"I am serious," I said. "I really want to make the best I can of my life. It"s the only one I"ve got."
"See here," he said: "let us say you clear up five hundred a year from this farm----"
"You exaggerate--" I interrupted.
"Do I?" he laughed; "that makes my case all the better. Now, isn"t it possible to rise from that? Couldn"t you make a thousand or five thousand or even fifty thousand a year?"
It seems an unanswerable argument: fifty thousand dollars!
"I suppose I might," I said, "but do you think I"d be any better off or happier with fifty thousand a year than I am now? You see, I like all these surroundings better than any other place I ever knew. That old green hill over there with the oak on it is an intimate friend of mine.
I have a good cornfield in which every year I work miracles. I"ve a cow and a horse, and a few pigs. I have a comfortable home. My appet.i.te is perfect, and I have plenty of food to gratify it. I sleep every night like a boy, for I haven"t a trouble in this world to disturb me. I enjoy the mornings here in the country: and the evenings are pleasant. Some of my neighbours have come to be my good friends. I like them and I am pretty sure they like me. Inside the house there I have the best books ever written and I have time in the evenings to read them--I mean _really_ read them. Now the question is, would I be any better off, or any happier, if I had fifty thousand a year?"
John Starkweather laughed.
"Well, sir," he said, "I see I"ve made the acquaintance of a philosopher."
"Let us say," I continued, "that you are willing to invest twenty years of your life in a million dollars." ("Merely an ill.u.s.tration," said John Starkweather.) "You have it where you can put it in the bank and take it out again, or you can give it form in houses, yachts, and other things. Now twenty years of my life--to me--is worth more than a million dollars. I simply can"t afford to sell it for that. I prefer to invest it, as somebody or other has said, unearned in life. I"ve always had a liking for intangible properties."
"See here," said John Starkweather, "you are taking a narrow view of life. You are making your own pleasure the only standard. Shouldn"t a man make the most of the talents given him? Hasn"t he a duty to society?"
"Now you are shifting your ground," I said, "from the question of personal satisfaction to that of duty. That concerns me, too. Let me ask you: Isn"t it important to society that this piece of earth be plowed and cultivated?"
"Yes, but----"
"Isn"t it honest and useful work?"
"Of course."
"Isn"t it important that it shall not only be done, but well done?"
"Certainly."
"It takes all there is in a good man," I said, "to be a good farmer."
"But the point is," he argued, "might not the same faculties applied to other things yield better and bigger results?"
"That is a problem, of course," I said. "I tried money-making once--in a city--and I was unsuccessful and unhappy; here I am both successful and happy. I suppose I was one of the young men who did the work while some millionnaire drew the dividends." (I was cutting close, and I didn"t venture to look at him). "No doubt he had his houses and yachts and went to Europe when he liked. I know I lived upstairs--back--where there wasn"t a tree to be seen, or a spear of green gra.s.s, or a hill, or a brook: only smoke and chimneys and littered roofs. Lord be thanked for my escape! Sometimes I think that Success has formed a silent conspiracy against Youth. Success holds up a single glittering apple and bids Youth strip and run for it; and Youth runs and Success still holds the apple."
John Starkweather said nothing.
"Yes," I said, "there are duties. We realise, we farmers, that we must produce more than we ourselves can eat or wear or burn. We realise that we are the foundation: we connect human life with the earth. We dig and plant and produce, and having eaten at the first table ourselves, we pa.s.s what is left to the bankers and millionnaires. Did you ever think, stranger, that most of the wars of the world have been fought for the control of this farmer"s second table? Have you thought that the surplus of wheat and corn and cotton is what the railroads are struggling to carry? Upon our surplus run all the factories and mills; a little of it gathered in cash makes a millionnaire. But we farmers, we sit back comfortably after dinner, and joke with our wives and play with our babies, and let all the rest of you fight for the crumbs that fall from our abundant tables. If once we really cared and got up and shook ourselves, and said to the maid: "Here, child, don"t waste the crusts: gather "em up and to-morrow we"ll have a cottage pudding," where in the world would all the millionnaires be?"
Oh, I tell you, I waxed eloquent. I couldn"t let John Starkweather, or any other man, get away with the conviction that a millionnaire is better than a farmer. "Moreover," I said, "think of the position of the millionnaire. He spends his time playing not with life, but with the symbols of life, whether cash or houses. Any day the symbols may change; a little war may happen along, there may be a defective flue or a western breeze, or even a panic because the farmers aren"t scattering as many crumbs as usual (they call it crop failure, but I"ve noticed that the farmers still continue to have plenty to eat) and then what happens to your millionnaire? Not knowing how to produce anything himself, he would starve to death if there were not always, somewhere, a farmer to take him up to the table."
"You"re making a strong case," laughed John Starkweather.
"Strong!" I said. "It is simply wonderful what a leverage upon society a few acres of land, a cow, a pig or two, and a span of horses gives a man. I"m ridiculously independent. I"d be the hardest sort of a man to dislodge or crush. I tell you, my friend, a farmer is like an oak, his roots strike deep in the soil, he draws a sufficiency of food from the earth itself, he breathes the free air around him, his thirst is quenched by heaven itself--and there"s no tax on sunshine."
I paused for very lack of breath. John Starkweather was laughing.
"When you commiserate me, therefore" ("I"m sure I shall never do it again," said John Starkweather)--"when you commiserate me, therefore, and advise me to rise, you must give me really good reasons for changing my occupation and becoming a millionnaire. You must prove to me that I can be more independent, more honest, more useful as a millionnaire, and that I shall have better and truer friends!"
John Starkweather looked around at me (I knew I had been absurdly eager and I was rather ashamed of myself) and put his hand on my knee (he has a wonderfully fine eye!).
"I don"t believe," he said, "you"d have any truer friends."
"Anyway," I said repentantly, "I"ll admit that millionnaires have their place--at present I wouldn"t do entirely away with them, though I do think they"d enjoy farming better. And if I were to select a millionnaire for all the best things I know, I should certainly choose you, Mr. Starkweather."
He jumped up.
"You know who I am?" he asked.
I nodded.
"And you knew all the time?"
I nodded.
"Well, you"re a good one!"
We both laughed and fell to talking with the greatest friendliness. I led him down my garden to show him my prize pie-plant, of which I am enormously proud, and I pulled for him some of the finest stalks I could find.
"Take it home," I said, "it makes the best pies of any pie-plant in this country."
He took it under his arm.
"I want you to come over and see me the first chance you get," he said.
"I"m going to prove to you by physical demonstration that it"s better sport to be a millionnaire than a farmer--not that I am a millionnaire: I"m only accepting the reputation you give me."
So I walked with him down to the lane.
"Let me know when you grease up again," he said, "and I"ll come over."
So we shook hands: and he set off st.u.r.dily down the road with the pie-plant leaves waving cheerfully over his shoulder.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Somehow, and suddenly, I was a boy again"]
VIII
A BOY AND A PREACHER
This morning I went to church with Harriet. I usually have some excuse for not going, but this morning I had them out one by one and they were altogether so shabby that I decided not to use them. So I put on my stiff shirt and Harriet came out in her best black cape with the silk fringes. She looked so immaculate, so ruddy, so cheerfully sober (for Sunday) that I was reconciled to the idea of driving her up to the church. And I am glad I went, for the experience I had.
It was an ideal summer Sunday: sunshiny, clear and still. I believe if I had been some Rip Van Winkle waking after twenty years" sleep I should have known it for Sunday. Away off over the hill somewhere we could hear a lazy farm boy singing at the top of his voice: the higher cadences of his song reached us pleasantly through the still air. The hens sitting near the lane fence, fluffing the dust over their backs, were holding a small and talkative service of their own. As we turned into the main road we saw the Patterson children on their way to church, all the little girls in Sunday ribbons, and all the little boys very uncomfortable in knit stockings.