"What, be a farmer?" asked his friend.
"Yes; why not?"
"Nothing, only I imagined that you would take a profession."
"The professions are overstocked, and we have not farmers enough for the good of the country. There is nothing like farming, to my mind. In no other employment have you a surer living. I do not like the cities. The heat and dust, and crowds of people, and buildings overtopping one another, and the rush of living, take my breath away. Suppose I did go to a city. I would sell out my share of the farm, and have a few thousand dollars. You know I am not an intellectual giant. I would never distinguish myself in any profession. I would be a poor lawyer or doctor, living in a back street all the days of my life, and never watch a tree or flower grow, or tend an animal, or have a drive unless I paid for it. No, thank you. I agree with President Eliot, of Harvard. He says scarcely one person in ten thousand betters himself permanently by leaving his rural home and settling in a city. If one is a millionaire, city life is agreeable enough, for one can always get away from it; but I am beginning to think that it is a dangerous thing, in more ways than one, to be a millionaire. I believe the safety of the country lies in the hands of the farmers; for they are seldom very poor or very rich. We stand between the two dangerous cla.s.ses--the wealthy and the paupers."
"But most farmers lead such a dog"s life," said Mr. Maxwell.
"So they do; farming isn"t made one-half as attractive as it should be,"
said Mr. Harry.
Mr. Maxwell smiled. "Attractive farming. Just sketch an outline of that, will you, Gray?"
"In the first place," said Mr. Harry, "I would like to tear out of the heart of the farmer the thing that is as firmly implanted in him as it is in the heart of his city brother--the thing that is doing more to harm our nation than anything else under the sun."
"What is that?" asked Mr. Maxwell, curiously.
"The thirst for gold. The farmer wants to get rich, and he works so hard to do it that he wears himself out soul and body, and the young people around him get so disgusted with that way of getting rich, that they go off to the cities to find out some other way, or at least to enjoy themselves, for I don"t think many young people are animated by a desire to heap up money."
Mr. Maxwell looked amused. "There is certainly a great exodus from country places cityward," he said. "What would be your plan for checking it?"
"I would make the farm so pleasant, that you couldn"t hire the boys and girls to leave it. I would have them work, and work hard, too, but when their work was over, I would let them have some fun. That is what they go to the city for. They want amus.e.m.e.nt and society, and to get into some kind of a crowd when their work is done. The young men and young women want to get together, as is only natural. Now that could be done in the country. If farmers would be contented with smaller profits and smaller farms, their houses could be nearer together. Their children would have opportunities of social intercourse, there could be societies and clubs, and that would tend to a distribution of literature. A farmer ought to take five or six papers and two or three magazines. He would find it would pay him in the long run, and there ought to be a law made compelling him to go to the post office once a day."
Mr. Maxwell burst out laughing. "And another to make him mend his roads as well as mend his ways. I tell you Gray, the bad roads would put an end to all these fine schemes of yours. Imagine farmers calling on each other on a dark evening after a spring freshet. I can see them mired and bogged, and the house a mile ahead of them."
"That is true," said Mr. Harry, "the road question is a serious one. Do you know how father and I settle it?"
"No," said Mr. Maxwell.
"We got so tired of the whole business, and the farmers around here spent so much time in discussing the art of roadmaking, as to whether it should be viewed from the engineering point of view, or the farmers"
practical point of view, and whether we would require this number of stump extractors or that number, and how many shovels and crushers and ditchers would be necessary to keep our roads in order, and so on, that we simply withdrew. We keep our own roads in order. Once a year, father gets a gang of men and tackles every section of the road that borders upon our land, and our roads are the best around here. I wish the government would take up this matter of making roads and settle it. If we had good, smooth, country roads, such as they have in some parts of Europe, we would be able to travel comfortably over them all through the year, and our draught animals would last longer, for they would not have to expend so much energy in drawing their loads."
CHAPTER XXII
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TEA TABLE
From my station under Miss Laura"s chair, I could see that all the time Mr. Harry was speaking, Mr. Maxwell, although he spoke rather as if he was laughing at him, was yet glancing at him admiringly.
When Mr. Harry was silent, he exclaimed, "You are right, you are right, Gray. With your smooth highways, and plenty of schools, and churches, and libraries, and meetings for young people, you would make country life a paradise, and I tell you what you would do, too; you would empty the slums of the cities. It is the slowness and dullness of country life, and not their poverty alone, that keep the poor in dirty lanes and tenement houses. They want stir and amus.e.m.e.nt, too, poor souls, when their day"s work is over. I believe they would come to the country if it were made more pleasant for them."
"That is another question," said Mr. Harry, "a burning question in my mind--the labor and capital one. When I was in New York, Maxwell, I was in a hospital, and saw a number of men who had been day laborers. Some of them were old and feeble, and others were young men, broken down in the prime of life. Their limbs were shrunken and drawn. They had been digging in the earth, and working on high buildings, and confined in dingy bas.e.m.e.nts, and had done all kinds of hard labor for other men.
They had given their lives and strength for others, and this was the end of it--to die poor and forsaken. I looked at them, and they reminded me of the martyrs of old. Ground down, living from hand to mouth, separated from their families in many cases--they had had a bitter lot. They had never had a chance to get away from their fate, and had to work till they dropped. I tell you there is something wrong. We don"t do enough for the people that slave and toil for us. We should take better care of them, we should not herd them together like cattle, and when we get rich, we should carry them along with us, and give them a part of our gains, for without them we would be as poor as they are."
"Good, Harry--I"m with you there," said a voice behind him, and looking around, we saw Mr. Wood standing in the doorway, gazing down proudly at his step-son.
Mr. Harry smiled, and getting up, said, "Won"t you have my chair, sir?"
"No, thank you; your mother wishes us to come to tea. There are m.u.f.fins, and you know they won"t improve with keeping."
They all went to the dining-room, and I followed them. On the way, Mr.
Wood said, "Right on top of that talk of yours, Harry, I"ve got to tell you of another person who is going to Boston to live."
"Who is it?" said Mr. Harry.
"Lazy Dan Wilson. I"ve been to see him this afternoon. You know his wife is sick, and they"re half starved. He says he is going to the city, for he hates to chop wood and work, and he thinks maybe he"ll get some light job there."
Mr. Harry looked grave, and Mr. Maxwell said, "He will starve, that"s what he will do."
"Precisely," said Mr. Wood, spreading out his hard, brown hands, as he sat down at the table. "I don"t know why it is, but the present generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with their hands, They"ll work their brains till they haven"t got any more backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it"s old-timey and out of fashion. I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure out just how little work they could do, and yet exist."
"Now, father," said Mrs. Wood, "you are trying to insinuate that the present generation is lazy, and I"m sure it isn"t. Look at Harry. He works as hard as you do."
"Isn"t that like a woman?" said Mr. Wood, with a good-natured laugh.
"The present generation consists of her son, and the past of her husband. I don"t think all our young people are lazy, Hattie; but how in creation, unless the Lord rains down a few farmers, are we going to support all our young lawyers and doctors? They say the world is getting healthier and better, but we"ve got to fight a little more, and raise some more criminals, and we"ve got to take to eating pies and doughnuts for breakfast again, or some of our young sprouts from the colleges will go a begging."
"You don"t mean to undervalue the advantages of a good education, do you, Mr. Wood?" said Mr. Maxwell.
"No, no; look at Harry there. Isn"t he pegging away at his studies with my hearty approval? and he"s going to be nothing but a plain, common farmer. But he"ll be a better one than I"ve been though, because he"s got a trained mind. I found that out when he was a lad going to the village school. He"d lay out his little garden by geometry, and dig his ditches by algebra. Education"s a help to any man. What I am trying to get at is this, that in some way or other we"re running more to brains and less to hard work than our forefathers did."
Mr. Wood was beating on the table with his forefinger while he talked, and every one was laughing at him. "When you"ve quite finished speechifying, John," said Mrs. Wood, "perhaps you"ll serve the berries and pa.s.s the cream and sugar. Do you get yellow cream like this in the village, Mr. Maxwell?"
"No, Mrs. Wood," he said; "ours is a much paler yellow," and then there was a great tinkling of china, and pa.s.sing of dishes, and talking and laughing, and no one noticed that I was not in my usual place in the hall. I could not get over my dread of the green creature, and I had crept under the table, so that if it came out and frightened Miss Laura, I could jump up and catch it.
When tea was half over, she gave a little cry. I sprang up on her lap, and there, gliding over the table toward her, was the wicked-looking green thing. I stepped on the table, and had it by the middle before it could get to her. My hind legs were in a dish of jelly, and my front ones were in a plate of cake, and I was very uncomfortable. The tail of the green thing hung in a milk pitcher, and its tongue was still going at me, but I held it firmly and stood quite still.
"Drop it, drop it!" cried Miss Laura, in tones of distress, and Mr.
Maxwell struck me on the back, so I let the thing go, and stood sheepishly looking about me. Mr. Wood was leaning back in his chair, laughing with all his might, and Mrs. Wood was staring at her untidy table with rather a long face. Miss Laura told me to jump on the floor, and then she helped her aunt to take the spoiled things off the table.
I felt that I had done wrong, so I slunk out into the hall. Mr. Maxwell was sitting on the lounge, tearing his handkerchief in strips and tying them around the creature where my teeth had stuck in. I had been careful not to hurt it much, for I knew it was a pet of his; but he did not know that, and scowled at me, saying: "You rascal; you"ve hurt my poor snake terribly."
I felt so badly to hear this that I went and stood with my head in a corner. I had almost rather be whipped than scolded. After a while, Mr.
Maxwell went back into the room, and they all went on with their tea. I could hear Mr. Wood"s loud, cheery voice, "The dog did quite right. A snake is mostly a poisonous creature, and his instinct told him to protect his mistress. Where is he? Joe, Joe!"
I would not move till Miss Laura came and spoke to me. "Dear old dog,"
she whispered, "You knew the snake was there all the time, didn"t you?"
Her words made me feel better, and I followed her to the dining room, where Mr. Wood made me sit beside him and eat sc.r.a.ps from his hand all through the meal.