Revisiting the Earth Part 10

_The Coronation of Labor_

Here is the secret of country boys when they go up to the city. They are not done for. The reflex influence of this is often a hindrance. It is not self help. It overlooks economy, enterprise, personal initiative, and intense application. The young man with money usually takes a young partner from the country to get the practical ability and energy. The country home is like a bee-hive for industry in every profitable way.

Farm life looks toward more productiveness. Eight or ten hour limits are not observed in days that are from morn to dusk. The country boy does a lot of unrequited labor. He hitches up, breaks out the road, and takes the whole bunch to the evening singing school. He takes off the wagon body, puts it upon runners, and stows it so full of mortal souls that they had to be cautioned, by their parents, as the sons of Jacob were by their father, "not to fall out by the way." Lay a plank on the ground, someone has truly said, and a million people can walk it without thought of losing balance. Lift it twenty-five feet and only one in a thousand will dare to walk it. Lift it one hundred feet and not more than one in a million will venture upon it. Country boys keep their balance near the ground. As persons grow stilted they lose their poise. If they have a disposition to rise higher it is by the old way of climbing, step by step, making each rise count one. They are not at first familiar with the elevator to carry them up and so suppose that their chance is by the stair-case. "One thing I must observe," says an Englishman, writing from Andover, "that I think wants rectifying, and that is their pluming pride when adjoined to apparent poverty." John G. Brady had not only "apparent poverty," but the real thing when deserted by his father, when he was made a ward of a Children's Aid Society. He became governor of Alaska.

Some such boys were ravenous for knowledge. They were awkward and uncouth but possessed minds that were bright, vigorous, susceptible, and retentive. It was a joy to teach them.

_Not Criticism, Just Description_

"You're a colt," said a farmer, "bye and bye you will grow to be a staid old horse. Till you do steady down and lose your coltish tricks I will enter with you into the spirit of your colthood, for I know you're not vicious. There is not a streak of evil in your nature." I saw a fine picture at one of the world's fairs of the School of Charlemagne, at the moment that Alcuin is informing the emperor that the poor boys have surpa.s.sed the rich in scholarship. It is a symbol of the way that things level up in every country. Country boys learn to feel their way, which is the healthiest method, and I have had frequent painful occasions to contrast it with the plunging method that we are frequently called to witness. At no other point, at the same exposition to which I have referred, were gathered so dense a crowd as about the model school for the blind. A poor girl without sight was reading about some boys that came upon a hive of wild bees and honey. When a word seemed difficult to her, she would instinctively apply both hands to the pages. Men coming from all quarters into this presence would unconsciously uncover their head. Feeling one's way excites sympathy. The poor have the gospel preached to them. Have any of the rulers believed on Him? No, no, no, it was the common people that heard Him gladly. City merchants advertising for a clerk often say, "One from the country preferred." I used to see the boys studying the map of the future and laying out work for manhood and age. Their longings were to be men. They were panting to have a part in the great drama of life and would rush in as soon as any door was open. It did not occur to them that the world already owed them a living, that they were to be fed by the raven. The man who calls upon Jupiter was to put his own shoulder to the wheel.

_To Go to the Top, First Go to the Bottom_

It is a riddle that persons, like the Lawrences, coming from the country, Groton, into the city out-step the natives and become their masters. Country life and country education are at least practical and invigorating to body and mind and hence those who are thus qualified triumph in the race of life. Country training and experience serve as a foothold for progress. Amos Lawrence, the initial genius in Boston in that line of merchant princes that founded Lawrence and the mills in Lowell and Ipswich (when one of the mills of Ipswich was losing one hundred dollars a day, one of the Lawrences was sick and the only comment was "too much Ipswich,") when a clerk in a dry-goods store sold a parcel of goods, promising to have them delivered in Charlestown by twelve o'clock M.,--the porter, who was to take them over, failed to return as soon as was expected,--loaded the goods on a wheelbarrow and trundled them over the long bridge, through the streets thronged with ladies and gentlemen, and had them there on time. It was a natural act of the country boy. A city young man would have felt an inclination to wait. Andrew Carnegie came over from Scotland with only a sovereign in his pocket but with sovereignty in his soul and fired a stationary engine at two dollars and a half a week.

_The Renewal of the Face of the World_

Jeremiah says, "Pharaoh King of Egypt" is but a noise. He agitates the atmosphere. He is a clamorous self advertiser. On the other hand a country boy reaching the city is often obliged to raise the simple bread and b.u.t.ter question. Give us this day our daily bread. I used to find these boys extremely capable and very warmly affectionate. City boys gave their mothers what money would buy, while the country boys gave their mothers what money could not buy, and no one was happier than the country mother with a letter from her boy telling her that there was so much love in his letter that he would have trouble in getting it into the envelope. She thought she saw that he was winning a widening way into recognition from his employer, also from his a.s.sociates. Such a man is likeliest to realize in life all the promise he gave in boyhood. If a country boy lost a step he felt that he must make it up. I could stand before that boy, hat in hand, and pay him honor and respect. He is not top heavy. He is solid. The corner stones of character are laid in place and well laid. Splendid specimens of boyhood, first work hard to supply their needs and then go on to make money to supply their wants.

By all the rules of the business world they have earned all that they have gained.

_Cables Binding to Safe Moorings_

On "first day" there being no school I worshiped with Quakers and never to this hour have departed from their heaven-born doctrines. When George Fox prayed, the spirit bearing witness with his spirit, men trembled, and so were called Quakers because they thus quaked. The wonder is not that they were agitated, but that people do not quake where they sit in profound silence until the spirit moves. When a person rises one's first thought is, There, that's the motion of the spirit, the inner witness.

It is the responsive factor in us that makes the Quaker doctrine take hold. They have an Inward Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. A friend, a lady with a serene, intelligent, illumined face, fluent and correct in expression, with most engaging modesty, moved by the spirit, arose and spoke, with a power stronger than human genius, her understanding being opened, her heart enlarged, in a manner wonderful to herself exhorting us to take heed to the light within us.

That was reasonable. Who could say nay to such entreaty a.s.suming that there is in us that which of itself responds to it, "as face answers to face in a gla.s.s?" In the intense quiet, in the solemn silence, all being retired into the presence chamber of G.o.d, the att.i.tude being that of Samuel when he said, "Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth" when an angel voice speaks to us who would not follow whithersoever it leads the way?

"Go feel what I have felt" and you will know by experience how Quakers get their name. It is a respectful doctrine; it only urges recognition of what hath shined into our hearts to give us light.

Revisiting the earth I say now, on the site where I taught school, what I felt then, that Quaker doctrines are as honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Even the men's manners are gentle and winsome and kindly, and kindly enough to proceed from the spirit. When conducting social affairs I have in uncounted cases asked that we might imitate the Quakers who before leaving their positions, beginning in the high seats, shake hands with those on the right and left who are next to them, it means we are on a level and on good terms, we must be social.

_A Fashion that is Wearing Away_

When men were clad in short clothes, wearing knee buckles, laces, and ruffles, and frills, and fringes, and finery, and frippery, the Quakers took strong ground for plain, unaffected simplicity in male attire and they carried the day. Honor to whom honor is due, I am with them as usual. The weather worn, long used, hard used little one room, one story school-house without an entry, is now in declining condition and exceedingly infirm. It seems broken, decrepit, wears a look of great age, seems inclined to melancholy and its dissolution is near. The dear old seminary of letters was not young when I was introduced to it.

Change and decay have pa.s.sed rapidly upon it. There is no making life stand still. I went back to it with my heart in my eyes. Its well worn old threshold and its battered entrance spoke of hospitality to vigorous youngsters who had reached their freedom year, when education stopped, and their adult life began. It was a.s.sumed that the door, exposed to the weather, would bind a little at the bottom, and so simultaneously with putting their hands to the latch the children would strike the door at the bottom with one of their heavily shod feet. The act was so unconscious and so natural that no impression was made except on the door.

_Time Can Obliterate as Well as Create_

The floor of that little edifice wore sundry patches of new white pine boards which were nailed over the crevices and flaws which gave the appearance of new cloth in an old garment. This rickety fabric has ceased forever from the name and form of a seat of learning, but it is tight full of memories and of public favor. A child when going through a museum said he liked the sculpture better than a painting because he could walk around the sculpture. With that feeling of regard for sacred places and times and things which we felt in our childhood, I viewed that building and went round about it, that I might tell it to the generation following. If anyone shall say,

"A bare old house with windows dim, A bare old house is still to him, And it is nothing more,"

I shall still look upon it with reverence. It has performed its office and its pictured form will bring up facts and throng my vacant hours with beautiful visions. Lord Jeffrey speaks fondly of that "dear retired adored little window" where he labored and prepared himself for the arrival of that brighter day which is almost sure to come to those who are careful to fit themselves for the duties that accompany it.

_A Table of Priorities_

The progress of the allied forces in the German war seemed at first very slow, partly because of the colossal number of men engaged, but chiefly because Germany derived a great advantage at the start. It is a difficult matter to make up for a bad beginning. On revisiting the earth we seemed to be set down upon a commanding eminence, having a panoramic view of occurences which showed distinctly the path we had trodden. If we noticed the milestones, we observed a succession, that was unbroken, that led directly to the place where, with different ways opened to us, we made life's vocational adventure. In the light of that first move we see the way to every subsequent position. Years rise up like the steps of the Pyramids and more and more extensive becomes the review of life.

How different a landscape looks when we have simply reversed our steps and are faced the other way. I must always remember it as one of the pleasures of life, that all the invisible lines that connect every later service and place of residence were set vibrating from the desk where I taught my first term of country school when I was seventeen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SEAT OF LEARNING FULL OF MEMORIES]

_Tremendous Trifles_

Taking deliberately one's position, here, that point in life, of which everyone's personal history has so many examples, the peak Teneriffe, the effect of volcanic action, after much slumbering, fills all the foreground. From such a mount of vision "see thy way in the valley."

"There's a chain of causes Linked to effects,"

that seemed trifles, that, on a review of life, have a new significance.

It can be seen at a glance that all subsequent events are a lengthened chain from this early landmark, at which, hat in hand, I stood. The connection is direct, the links are distinctly interlocked. As in the growth of a stalk of corn, each section makes a close jointure with the next below it as well as with the next above it, so is it in any individual career. The same school, the second winter, was needed to give publicity to a situation, which resulted in an invitation to take the school at the community center, an elevation which had not even in dreams and reveries entered my mind. Out of this came an appointment to teach in a college town and so to this hour every stage has brought about the next step which the last one made inevitable. In that first school was struck the medial key-note. It is the C, and the whole melody of life rests upon it. Some people remark upon fruit and flower, as if detached and independent of their seed. Not by G.o.d's mercy! Personal history has its teachings, a golden thread runs through it, on which are strung, a series of events in a logical succession, represented in pictures unrivalled for their distinctness, delineated by time's own hand and lifted out into powerful relief. The more widely I looked for connected events the more I saw. It pleased the Father to command the light to shine out of darkness. Dull and unimaginative as I am, even I felt the divinity stir within me, and I found it difficult to suppose otherwise than that, while the public takes no cognizance of such things, yet a look into one's personal biography exhibits a moving picture of Providence. To feel that we are tethered to a place of beginning, though we live on the other side of the world, is not to say that we would like to go back there to reside. We are viewing it only as a factor in our past life. It was like the experience once of reading Whittier's Hampton Beach when there. It made past history realistic. It was like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for your conception of its vivid character. No words can possibly describe the impression, of thus revisiting the earth and doing our own thinking instead of sending some neighbor to do it for us.

_Critical Periods_

Instead of seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, how much more self-respecting for each of us to himself stand in the actual presence of these silent talkers and perceive the guide marks to all the paths which led us through the tangle of life. Above all else one lesson blazes out in letters of living light. How careful Providence is about beginnings. It is only in looking down upon the battle field that we can clearly discern the maneuvers that lead to victory. We must place ourselves at a given point, not too remote from the causes, that make our history, to justly estimate them, if we could begin again, that tragic wish having been conceded to us, all our activity would be best used at these clearly discerned centers. To gain greater effectiveness opportunity here makes his call upon us and comes unawares and his approach is invariably disguised in humble garb.

"Master of human destinies am I.

Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait; Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and pa.s.sing by Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate.

Those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; I answer not, and I return no more."

CHAPTER XIV

WHERE A VISITANT SEES MORE THAN A RESIDENT

When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he does and recollection faithful to its office supplies me with an image of the past which he does not perceive. He gets no glimpse of the panorama that is pa.s.sing in review before me. In looking over an ill.u.s.trated volume of the place there are two pictures on each page.

There is the one I now see, and to my inner sight there is just above it the one I remember. It is a case of what philosophers call Compound Perception. The absence of the object is contrasted with its presence.

You imagine it gone, and perceive the blank it would leave. You observe the object, you also consider it as a negative quant.i.ty, for a moment thinking it away. There is the depot. I do not need to have it pointed out. Beside this building I instantly see the picture of another station un.o.bserved by the present generation, which was connected with a different route. Before the Rock Island and before the Central of Iowa, we had the underground R. R. In Grinnell that came first. It did a good business. It had a through line. Its chief station still exists. The glamor of the past is upon it. I knew the station master. I am on intimate terms with one of its conductors. When its train was made up any one could compute its horse-power. The place had public spirit enough for a half dozen average towns. There is the church where the college diplomas were awarded. How plainly I also saw the church where I was, at its completion, an habitual hearer of the Word, that stood on the same n.o.ble corner. I never could understand how any mortal could be hired to tear down the earlier sacred edifice. It must have been done by aliens. No one could have bribed me to do it. There isn't money enough.

I would as soon have lifted my hand against her who gave me being. The fate of Uzza, whom the Lord smote for a smaller impiety, would have given me alarm.

_A Sort of Homesickness_

All religious annals will be searched in vain for a better example of the community church. Everybody attended it. All our pleasures were connected with it. Anyone could get the key to hold a meeting. There was always something doing. It had a part in everything that interested the people. When in the Civil War there were victories, the farmers came in, and there sang Praise G.o.d, etc., and when we had reverses there was a meeting to appoint a fast. Far away down the gallery of memory hangs a picture. It is a church scene. The figures are the deacons and others, in colors that are fresh and glowing to this hour. The artist that could portray them on canvas would be immortalized in that one act. Extremely fastidious critics would call them old fashioned, but they have at least this merit, they are life-like. It would be becoming in us to honor them as they, in their day, honored the community. I recollect nearly every family that sat under the benign ministry of that church, and could come near to designating each pew they occupied. There was a kind of exaltation about the place, which held the fire, in the old days, on G.o.d's altars, and the quaint bare building became as the temple on Mount Zion. Never in the splendid temples, seen in after life, where the wealth of princes had been lavished, to decorate the world famous cathedrals, where stained windows shed an impressive light over the solemn courts, and where the ponderous organ rolls its deep thunders on the ear, have I seemed to be so near the Holy of Holies, as on one or two occasions when my heart was lifted up in that unadorned place of worship. Once the clergyman had p.r.o.nounced the blessing and the congregation were dispersing when I lingered behind to make a single vow. Tear down that church! I could not have stood it to be present. To some meeting houses they attach a card giving, in plain letters, the church's name and age.

_Recollections of Other Years_

If, as a boy, I had been asked to prepare a tablet to place on that heaven-blessed house of prayer, I should have put up the sign, "The Lord lives here." There was a solemnity, in its very simplicity, and an impressiveness not artificial, which to a religious fanatic might easily seem supernatural.

The large plain room was pervaded, in the evening, by a dim religious light that proceeded from a few reeking kerosene lamps. Any kind of a meeting was opened with prayer and much decorum and orderliness were observed by the citizens, old and young. The church took everything hard that concerned its own folks. The building was our cradle of liberty.

Both men and boys rocked that cradle. A large sweetly toned bell, joyously rung by lads at day break on Independence Day, was finer music to our juvenile ears than would be the combined bands of the world. In the capitol at Richmond, a painting is exhibited, representing the Earl of Chatham pointing to a little flame on the altar of liberty. At that flame how many torches have been lighted. Some have held that the church must be opened only to old age, but that was not the view then and there held. I loved the church. I never saw it surpa.s.sed. All its ideals are mine today. I have labored and sacrificed to exhibit them and realize them in other places. If the older present resident members were to visit the people that once had their church home with them there, they would find no trouble in recognizing the leaven which had been carried away from that sanctuary. Temperaments were different, all were unlike and individual, with unequal education, with diverse talents, not able to see with each other's spectacles, yet all learned from each other and all united on the big things. I feel myself indebted to those with whom I a.s.sociated there, some of whom afterward obtained high and merited distinction. Some of them, G.o.d has made princes in the earth.

There is the place where they grew up and there they had their vision of service. My warmest prayers have always been for their success. A throng of recollections which I can not repress starts from every corner of the old church and attends my walks about the streets.