The Book of Courage Part 13

"The face of all the world is changed, I think Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul."

III

COMPANIONSHIP WITH THE PAST

What, courage from companionship with the past? The pessimist says, "Impossible! The past was so much better than the present. See how the country is going to the dogs!" and they point to the revelations of dishonesty in high places. "There were no such blots on our records when the country was young."

A public man gave an effective answer to such croakers when he said:

"As we go on year by year reading in the newspapers of the dreadful things that are occurring; wicked rich men, wicked politicians and wicked men of all kinds, we are apt to feel that we have fallen on very evil times. But are we any worse than our fathers were? John Adams, in 1776, was Secretary of War. He wrote a letter which is still in existence, and told of the terrible corruption that prevailed in the country; he told how everybody was trying to rob the soldiers, rob the War Department, and he said he was really ashamed of the times in which he lived. When Jefferson was President of the United States it was thought that the whole country was going to be given over to French infidelity. When Jackson was President people thought the country ruined, because of his action in regard to the United States Bank. And we know how in Polk's time the Mexican War was an era of rascality and dishonesty that appalled the whole country."

It is a mistake to look back a generation or two and say, "The good old days were better than these." In the address already referred to the speaker continued:

"Only thirty years ago, on my first visit to California, I went with a friend to the mining district in the Sierras. One summer evening we sat upon the flume looking over the landscape. My friend was a distinguished man of great ability. In the distance the sun was setting, reflecting its light on the dome of the Capitol of the state, at Sacramento, twenty miles off. He turned to me and said suddenly: 'I would like to be you for one reason, that you are thirty years younger than I am, and they are going to be thirty of the greatest years the world has ever seen.'

He is dead now, but his words were prophetic. He and I used to talk about how we could send power down into the mines. An engine would fill the mine with smoke and gases, and yet we must have power to run the drills, etc., using compressed air. How easy to-day, just to drop a wire down and send the power of electricity! At that time there was but a single railroad running across the continent, which took a single sleeping car each day. Look at the difference now, with six great trunk lines sending out more than a dozen trains, and more than a hundred sleeping cars each day."

Students of American history know something of the fears of early adherents of the United States Government lest the republic prove a failure, and of the threats of doubters and disaffected citizens to do their best to replace the republic by a monarchy. But comparatively few realize how great were the fears, and how brazenly the prophecies were spoken.

An examination of "The Complete Anas of Thomas Jefferson," the collection of private memoranda made by the patriot when he was successively Secretary of State, Vice-President, and President, discloses the fact that some of the gravest of these fears were held by those high in authority, and that the prophecies of evil came from men who were leaders in the nation.

On April 6, 1792, President Washington, in conversation with Jefferson, "expressed his fear that there would, ere long, be a separation of the Union, that the public mind seemed dissatisfied and tending to this." On October 1, 1792, he spoke to the Secretary of his desire to retire at the end of his term as President. "Still, however, if his aid was thought necessary to save the cause to which he had devoted his life princ.i.p.ally, he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance."

On April 7, 1793, Tobias Lear, in conversation with Jefferson, spoke pessimistically of the affairs of the country. The debt, he was sure, was growing on the country in spite of claims to the contrary. He said that "the man who vaunted the present government so much on some occasions was the very man who at other times declared that it was a poor thing, and such a one as could not stand, and he was sensible they only esteemed it as a stepping-stone to something else."

On December 1, 1793, an influential Senator (name given) said to several of his fellow Senators that things would never go right until there was a President for life, and a hereditary Senate.

On December 27, 1797, Jefferson said that Tenche c.o.xe told him that a little before Alexander Hamilton went out of office, he said: "For my part I avow myself a monarchist; I have no objection to a trial being made of this thing of a republic, but, ... etc."

On February 6, 1798, it was reported to Jefferson that a man of influence in the Government had said, "I have made up my mind on this subject; I would rather the old ship should go down than not." Later he qualified his words, making his statement hypothetical, by adding, "if we are to be always kept pumping so."

On January 24, 1800, it was reported to Jefferson that, at a banquet in New York, Alexander Hamilton made no remark when the health of the President was proposed, but that he asked for three cheers when the health of George III was suggested.

On March 27, 1800, the Anas record: "Dr. Rush tells me that within a few days he has heard a member of Congress lament our separation from Great Britain, and express his sincere wishes that we were again dependent on her."

On December 13, 1803, Jefferson told of the coming to President Adams of a minister from New England who planned to solicit funds in New England for a college in Green County, Tennessee. He wished to have the President's endors.e.m.e.nt of the project. But "Mr. Adams ... said he saw no possibility of continuing the union of the States; that their dissolution must take place; that he therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary inst.i.tution in the South; that it was in fact giving strength to those who were to be their enemies, and, therefore, he would have nothing to do with it."

One who reads bits like these from Jefferson's private papers appreciates more fully some of the grave difficulties that confronted the country's early leaders; he rejoices more than ever before that the United States emerged so triumphantly from troubled waters until, little more than a century after those days of dire foreboding, it was showing other nations the way to democracy; he takes courage in days of present doubt and uncertainty, a.s.sured that the country which has already weathered so many storms will continue to solve its grave problems, and will be more than ever a beacon light to the world.

IV

COMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE

"Look at the World," is the advice David Grayson gives to those who follow him in his delightful essays on Great Possessions--possessions that cannot be measured with a yardstick or entered in the bank book.

This is his cure for all the trials and vexations that come in the course of a busy life. For how can a man remain unsettled and morose and distressed when he is gazing at the broad expanse of the sky, studying the beauty of the trees, or listening to the mellow voices of the birds?

How can the wanderer in field and forest forget that G.o.d is love?

Some people think that to drink in the glories of nature they must go to the mountains, or seek some other far-away spot. Mistake! The place to enjoy G.o.d's world is just where one is, and the time is that very moment. This was the lesson taught so impressively by Alice Freeman Palmer, when she described the little dweller in the tenements who resolved to see something beautiful each day, and who, one day, when confined to the house, found her something in watching a rain-soaked sparrow drinking from the gutter on the tin roof. And this was the thought in the mind of Mr. Grayson when he said:

"I love a sprig of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark, or a pine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy gra.s.s drawn slowly from its sheath, or a twig of the birch that tastes like wintergreen."

Hamlin Garland, in "A Son of the Middle Border," has told the story of his boyhood on an Iowa farm. He knew how to enjoy the sights to which so many are blind:

"I am reliving days when the warm sun, falling on radiant slopes of gra.s.s, lit the meadow phlox and tall tiger lilies to flaming torches of color. I think of blackberry thickets and odorous grapevines, and cherry-trees and the delicious nuts which grew in profusion throughout the forest to the north. The forest, which seemed endless and was of enchanted solemnity, served as our wilderness. We explored it at every opportunity. We loved every day for the color it brought, each season for the wealth of its experiences, and we welcomed the thought of spending all our years in this beautiful home where the wood and the prairie of our song did actually meet and mingle.... I studied the clouds. I gnawed the beautiful red skin from the seed vessels which hung upon the wild rose bushes, and I counted the prairie chickens as they began to come together in winter flocks, running through the stubble in search of food. I stopped now and again to examine the lizards unhoused by the shares, ... and I measured the little granaries of wheat which the mice and gophers had deposited deep under the ground, storehouses which the plow had violated. My eyes dwelt enviously on the sailing hawk and on the pa.s.sing of ducks.... Often of a warm day I heard the sovereign cry of the sand-hill crane falling from the azure throne, so high, so far, his form could not be seen, so close to the sun that my eyes could not detect his solitary, majestic, circling sweep.... His brazen, reverberating call will forever remain a.s.sociated in my mind with mellow, pulsating earth, spring gra.s.s and cloudless glorious May-time skies."

Henry Fawcett lived at about the same period in a rural district in England. He, too, delighted to ramble in the fields. One day, when he was out hunting with his father, an accidental gunshot deprived him of his eyesight. But the boy would not think of shutting himself away from the joys of nature which meant so much to him. "I very soon came to the resolution to live, as far as possible, just as I had lived before....

No one can more enjoy catching a salmon in the Tweed of the Spey, or throwing a fly in some quiet trout stream in Wiltshire or Hampshire."

In the story of the life of John J. Audubon an incident is told that shows how the greatest joy can be found in what seems like one of the most ordinary things in the life of the forest--the nesting of the birds:

"He became interested in a bird, not as large as the wren, of such peculiar grey plumage that it harmonized with the bark of the trees, and could scarcely be seen. One night he came home greatly excited, saying he had found a pair that was evidently preparing to make a nest. The next morning he went into the woods, taking with him a telescopic microscope. The scientific instrument he erected under the tree that gave shelter to the literally invisible inhabitants he was searching for, and, making a pillow of some moss, he lay upon his back, and looking through the telescope, day after day, noted the progress of the little birds, and, after three weeks of such patient labor, felt that he had been amply rewarded for the toil and the sacrifice by the results he had obtained."

When a boy David Livingstone laid the foundation for the love of the open that helped to make his life in Africa a never-ending delight.

"Before he was ten he had wandered all over the Clyde banks about Blantyre and had begun to collect and wonder at sh.e.l.ls and flowers," one of his biographers says.

Not far away, also in Scotland, Henry Drummond spent his boyhood. He, too, knew the pleasure of wandering afield. He liked to go to the rock on which stands grim Stirling Castle, and look away to the windings of the crooked Forth, the green Ochil Hills, and, farther away, Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, and Ben Ledi, the guardians of the beautiful Highland lochs.

He was never weary of feasting his eyes on them. In later years he would go back to the scenes of his boyhood, climb to the Castle, and, looking out on the beautiful prospect, would say "Man, there's no place like this; no place like Scotland."

Bayard Taylor first made a name for himself by his ability to see the things that many people pa.s.s by, and to describe them sympathetically.

But he, also, in boyhood days learned the lesson that paved the way for later achievements. He was not six years old when he used to wander to a fascinating swamp near his Pennsylvania home. If the child was missed from the house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon a mound which overlooked the swamp. Once, from the roof of the house, he discovered unknown forests and fresh fields which he made up his mind to explore. Later, in company with a Quaker schoolmaster, he took long walks, and thus learned many things about the trees and plants. When he was twelve he began to write out the thoughts that came to him in this intimate study of nature.

In far-away Norway Ole Bull had a like experience. At an early age he began to be on familiar terms with the silent things about him. The quality of his later work was influenced by the grandeur of the scenery in which he lived. To him trees, rocks, waterfalls, mountains, all spoke a language which demanded expression through the strings of his violin; he turned everything into music. His biographer says:

"When, in early childhood, playing alone in the meadow, he saw a delicate bluebell moving in the breeze, he fancied he heard the bell ring, and the gra.s.s accompanying it with most exceptionally fine voices."

John Muir, who later wrote of the great Sequoias of California and the glaciers of Alaska, when a boy of ten found delight in scenes of which he wrote as follows:

"Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of spring, when nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping tune with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together."

There is something missing in the life of one who cannot enter into the feelings of a boy like Muir or Taylor or Drummond. And when such a boy grows up, the gap in the life will be more conspicuous than ever.

Think of the poverty of the stranger to whom a traveler, feeling that he must give expression to his keen delight in the autumn foliage, said, "What wonderful coloring!" "Where?" came the reply. "Oh, the trees!

Well, I'm not interested in trees. Talk to me about coal. I know coal."

V

COMPANIONSHIP WITH G.o.d

Some people insist that it is impractical moonshine to speak of making a companion of G.o.d, that folks who talk about such things are dreamers, far removed from touch with the cold reality of daily life.

Then how about the nephew of whom Dr. Alexander MacColl told at Northfield? He was surely a practical man. For four years he had been in the thick of the fighting in France. Yet at the close of one of his letters to his uncle he said: "I hope when the war is over that I may be able to spend a month somewhere among the hills. I often think that if more people in the world had lived among such hills as we have in Scotland there would have been no world war."

"When I came yesterday afternoon, and saw again the glory of these hills," was Dr. MacColl's comment, "I found myself sharing very deeply in that feeling of my good nephew, and wishing that more people in the world had known what it is to commune with G.o.d in the silences."

That fine young Scotchman would have known how to take a college student who, while having a country walk with a friend, was explaining the reason for his belief in G.o.d and his trust in Him. As he concluded his message he pointed to a large tree which they were pa.s.sing, saying as he did so, "G.o.d is as real to me as that tree."