I PS 3513 
 .R454 
 S4 
 1907 
 Copy 1 
 
 UBBIN' DID IT 
 
Scrubbin' Did It 
 
 BY 
 REV. THOMAS E. GREEN, D. D. 
 

 AUTHOt 
 
 1 9 O 7 
 
b 
 
 m 
 
 T MAY sound a bit plati- 
 tudinous to say that one 
 never knows what is 
 going to happen. It is a 
 bit more thoughtful to 
 say that one never 
 knows where or when an ideal is going 
 to materialize. I mean something from 
 which one may gain, by dint of the least 
 bit of reflection, an inspiration. 
 
 It goes without sajong that the most 
 of us rush along the strenuous ways of 
 our profession, more concerned for the 
 sordid mechanism by which railroad 
 schedules co-ordinate with the current 
 
calendar, than for much idealizing of 
 passing things. We are much like him 
 of whom it was said that 
 
 "The yellow primrose by the brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And nothing more." 
 
 It is the mark of real genius — the 
 hall stamp on him on whom the gods 
 have smiled, that he 
 
 «* * * Finds tongues in trees, 
 Books in the running brooks. 
 Sermons in stones, and 
 Good in everything." 
 
 But you do occasionally catch a 
 vision, you do once in a while find an 
 inspiration in the most imexpected of 
 places. 
 
 I think I am not entirely indifferent 
 to the voices that call jfrom the heart 
 of beauty, or sound from the soul of 
 grandeur, as we hear them now and 
 then in the pilgrimage of this world. I 
 am quite sure that I can thrill as many 
 
thrills as any one when I stand amid 
 the Gothic arches of the pines, uplifting 
 their long flung naves beneath an 
 amethystene dome besprent with fres- 
 coed stars — over a pavement tiled in 
 emerald mosaiced with a tangled ara- 
 besque of flowers. I know that I can 
 feel the puniness of man's pretense, 
 when on some beetling crag, mid earth 
 ribs upward thrust, I gaze upon the 
 eternal innocence of snows like vestal 
 virgins, that never sin because they 
 never feel the kiss of hot temptation. 
 
 Yes, I have gained inspiration from 
 all of these; but I foimd a lasting lesson 
 today — where do you imagine? At 
 Wahoo, Nebraska! 
 
 W^ahoo! They tell me it means 
 "bad Indian," tho' you could fancy 
 nothing bad, not to say savage, in the 
 little town Ijdng so quietly in the peace- 
 ful environs of its com fields, and, as if 
 
to make the contrast greater between 
 name and fact, the large proportion of 
 the people here and hereabouts are 
 German and Bohemian — the most 
 quiet, home-making and home-loving 
 of all the alien lines that blend into the 
 complex resultant of our American life. 
 Wahoo! I opened the course there, 
 giving my lecture to as attentive and 
 thoughtful an audience as one might 
 hope to meet; rested, unvexed, in com- 
 fort at a well-kept inn, where every 
 kindness was shown me, and in the 
 early morning said good-bye and 
 started on my way. My bags had 
 gone on the wagon — I chose to walk 
 the half-mile through the snappy, fros- 
 ty October morning. 
 
 I turned onto the platform and ap- 
 proached the depot. Just a plain, or- 
 dinary Chicago CSi, Northwestern depot 
 — one sees them every day. I opened 
 
the door of the waiting room to buy 
 my ticket — and — what! Where was I? 
 
 Before me was a floor that actually 
 shown in snowy whiteness; a stove pol- 
 ished to the last degree of brilliancy, 
 with straight, bright stovepipe reach- 
 ing to the flue; the windows fleckless, 
 and each with a neat, cheap, but tidy, 
 Holland shade — all drawn to the same 
 exact level; on the walls a medley of 
 railway scenes and advertising pictures, 
 but all neatly framed and hung, not 
 without artistic consistency; a water 
 cooler, with a clean granite cup; in one 
 window a tank of goldfish, in another 
 some neatly potted plants; along one 
 wall a convenient rack filled with time 
 tables of various roads and magazines 
 for tedious waits. Where was I? 
 
 "Ah!" I said, "this is the ladies' wait- 
 ing room. Some tidy woman is think- 
 ing of her traveling sisterhood. I be- 
 
long at the other end. There I'll find 
 the familiar, oft-repeated, muddy 
 floor, the stinking spit-boxes, the 
 grimy windows, the rusty stove, the 
 scattered ashes—all the nasty squalor 
 and the disease -breeding filth of the 
 usual country depot. 
 
 Reluctantly I crossed to the other side. 
 Could it be so? A clean, wholesome 
 room, with well swept floor, polished 
 stove, pictured walls, shaded windows; 
 on one side a home-made desk, with 
 ink well, pens, some company paper 
 and envelopes. Visions of Utopia be- 
 gan to shape themselves. 
 
 But I had little time to dream— I had 
 to have a ticket. I went to the window. 
 A big man with a strong clean face 
 made out my ticket. 
 
 "How do you do it?" I said won- 
 deringly. 
 
"Scrubbin*," said he briefly, "there's 
 a heap of virtue in soap and water 
 when they're properly laid on." 
 
 "Can you keep it so?" I said doubt- 
 fully. 
 
 "Sure!" said he. "Things ought to 
 be always clean, and I notice that even 
 when dirty folks come in where it's 
 clean, it makes them more careful." 
 
 And just then I had a visible proof, 
 for a big man who was "eatin' tobacco," 
 suddenly turned to the right, then to 
 the left, then got up and went out on 
 the platform, and shut the door behind 
 him before he spat! 
 
 "Company do anything to help 
 you?" I said, as the train whistled. 
 
 "Oh, bless you, no!" said the man 
 of Spotless Town, "I don't do it for 
 that. I just like things clean and or- 
 derly, and it's just as easy as not to 
 keep them so." 
 
I looked back at Wahoo— before 
 we turned the curve. There was the 
 depot— just a common Northwestern 
 depot — but as I said, one never knows 
 what one is going to find. I had found 
 a lesson. 
 
 Station agent at Wahoo is not a 
 remarkably exalted position, and yet 
 my unknown, unnamed friend had 
 made it blossom. Everything ought 
 to blossom, and he had taken the most 
 habitually ugly and untidy thing on 
 earth — a country depot — and made 
 you remember it for its cleanliness and 
 order. 
 
 Cui bono? Well, why does the 
 poet sing, the artist paint, the preacher 
 exhort, the reformer labor, if not to rid 
 this world of ugliness, of discord, of un- 
 cleanliness — to preach God's evangel 
 of beauty? 
 
 Ask a more practical, characteris- 
 
tically twentieth century question: 
 what does he get for it all? 
 
 Nothing! save as you count his own 
 satisfaction. That's generally the way 
 in this world. 
 
 You remember Browning's "Herve 
 Riel" who "saved the King his ships," 
 and then was told to "name his own 
 reward." 
 
 He laughed — did Herve Riel — he 
 had not done it for reward. But when 
 they pressed him he said : 
 
 "Since it's ask, and have I may, 
 Come a whole half-holiday — 
 Leave to go and see my wife, 
 Whom I call *La Belle Aurore.' 
 This he asked and this he got — 
 Nothing more." 
 
 But some day, maybe, a stray Chi- 
 cago CEi Northwestern official, with 
 "power to act," may blunder into the 
 depot at Wahoo, and when he sees 
 what that depot is, and remembers 
 
what most depots are, he may take 
 my nameless friend and send him out 
 to start a depot crusade, and the first 
 thing you know all depots will be clean 
 and decent, and all this will be the re- 
 sult of the inspiration that started at 
 \A^ahoo. 
 
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