Isn"t it odd how unconvinced we often are by the crises in the lives of other people? They seem to us trivial or unimportant; but the fact is, the crises in the life of a boy, for example, or of a poor man, are as commanding as the crises in the life of the greatest statesman or millionaire, for they involve equally the whole personality, the entire prospects.
The Clark family, I soon learned, had lost its pig. A trivial matter, you say? I wonder if anything is ever trivial. A year of poor crops, sickness, low prices, discouragement and, at the end of it, on top of it all, the cherished pig had died!
From all accounts (and the man on the porch quite lost his apathy in telling me about it) it must have been a pig of remarkable virtues and attainments, a paragon of pigs--in whom had been bound up the many possibilities of new shoes for the children, a hat for the lady, a new pair of overalls for the gentleman, and I know not what other kindred luxuries. I do not think, indeed, I ever had the portrait of a pig drawn for me with quite such ardent enthusiasm of detail, and the more questions I asked the more eager the story, until finally it became necessary for me to go to the barn, the cattle-pen, the pig-pen and the chicken-house, that I might visualize more clearly the scene of the tragedy. The whole family trooped after us like a cla.s.sic chorus, but Mr. Clark himself kept the centre of the stage.
How plainly I could read upon the face of the land the story of this hill farmer and his meagre existence--his ill-directed effort to wring a poor living for his family from these upland fields, his poverty, and, above all, his evident lack of knowledge of his own calling. Added to these things, and perhaps the most depressing of all his difficulties, was the utter loneliness of the task, the feeling that it mattered little to any one whether the Clark family worked or not, or indeed whether they lived or died. A perfectly good American family was here being wasted, with the precious land they lived on, because no one had taken the trouble to make them feel that they were a part of this Great American Job.
As we went back to the house, a freckled-nosed neighbour"s boy came in at the gate.
"A letter for you, Mr. Clark," said he. "I brought it up with our mail."
"A letter!" exclaimed Mrs. Clark.
"A letter!" echoed at least three of the children in unison.
"Probably a dun from Brewster," said Mr. Clark discouragingly.
I felt a curious sensation about the heart, and an eagerness of interest I have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter--a mere unopened unread letter--would mean to a family like this.
"It has no stamp on it!" exclaimed the older girl.
Mrs. Clark turned it over wonderingly in her hands. Mr. Clark hastily put on a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
"Let me see it," he said, and when he also had inspected it minutely he solemnly tore open the envelope and drew forth my letter.
"I a.s.sure you I never awaited the reading of any writing of mine with such breathless interest. How would they take it? Would they catch the meaning that I meant to convey? And would they suspect me of having written it?
Mr. Clark sat on the porch and read the letter slowly through to the end, turned the sheet over and examined it carefully, and then began reading it again to himself, Mrs. Clark leaning over his shoulder.
"What does it mean?" asked Mr. Clark.
"It"s too good to be true," said Mrs. Clark with a sigh.
I don"t know how long the discussion might have continued--probably for days or weeks--had not the older girl, now flushed of face and rather pretty, looked at me and said breathlessly (she was as sharp as a briar):
"You wrote it."
I stood the battery of all their eyes for a moment, smiling and rather excited.
"Yes," I said earnestly, "I wrote it, and I mean every word of it."
I had antic.i.p.ated some shock of suspicion and inquiry, but to my surprise it was accepted as simply as a neighbourly good morning. I suppose the mystery of it was eclipsed by my astonishing presence there upon the scene with my tin whistle.
At any rate, it was a changed, eager, interested family which now occupied the porch of that dilapidated farmhouse. And immediately we fell into a lively discussion of crops and farming, and indeed the whole farm question, in which I found both the man and his wife singularly acute--sharpened upon the stone of hard experience.
Indeed, I found right here, as I have many times found among our American farmers, an intelligence (a literacy growing out of what I believe to be improper education) which was better able to discuss the problems of rural life than to grapple with and solve them. A dull, illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed much better at the job of life than his American neighbour.
Talk with almost any man for half an hour, and you will find that his conversation, like an old-fashioned song, has a regularly recurrent chorus. I soon discovered Mr. Clark"s chorus.
"Now, if only I had a little cash," he sang, or, "If I had a few dollars, I could do so and so."
Why, he was as helplessly, dependent upon money as any soft-handed millionairess. He considered himself poor and helpless because he lacked dollars, whereas people are really poor and helpless only when they lack courage and faith.
We were so much absorbed in our talk that I was greatly surprised to hear Mrs. Clark"s voice at the doorway.
"Won"t you come in to supper?"
After we had eaten, there was a great demand for more of my tin whistle (oh, I know how Caruso must feel!), and I played over every blessed tune I knew, and some I didn"t, four or five times, and after that we told stories and cracked jokes in a way that must have been utterly astonishing in that household. After the children had been, yes, driven to bed, Mr. Clark seemed about to drop back into his lamentations over his condition (which I have no doubt had come to give him a sort of pleasure), but I turned to Mrs. Clark, whom I had come to respect very highly, and began to talk about the little garden she had started, which was about the most enterprising thing about the place.
"Isn"t it one of the finest things in this world," said I, "to go out into a good garden in the summer days and bring in loaded baskets filled with beets and cabbages and potatoes, just for the gathering?"
I knew from the expression on Mrs. Clark"s face that I had touched a sounding note.
"Opening the green corn a little at the top to see if it is ready and then stripping it off and tearing away the moist white husks--"
"And picking tomatoes?" said Mrs. Clark. "And knuckling the watermelons to see if they are ripe? Oh, I tell you there are thousands of people in this country who"d like to be able to pick their dinner in the garden!"
"It"s fine!" said Mrs. Clark with amused enthusiasm, "but I like best to hear the hens cackling in the barnyard in the morning after they"ve laid, and to go and bring in the eggs."
"Just like a daily present!" I said.
"Ye-es," responded the soundly practical Mrs. Clark, thinking, no doubt, that there were other aspects of the garden and chicken problem.
"I"ll tell you another thing I like about a farmer"s life," said I, "that"s the smell in the house in the summer when there are preserves, or sweet pickles, or jam, or whatever it is, simmering on the stove. No matter where you are, up in the garret or down cellar, it"s cinnamon, and allspice, and cloves, and every sort of sugary odour. Now, that gets me where I live!"
"It IS good!" said Mrs. Clark with a laugh that could certainly be called nothing if not girlish.
All this time I had been keeping one eye on Mr. Clark. It was amusing to see him struggling against a cheerful view of life. He now broke into the conversation.
"Well, but--" he began.
Instantly I headed him off.
"And think," said I, "of living a life in which you are beholden to no man. It"s a free life, the farmer"s life. No one can discharge you because you are sick, or tired, or old, or because you are a Democrat or a Baptist!"
"Well, but--"
"And think of having to pay no rent, nor of having to live upstairs in a tenement!"
"Well, but--"
"Or getting run over by a street-car, or having the children play in the gutters."
"I never did like to think of what my children would do if we went to town," said Mrs. Clark.
"I guess not!" I exclaimed.