopold’s cruelty to the natives of the Congo Free State. It is said of him that he had instructed his agents to inflict terrible punishment on the natives if they failed to bring in the required quantity of rubber. Many of the poor, god-forsaken creatures have had a hand cut off, or a foot removed, for failing to bring in wealth to the agents of this monstrosity of a ruler. If I stood on the banks of the crater known as the bottomless pit and saw such deeds of brutality inacted in hell, I could not believe my own eyes; and to hear of such things being done on top of ground, makes one’s soul groan in utter despair of Right ever being able to dethrone Wrong and usher in the rule of peace and love.
And the latest outrage Wrong has perpetrated against the world was the murder of Ferrer, the Spanish reformer. And they tell me it was done in the name of religion! The shameless idea of that half-idiot, Alfonso, King of Spain, ordering the death of a man towering intellectually so far above the pigmy dummy who ornaments the Spanish throne, insults the very fiber of my soul.
Ferrer was teaching the men the science of human rights, just as Socrates had done centuries ago. The crime is always the same, and the excuse for killing the reformer is always the same. The world is made to believe that the killing is done to protect religion, and to defend God. The plot is dark and deep—deeper than orthodox hell itself; for hell is said to be the everlasting abode of wrong, and wrong doers.
Will the mists ever clear away from men’s eyes, so that they can recognize Wrong on the throne and Right hanging by the neck on the scaffold erected by the willing tools of Wrong? Will they? I very much doubt it. The world’s history has been written by the sword of the tyrant, dipped in the blood of the many victims who died for the cause of human liberty, and the sleeping world has been made to believe that it was all done in the name of religion.
Does God care? Go to the graves of the millions slain by Wrong; go to the stake where the thousands were burned and left their ashes to cry to high heaven for human liberty; go to the prison dungeons where the thousands of martyrs wasted their lives and died in filth and misery—and ask there if God cares that this monster, Wrong, shall longer rule the destinies of men. I cannot see a single ray of hope. These insects we call men, are brutal as the beasts of the field. They glory in bloodshed.
Even child life is full of tragedy. In their helplessness they stand in the way of advancing events, a mother or a father taken away while yet they need their helping hand, and often the mother is stricken down while the child has no other means of existence but the milk that flowed from the maternal breast of the dead woman. If this is by design, who can justify the designer while looking through the orphan’s tears? No, the designer of all these heartaches and sorrows does not ask to be justified by those who suffer most. The same God who created conditions that give pain to his creatures, also gave the suffering creature voice to protest and cry out against the treatment they receive. Tears and sobs are also a protest against the pangs of sorrow and pain.
Yes, tragedy is forced into each life at the hour of birth. Show me a child a year old, and I can write of its history in a way to bring tears to your eyes, and to my own. Its little tiny wail at the hour of birth is a protest against the pains of the world, and only when it sleeps does instinct cease to cry out for mercy and assistance. For this is a cruel world to be born into. Nature has provided a thousand sources of torture to direct the child mind into choosing the proper way through life. God does not temper the hot stove to the tender hand of a child, and when one falls into the fire Nature does not halt to pull it out and pour a soothing balm upon the blisters. No, Nature moves on as unrelentingly as the cogs of two great wheels in a mill crushing all that falls between the meshing cogs.
I know an orphan boy who was one of several children when his mother died, and was sent from the western home to the grandparents in the East. They were kind to him and did all they could to make him happy, but often in the silent hours of the night, they could hear him sobbing and crying as though his little heart were breaking. They were the sobs of a homesick child, for when they would ask him why he was crying so bitterly, he would say: “Oh, I fear I will never see my little brothers nor my papa again. They are so far away, and I am so small, and they will forget me.”
Something had gone out of his life when his mother died which no human love could replace. He lost something that would never, never be found and restored to the child; and in my blind way I can never reconcile the death of a loving mother with the work of a loving God. Does he love to hear the bitter cries and heart-broken sobs of a homesick child?
Who knows how much influence these bitter cries have over the designs of the great Creator? If God listens to prayer, is he deaf to the sobbing cries of a homesick orphan? Is not the pathetic music sweeter than all other strains of harmonious sound? Perhaps God loves the pathetic and the heart-cries of children far better than the coarser songs of the full-grown people.
We do not know, but there must be some reason for all these sad causes and effects. The child outgrows its many distresses, and the orphan soon lives down its sorrows, and happiness blooms in the ashes of child memories. A loving God would not send all these afflictions for sport. They all mean something in the universal design. Perhaps to soften older hearts and to water the tender plant of love with a child’s tears.
These sobs and tears may be necessary as the sunshine and showers of rain, else why do they exist? It may be as impossible to run this old sphere without human sorrow and heartaches as it is to run a living world without an atmosphere and clouds. Who knows that the clouds do not suffer afflictions when they pour out their raindrops, or the wind feel pain and heartache when it wails at our doors?
Do the trees feel sad when they droop their leaves, or the vines and shrubs feel melancholy when their flowers wither and die on their stems? They have a language of their own, no doubt, and one that we can not understand. Man can only listen and have his sympathies awakened by the voices he can understand. If he knew all the pain and the suffering the other things are obliged to endure, he might hesitate to cut a tree or to plow up the bosom of the earth and force it to produce vegetables and grain.
We are in the midst of a great mystery, and only the songs and laughter, the sermons and the tears of others are evidence that we are all human creatures.
I want to talk today to the boys on the farm, and the old gray-haired boys who were raised on the farm. I think the old boys will appreciate my talk the most because they have had the experience I shall talk about. The farm boy nowadays knows nothing of the old experience that used to come to us older farm boys who were obliged to go barefooted the greater part of the summer and autumn. Say, you old gray-headed farm hand, do you remember how you used to chase the cows up on a cold, frosty morning, and use the warm spot to warm your half-frozen feet? I do. Often when obliged to go to the fields for the cows on a frosty October morning I would chase the cows up and then stand in the warm spot to thaw out my red feet.
Well, that game has been reversed on me a hundred times since that day, and I have been chased up from my bed that others might warm their feet at my expense. Once in particular I owned, or thought I owned, a tract of mountain land. I was saving the timber for a future day. It was all the property I had in the world. The man who owned the tract adjoining mine sold it to my neighbor. This neighbor was an amateur surveyor, and spent much time running old lines through the woods. I thought it was for the practice he was getting out of the work, but I soon learned differently.
He had discovered an old line running through the centre of my tract of mountain land. It was two years older than the line between his new possessions and my land. He jumped the tract and said that all above the old line he found was his—that it belonged to the tract he had purchased. He began at once to cut down the timber I had been saving for a future day, and laughed at me when I protested and told him I had bought the land in good faith, and it belonged to me.
I employed a surveyor, who counted the growths of the trees since the blazes were made, and he agreed with my surveying neighbor that he was right—the line to which he claimed was two years older than the line to which I had purchased land. I was obliged to get up and let him warm his feet in the one spot on earth I had warmed.
It all came back to me how I used to chase the cows up to warm my bare feet. It wasn’t exactly bread coming back on the water, but it was the cold coming back to my feet. I was taken with cold feet and gave up the land.
Since then I learned that the old line that served so well to swindle me out of my mountain land was an old township line, and had nothing to do with dividing the tracts of privately owned land. Did my surveying neighbor know this to be a fact at the time? I fear he did, for he had previously gone over that same township line from the starting point at the river, and had learned the truth about the line through the woods. With this knowledge he chased me out of my warm spot and proceeded to warm his feet.
Strange to say, we are friends today. I wouldn’t do him an injury for any price, and I don’t think he would injure me—any more than to chase me out of a warm spot again, and warm his feet at my expense; for this seems to be the game of life with most business people. Some of them prosper and some of them do not. My neighbor has gained but little. He took all I had in the world, but it didn’t prosper in his hands. I would not trade positions or future prospects with him today.
It doesn’t always pay to chase a man up to get possession of the warm spot he occupied.
It didn’t pay me at all when I used to chase the cows up for the same purpose. The intermittent moments of cold and warm feet made the cold feel all the more chilly when I left the warm spot and stepped into the frost-laden grass.
No doubt my neighbor realizes the same truth now. He would be far happier if he had never wronged me—if he had never chased me up to get possession of the spot I had warmed. We all feel that way, dear readers, no odds how hard we try to hide the fact from the world. We are far happier in occupying only the small spot we have warmed ourselves; for it is not natural to treat human beings the same as we sometimes treat the inoffensive cows.
Sending flowers to the dead is a beautiful tribute to their worth while living. Some day I shall lie in my coffin with closed lips and folded hands, looking through dead and expressionless eyes into the great eternity that opens to receive me; and those who loved me will bring sweet flowers and lay them near my hard bed and drop a tear to mark the place of our parting. But I will not be able to smell the flowers, nor to see the tear, nor to look into their beloved faces and catch the gleam of friendship and the glory of human love. It will then be too late for a responsive smile and hand squeeze and a tender word of recognition; for I will be far away from the touch of friendship, and only the cold clod of the senseless mortal will be there to receive the gift of love.
Below I publish a bouquet that was sent to me while my heart is hungry for appreciation, and my soul longs for congenial companionship; for we are all groping our way through this jungle of theory and blindfolded guess work, and we are glad to know that others are going our way:
Reading, Pa., January 7, 1910.
Jake Haiden, Esq.,
Chatham Run, Pa.
My Dear Sir—Permit me to introduce myself for the purpose of expressing my appreciation of the beautiful sentiments contained in your “philosophy,” appearing in the “Reading Times” daily. I was particularly impressed with the article in today’s issue, and thank you sincerely for same. I am looking forward to the time when the citizens of this community will become better and more generally acquainted with you personally and with your writings, and I assure you that if my recommendation to my friends and neighbors will in any measure help to call attention to the increasing value and attractiveness of the “Times,” I unreservedly give it, for I feel that if our merchants, business men and men in all walks in life, should spend a few moments each day in silent communion with you, we will all feel better and accomplish more for the philosophy of “Jake Haiden.”
With my very best wishes, I am,
Yours truly,
JENKIN HILL.
These are the bouquets that give new life to the living, new hope to the despondent, new inspiration to the writer who has often doubted the value of his work. For any one who treads on new paths and leaves the old beaten tracks where the thoughtless millions have trod for centuries, is so likely to be misunderstood. When the independent thinker finds himself away from the old ruts where the heavy chariots of plodding thought have left deep gutters for the millions to follow, he feels that he is traveling alone, and is ever reaching out to grasp some friendly hand and feel the warmth of a congenial living body and a progressive mind.
Some day Mr. Hill will carry a bouquet to a dead friend, but the flowers will not be able to bring new hope and new inspiration and new courage, like his letter has brought to me. And yet, I have never met Mr. Hill, to touch his hand and look into his face and express pleasure in meeting him. Our bodies are total strangers to each other, but out on the sea of thought we met and touched each other’s boat, and now go floating down the storm-tossed stream toward the land of God knows where—out beyond these shadows that hide our faces and our motives from our neighbors and cause us to misjudge our fellow man, and to throw him thorns and thistles instead of the sacred flower of human love.
If you are out on the sea of thought, drifting before the winds that are ever blowing us away from the land of knowledge, and making life an endless pull against wind and current—and you meet others out there in the shadow—don’t go off quietly and hide until they are past. Hail them—call to them in friendly tones and tell them you are going the same way and would enjoy their companionship. Don’t wait until the storms of life have wrecked their boat and you find their dead body on the shore, beyond the reach of your flowers and love and appreciation.
After all is said, the religion of humanity comes nearest to our hearts. We need no towering church spires, nor cold stone walls to make our place of worship a secluded spot. The world is our book, and humanity our altar, on which we may lay our white rose of love and our pale lily of charity, and reach out to the Great Jehovah, through the responsive heart-throbs of our friends and neighbors.
Looking down the new road that leads up to the church and my own humble home, my wife and I saw a strange man approaching. We thought he was deformed at first glance, for he seemed to be out of proportion in many ways. As he drew nearer the window we noticed that he wore three or more coats, and the same number of inseparable pants—at least each pair was inseparable.
At the church he hesitated, glancing at the parsonage, and then back to our back door. He was rather an old man, past sixty, judging from his hair and whiskers. At last he decided to try our house.
I did not ask him, but I suspect that he mistook our house for the Methodist parsonage, since the church and our house are painted the same colors. I went to the door myself, and when he asked, “Could you give a hungry man something to eat?” I replied by inviting him inside and giving him a chair.
“Traveling?” I inquired, not from idle curiosity, but to start a conversation and make the stranger feel that I took an interest in him.
“A little,” he replied, “I came down from Erie last night on a freight train, and I ’most froze to death. No work up that way, except in the coke regions, and there they have Poles and Slavs and Finlanders and Hitalians and niggers.”
I knew he was English by the way he pronounced Italian.
“Did you use to work at the coke ovens?” I asked.
“No, but I use to work in the hard coal mines—at Nanticoke and Shamokin; knocked off thirteen years ago, when the foreigners cut down wages. It was at Nanticoke I had the narrow escape with my life. I’ll tell you while I’m getting warmed up. It was all the mistake of the engineer. We were putting a tunnel from the new drifts up into the old abandoned workings, in order to drain the old workings down into the lower level, and then pump it out through the great pump that was pumping out the lower level.
“The engineer calculated to strike the old drift several feet above the great body of water lying there, and then pump it up into the tunnel and let it flow down to the lower level. The engineer made a grave error in his calculations, for instead of entering the old drift above the water, the tunnel was almost on a level with the bottom of the old drift. There was a large quantity of water in the drift. When the men put in the last blast it tore the intervening wall down and the river of water came bursting into the tunnel. There were eleven men working there besides Ed Evans and me. We had gone back to the shaft to get some powder and were back as far as the big slope when we heard the mighty roar of the rushing waters.
“We could not tell at first what the noise meant, but we felt there was danger in the pitchy darkness. Ed and I ran up the slope, calling to big Billy Beck to follow us, who was then working at something near the foot of the slope. He waited to learn what the cause of the noise was. We looked back and saw him start in our direction. We could see the light waving rapidly up the slope behind us. Suddenly his light went out. We soon learned why, for a moment later the water came rushing up the slope and soon submerged our legs up to our knees.
“Luckily we had reached an elevation on the slope almost as high as the flood could ascend when the level was filled, and we soon found ourselves on dry ground. This slope had not been worked for over a year, and no one else was penned up in the horrible trap but Ed and me.
“We felt confident that all the men who were cutting the tunnel into the old drift had been drowned. The terrific flood came in so suddenly that none could escape. Then we began to think of our own situation. It would require months to pump all the water out of the level. In the meantime we would starve. We had even lost our dinner pails. We looked into each other’s eyes through the dim light, and Ed said, ‘We’re in a hell of a fix now, old man! I wonder if the people outside will still think we poor miners demand too much pay? Will they be good to my wife and the babies?’
“At the word ‘babies’ poor Ed broke down and wept as only a brave man can weep when facing despair. Then we remembered the old abandoned air shaft, and we went up the slope as fast as we could go until we found it. We called up the shaft to where we could see a speck of light, but there was nobody there to hear us. Then we both sat down and cried in utter despair.
“Yes, we were rescued. Men came to the old shaft next day intending to go down and see if anybody had found safety in the old slope. We were rescued thirty hours after the accident. Our wives and Ed’s children were on hand to receive us. But, dear God, I can never forget the wail of the poor wives whose dear ones lay drowned down in the lower level. Big Bill Beck’s poor old wife had to be carried home when she saw that Bill was not among the rescued.
“Yes, thank you very much for the food and your kindness. No, I’ll never go back to the mines again. It’s a hard life, and the operators have made the world believe that the miners are asking too much for their work and their lives. Say, did you ever notice? Two days after a mine accident the widows and orphans need help! Too much pay? Oh, the shame of it all!”
It seems to be a human impossibility for us to see ourselves as others see us. We never know exactly how we appear to our neighbors. Men are like moving pictures—it requires some distance from the picture to see the moving figures to the best advantage. We know that our nearest neighbor knows less of our true character than the people living at a distance. When Henry D. Thoreau built a little log cabin, with his own hands, on the banks of Walden Pond, Massachusetts, his neighbors saw the man at close range, and failed to notice the strength of mind and character. It was the people at a long distance who saw the real Thoreau at fitful glances, and anxiously magnified the man until he became a thing unnatural—a genius.
The too-appreciative public called Thoreau a genius—a man to whom thought came without an effort. He himself didn’t think so. He lamented his own weakness and ignorance of things. It required so much time to learn a simple truth: to cull out the true from the false. Half the thinkers of the world are thinking out a plan to live without menial labor. They are thinking out a plan to fool and deceive the unthinking into buying knowledge and secret keys to science. And the deceived people look at them from a distance and put a false estimate on their ability, and pay them well to be fooled and humbugged.
I have seen sick people ignore their home physician and go a hundred miles to consult a quack; and for a long time imagine that his knowledge of the healing art was almost divine. The quack’s nearest neighbors looked on in disgust, and repeated the immortal words of Shakespeare, “What fools these mortals be!”
But even Shakespeare is seen at a distance in greater lustre than around his own home. There is an old saying that “the king is never great to his own valet.” But often this is because of the mental gulf between the two men. The valet often judges only the physical man, or the moods of the mental man. Men are great only when they go into the silence and apply their entire force of mind to solving the problems of life. The great speech you heard your favorite orator deliver was not gathered spontaneously while standing before you. The speech was but the fruit of many, many hours of struggle and study and worry and of painful effort. Did you but know the late hour when he blew out the lamp and lay his aching, throbbing head on his pillow, and only slept to dream over again his struggles, you would not call him a genius, but a plodding student.
The man who stands looking into the mirror and beholds his own face, without finding weak spots and flaws and lack of character, is too vain to be judge of himself. The serious, sincere man is always finding flaws in himself, and seeking to find a remedy to cure them. The man or woman who “gets stuck” on the face they see in the glass are mental quacks—they are humbugging themselves. They see a genius in the reflection of an asinine mug. They go away from the glass, and a moment later cannot describe the manner of face they carry on their shoulders. If they were ever so good an artist and painter, they could not paint a picture of themselves from memory.
And if we cannot judge ourselves correctly, how can we expect our own neighbors to judge us even charitably. And our mental face flits before us and out of reach of our grasp as rapidly as the reflection of our physical countenance. We seem to sit in the midst of moving pictures, our mind the curtain on which the pictures are flashed. If we stop the machine and retain the same picture for any great length of time on our mental curtain, we become insane. The machine must be kept in motion, one scene following after the other all day long. True, we can repeat the passing scenes daily, but they must be in motion, passing swiftly on.
When we apply ourselves to any particular study we learn to ignore all the other passing scenes and fasten our mental eye on the screen at a point where our favorite figures appear as they flash by, but our subconscious mental eye realizes all the time that the entire picture show is in progress. The truth is, dear reader, we haven’t time to see our neighbor as he really is, nor even see ourself in all our many phases. Our face is passing through the mirror too rapidly for us to estimate the strength or force of character. In the great economy of nature we are only shadows cast upon the curtain of eternity and passing rapidly away. Our short life makes a film of limited length, the different scenes passing before us so rapidly that even in our sensitive memory only one per cent of all that transpires leaves a trace that can be recalled in after years.
What need we care what people think of us, when we cannot judge or estimate ourselves. If we can practice charity toward each other and forget our neighbor’s faults, as we forget our own face, we do well. The moving pictures of life will not stop long enough for us to “get stuck on ourself.” If we do so, we are left behind. The rushing crowd cannot see us as we see ourselves in the glass.
Girls are so prone to over-estimate their usefulness and greatness and social prestige. The average girl of eighteen or twenty is always “It” in her own estimation. And if she is a city-bred girl she sets a very low estimation on the young man from the country. “He is too slow,” or “too much of a jay,” no odds how sincere he may be. She prefers the flashy, dashing, frivolous city-bred bubble who is always bursting with light wit and shady insinuations. The traveling man is her ideal, whether she knows anything about his character or not.
A story just reached me through a mysterious channel about two rather pretty, well-dressed but flippant school teachers, who went from a Pennsylvania city to a nearby country village to teach in the local school. They felt country life a bore at first because traveling men seldom came that way. So, by way of making country life more tolerable, they began to cultivate the acquaintance of the neighborhood boys. Some of these they flattered and smiled upon and encouraged, and in return were treated often to candies, fruits, and were escorted to card parties and country dances and given a good time. When sleighing season came two of the rustic swains, who earned the munificent sum of three dollars per week, chipped in and hired a two-horse outfit at the cost of four dollars, and invited the two young teachers to take a ride with them and eat supper at a famous chicken and waffle resort at the far end of the valley.
The girls pretended to be delighted, and the party drove off gaily amid cheers and the jingle of bells. When the hotel was reached, where an elaborate and expensive supper had been ordered in advance, the gay, giddy teachers jumped out of the sleigh and ran into the warm parlor, while the unsuspecting young men drove around to the stable to see that the horses were properly attended to. In the parlor the girls met a gay party of young folks, of aristocratic tastes and manners, from their home city, who knew the two teachers. “Who brought you here?” inquired one of the city girls, to which one of the deceitful and shameless teachers responded: “Oh, a couple of country prunes—a pair of dubs brought us. Gee, but they are slow and jayish.”
But at the supper table these same shameless marms made an awful fuss over the country boys, thoroughly disgusting their city friends. Their hypocrisy and duplicity and deceitfulness was actually sickening to those city people who expected far greater honor and more stability of character in women capable of teaching school. How much better for these deceitful girls to have remained silent on the subject of their escorts, after receiving and accepting favors from them, and pretending that they were delighted with their society. They have now lowered themselves in the estimation of those friends who witnessed their hypocrisy to such an extent that they can never reinstate themselves again. Nobody likes a hypocrite, no difference how handsome or brilliant they may be. The honest, sincere and truthful girl is always respected and admired and loved.
Twenty years ago a young school teacher of my acquaintance was teaching out on the mountain, and to get taken home and back again to her boarding house, she pretended to be very fond of a young mountaineer who owned a horse and sleigh and buggy. The poor fellow fell desperately in love with her and she encouraged him, but when the school term was ended she took advantage of the first opportunity to insult him and throw him over, with as little feeling as though he had been a worn-out shoe.
She afterwards married a young man not half so honorable as the young mountaineer, whom she jilted so cruelly. He deserted her ten years ago, leaving her a family of helpless children and a broken heart. “As you sow, so shall you reap.” There is no more dangerous game to play than to play hypocrite. No one means to become hardened in the game, but it grows on a person and poisons all the nobler impulses of the soul, and as age advances, the face hardens and every line in the countenance tells the secret thoughts that have always haunted the mind. The hypocrite cannot hide her sins from the trained eye of the observer, and the world is unforgiving toward the deceptive soul.
A child of seven, with her mission marked out for her, and her future predestined to fall in hard places. Her childhood was to end at the age of ten, and she was to enter into the duties of a woman. Poor little Bernice, how my heart ached for her. But she was as happy as a child of seven could be. She had not forgotten the caresses of her dead mother, but they now seemed to be a long way back in the gloomy past—a year ago.
There were four children younger than she: Albert, Lottie, Addie and Mary; and Leonard was a year older. But he was only a boy, and boys are no good at keeping house. Little Bernice had heard her father tell her Aunt Maud that Bernice would soon be old enough to keep house, and then he would gather all the children in again and keep them together. Aunt Maud took little Addie and baby Mary to care for, and Bernice was sent to live with her grandmother, who had lately become a widow in very poor circumstances.
Bernice seemed to realize the situation and was perfectly satisfied. Her father was working in the lumber woods, and her brothers and sisters were scattered like autumn leaves. She was so anxious to become ten years old and gather them all under her little wings. What a laudable ambition!
Dear God, what an age to feel such motherly cares! Where would there be room to crowd in a few years of innocent childhood?
I wish this was only a story. I wish the child I am writing about was only a creature of my imagination. But it is all too painfully true. She sat in that chair over yonder only yesterday, and told me all about it. Told of it all in gladness and with the sunshine of hope beaming on her little child soul. But every word sent a pang of regret to my heart. This child was giving herself as a willing sacrifice to love and duty. Dear God, what an age to entertain such great resolutions—only seven years!
“Yes,” she said, childishly, “I must not lose a day at school, ’cause I’m goin’ to quit at ten and go to keepin’ house for papa. I kin read now, and kin write purty good, only I forgit how to spell the big words. But I kin learn a hull lot before I’m ten. It’s three long years off. I wish it wasn’t so long, ’cause I want to git the children all together and be their little mother. Mary isn’t quite two years old yit, but she’ll be five when I git to be her mother, and she’ll know how to do a hull lot of work for me. We’re going to live out in the country—out on a mountain farm, and there’ll be cows to milk and pigs and chickens to feed, but the children will all help. Maybe we’ll take grandma along, but she says she’ll have to keep house for Uncle Jim and Uncle Herman, unless they git married and set up for themselves.
“Yes, I must be goin’. Grandma will be waitin’ supper for me. No, sir, I haven’t seen brother Albert and Leonard and sister Lottie for over a year. But it won’t be long until we all git together. Grandma is goin’ to teach me how to bake next summer. She talks to me about keepin’ house for papa, and she cries about it, and kisses me and says, ‘God bless you, child!’ Do you s’pose God will?”
She took her books and went off, singing as happily as though she were the child of a millionaire father; and I sat and looked out of the east window to where the ice lay gorged along the banks of the river, and I tried to think about the ways of Providence. I knew of scores of children twice the age of little Bernice, who never took a single thought of tomorrow, who never expected to keep house until they grew to full womanhood and married a rich husband, who would employ servants and furnish everything the heart could desire. But this child of seven already had her life mapped out for her—a life of toil and care and hardships, and her only pay was to be with those she loved.
And down the road hurried the child, skipping hipperty-hop, her soul as happy as a blue-bird in May, her little red hood tilted to one side and a lock of escaped hair dancing in the wind. Unconsciously the tears welled into my eyes as I looked after her, and the words came again into my mouth: “Dear God, what an age to give up child-life for those she loves!”
The fickle man was coming to have a last meeting with the girl whose heart he had broken—whose heart was still breaking. They had been engaged for two years, and he came out to the farm to visit her every time his business allowed him to visit the town near to the girl’s home. He had always lived in this particular country town, but had been traveling for an educational institution for several years. He had always written to Lizzie once a week while away, but of late he had often skipped a week, and now his letters were growing colder and more unfeeling. It had been rumored that he had another girl in town to whom he wrote almost daily, and with whom he had been seen riding on the day he promised to call on Lizzie and failed to appear.
It had been rumored that he was engaged to the other girl, but Lizzie could not believe the rumor. She knew there was something wrong, but hoped it would all be straightened out when he came. Again he disappointed the girl and failed to come. He wrote her a formal letter telling her that he had been detained in a distant town. But the following day a gossipping neighbor said she had seen him in town the previous night. She had gone into an ice cream parlor and saw him eating ice cream with the girl whom it had been said he was going to marry.
For several nights her sister Maggie, who roomed with Lizzie, heard her sobbing silently late in the night, sobbing as though her heart was breaking. Maggie longed to console her, but was it time yet to speak? Poor Lizzie still had hopes that the fickle lover would return and set everything straight.
Two weeks later the flirt made another appointment to call at eight o’clock. Maggie and her father retired, but Maggie did not undress. She wanted to know how serious the matter stood, for Lizzie was simply dying of a broken heart. If her sister broke down during the interview, Maggie fully intended to go down and take part in dismissing the false-hearted man.
At half-past eight there were sounds of horse steps and buggy wheels in the road. Maggie heard a sob and smothered cry downstairs. Had her poor sister broken down? But it was a firm step that walked to the door to let the caller in. They greeted each other coldly, and for a moment there was silence. Would Lizzie fail to defend herself? A moment longer and the injured girl began:
“Do I understand from your neglect of me that you wish our engagement broken?”
“Lizzie,” the man began coldly, “our engagement was all a mistake. I am not suited to make you an ideal husband. I am not good enough for you——”
The girl interrupted:
“If so, then how dare you marry another woman? Don’t try to defend yourself, sir. I know all. You tired of me because you met another girl who suited you better, and you neglected me to anger me and induce me to break the engagement. This I will never do. You must say the words yourself. I loved you truly and sincerely—I still love you. It is not a child’s love that will be forgotten in a few months or years. I am a woman and love as a woman. I will love you after all the sunlights have gone out of my life and my heart is dead within me. I can not help it. You taught me how to love, and I learned the lesson too well. Now you cast me off, but you can’t take the love out of my heart. I will still love the man I once thought you were. I will love you always. You take joy and sunshine from me and fill my life with shadows, but you can’t take back the love you planted in my soul.”
“Lizzie, for God’s sake hear me through! Our engagement was all a mistake——”
“Yes, a sad mistake—a cruel, wicked mistake,” she interrupted. “But I wish you no harm, no ill luck. God will punish you for your cruel work, I fear. I will even pray for you that you may be spared the punishment that goes to the man who ruins a woman’s life—who steals the sincerest sentiments of her soul and then throws them away, when he sees a new heart that can be won.”
Once again he attempted to explain, but she requested him to go and leave her alone, and he went. No one but himself will ever know the guilt and shame he felt at that hour as he slunk from the house. Maggie could hear her sister sobbing in the room below. She waited an hour and then went down quietly and led her up to bed. She helped to undress the drooping form and put her in the bed, and then got in herself and held the weeping girl in her arms during the night.
Oh, it was sad, sad, sad. Do these men flirts ever dream of the heartaches they bring to those who learn to love them and are then cast aside like broken toys? And think of the sadness this heart tragedy brought to the other members of Lizzie’s family. They watched her day after day, seeing the lines of despair grow deeper and deeper every week. And oh, how her sad, sweet face appealed to their love and sympathy. After the announcement of the fickle man’s wedding appeared in the local press, the sadness seemed to deepen for a few months, and then the poor girl slowly came out of the shadows. But any one who knew her could see that her poor heart was buried in the ashes of her early hopes, and that her never-dying love still sat sighing in the ashes.
The other day while searching through an old trunk for a lost paper, I came across a little pasteboard box. Inside the box I found a photo of a three-year-old boy with Fontleroy curls, and in the same box I found those curls of beaten gold. I called to my wife, and together we examined the relics of a bygone day. This was the picture of our baby boy, and I recalled how, twelve years ago, we took him to the photographer and posed him for his picture; and from there we took him to the barber’s and had his curls cut off. He could not always remain our baby. We had postponed the sad day for several months, and when we brought him back home and his grandmother caught sight of the shorn boy, she took him in her arms and cried: “Oh, where is my baby? You have traded him off for a boy!”
Strange how these things affect us. Strange how these babies grow out of childhood and go exploring through boyhoodland. Our baby disappeared the moment his last curl was severed, and a boy took his place in our affection. Now that boy is passing from us. He is growing tall and stout, and his voice is changing. The moment we put long trousers on him and hide those sturdy legs he will be a young man. The boy will pass away as did the baby in curls, leaving a peculiar sadness at our hearts. That baby did not die, and yet he passed away from us as completely as though we had placed him in a little grave. And some day soon the boyish face will change to that of a man, and the boy will be gone forever.
I still recall the first evening we saw the boy sleeping on his bed, after shorn of his curls, and his mother said to me: “No one can tell how sadly I feel at this great change.” “I believe I do,” I replied; “and I will try to put down on paper some of the emotions passing through your heart. They are in mine too.”
And so I did try to write of her emotions, and the lines were still in the old trunk, tied up with the photo and
And on the day we found those curls, and read these lines aloud, we could look through the window and see our boy coming home from school. “In a little while,” I said, “the boy will disappear with the baby, and the man will grow out of the ashes. Oh, this is a strange world, and were it not for our memories, life would be short indeed! How sad, how sweet, how full of sentiment, how inspiring to live over the past.”
The old negro was past seventy years, hostler at a country hotel. Some of the young men were drinking, and they persuaded “Uncle Andy” to sing us a song. He willingly sang several of his jolliest negro songs, and then wound up with Nellie Gray. When he came to that part which concluded the song, I saw tears stealing down his old wrinkled cheeks. I asked him to sing the chorus over again, and when he looked into my eyes and saw the sympathy I knew was welling up from my heart, he began again in that peculiar cadence which belongs to the negro race alone:
He covered his old eyes with his black hands and sobbed aloud at the conclusion of the song, but the noisy young men who had persuaded him to sing were lined up against the bar for another drink, and had forgotten all about Uncle Andy and his song. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said:
“It was an awful thing to happen in a so-called civilized country—to separate two loving souls and sell the woman into damnable slavery, by a race of men who pretended to worship God and love their neighbors as themselves. I have never suffered such a thing, and I cannot even imagine the feelings of the man who saw his beloved wife torn from his bosom and sold like a horse in the market.”
“You should thank God, sah, dat you-all nevah ’sperienced sich a great sorrow,” he said, looking toward me through his tears. “I has. When I was twenty I was married to Clarissa Beckon. Master died, and we all was sold on de block de nex’ year. I saw her taken away and I fainted dead off. She wor strongah than me. She walked away with her head up in defiance. De las’ words she spoke to me was like de song, dat up in heaven we all shud meet again, where dey cud nevah take her away any more.”
Ah, what a mockery to tell the poor, broken-hearted slaves that up in heaven their wrongs would all be righted. If the slave wife should be restored to her husband up in heaven, why did not those old brutalized slave-owners restore the broken-hearted wife to her husband on earth? How would they picture a just heaven, full of love and mercy and beauty, and then turn around and make a cruel hell out of this world? Ah, yes, and even asked God daily to shower his divine blessings upon this hell of their own making.
I went to bed thinking of the outrages and violent cruelties of the old slavery days, and fell asleep with the horrible picture of slavery in my mind. And sleeping I dreamed that God had reversed the conditions and changed the white men to colored slaves, and the old black slaves were now their masters. Even in that dream I said to myself that the proceedings were just and fair. If the black slave had been sold for the sake of profit long ago, it was fair that he should take advantage of the reversed order of things, and sell his old tormentors into slavery.
Suddenly the scene changed. I stood in a market place, a lad of fourteen. The auctioneer was selling a woman. Her back was toward me, but I could see that she was weeping. I caught the sound of her voice and it was familiar to my ears. I had heard that voice before. Could it be the one woman I had loved from birth—the woman whose first embrace was my first lesson in human love? In heart-broken tones I called to her, “Mother.”
She turned and raised her face to look over the crowd. “Great God!” I cried, “it is my own mother! And she is being sold into slavery!”
I rushed through the crowd toward the auction block, calling her name aloud as I went. Strong men tried to catch and hold me, but I wiggled from their grasp. I reached the block and caught hold of her dress, but she could not stoop down to pick me up and hug me to her heart, because her hands were tied behind her back. I could see her struggle in a mighty effort to break the cords that bound her. Sorrow gave her the strength of a giantess, and I saw the cords break and fall to the ground. The next moment she had clasped me to her breast and made an attempt to run away with me through the crowd. Blood hounds caught her by the throat and she fell to the ground.
I was torn from her bosom by the cruel hands of the man who had bought her, and when she reached her hands toward me the brutal man struck her loving hands with the butt-end of his whip. Then he raised the whip to strike me in the face, and as the blow descended I awoke. I was wet with perspiration, and tears of agony stood on my cheeks.
Think of this—less than fifty years ago such scenes were common—to other mothers and other sons.
I was waiting on the ten o’clock train to leave the depot at Williamsport, Pa., when a vigorous old man came into the waiting room, accompanied by four children. It was an hour yet before train time, and I happened to be the only waiting passenger up to this time. I had come down from Lock Haven on the early morning train, and had two hours on my hands before the Reading train pulled out for Philadelphia. I had passed some of the time away talking to the vigorous scrub woman, who had mopped up the entire floor space of the station since daylight. She had gathered up her buckets and brooms and mops, and was leaving when the vigorous old man and the four children arrived.
He bade me good morning and then seated the children, but he did not sit down himself. He walked to the south window and looked out over the frozen river for several minutes, then turned to me and said: “The old river looks tame under her lid of ice, but some day she’ll get up and shove the lid off, and if the lid refuses to go, there will be a scene along here. I’ve seen her get her back up in my time and shove ice up on the tracks, right here in front of the station.”
“I wonder how deep the flood in 1889 was in the station,” I ventured. He put his finger on a spot a few inches up the window facing and said: “About here somewhere, I think. I was here at the time. You see, I was yard master here up to sixteen years ago. The boys went out on a strike, and I went out along and I never came back. I went into business and gave up railroading.”
“Do you never intend to railroad again?” I asked, by way of keeping up the conversation.
“Oh, no; the roads have no use for us old fellows any more. They want younger blood.”
“But you are not so old,” I said.
“Older than I look, sir. These are my grandchildren. We are off on a little trip together. You see, my youngest daughter is getting married today, and we are going along with the bridal party for a short distance. These grandchildren are very dear to me now since my own children are all married and gone off to build homes of their own.”
As the train drew near he took the children into the ladies waiting room, and other people came in and attracted my attention. Pretty soon a carriage drove up to the station. The horses were decorated with white ribbons and a few white bows on the carriage. Even the driver’s whip was decorated with a white bow. I knew by these signs that it was a wedding party. Two ladies and two gentlemen got out of the carriage, and I found myself guessing which couple were the bride and groom. They entered the ladies waiting room, and other young people appeared on the scene and began to throw rice and raise a great noise. They were having a great time, a jolly, happy time.
In a few minutes the old train master came back to me, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said: “They’re having their fun in there, as young people will. The bride in there is my youngest daughter, going off on her wedding trip.”
I could see that his voice was trembling and that his feelings were getting the better of him, but he walked to the window and looked out over the river and let the tears run quietly down his brave old face. He had escaped from the merry crowd to look out over the frozen river. What did he see? What was the fascination?
Intuitively I knew that the vision out there on the river was another wedding party of long years ago. I knew that the fair bride he saw out yonder was leaning on his own strong arm, and that they were going off on that journey this world and this life only gives but once to men and women—that journey which comes so near to making this world a heaven. Was that bride still alive? No, the tears in the old man’s eyes were silent witnesses to proclaim the sad news that she had gone on another journey—and gone alone.
The train pulled up and the crowd rushed out to get on board, and the old train master, with his untold story, drifted away from me, and I never saw him again.
A reader writes me to learn what books did me the most good. This is hard to tell. As a boy we had but few books in our home, the Bible being the leading book, and a Lutheran catechism being the next in importance. My boyhood work was to watch cows. Our farm was small, and we raised patches of grain and hay, instead of whole fields. When we pastured one of these patches, I was obliged to keep them away from the patches of grain. It was during this time that I read the entire Bible, and tried in vain to grasp the meaning of many passages. The chapters devoted to love and charity and honesty, were within the grasp of any boy, but when it came to treating of sacrifices to please a God of love, I was getting in too deep to wade through, and was obliged to back out and sit down and contemplate the situation. I still hold the subject under deep contemplation.
The next book I can remember was “Great Expectations,” by Dickens. It filled my boyish mind with a love of literature. Since then I have read all of Dickens’ books, and he is my favorite author. In spite of his exaggerations and impossible characters, he is nearer in touch with all manner of humanity than any other author I have read. I think still that “David Copperfield” is the best book of fiction ever written, with “Little Dorrit” a close second.
I never liked Scott. There was too much war and fantastic thunder about him. His heroes were of the royalty, while Dickens found his among the common people—my kind of people—the people I love.
I read a few of Thackeray’s best stories and liked them, only they lacked the humor and the child sympathy I found in Dickens. He could never touch me in the tender spot as Dickens could.
Then comes Mark Twain’s early stories—not for instruction alone, but for amusement. His most humorous book is the most instructive, as well. “Huckelberry Finn,” to my idea of humor, is the most humorous book I ever read, providing one sees the pathetic and human qualities. The characters of the story are not trying to make sport or act ridiculous—they are serious all the time. It is this feature that brings out the humor. “Huckelberry Finn” looks upon the subject of human slavery with the eyes and soul of a southern boy fifty years before the great rebellion and the emancipation of the negro slaves. It was part of his religion to believe in the institution of human slavery, and he had to make up his mind to go to hell for the sin of it, before he dared assist a black slave to escape to a free state.
Never did any book give me as deep insight into human character as did this one. A man can be trained to harmonize almost any outrage against his weaker neighbor, if he can find a single verse of Scripture to uphold his actions.
Of our more modern writers, I can get more thought food from Elbert Hubbard, and this is what a reader wants. The writer who can make you think thoughts of your own, is the one who draws out the truth and the faith that is in you. Some can amuse and instruct without making you think along new lines. Unless you do some original thinking, after reading a book or a story, or a poem, you have not gained anything of lasting effect. The thoughts that do you the most good are the thoughts you can claim as your own. We are all looking at the world and into the mysteries of life from different view points. Others can tell us of a peep hole that brings to view many unknown things, but we must do the peeping ourselves. We must see things with our own mental eyes before we can size them up and grasp them and call them our own.
However, it all depends on the trend of one’s mind. The books that gave me the most instruction and entertainment might have no value at all in the judgment of another. Each individual must read until he discovers the trend of his mind, and then read books that satisfy. Even the much abused ten cent novel whetted my taste for higher literature. Occasionally one would make me think.
During the seven years I lived in my present home, I have sat on the front porch and looked across the Susquehanna river to a bluff just beyond the P. & E. Railroad. White tombstones, looming up above the weeds, like the great white teeth of Death, indicated that human bodies had been laid there to rest, while the struggle with others continued for a little while longer. Mrs. Haiden often spoke of going over to visit the spot. To her an old graveyard appeals with stronger force than the most beautiful garden of flowers. Three years ago, when we visited Washington, the wise old faces of the Senators and Representatives of the people did not appeal to her. Neither did the political stench of the Capitol. Arlington cemetery and the Egyptian mummies in the National Museum took her fancy. They were flowers handed down to us from a former generation, as they say in the Declaration of Independence.
Well, Mrs. Haiden’s curiosity to visit the old Quiggle cemetery overcame my laziness, and one fine Sunday we persuaded Professor Stevenson to accompany us, and we crossed the river at the ferry and walked through the fields to the place of interest. The cemetery is quite an old burial ground for this neighborhood. We could not determine how old, because the first graves made there were marked only with mountain sand stones, and only a few of them bore an inscription.
One of the graves was marked with a granite monument and surrounded with an iron fence, and inside the enclosure was an iron bench, just as though some loved one left behind would often come there and sit in the solitude and commune with the dead man under the sod. It was a beautiful and tender suggestion, and if the dead could really send back a message to the waiting ones, how much of death’s mystery could be cleared away. But aching hearts and the longings of yearning souls have failed to bring back even a whispered message from the land beyond the shadow line. The dead cannot talk to us any more than the living can talk to the dead. The wires are all down between the living and the dead—all down and out of use, and when we sit at the graves of our loved ones, all we can do is to recall the past; if time is a circle, then heaven lies in the past, as well as in the future, and the needle of our mental compass always points into the great beyond, no difference where we look.
On one mountain stone we found the figures 1803, and the name, Andrew K. Rinder. He had been buried one hundred and seven years—before the war of 1812 was fought between our country and Great Britain. The roar of the cannons could not disturb his rest. The big trains on the “Pennsy” go thundering by only two hundred feet away, but Rinder does not hear them. He never saw a steam locomotive nor a railroad track. These modern inventions have crowded in upon his resting place, but he is done with the world—he does not care. He lived his little life and lies in his little grave on this lonely little hill. Perhaps we will be as thoroughly forgotten in a century from now as Andrew K. Rinder. It has been over a hundred years since that name was set up in printed letters—perhaps it will never appear again. Did some mysterious force lead me there to resurrect that long forgotten name? Who can say? Life is a plan and a purpose; we move as the wheels in a clock, urged by a power to which we are attached by unseen hands.
On our return, we ran across a private burial ground we had known nothing about. Here lie the two generations of Stech’s. John Stech was buried in 1815. His sons and daughters lie sleeping at his side. The sons never married, and the name of Stech died out of the neighborhood. Not a man bearing that good old German name is known in this county. The valuable farm has fallen into the hands of strangers, and the private burial place is overgrown with briars and trees, and the top of the marker fallen to the ground. Nobody cares. These two bachelor brothers should have married and left some one to carry their name and to care for their graves.
I do not advocate Rooseveltian families—the age for large families has passed away—but I do believe every sane man should have a life behind in place of the one he takes away when he steps out. These forgotten and neglected graves in the Stech burial ground show that the Stechs neglected their duty during life. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” is true in all phases of earthly existence.
In less than a century ninety-nine per cent of the world’s dead are forgotten on earth. We, too, will be forgotten. Is there a record kept elsewhere? Are there more durable tablets than these rough mountain stones and granite?
While out driving during the summer days of last season, I passed a little whitewashed cottage many times while returning in the evening, and noticed that on clear sunset days, an old woman stood in the open door and looked out toward the sunset, where the light lay like golden sheets upon the distant hilltops. When I spoke to her and bade her “good evening,” she lowered her eyes for a moment and returned my salute, and then raised them to study the sun set beauties. At last I stopped one September evening and remarked: “You seem to take great pleasure in the glories of a Pennsylvania sunset, grandmother. Were you ever an artist or painter?”
“Bless your heart, no. I’ve always been a plain housekeeper. My husband used to make and repair shoes in that little shop across the road, and I married him to keep house and cook his meals. I love the sunset for the sake of old memories. It was a bright sunset evening when Albert and I drove up the road to the gate yonder, and the farmer’s son came and took the horse and buggy home. We walked down this gravel path hand in hand and passed in through this door. We had been married only two hours, and we came here to begin our married life.
“The cottage was new then, for Albert built it for our home when we first became engaged. Previous to that he had lived in the shop. He came here a journeyman shoemaker, but the journeyman business had changed to the village shoe shop. He bought the little shop from the shoemaker who was removing to Ohio. And there he worked for two years and prospered. He was an orphan boy and had no relatives he knew of. Had been brought up in a foundling, which they called a “poor house,” in those days. Albert and I met at the country dances, for he could play the fiddle lovely. Nowadays they call it a violin, but Albert was only a fiddler on a fiddle.
“Sixty-two years ago and better, we walked down this gravel path hand in hand, and we were chums for over forty years. The old shop is falling into decay and the door does not close tight any more, but the cottage has been repaired since Albert died. But I don’t think of his death on these bright sunset evenings. I only remember and think of our wedding day, and of the other bright, sunny evenings when he and the children sat on this bench after working hours, and I sat in the door with my knitting.
“You only see a poor, old, lonely woman standing in the open door of her humble home, but I see the happiest little family circle in all the world—a proud father and three healthy, laughing children. Albert would always come out here on a summer evening to smoke his pipe, and the children would bring toys to be mended by his dear, loving hands.”
She wiped a tear from her dim old eyes, and continued: “We were so very happy while the children lived; but one winter diphtheria broke out in the village and swept all our darling loved ones from our grasp. Poor Albert was heartbroken for several years, and every Sunday we would walk over to the little graveyard in yonder hill and talk of the children as though the cemetery were a school and we had come to visit the children and bring them flowers.
“But I do not see this sad picture as I stand in the open door and look to the sunset sky. I only see the wedding party for a moment, and then Albert and the children sitting on the porch. Sometimes I talk to them while the sun is setting, and when the shadows fall, they bring back the faces of those I love. It is then that I can hear Albert’s voice as he sings the children to sleep out here on the porch, and sometimes I go out to bring the sleeping baby in and lay it on the bed, as I used to do sixty years ago.
“And I am not disappointed when I awake from my delusion, for I know that over yonder, beyond the sunset, Albert is singing to the children, and it is the echo of his voice that comes to me through the open door. You only see a poor, old, gray-haired woman standing here alone in the open door, but I am surrounded with dreams and visions and memories which no others can behold.”
One of the nice things people tell of Judge Mayer, who served the counties of Clinton, Cameron and Elk as president judge for almost forty years, is of the deep sympathy he showed when Attorney Henry Harvey fell dead in the court room. Harvey had been a law student in the judge’s office, and he felt a fatherly interest in the young man. He was proud of his achievements and successes at the bar, and was pleased when the local Republicans spoke of Harvey as a candidate for the high office of Governor of the great State of Pennsylvania. The judge much regretted the conditions that robbed his pupil of the high honor, but still looked ahead and hoped the honor might still hover near and select Mr. Harvey later on.
The judge knew what disappointment tasted like, for, being a Democrat in a Republican state, is what barred him from the Supreme bench. But he deemed the honor, at the expense of his honest political convictions, to be hollow and empty.
But one unfortunate day the man for whom he had seen such a brilliant future was fatally stricken in court. Harvey was addressing the jury in an important case, and was even more brilliant than usual, when suddenly he threw up his arms and staggered backward into the arms of R. C. Quiggle, calling to a physician sitting near him: “Doctor, I am sick.”
These were the last words uttered by the man of whom such a brilliant future had been predicted. When all was over, and the dead attorney lay cold in front of the jury, the venerable judge broke down and wept like a tender-hearted woman.
People who had come to look upon Charles A. Mayer as a stern and relentless judge, never dreamed of such a display of affection and sympathy. The judge had revealed his humane and tender side to the people, and they admired the new man far above the old one. After adjourning court, he stood with a bunch of attorneys and court officials discussing the tragical end of his friend, and out on the streets the people were discussing the affair, and to each new man who joined the crowds of startled citizens, some one would say: “The judge wept like a child when Harvey died.”
The writer of these lines was attending a relative’s funeral on that day, and when a man came to the funeral who had been in court when the tragical death occurred, and was telling a bunch of men standing outside the home and waiting for the services to begin, he did not forget to add: “Judge Mayer cried like a loving father when he saw that his friend was dead.”
And all over the country the news of Attorney Harvey’s death was whispered in awed tones, and always in connection with the death of Harvey was told the story of the judge’s tears.
It gave the people a peep into the real man behind the legal mask, and they admired the real man far above the legal sternness which the profession forced upon the judge. A man always gains in power and admiration when he shows evidence of a sympathetic heart. Abraham Lincoln’s tears of sympathy stand out as liquid diamonds upon his official record, never to be washed away while his beloved name remains on the pages of American history. The world may malign him and wrongly accuse him of many things, but those tears of sympathy are out of reach of human hands or slanderous tongues, and the crown of his earthly glory will always sparkle in the light of his illustrious name as indelible stars, forever polished by the love the American people retain for the man.
So, too, do the judge’s tears stand out above all his other good qualities, and command respect and admiration from his bitterest enemies. They can never be forgotten. Though he is dead and in his grave, the tears shed by loving friends will be forgotten by the world, while yet his own tears of sympathy remain like drops of dew to keep his memory fresh and green in the hearts of all those who know of the tender and sympathetic side of the judge.
It was a bleak morning in April, the country roads being muddy and heavy and discouraging, and as the young man trudged along, his mind wandered back to the day he started as a tramp. His parents had become suddenly wealthy, through an oil strike on their mountain farm. They immediately moved to the city and purchased a fine home. The boy was sent to college. He was then eighteen years old. On the second year term Walter was progressing in his studies rapidly, and the teachers were proud of their bright pupil. They told him so. Their words of praise came back in memory whispers as he trudged along, footsore, sick, weary and hungry.
It was a bitter recollection to recall the day when the news was brought to him of his father’s and mother’s death. They had been killed in a railroad wreck. After the funeral it was discovered that good fortune had given Aaron Burfield the big head, and he started to gamble in stocks. He knew as much about it as a cow knows about Latin. He was a lamb to be easily fleeced. All the fortune had been lost and the big house was mortgaged. Walter was a beggar when twenty years of age.
He realized that he had no rich relatives or friends to help him. His foolish father had deserted all his old friends and many poor relatives the hour he found himself wealthy. Walter’s pride barred him from going back to these deserted friends and relatives. He went back to school, but the news of his change of fortune reached the ears of the young aristocratic friends with whom he had associated, and they cut him short. His tuition was paid in full, but he could not remain at school and be the outcast and beggar. News reached him that the big house was sold, and did not satisfy the creditors. He had nothing left but his clothes and a gold watch.
Now he regretted, as he walked along, that he had not remained at school and graduated. The sting of becoming an outcast was painful. Had he to do it all over again, he might do just as he had done—jumped a freight train one night with ten dollars in his pocket and left the college town forever. This was two years ago. He had harvested in the Dakotas, worked on the lakes, tried packing-house drudgery and tried his hand at work on a farm. He was now too sick and discouraged to beat his way by rail. He had lost his old-time courage, and felt like a whipped child. He must give up the careless, worthless life he was leading, and secure a permanent job.
He came to a large farm-house and went around to the back door to ask for a bite of breakfast. A tired woman told him to go away. He asked permission to sit on the porch step and rest. The old farm dog came up and licked his hand. His heart leaped in a glad response to even the friendship of a dog. He put one arm around the dog’s neck and unconsciously spoke aloud:
“Do you know how heart-sick and friendless I am, old doggie?”
“Do you like dogs?”
It was a girl’s voice. Walter Burfield looked up and saw it was a pretty red-cheeked girl addressing him. My, but she looked pretty and wholesome. A sinner standing outside of heaven and looking in through the open gate and beholding an angel would feel as Walter felt on beholding that pretty country girl.
“Do you like dogs,” she asked again, for the tramp sat dumb before her. His eyes dropped. He had reached that point in the life of a vagabond where the frank, honest eyes of some one in whom hope burns brightly, makes the hopeless soul recoil and seek to hide away from questioning eyes.
“I just feel like hugging the old dog,” he said, “because he offered to be my friend, and I am so hungry for friendship. I would like to secure a position, and find a home and settle down in the ways of peace once more. I am without a friend in all the wide world. The touch of the dog’s tongue on my hand is the first friendly touch I have felt for two years. The woman inside allowed me to sit down and rest here, but she refused me a bite to eat. I guess the old dog knows how hungry and friendless and despondent I am, so he came up and gave me the kiss of loving friendship.”
“Wait,” said the girl, “I’ll bring you something to eat, poor man.”
She sat and talked to him while he ate. She had never found any one so interesting, and he had never seen any one so beautiful. He could touch her heart as never any one had touched it before. He knew so much of life and was so discouraged and hopeless with it all. His talk opened up a new world to her. Her life had been so tame and commonplace, and she had longed for news from the outside world. He did not look like a tramp, though he was ragged and dirty and unshaven. The girl went to her father and persuaded him to give the poor tramp a job.
Walter Burfield stayed. He worked hard and faithfully. He resolved to give up roaming forever and try to make a man of himself, though obliged to begin down at the bottom. The old dog followed him through the fields day after day, as though he felt that it was his influence that had called Walter back to a life of usefulness. And Walter well knew that it was old Hector’s warm kiss on his hand that brought out the heart talk that morning with Adaline Blair.
Two years afterward, as he sat under a shade tree while resting his team of horses, he hugged the old dog and said to him:
“Dear old Hector, that first kiss of yours opened the door to a brand new world for me. God, but I must have been sick and lonely on that morning I sat resting on the porch, and you and Adaline found me and took me into your affections. Your kisses are still warm and affectionate, old doggie, but I felt a warmer one last night on my lips. Do you know that your little mistress has promised to be my wife? She says she was drawn toward me when she saw me hugging her dog. It was your loving kiss, old Hector, that has brought all this new love and hope and sunlight into my life. She would never have caught me hugging you, were it not for your friendly kiss.”
Through an almost fatal accident, an old lady of seventy-five years lay at death’s door for many long weeks. She had not been as prosperous during the last twenty-five years of her life as she had been in her early married life, and many of her old time friends had drifted out of her life, and she drifted out of theirs. She thought of all this as she lay on her bed of affliction, too weak to move more than one arm. It was sad to think of the old friends who had forgotten her so completely. They must all know of her illness, for her daughter Mary had read several notices to her from the local papers concerning her serious accident, and more serious condition since the accident occurred.
Somehow she felt so lonely and isolated and neglected. Better die and be out of this painful existence than to lie sick in bed for weeks and weeks and be absolutely forgotten by the old-time friends, whose society she once enjoyed so delightfully.
When her daughter came in she had hard work to turn her feeble head to the wall, so the tears on her lashes could not be seen. She even felt one on her thin cheek, but had not the physical power to wipe it away. As the daughter went about the room, tidying things up, and dusting off the stand on which the medicine bottles stood, she listened carefully to see if her mother was sleeping. A slight cough from the bed convinced her that the invalid was awake, and she broke the silence by saying:
“I hope the mail today will bring a letter from brother John. He knows of your accident, and I feel sure he will reach us today with his answer.”
The finger on the bed moved slightly and a weak voice answered; “I hope so, Mary. It’s nice to receive a letter from our absent ones, at such times like this.”
Mary knew how it exhausted her mother to talk, so she said no more, but pulled down the blind to shut out the light, and left the sick room with a pain at her heart. Her keen eye had seen the tears on her mother’s eye lashes, and she felt certain that the poor invalid had been weeping over confinement and isolation from society and her friends.
In an hour the morning mail arrived, and she was agreeably surprised to find five letters, addressed to her mother, besides the one from John. She opened John’s letter and read it over carefully, to make sure that he had said nothing to hurt his mother’s feelings. John was so careless at times, and would bring up business problems that should not be spoken of when the mother was not in condition for such matters. Then Mary went up to the sick room and read John’s letter aloud.
“I’m glad to hear he’s well,” the invalid said laboriously, and closed her eyes again from sheer weakness.
“But mother,” exclaimed Mary, “here’s a letter from Mrs. Moore—your old friend, Mrs. Moore, of whom you spoke only yesterday.”
The invalid opened wide her eyes and listened until the letter was finished. It spoke of the old time friendship, and expressed hope that the invalid would soon recover, and be in condition to enjoy a visit from her friend, just so soon as the weather was settled.
“How kind of Mrs. Moore to think of me in my affliction,” exclaimed the invalid in much stronger tones. “It’s better than medicine to hear from her. Old friends are so dear to the heart, for they bring up old memories.”
“But here are letters from more of your old friends, mother. Here is one from Mrs. Bridgens, and one from Mrs. Jones, and one from old Miss Christie, and from Mrs. Cook.” And Mary sat for almost an hour reading the messages from old friends to the invalid of whom the writers spoke so tenderly, and wrote of old-time adventures and scenes from their girlhood days.
Mary was delighted to see the change these messages of love had worked in her invalid mother. The faded old eyes were lighted with a new illumination, and a little color had struggled back to her cheeks. She asked to have the letters given to her, and she brought both hands together to receive them, holding them as tenderly as a little girl would hold her first doll. Mary went downstairs, leaving the invalid holding her love letters so fondly, and when she returned in half an hour, she found her sleeping sweetly, and fondly holding those letters in one feeble hand. And Mary whispered:
“If they only knew how much pleasure and hope their letters brought to my dear old mother, they would never neglect writing to their old friends when affliction is upon them. God bless them for the hope and happiness they brought to this home.”
The unsatisfied hunger we experience during this life, creates a longing in every human heart for another trial at living after this life has been lived to the end. Once out on a desert, some travelers were perishing from thirst. The man came to a small oasis amidst a few gnarled and twisted trees. The sight of the trees was evidence that water was near, so he hurried his steps and came near to the desired spot. He found water there, but it was stagnated and foul, wild animals had been drinking and wading and wallowing in the pool until it looked sickening and disgusting to the traveler.
The hopes that filled his heart as he approached the promising oasis began to ooze out through his fingers, and a sickly sensation filled his soul. Yet this was all the available water to be had. His wife joined him a few minutes later, bringing two children. They remained over night at the pool, finding that the foul water had revived them in spite of the filth. They did not know which way to go to find the inhabited country, so they erected an improvised tent and thought to live there until some traveling caravan came that way, when they would follow it back to the green earth.
They could secure flesh to eat from the fowls that came to the trees and the young of wild animals brought there to get a drink of water. And so days passed into weeks and months and years, and the longing to be rescued became as a dead hope. None were satisfied with the befouled water, nor the narrow life, but the wife and children were afraid to again brave the desert and go in search of inhabited land. One night the husband and father became so sick and disgusted with the water that he arose and stole away by the light of the moon determined to find a better place of existence or become lost and perish out on the burning sands.
Next morning there was deep sorrow at the pool. The mother and children mourned him as one dead. They tried to follow him, but his tracks were soon lost in the shifting sands, so they returned to the pool and the friendly trees, resolved to wait until some one came to take them away.
This is a good illustration of man’s life on earth. He is never satisfied nor contented. The shallow pool of stagnated water never satisfies his longings for a deeper and broader life. And finally he goes away into the night of darkness, and the winds of mystery blow the sands of oblivion over his tracks, and no one knows whither he went. And the living sit at the pool and look out over the desert of life and wonder, and wonder, and grow more and more dissatisfied and say to themselves: “This life is so unsatisfactory and barren of real pleasure—there must be sweeter and purer water away over yonder.”
The divorce trial of a handsome young woman and her wealthy husband, brings up the story of her early environment and her unfortunate mother’s disappointed life. The woman now seeking a divorce was reared in the midst of matrimonial unrest and social misery—what other ending could the world expect in her own case? Where the union is not purely a union of heart and soul, a harmony of taste and temperament, where the souls are not tuned to respond to the same vibrations, conjugal happiness is simply impossible.
The mother of this woman in the divorce court was once a beautiful Irish girl, the daughter of a man who kept a small crockery store in Philadelphia. His store was located around the corner from the aristocratic neighborhood, where the scions of the old Quaker families reside in magnificent palaces. Sometimes a few of them would condescend to stop at the modest shop and make a purchase, but the liveried negro servants came more frequently to make the purchases desired by their masters. At such times they would sit and gossip with the Irish merchant and his wife about their aristocratic and proud employers.
These conversations with the servants revealed the great social chasm existing between the humble shop people and the wealthy aristocrats living just around the corner. The shopman’s eldest daughter, a beautiful girl of sixteen, listened to the tales told by the liveried servants of the rich, and a longing grew daily stronger in her humble soul to become rich and aristocratic some day, too. She cared not by what means. She only thought of the glorious end of the road leading up to one of these magnificent palaces, and gave no thought to the mud and the mire and the dangerous chasms to cross before arriving at the end of all this golden glory and glitter of gilded gladness. She dreamed of it night and day. Her pure soul became sordid and hard with an ambition that was ever in her dreams. On the street where the shop was located, students bound for the University of Pennsylvania would pass daily, and among them were a number of young aristocrats, exquisitely attired, with their coats thrown back to display their jeweled fraternity pins. As time went on, the daughter of the shop man developed into a tall, slender, beautiful girl, with violet eyes and chestnut brown hair, and a complexion of lovely pink. In the morning she would go outside the store to put the goods on display, and was noticed by the wealthy university students. One of them in particular fell desperately in love with the bewitching girl. They began to slyly flirt as the students passed. It would not be fair nor true to put all the blame upon the student. The ambitious shop girl was just as anxious to make a conquest as was the young man. She knew he was rich and could see that he was handsome. She felt only hatred toward the rich people who ignored her, and her humble parents. She could never love this young man sincerely, but she would sell herself for the grand position he could give her. He would always hold himself at an elevation far above her parents, and this would always be a sting in her soul, but she was too ambitious to hesitate at this.
One day he stopped at the shop to buy a shaving mug, and she waited on him. They became acquainted. She was fascinated with his beauty and fine clothes and polite manners. He made love to her from that day with ardor, and she was in the heaven of glory she had dreamed of as she attended to the shop. One day he proposed to her, and she gladly accepted his offer. Her ambition was to be gratified. Oh, the fascination and the wild ambition and magnificent hopes! But all the time she knew she did not love him with a sincere heart. Her humble origin, and his proud and aristocratic parents, made a chasm that could not be bridged in so short a time. Her parents thought it a fine bargain and sale, and encouraged the courtship. Love would come later on. A woman must learn to love where love pays the largest dividends in gold.
So the beautiful, ambitious Irish girl and the aristocratic youth were quietly married. When he told his proud mother that he had married the girl from the crockery store, the last happy smile died on her lips, and she never smiled again. She had such high ambitions for her boy, and he had spoiled them by a rash marriage.
Is it any wonder the marriage proved a failure? They had six children, yet the mother never loved her husband as a woman should love the father of her babies. She was ever conscious of the social chasm between them, and it was a thorn that never ceased to give pain. She had reached the place her ambition craved, but it did not reward her with happiness. There was more pleasure in slowly falling from it, than trying to go higher. The home and money and position were not satisfying. Her popular young husband and the social distinction he gave her were not satisfying. She was not happy.
She filled the aching void with lovers. One was a society man in her husband’s set, and one other was a big, dark, much-married actor. She broke her husband’s heart, she broke the heart of his adoring mother, and she grew more wretched herself every year. She then took to drink, and soon after to drugs. Coming home one night from a party she fell on the icy pavement and broke both lower limbs. She never saw a well day after the accident, and died at the age of thirty-four. She had starved her heart for wealth and position. She went without love to a high position and found it a bitter mockery. She had outraged her own soul. Then began the work of turning to ruin the palace in which she tried to live without love.
In an old trunk, up in the garret where the family letters were deposited for more than half a century, I found the diary of a soldier, in which the following notes attracted my attention: “August 14, 1864. Yesterday was a terrible day for me. The battle at Deep Bottom, near Richmond, took the last of my messmates. Andrew Brown was wounded early in the engagement—shot through the thigh. Comrade Charles Pepperman assisted him to the rear. While they were gone, the man at my side, Amos Friedel was shot through the head and died instantly. Thus three of my messmates left my side within fifteen minutes. Pepperman joined the ranks an hour later, and a few minutes after was shot and fatally wounded. This morning Henry Traveler was found on the battle field, with his arm shattered horribly, and was taken to the hospital.
“In noting these fatalities and injuries, I cannot help but recall Comrade Shoemaker, the first of my messmates to pass out. His was the most pitiable death of all. He died three months ago of nostalgia. This is simply a melancholy growing out of homesickness. Shoemaker had married a pretty girl only a few weeks before he enlisted and went to the front. The army lay in supine idleness for several weeks, and Shoemaker had nothing to do but brood over his separation from the one he loved so fondly. A deep melancholia settled down upon his soul and we could not awaken an interest in his heart. Hour after hour his mind dwelt upon the scenes of his Pennsylvania home, and his deserted wife’s sad face looked out of the shadows and smiled the lonely smile of a forsaken woman.
“They took him to the hospital, but the doctors could find no organic disease in his body. He was simply dying of loneliness and a longing, longing to be with the people he loved. He was a large man, standing six feet in his bare feet, and this made his death all the more pathetic. We tried to get him a furlough and send him to his family at home, for thirty days, but the officers laughed at us, and said the man would come out of his melancholia in a few days and go to eating hard-tack. They were men without heart or sentiment, and they did not know the depth of Shoemaker’s gloom.
“Three weeks after being taken to the hospital, he died, and was buried in Virginia, and the longing wife never saw his face again.
“August 25th. Was to see Comrade Brown today, before they removed him to the hospital at Washington. He is very badly wounded, the bone being shattered and there is danger of gangrene. He gave me a letter to read which he received the previous day from home, written by his sister, Barbara. Among the many things she wrote was this: ‘On the night of the 15th and about two o’clock in the morning I dreamed that you came home. I could see you walking up to the door as plainly as I ever saw your familiar face. Your knock on the door wakened me out of a troubled sleep, and so sure was I that you were down at the door waiting to be admitted, that I insisted on some one going down to let you in. Of course it was all a dream, but so realistic, that I was sorely troubled until father read in the Tribune that you were wounded. Surely you must have been thinking of home at that hour.’”
There the diary ended. For it was only a portion of the book in which this unknown comrade had been jotting down the events of his army life. The hand that put those written pages in the old trunk has been dead for many years, and we can only guess who the writer was. He, too, may have left his bones to decay in Virginia soil, and his diary sent back to Northern friends. But I knew this Samuel Shoemaker, and I still remember of hearing my parents talking about his sad death. No doubt there were many thousands of young men taken from their mountain homes and rushed to the front, and the change was so great that they could not prevent their hearts from longing for the dear old scenes of home—for the dear old mother, wife or sweetheart. And then came the hopelessness and melancholia and the loss of courage, and finally death.
And yet that war settled nothing. The negro question is still the overshadowing problem calling for a solution. Burning negroes at the stake marks America as one of the barbarous nations.
When I was a young man I had occasion to write something for the local paper, published near my home. The late Girard Wright, brother of Theodore, editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia Record, was managing the paper at the time. He sent for me. Timidly I called at the office, for I was an awkward country youth and afraid of men who were established in the business world. There did not seem to be any place in the world for me outside of a barren hillside farm, and I always felt like a thief stealing off in the dark when I looked out over the world for something better.
Mr. Wright was a revelation and an inspiration to me. Why, he was just as approachable as a boy. A handsome man, with the kindliest and most sympathetic face I had ever seen. I can shut my eyes and see that intelligent face, with those sympathetic eyes, into which the hopeless could look and find hope and courage.
He wanted me to write for his paper. I told him frankly that I lacked education and vocabulary, and could write only in a crude style. And he replied:
“Why, that is what the people want. The world is tired of rounded phrases and poetical lines and erudite sentences. What the people want is original thought, new ideas—a new and original way of looking at every-day events, without prejudice or superstition or cant. You can do this, for there is an originality about your ideas—an independent peephole, through which you observe the world, without fear or favor. All you want is practice. You do not ape or copy after any writer I ever heard of, and practice will polish your original style to a surprising extent. If your style was borrowed, practice would do you little good. It might add to your ability to ape and copy after others, but the style would never be your own.”
Something happened soon after this, and Mr. Wright went back to Philadelphia before I could send in my contributions. Then my old mother was taken very ill, and I had no time for literature. Mr. Wright kept in touch with the country paper, and when my contributions no longer appeared, he wrote me to know the reason why. I told him that I was nursing my dying mother, and was obliged to drop literature until all was over. He wrote me again and extended his sympathy, and what was of still more material benefit—a bank note. It came when poverty and sorrow were sweeping over me, and it gave me courage.
It was so pleasant to know that this big-hearted man was thinking of me, away down in the big city. He was the first educated man to find any merit in my feeble attempts at writing for publication. His appreciation came like rain to a famishing flower. It was something I had been hungering for through the miserable years when all the future looked like a narrow horizon, that dipped down into a coming storm of hopelessness.
I never saw Mr. Wright but that one time, and never heard directly from him again. I never had the opportunity to tell him how much good his kind words of appreciation had done for me. He died while I was living in Colorado, and my soul was filled with sorrow and regret. I had always hoped to meet him again and thank him for the good he had so unconsciously imparted to me. I knew that an inspiration had gone out of my life when he died, though he never dreamed of the great uplift he had given me.
I am writing these lines to show the reader how much good one man’s appreciative words can do for another. We all have a subtle force within ourselves for doing good or harm to our fellow men. The thought pebble we carelessly toss into the intellectual stream of our neighbor may start little waves to vibrating and extending into a circle around him, which will greatly influence his future life.
After Mr. Wright’s death there was a space of fifteen years in which no man could transmit an inspiration to my soul and give my mind a new impetus. Then, outside a little country church, I met for the first time the other man who touched a vibrating chord in my soul, and a new world of hope opened up, like the lifting of a dense fog often reveals the distant mountains.
| Page | |
| Frontispiece | 1 |
| Biographical Appreciation | 3 |
| I Plead Guilty | 9 |
| Religion of Humanity | 10 |
| Joe Bailey’s Ride | 12 |
| The Other Man’s Baby | 13 |
| The Pathos of Humor | 15 |
| The Pine Creek Tragedy | 16 |
| The Homesick Boy | 18 |
| Friends Who Pass in the Dark | 19 |
| Voice of the Stone | 20 |
| Ingratitude | 22 |
| Orphan Eva | 23 |
| Loving the World | 24 |
| Lost in the Snow | 26 |
| A Plea for Childhood | 27 |
| Thoughts of Immortality | 29 |
| Teach Sentiment | 30 |
| The Soul of Sorrow | 31 |
| Visiting the Old Home | 32 |
| The Wayward Boy | 34 |
| A Wasted Life | 35 |
| Garret Memories | 36 |
| Your Baby Still | 38 |
| Wish I were a Jew | 39 |
| Memories | 40 |
| Sweetened with Sorrow | 42 |
| In Her Dreams | 43 |
| The Mortgaged Mother | 45 |
| The Toy Maker | 46 |
| The Mother-in-Law | 47 |
| Bob White | 49 |
| Whipping a Child | 51 |
| Not a Clinging Vine | 52 |
| The Saloon in Our Town | 53 |
| The Homesick Child | 55 |
| Why He Quit Hunting | 56 |
| The Hard-Luck Showman | 58 |
| Playing with Hearts | 59 |
| True Friendship | 61 |
| Sighing of the Pines | 62 |
| The Homesick Horses | 64 |
| The Blind Cigarmaker | 65 |
| The Three Classes | 66 |
| Hissed and Hooted | 68 |
| The War with Self | 69 |
| Crippled Joe and the Showman | 71 |
| Race Suicide | 73 |
| For a Stage Career | 74 |
| The Dead of the Land and Sea | 76 |
| Where Dreams Come True | 77 |
| It Might Have Been | 79 |
| A Misguided Mother | 80 |
| The World is Blind | 82 |
| Wrong on the Throne | 83 |
| The Voices We Understand | 84 |
| Chasing the Cows Up | 86 |
| Flowers for the Living | 87 |
| The Hobo’s Story | 89 |
| In the Looking Glass | 90 |
| Ungrateful Young Girls | 92 |
| The Giant Pine | 93 |
| The Little House-Keeper | 95 |
| The Male Flirt | 96 |
| Memories of the Old Trunk | 98 |
| The Auction Block | 100 |
| The Old Yard Master | 101 |
| Books that Made Me Think | 103 |
| Forgotten Graves | 104 |
| In the Open Door | 105 |
| The Judge’s Tears | 107 |
| The Dog’s Kiss | 108 |
| Love Letters | 110 |
| At the Pool of Life | 112 |
| A Palace Without Love | 113 |
| The Soldier’s Diary | 114 |
| Two Men Who Touched My Soul | 116 |