Chapter IV: Part 4

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.

NOT A CLINGING VINE

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!”

THE SALOON IN OUR TOWN

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.

THE HOMESICK CHILD

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!”

WHY HE QUIT HUNTING

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.”

THE HARD-LUCK SHOWMAN

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.

PLAYING WITH HEARTS

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

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.

SIGHING OF THE PINES

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.”

THE HOME-SICK HORSES

“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.”

THE BLIND CIGARMAKER

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.

THE THREE CLASSES

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.