CHAPTER
III
Mr. Pryor's Door
"Grief will be joy if on its edge
Fall soft that holiest ray,
Joy will be grief if no faint pledge
Be there of heavenly day."
Have Sally and Peter said anything about getting married yet?"
asked my big sister Lucy of mother. Lucy was home on a visit. She
was bathing her baby and mother was sewing.
"Not a word!"
"Are they engaged?"
"Sally hasn't mentioned it."
"Well, can't you find out?"
"How could I?" asked mother.
"Why, watch them a little and see how they act when they are
together. If he kisses her when he leaves, of course they are engaged."
"It would be best to wait until Sally tells me," laughed
mother.
I heard this from the back steps. Neither mother nor Lucy knew I
was there. I went in to see if they would let me take the baby.
Of course they wouldn't! Mother took it herself. She was rocking,
and softly singing my Dutch song that I loved best; I can't spell
it, but it sounds like this:
"Trus, trus, trill;
Der power rid der fill,
Fill sphring aveck,
Plodschlicter power in der dreck."
Once I asked mother to sing it in English, and she couldn't because
it didn't rhyme that way and the words wouldn't fit the notes; it
was just, "Trot, trot, trot, a boy rode a colt. The colt sprang
aside; down went the boy in the dirt."
"Aw, don't sing my song to that little red, pug-nosed bald-head!"
I said.
Really, it was a very nice baby; I only said that because I wanted
to hold it, and mother wouldn't give it up. I tried to coax May
to the dam snake hunting, but she couldn't go, so I had to amuse
myself. I had a doll, but I never played with it except when I was
dressed up on Sunday. Anyway, what's the use of a doll when there's
a live baby in the house? I didn't care much for my playhouse since
I had seen one so much finer that Laddie had made for the Princess.
Of course I knew moss wouldn't take root in our orchard as it did
in the woods, neither would willow cuttings or the red flowers.
Finally, I decided to go hunting. I went into the garden and gathered
every ripe touch-me-not pod I could find, and all the portulaca.
Then I stripped the tiger lilies of each little black ball at the
bases of the leaves, and took all the four o'clock seed there was.
Then I got my biggest alder popgun and started up the road toward
Sarah Hood's.
I was going along singing a little verse; it wasn't Dutch either;
the old baby could have that if it wanted it. Soon as I got from
sight of the house I made a powderhorn of a curled leaf, loaded
my gun with portulaca powder, rammed in a tiger lily bullet, laid
the weapon across my shoulder, and stepped high and lightly as Laddie
does when he's in the Big Woods hunting for squirrel. It must have
been my own singing--I am rather good at hearing things, but I never
noticed a sound that time, until a voice like a rusty saw said:
"Good morning, Nimrod!"
I sprang from the soft dust and landed among the dog fennel of a
fence corner, in a flying leap. Then I looked. It was the Princess'
father, tall, and gray, and grim, riding a big black horse that
seemed as if it had been curried with the fine comb and brushed
with the grease rag.
"Good morning!" I said when I could speak.
"Am I correct in the surmise that you are on the chase with
a popgun?" he asked politely.
"Yes sir," I answered, getting my breath the best I could.
It came easier after I noticed he didn't seem to be angry about
anything.
"Where is your hunting ground, and what game are you after?"
he asked gravely.
"You can see the great African jungle over there. I am going
to hunt for lions and tigers."
You always must answer politely any one who speaks to you; and you
get soundly thrashed, at least at our house, if you don't be politest
of all to an older person especially with white hair. Father is
extremely particular about white hair. It is a "crown of glory,"
when it is found in the way of the Lord. Mahlon Pryor had enough
crown of glory for three men, but maybe his wasn't exactly glory,
because he wasn't in the way of the Lord. He was in a way of his
own. He must have had much confidence in himself. At our house we
would rather trust in the Lord. I only told him about the lions
and tigers because he asked me, and that was the way I played. But
you should have heard him laugh. You wouldn't have supposed to see
him that he could.
"Umph!" he said at last. "I am a little curious about
your ammunition. Just how to you bring down your prey?"
"I use portulaca powder and tiger lily bullets on the tigers,
and four o'clocks on the lions," I said.
You could have heard him a mile, dried up as he was.
"I used to wear a red coat and ride to the hounds fox hunting,"
he said. "It's great sport. Won't you take me with you to the
jungle?"
I didn't want him in the least, but if any one older asks right
out to go with you, what can you do? I am going to tell several
things you won't believe, and this is one of them: He got off his
horse, tied it to the fence, and climbed over after me. He went
on asking questions and of course I had to tell him. Most of what
he wanted to know, his people should have taught him before he was
ten years old, but father says they do things differently in England.
"There doesn't seem to be many trees in the jungle."
"Well, there's one, and it's about the most important on our
land," I told him. "Father wouldn't cut it down for a
farm. You see that little dark bag nearly as big as your fist, swinging
out there on that limb? Well, every spring one of these birds, yellow
as orange peel, with velvet black wings, weaves a nest like that,
and over on that big branch, high up, one just as bright red as
the other is yellow, and the same black wings, builds a cradle for
his babies. Father says a red bird and a yellow one keeping house
in the same tree is the biggest thing that ever happened in our
family. They come every year and that is their tree. I believe father
would shoot any one who drove them away."
"Your father is a gunner also?" he asked, and I thought
he was laughing to himself.
"He's enough of a gunner to bring mother in a wagon from Pennsylvania
all the way here, and he kept wolves, bears, Indians, and Gypsies
from her, and shot things for food. Yes sir, my father can shoot
if he wants to, better than any of our family except Laddie."
"And does Laddie shoot well?"
"Laddie does everything well," I answered proudly. "He
won't try to do anything at all, until he practises so he can do
it well."
"Score one for Laddie," he said in a queer voice.
"Are you in a hurry about the lions and tigers?"
"Not at all," he answered.
"Well, here I always stop and let Governor Oglesby go swimming,"
I said.
Mr. Mahlon Pryor sat on the bank of our Little Creek, took off his
hat and shook back his hair as if the wind felt good on his forehead.
I fished Dick Oglesby from the ammunition in my apron pocket, and
held him toward the cross old man, and he wasn't cross at all. It's
funny how you come to get such wrong ideas about people.
"My big married sister who lives in Westchester sent him to
me last Christmas," I explained. "I have another doll,
great big, with a Scotch plaid dress made from pieces of mine, but
I only play with her on Sunday when I dare not do much else. I like
Dick the best because he fits my apron pocket. Father wanted me
to change his name and call him Oliver P. Morton, after a friend
of his, but I told him this doll had to be called by the name he
came with, and if he wanted me to have one named for his friend,
to get it, and I'd play with it."
"What did he do?"
"He didn't want one named Morton that much."
Mr. Pryor took Dick Oglesby in his fingers and looked at his curly
black hair and blue eyes, his chubby outstretched arms, like a baby
when it wants you to take it, and his plump little feet and the
white shirt with red stripes all a piece of him as he was made,
and said: "The honourable governor of our sister state seems
a little weighty; I am at a loss to understand how he swims."
"It's a new way," I said. "He just stands still and
the water swims around him. It's very easy for him."
Then I carried Dick to the water, waded in and stood him against
a stone. Something funny happened instantly. It always did. I found
it out one day when I got some apple butter on the governor giving
him a bite of my bread, and put him in the wash bowl to soak. He
was two and a half inches tall; but the minute you stood him in
water he went down to about half that height and spread out to twice
his size around. You should have heard Mr. Pryor.
"If you will lie on the bank and watch you'll have more to
laugh at than that," I promised.
He lay down and never paid the least attention to his clothes. Pretty
soon a little chub fish came swimming around to make friends with
Governor Oglesby, and then a shiner and some more chub. They nibbled
at his hands and toes, and then went flashing away, and from under
the stone came backing a big crayfish and seized the governor by
the leg and started dragging him, so I had to jump in and stop it.
I took a shot at the crayfish with the tiger ammunition and then
loaded for lions.
We went on until the marsh became a thicket of cattails, bulrushes,
willow bushes, and blue flags; then I found a path where the lions
left the jungle, hid Mr. Pryor and told him he must be very still
or they wouldn't come. At last I heard one. I touched Mr. Pryor's
sleeve to warn him to keep his eyes on the trail. Pretty soon the
lion came in sight. Really it was only a little gray rabbit hopping
along, but when it was opposite us, I pinged it in the side, it
jumped up and turned a somersault with surprise, and squealed a
funny little squeal,--well, I wondered if Mr. Pryor's people didn't
hear him, and think he had gone crazy as Paddy Ryan. I never did
hear any one laugh so. I thought if he enjoyed it like that, I'd
let him shoot one. I do May sometimes; so we went to another place
I knew where there was a tiger's den, and I loaded with tiger lily
bullets, gave him the gun and showed him where to aim. After we
had waited a long time out came a muskrat, and started for the river.
I looked to see why Mr. Pryor didn't shoot, and there he was gazing
at it as if a snake had charmed him; his hands shaking a little,
his cheeks almost red, his eyes very bright.
"Shoot!" I whispered. "It won't stay all day!"
He forgot how to push the ramrod like I showed him, so he reached
out and tried to hit it with the gun.
"Don't do that!" I said.
"But it's getting away! It's getting away!" he cried.
"Well, what if it is?" I asked, half provoked. "Do
you suppose I really would hurt a poor little muskrat? Maybe it
has six hungry babies in its home."
"Oh THAT way," he said, but he kept looking at it, so
he made me think if I hadn't been there, he would have thrown a
stone or hit it with a stick. It is perfectly wonderful about how
some men can't get along without killing things, such little bits
of helpless creatures too. I thought he'd better be got from the
jungle, so I invited him to see the place at the foot of the hill
below our orchard where some men thought they had discovered gold
before the war. They had been to California in '49, and although
they didn't come home with millions, or anything else except sick
and tired, they thought they had learned enough about gold to know
it when they saw it.
I told him about it and he was interested and anxious to see the
place. If there had been a shovel, I am quite sure he would have
gone to digging. He kept poking around with his boot toe, and he
said maybe the yokels didn't look good.
He said our meadow was a beautiful place, and when he praised the
creek I told him about the wild ducks, and he laughed again. He
didn't seem to be the same man when we went back to the road. I
pulled some sweet marsh grass and gave his horse bites, so Mr. Pryor
asked if I liked animals. I said I loved horses, Laddie's best of
all. He asked about it and I told him.
"Hasn't your father but one thoroughbred?"
"Father hasn't any," I said. "Flos really belongs
to Laddie, and we are mighty glad he has her."
"You should have one soon, yourself," he said.
"Well, if the rest of them will hurry up and marry off, so
the expenses won't be so heavy, maybe I can."
"How many of you are there?" he asked.
"Only twelve," I said.
He looked down the road at our house.
"Do you mean to tell me you have twelve children there?"
he inquired.
"Oh no!" I answered. "Some of the big boys have gone
into business in the cities around, and some of the girls are married.
Mother says she has only to show her girls in the cities to have
them snapped up like hot cakes."
"I fancy that is the truth," he said. "I've passed
the one who rides the little black pony and she is a picture. A
fine, healthy, sensible-appearing young woman!"
"I don't think she's as pretty as your girl," I said.
"Perhaps I don't either," he replied, smiling at me.
Then he mounted his horse.
"I don't remember that I ever have passed that house,"
he said, "without hearing some one singing. Does it go on all
the time?"
"Yes, unless mother is sick."
"And what is it all about?"
"Oh just joy! Gladness that we are alive, that we have things
to do that we like, and praising the Lord."
"Umph!" said Mr. Pryor.
"It's just letting out what our hearts are full of," I
told him. "Don't you know that song:
"`Tis the old time religion And you cannot keep it still?'"
He shook his head.
"It's an awful nice song," I explained. "After it
sings about all the other things religion is good for, there is
one line that says: `IT'S GOOD FOR THOSE IN TROUBLE.'"
I looked at him straight and hard, but he only turned white and
seemed sick.
"So?" said Mr. Pryor. "Well, thank you for the most
interesting morning I've had this side England. I should be delighted
if you would come and hunt lions in my woods with me some time."
"Oh, do you open the door to children?"
"Certainly we open the door to children," he said, and
as I live, he looked so sad I couldn't help thinking he was sorry
to close it against any one. A mystery is the dreadfulest thing.
"Then if children don't matter, maybe I can come lion-hunting
some time with the Princess, after she has made the visit at our
house she said she would."
"Indeed! I hadn't been informed that my daughter contemplated
visiting your house," he said. "When was it arranged?"
"My mother invited her last Sunday."
I didn't like the way he said: "O-o-o-h!" Some way it
seemed insulting to my mother.
"She did it to please me," I said. "There was a Fairy
Princess told me the other day that your girl felt like a stranger,
and that to be a stranger was the hardest thing in all the world.
She sat a little way from the others, and she looked so lonely.
I pulled my mother's sleeve and led her to your girl and made them
shake hands, and then mother HAD to ask her to come to dinner with
us. She always invites every one she meets coming down the aisle;
she couldn't help asking your girl, too. She said she was expected
at home, but she'd come some day and get acquainted. She needn't
if you object. My mother only asked her because she thought she
was lonely, and maybe she wanted to come."
He sat there staring straight ahead and he seemed to grow whiter,
and older, and colder every minute.
"Possibly she is lonely," he said at last. "This
isn't much like the life she left. Perhaps she does feel herself
a stranger. It was very kind of your mother to invite her. If she
wants to come, I shall make no objections."
"No, but my father will," I said.
He straightened up as if something had hit him. "Why will he
object?"
"On account of what you said about God at our house,"
I told him. "And then, too, father's people were from England,
and he says real Englishmen have their doors wide open, and welcome
people who offer friendliness."
Mr. Pryor hit his horse an awful blow. It reared and went racing
up the road until I thought it was running away. I could see I had
made him angry enough to burst. Mother always tells me not to repeat
things; but I'm not smart enough to know what to say, so I don't
see what is left but to tell what mother, or father, or Laddie says
when grown people ask me questions.
I went home, but every one was too busy even to look at me, so I
took Bobby under my arm, hunted father, and told him all about the
morning. I wondered what he would think. I never found out.
He wouldn't say anything, so Bobby and I went across the lane, and
climbed the gate into the orchard to see if Hezekiah were there
and wanted to fight. He hadn't time to fight Bobby because he was
busy chasing every wild jay from our orchard. By the time he got
that done, he was tired, so he came hopping along on branches above
us as Bobby and I went down the west fence beside the lane.
If I had been compelled to choose the side of our orchard I liked
best, I don't know which I would have selected. The west side--
that is, the one behind the dooryard--was running over with interesting
things. Two gates opened into it, one from near each corner of the
yard. Between these there was quite a wide level space, where mother
fed the big chickens and kept the hens in coops with little ones.
She had to have them close enough that the big hawks were afraid
to come to earth, or they would take more chickens than they could
pay for, by cleaning rabbits, snakes, and mice from the fields.
Then came a double row of prize peach trees; rare fruit that mother
canned to take to county fairs. One bore big, white freestones,
and around the seed they were pink as a rose. One was a white cling,
and one was yellow. There was a yellow freestone as big as a young
sun, and as golden, and the queerest of all was a cling purple as
a beet.
Sometimes father read about the hairs of the head being numbered,
because we were so precious in the sight of the Almighty. Mother
was just as particular with her purple tree; every peach on it was
counted, and if we found one on the ground, we had to carry it to
her, because it MIGHT be sound enough to can or spice for a fair,
or she had promised the seed to some one halfway across the state.
At each end of the peach row was an enormous big pear tree; not
far from one the chicken house stood on the path to the barn, and
beside the other the smoke house with the dog kennel a yard away.
Father said there was a distinct relationship between a smoke house
and a dog kennel, and bulldogs were best. Just at present we were
out of bulldogs, but Jones, Jenkins and Co. could make as much noise
as any dog you ever heard. On the left grew the plum trees all the
way to the south fence, and I think there was one of every kind
in the fruit catalogues. Father spent hours pruning, grafting, and
fertilizing them. He said they required twice as much work as peaches.
Around the other sides of the orchard were two rows of peach trees
of every variety; but one cling on the north was just a little the
best of any, and we might eat all we wanted from any tree we liked,
after father tested them and said: "Peaches are ripe!"
In the middle were the apple; selected trees, planted, trimmed,
and cultivated like human beings. The apples were so big and fine
they were picked by hand, wrapped in paper, packed in barrels, and
all we could not use at home went to J. B. White in Fort Wayne for
the biggest fruit house in the state. My! but father was proud!
He always packed especially fine ones for Mr. White's family. He
said he liked him, because he was a real sandy Scotchman, who knew
when an apple was right, and wasn't afraid to say so.
On the south side of the orchard there was the earliest June apple
tree. The apples were small, bright red with yellow stripes, crisp,
juicy and sweet enough to be just right. The tree was very large,
and so heavy it leaned far to the northeast.
This sounds like make-believe, but it's gospel truth. Almost two
feet from the ground there was a big round growth, the size of a
hash bowl. The tree must have been hurt when very small and the
place enlarged with the trunk. Now it made a grand step. If you
understood that no one could keep from running the last few rods
from the tree, then figured on the help to be had from this step,
you could see how we went up it like squirrels. All the bark on
the south side was worn away and the trunk was smooth and shiny.
The birds loved to nest among the branches, and under the peach
tree in the fence corner opposite was a big bed of my mother's favourite
wild flowers, blue-eyed Marys. They had dainty stems from six to
eight inches high and delicate heads of bloom made up of little
flowers, two petals up, blue, two turning down, white. Perhaps you
don't know about anything prettier than that. There were maiden-hair
ferns among them too! and the biggest lichens you ever saw on the
fence, while in the hollow of a rotten rail a little chippy bird
always built a hair nest. She got the hairs at our barn, for most
of them were gray from our carriage horses, Ned and Jo. All down
that side of the orchard the fence corners were filled with long
grass and wild flowers, a few alder bushes left to furnish berries
for the birds, and wild roses for us, to keep their beauty impressed
on us, father said.
The east end ran along the brow of a hill so steep we coasted down
it on the big meat board all winter. The board was six inches thick,
two and a half feet wide, and six long. Father said slipping over
ice and snow gave it the good scouring it needed, and it was thick
enough to last all our lives, so we might play with it as we pleased.
At least seven of us could go skimming down that hill and halfway
across the meadow on it. In the very place we slid across, in summer
lay the cowslip bed. The world is full of beautiful spots, but I
doubt if any of them ever were prettier than that. Father called
it swale. We didn't sink deep, but all summer there was water standing
there. The grass was long and very sweet, there were ferns and a
few calamus flowers, and there must have been an acre of cowslips--cowslips
with big-veined, heartshaped, green leaves, and large pale gold
flowers. I used to sit on the top rail of that orchard fence and
look down at them, and try to figure out what God was thinking when
He created them, and I wished that I might have been where I could
watch His face as He worked.
Halfway across the east side was a gully where Leon and I found
the Underground Station, and from any place along the north you
looked, you saw the Little Creek and the marsh. At the same time
the cowslips were most golden, the marsh was blue with flags, pink
with smart weed, white and yellow with dodder, yellow with marsh
buttercups having ragged frosty leaves, while the yellow and the
red birds flashed above it, the red crying, "Chip," "Chip,"
in short, sharp notes, the yellow spilling music all over the marsh
while on wing.
It would take a whole book to describe the butterflies; once in
a while you scared up a big, wonderful moth, large as a sparrow;
and the orchard was alive with doves, thrushes, catbirds, bluebirds,
vireos, and orioles. When you climbed the fence, or a tree, and
kept quiet, and heard the music and studied the pictures, it made
you feel as if you had to put it into words. I often had meeting
all by myself, unless Bobby and Hezekiah were along, and I tried
to tell God what I thought about things. Probably He was so busy
making more birds and flowers for other worlds, He never heard me;
but I didn't say anything disrespectful at all, so it made no difference
if He did listen. It just seemed as if I must tell what I thought,
and I felt better, not so full and restless after I had finished.
All of us were alike about that. At that minute I knew mother was
humming, as she did a dozen times a day:
"I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then."
Lucy would be rocking her baby and singing, "Hush, my dear,
lie still and slumber." Candace's favourite she made up about
her man who had been killed in the war, when they had been married
only six weeks, which hadn't given her time to grow tired of him
if he hadn't been "all her fancy painted." She arranged
the words like "Ben Battle was a soldier bold," and she
sang them to suit herself, and cried every single minute:
"They wrapped him in his uniform,
They laid him in the tomb,
My aching heart I thought 'twould break,
But such was my sad doom."
Candace just loved that song. She sang it all the time. Leon said
our pie always tasted salty from her tears, and he'd take a bite
and smile at her sweetly and say: "How UNIFORM you get your
pie, Candace!"
May's favourite was "Joy Bells." Father would be whispering
over to himself the speech he was preparing to make at the next
prayer-meeting. We never could learn his speeches, because he read
and studied so much it kept his head so full, he made a new one
every time. You could hear Laddie's deep bass booming the "Bedouin
Love Song" for a mile; this minute it came rolling across the
corn:
"Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
Till the sun grows cold,
And the Stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!"
I don't know how the Princess stood it. If he had been singing that
song where I could hear it and I had known it was about me, as she
must have known he meant her, I couldn't have kept my arms from
around his neck. Over in the barn Leon was singing:
"A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where codfish waggle their tails
'Mid tadpoles two feet deep."
The minute he finished, he would begin reciting "Marco Bozzaris,"
and you could be sure that he would reach the last line only to
commence on the speech of "Logan, Chief of the Mingoes,"
or any one of the fifty others. He could make your hair stand a
little straighter than any one else; the best teachers we ever had,
or even Laddie, couldn't make you shivery and creepy as he could.
Because all of us kept going like that every day, people couldn't
pass without hearing, so THAT was what Mr. Pryor meant.
I had a pulpit in the southeast corner of the orchard. I liked that
place best of all because from it you could see two sides at once.
The very first little, old log cabin that had been on our land,
the one my father and mother moved into, had stood in that corner.
It was all gone now; but a flowerbed of tiny, purple iris, not so
tall as the grass, spread there, and some striped grass in the shadiest
places, and among the flowers a lark brooded every spring. In the
fence corner mother's big white turkey hen always nested. To protect
her from rain and too hot sun, father had slipped some boards between
the rails about three feet from the ground. After the turkey left,
that was my pulpit.
I stood there and used the top of the fence for my railing.
The little flags and all the orchard and birds were behind me; on
one hand was the broad, grassy meadow with the creek running so
swiftly, I could hear it, and the breath of the cowslips came up
the hill. Straight in front was the lane running down from the barn,
crossing the creek and spreading into the woods pasture, where the
water ran wider and yet swifter, big forest trees grew, and bushes
of berries, pawpaws, willow, everything ever found in an Indiana
thicket; grass under foot, and many wild flowers and ferns wherever
the cattle and horses didn't trample them, and bigger, wilder birds,
many having names I didn't know. On the left, across the lane, was
a large cornfield, with trees here and there, and down the valley
I could see the Big Creek coming from the west, the Big Hill with
the church on top, and always the white gravestones around it. Always
too there was the sky overhead, often with clouds banked until you
felt if you only could reach them, you could climb straight to the
gates that father was so fond of singing about sweeping through.
Mostly there was a big hawk or a turkey buzzard hanging among them,
just to show us that we were not so much, and that we couldn't shoot
them, unless they chose to come down and give us a chance.
I set Bobby and Hezekiah on the fence and stood between them. "We
will open service this morning by singing the thirty-fifth hymn,"
I said. "Sister Dover, will you pitch the tune?"
Then I made my voice high and squeally like hers and sang:
"Come ye that love the Lord,
And let your joys be known,
Join in a song of sweet accord,
And thus surround the throne."
I sang all of it and then said: "Brother Hastings, will you
lead us in prayer?"
Then I knelt down, and prayed Brother Hastings' prayer. I could
have repeated any one of a dozen of the prayers the men of our church
prayed, but I liked Brother Hastings' best, because it had the biggest
words in it. I loved words that filled your mouth, and sounded as
if you were used to books. It began sort of sing- songy and measured
in stops, like a poetry piece:
"Our Heavenly Father: We come before Thee this morning,
Humble worms of the dust, imploring thy blessing.
We beseech Thee to forgive our transgressions,
Heal our backsliding, and love us freely."
Sometimes from there on it changed a little, but it always began
and ended exactly the same way. Father said Brother Hastings was
powerful in prayer, but he did wish he'd leave out the "worms
of the dust." He said we were not "worms of the dust";
we were reasoning, progressive, inventive men and women. He said
a worm would never be anything except a worm, but we could study
and improve ourselves, help others, make great machines, paint pictures,
write books, and go to an extent that must almost amaze the Almighty
Himself. He said that if Brother Hastings had done more plowing
in his time, and had a little closer acquaintance with worms, he
wouldn't be so ready to call himself and every one else a worm.
Now if you are talking about cutworms or fishworms, father is right.
But there is that place where--"Charles his heel had raised,
upon the humble worm to tread," and the worm lifted up its
voice and spake thus to Charles:
"I know I'm now among the things
Uncomely to your sight,
But, by and by, on splendid wings,
You'll see me high and bright."
Now I'll bet a cent THAT is the kind of worm Brother Hastings said
we were. I must speak to father about it. I don't want him to be
mistaken; and I really think he is about worms. Of course he knows
the kind that have wings and fly. Brother Hastings mixed him up
by saying "worms of the dust" when he should have said
worms of the leaves. Those that go into little round cases in earth
or spin cocoons on trees always live on leaves, and many of them
rear the head, having large horns, and wave it in a manner far from
humble. So father and Brother Hastings were both partly right, and
partly wrong.
When the prayer came to a close, where every one always said "Amen,"
I punched Bobby and whispered, "Crow, Bobby, crow!" and
he stood up and brought it out strong, like he always did when I
told him. I had to stop the service to feed him a little wheat,
to pay him for crowing; but as no one was there except us, that
didn't matter. Then Hezekiah crowded over for some, so I had to
pretend I was Mrs. Daniels feeding her children caraway cake, like
she always did in meeting. If I had been the mother of children
who couldn't have gone without things to eat in church I'd have
kept them at home. Mrs. Daniels always had the carpet greasy with
cake crumbs wherever she sat, and mother didn't think the Lord liked
a dirty church any more than we would have wanted a mussy house.
When I had Bobby and Hezekiah settled I took my text from my head,
because I didn't know the meeting feeling was coming on me when
I started, and I had brought no Bible along.
"Blessed are all men, but most blessed are they who hold their
tempers." I had to stroke Bobby a little and pat Hezekiah once
in a while, to keep them from flying down and fighting, but mostly
I could give my attention to my sermon.
"We have only to look around us this morning to see that all
men are blessed," I said. "The sky is big enough to cover
every one.
If the sun gets too hot, there are trees for shade or the clouds
come up for a while. If the earth becomes too dry, it always rains
before it is everlastingly too late. There are birds enough to sing
for every one, butterflies enough to go around, and so many flowers
we can't always keep the cattle and horses from tramping down and
even devouring beautiful ones, like Daniel thought the lions would
devour him--but they didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea, O Lord,
for You to shut the cows' mouths and save the cowslips also; they
may not be worth as much as a man, but they are lots better looking,
and they make fine greens. It doesn't seem right for cows to eat
flowers; but maybe it is as right for them as it is for us. The
best way would be for our cattle to do like that piece about the
cow in the meadow exactly the same as ours:
"`And through it ran a little brook,
Where oft the cows would drink,
And then lie down among the flowers,
That grew upon the brink.'
"You notice, O Lord, the cows did not eat the flowers in this
instance; they merely rested among them, and goodness knows, that's
enough for any cow. They had better done like the next verse, where
it says:
"`They like to lie beneath the trees,
All shaded by the boughs,
Whene'er the noontide heat came on:
Sure, they were happy cows!'
"Now, O Lord, this plainly teaches that if cows are happy,
men should be much more so, for like the cows, they have all Thou
canst do for them, and all they can do for themselves, besides.
So every man is blessed, because Thy bounty has provided all these
things for him, without money and without price. If some men are
not so blessed as others, it is their own fault, and not Yours.
You made the earth, and all that is therein, and You made the men.
Of course You had to make men different, so each woman can tell
which one belongs to her; but I believe it would have been a good
idea while You were at it, if You would have made all of them enough
alike that they would all work. Perhaps it isn't polite of me to
ask more of You than You saw fit to do; and then, again, it may
be that there are some things impossible, even to You. If there
is anything at all, seems as if making Isaac Thomas work would be
it. Father says that man would rather starve and see his wife and
children hungry than to take off his coat, roll up his sleeves,
and plow corn; so it was good enough for him when Leon said, `Go
to the ant, thou sluggard,' right at him. So, of course, Isaac is
not so blessed as some men, because he won't work, and thus he never
knows whether he's going to have a big dinner on Sunday, until after
some one asks him, because he looks so empty. Mother thinks it isn't
fair to feed Isaac and send him home with his stomach full, while
Mandy and the babies are sick and hungry. But Isaac is some blessed,
because he has religion and gets real happy, and sings, and shouts,
and he's going to Heaven when he dies. He must wish he'd go soon,
especially in winter.
"There are men who do not have even this blessing, and to make
things worse, O Lord, they get mad as fire and hit their horses,
and look like all possessed. The words of my text this morning apply
especially to a man who has all the blessings Thou hast showered
and flowered upon men who work, or whose people worked and left
them so much money they don't need to, and yet a sadder face I never
saw, or a crosser one. He looks like he was going to hit people,
and he does hit his horse an awful crack. It's no way to hit a horse,
not even if it balks, because it can't hit back, and it's a cowardly
thing to do. If you rub their ears and talk to them, they come quicker,
O our Heavenly Father, and if you hit them just because you are
mad, it's a bigger sin yet.
"No man is nearly so blessed as he might be who goes around
looking killed with grief when he should cheer up, no matter what
ails him; and who shuts up his door and says his wife is sick when
she isn't, and who scowls at every one, when he can be real pleasant
if he likes, as some in Divine Presence can testify. So we are going
to beseech Thee, O Lord, to lay Thy mighty hand upon the man who
got mad this beautiful morning and make him feel Thy might, until
he will know for himself and not another, that You are not a myth.
Teach him to have a pleasant countenance, an open door, and to hold
his temper. Help him to come over to our house and be friendly with
all his neighbours, and get all the blessings You have provided
for every one; but please don't make him have any more trouble than
he has now, for if You do, You'll surely kill him. Have patience
with him, and have mercy on him, O Lord! Let us pray."
That time I prayed myself. I looked into the sky just as straight
and as far as I could see, and if I had any influence at all, I
used it then. Right out loud, I just begged the Lord to get after
Mr. Pryor and make him behave like other people, and let the Princess
come to our house, and for him to come too; because I liked him
heaps when he was lion hunting, and I wanted to go with him again
the worst way. I had seen him sail right over the fences on his
big black horse, and when he did it in England, wearing a red coat,
and the dogs flew over thick around him, it must have looked grand,
but it was mighty hard on the fox. I do hope it got away. Anyway,
I prayed as hard as I could, and every time I said the strongest
thing I knew, I punched Bobby to crow, and he never came out stronger.
Then I was Sister Dover and started: "Oh come let us gather
at the fountain, the fountain that never goes dry."
Just as I was going to pronounce the benediction like father, I
heard something, so I looked around, and there went he and Dr. Fenner.
They were going toward the house, and yet, they hadn't passed me.
I was not scared, because I knew no one was sick. Dr. Fenner always
stopped when he passed, if he had a minute, and if he hadn't, mother
sent some one to the gate with buttermilk and slices of bread and
butter, and jelly an inch thick. When a meal was almost cooked she
heaped some on a plate and he ate as he drove and left the plate
next time he passed. Often he was so dead tired, he was asleep in
his buggy, and his old gray horse always stopped at our gate.
I ended with "Amen," because I wanted to know if they
had been listening; so I climbed the fence, ran down the lane behind
the bushes, and hid a minute. Sure enough they had! I suppose I
had been so in earnest I hadn't heard a sound, but it's a wonder
Hezekiah hadn't told me. He was always seeing something to make
danger signals about. He never let me run on a snake, or a hawk
get one of the chickens, or Paddy Ryan come too close. I only wanted
to know if they had gone and listened, and then I intended to run
straight back to Bobby and Hezekiah; but they stopped under the
greening apple tree, and what they said was so interesting I waited
longer than I should, because it's about the worst thing you can
do to listen when older people don't know. They were talking about
me.
"I can't account for her," said father.
"I can!" said Dr. Fenner. "She is the only child
I ever have had in my practice who managed to reach earth as all
children should. During the impressionable stage, no one expected
her, so there was no time spent in worrying, fretting, and discontent.
I don't mean that these things were customary with Ruth. No woman
ever accepted motherhood in a more beautiful spirit; but if she
would have protested at any time, it would have been then. Instead,
she lived happily, naturally, and enjoyed herself as she never had
before. She was in the fields, the woods, and the garden constantly,
which accounts for this child's outdoor tendencies. Then you must
remember that both of you were at top notch intellectually, and
physically, fully matured. She had the benefit of ripened minds,
and at a time when every faculty recently had been stirred by the
excitement and suffering of the war. Oh, you can account for her
easily enough, but I don't know what on earth you are going to do
with her. You'll have to go careful, Paul. I warn you she will not
be like the others."
"We realize that. Mother says she doubts if she can ever teach
her to sew and become a housewife."
"She isn't cut out for a seamstress or a housewife, Paul. Tell
Ruth not to try to force those things on her. Turn her loose out
of doors; give her good books, and leave her alone. You won't be
disappointed in the woman who evolves."
Right there I realized what I was doing, and I turned and ran for
the pulpit with all my might. I could always repeat things, but
I couldn't see much sense to the first part of that; the last was
as plain as the nose on your face. Dr. Fenner said they mustn't
force me to sew, and do housework; and mother didn't mind the Almighty
any better than she did the doctor. There was nothing in this world
I disliked so much as being kept indoors, and made to hem cap and
apron strings so particularly that I had to count the number of
threads between every stitch, and in each stitch, so that I got
all of them just exactly even. I liked carpet rags a little better,
because I didn't have to be so particular about stitches, and I
always picked out all the bright, pretty colours.
Mother said she could follow my work all over the floor by the bright
spots. Perhaps if I were not to be kept in the house I wouldn't
have to sew any more. That made me so happy I wondered if I couldn't
stretch out my arms and wave them and fly. I sat on the pulpit wishing
I had feathers. It made me pretty blue to have to stay on the ground
all the time, when I wanted to be sailing up among the clouds with
the turkey buzzards. It called to my mind that place in McGuffey's
Fifth where it says:
"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year."
Of course, I never heard a turkey buzzard sing. Laddie said they
couldn't; but that didn't prove it. He said half the members of
our church couldn't sing, but they DID; and when all of them were
going at the tops of their voices, it was just grand. So maybe the
turkey buzzard could sing if it wanted to; seemed as if it should,
if Isaac Thomas could; and anyway, it was the next verse I was thinking
most about:
"Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring."
That was so exciting I thought I'd just try it, so I stood on the
top rail, spread my arms, waved them, and started. I was bumped
in fifty places when I rolled into the cowslip bed at the foot of
the steep hill, for stones stuck out all over the side of it, and
I felt pretty mean as I climbed back to the pulpit.
The only consolation I had was what Dr. Fenner had said. That would
be the greatest possible help in managing father or mother.
I was undecided about whether I would go to school, or not. Must
be perfectly dreadful to dress like for church, and sit still in
a stuffy little room, and do your "abs," and "bes,"
and "bis," and "bos," all day long. I could
spell quite well without looking at a schoolhouse, and read too.
I was wondering if I ever would go at all, when I thought of something
else. Dr. Fenner had said to give me plenty of good books. I was
wild for some that were already promised me. Well, what would they
amount to if I couldn't understand them when I got them? THAT seemed
to make it sure I would be compelled to go to school until I learned
enough to understand what the books contained about birds, flowers,
and moths, anyway; and perhaps there would be some having Fairies
in them. Of course those would be interesting.
I never hated doing anything so badly, in all my life, but I could
see, with no one to tell me, that I had put it off as long as I
dared. I would just have to start school when Leon and May went
in September. Tilly Baher, who lived across the swamp near Sarah
Hood, had gone two winters already, and she was only a year older,
and not half my size. I stood on the pulpit and looked a long time
in every direction, into the sky the longest of all. It was settled.
I must go; I might as well start and have it over. I couldn't look
anywhere, right there at home, and not see more things I didn't
know about than I did. When mother showed me in the city, I wouldn't
be snapped up like hot cakes; I'd be a blockhead no one would have.
It made me so vexed to think I had to go, I set Hezekiah on my shoulder,
took Bobby under my arm, and went to the house. On the way, I made
up my mind that I would ask again, very politely, to hold the little
baby, and if the rest of them went and pigged it up straight along,
I'd pinch it, if I got a chance.
|