Beautiful Joe - Marshall Saunders (the reading strategies book .TXT) 📗

it." And she told him about our night with Jenkins.

 

All the time she was speaking, Mr. Harry held me by the paws, and

stroked my body over and over again. When she finished, he put his head

down to me, and murmured, "Good dog," and I saw that his eyes were red

and shining.

 

"That's a capital story, we must have it at the Band of Mercy," said Mr.

Maxwell. Mrs. Wood had gone to help prepare the tea, so the two young

men were alone with Miss Laura. When they had done talking about me, she

asked Mr. Harry a number of questions about his college life, and his

trip to New York, for he had not been studying all the time that he was

away.

 

"What are you going to do with yourself, Gray, when your college course

is ended?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

 

"I am going to settle right down here," said Mr. Harry.

 

"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 classes--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 amusement 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 amusement, 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 basements, 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 muffins,

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 pass the cream and sugar. Do you