Class Book CoiPglitN?. CfOBKRIGHT DEPOSm This Edition, printed by tl\e ffictoxBton Jlautttal PtieaB is limited to fifteen, hundred copies, eakch signed by the Author, of ■which this is No. Copyright 1921 A. G. DEC -5 1921 ^C1.A630815 Snnotntmn 2Iet tto one sag tl|at ttjia houk aako from tl|E reader more tl|an it merits. 3lt is a roUcctiott of familiar essays, one of mljiclj Ijas been publisl|eb, eacl| bay, for four gears in tl|e newspaper of mljiclj tljc mriter is tl|e eMtor. QJlje subjects are all next boor to eacl| of us. ^urlj morals are bramn as seem appurtenant. 3f no moral be inbicateb, tl|e reader mag perl)aps finb one in tl|e text ; anb sometimes tl|ere mag be no moral at all — onlg a smile or tl|e reoinal of a latent memorg. 3ack in tlje Pulpit is a mobest flomer tl|at groms in tl|e beeper moobs. 2lt is loueb bg cl|ilbren. Ue useb to Ijunt it out anb make tl]e little preacl|er bom anb speak l|is piere mljile tlje sunligl|t playeb in ttje trees anb tl|e summer mas brigl|t anb gag. (5l|is is tl|e plan of tljis collection of essags. 3t Ijas no notion of preacljing except as one loues anb loses l|imself in tl|e subverts treateb, tl|e scenes belin- eateb anb tl|e memories reuioeb. Anb mljen one gets to tljat point in mriting, l|e neeb not preacl| at all. Artljur (^. B'taples OJnntenta Chapter Page On "The Inflcknzy" 3 On "Bends in Rivers" 5 On "The Marks on the Door Jamb'' 7 On"Yotjth" 10 On "Pumps — Especially Chain-pumps " 13 On "Thanksgiving Days".„ 16 On "Reading Aloud".... 19 On "Old Time Torchlight Processions" 25 On "My Aunt's Millinery Shop" 28 On "A Ride to Bath" 31 On "The Qualms of Golf" 36 On "Stilts" 38 On "My Best Umbrella" 41 On "A Sermon on the Seed" 44 On "The First Frosts" 47 On "An Old Baseball Story" 50 On "Your First Trousers" 53 On "The Spectres in Our Path" 56 On "Co-operation After a Fashion" 59 On "Having Nothing To Do" 62 On "Some Old Newspapers" 65 On "Back to the Old School" 68 On "Spring and Daisies" 71 On "Peonies" 74 On "The Value of Character" 77 On "The Little Village" 80 On "A Personal Matter" 83 On "The Etiquette of Sv/immin" 85 On "Going Berrying" 88 On "The Old Peddler's Cart" 91 On "The Vagabond" 94 On "My First Jackknife" 97 On "Old Time Breaking Out op the Roads" 100 xiv CONTENTS Chapter Page On "When the Minister Came" 103 On "The Pussy Willow" 106 On "Carving One's First Turkey" 109 On "Abraham and Lot" 112 On "The Old Brick Oven"..._ 115 On "A Little Buck Up Story" 118 On "Noah" 121 On "The Elm Tree" 124 On "How I Tired of Farming" 127 On "The Smell op a Brush Fire" 130 On "Ghosts and Such" 133 On "Church Dinners" 136 On "The Crows in the Sky" 139 On "Driving Home the Cow" 142 On "Last Days of School" 145 On "Old Maids" 148 On "Camp Fires" 151 On "Going to the Movies" 154 On "Prodigies" 157 On "Certain Noises".— 160 On "Graves by the River" 162 On "Grandfather's Clocks" 165 On " Sopsey- Vines " 168 On "An Old Notion of War's Ending" 171 On "What Our Fathers Read" 174 On "The Sleeping Child" 178 On "The Cavern of the Snail" 181 On "Fall Pickling" 184 On "Woodland Pools" 187 On "Amiability at Home" 190 On "A Woman Hanging Out the Clothes" 193 On "The Clam" 195 On "Sand" 198 On "Forming One's Personality" 201 On "Grannie" 204 On "Helping the Boy" 207 On "Shadows" 210 On "The Lesson in the Rainbow" 213 On "Hair and Heads" 216 CONTENTS XV Chapter Page On "A Talk to Children of All Ages" 219 On "Race Suicide" 222 On "Clearing Off After Storms" 225 On "Reforming as a Business" 228 On "Resourcefulness" 231 On "Woodchucking" 234 On "Having the Lumbago" 237 On "Faces Waiting at the Window" 240 On "Advice to Reporters" 243 On "Eating Yeast" 246 On "The Maine of 100 Years" 248 On "Sap-boiling Time" 251 On "The First Crow" 254 On "Going to Sunday School" 257 On "The Chimney Corner" 261 On "Sulphurandmolasses" 264 On "Having a System" 267 On "An Old Text" 270 On "Ribbon Grass" 273 On "My Alarm Clock" 276 On "Autumn in the Cellar" 279 On "Riding in Smoking Cars" 282 On "Cobwebs" 285 JACK IN THE PULPIT ON "THE INFLUENZY" OC'S been here agen terday! Seem's ez ef he come ter say "How yer gettin' on terday?" lookin' at me where I lay. I ain't talkin' over much; ain't no need ter air my lore. Eyes a burnin' where they be; ears a bustin' with a roar; mouth thet's like a shingle-mill; dry's the handle of a pump; back that's broke square in two 'bout four inches 'bove the rump ! So I ain't so long on talk. Got no answer fer the doc! Doc don't seem ter mind me none; sets around a little bit ; pulls a little dictaphone ; lays it on my kroop- er-bone; makes me breathe and holler "A-a-ah"; breathe an' intake ; breathe an' groan through his little dictaphone. Sez he after quite a spell, "Them Bolsheveeks is raisin' hell! D'yer think ol' Wilson's doin' well?" Takes my temperatoor agen; thumps me on the abdo- men. "Think it's goin' ter snow agen?" But I don't want no casual chat. I don't call no doc, fer that. Got no call for Bolsheveeks, fer at least a couple er weeks ! Don't keer ef it snows an' snows ef I could only blow my nose ! I want facks ! Right off 'n the bat! I don't want no social chat! Ef I'm wusn't what I wuz, what's the reason; what's the cause? What's the status of the case ; tell the facks right to my face; lemme know the wust and best; is my innards all congessed ; are there bones loose in my pate ; is my backbone dislocate; ef I ain't got no temperatoor an' no disease fer sure, what in time's ther howdydoo ef 'tain't the pip and 'tain't the flu? 4 JACK IN THE PULPIT Doc he sets around a bit. "Man !" says he, "you're lookin' fit ! Have you fightin' Dempsey yit." Then I looks doc in the eye : "Tie the bull outside," says I. "Doc, I bleeve I'm goin' ter die. I'm dead now above my chin ! Eyes and nose and ears all in ! Ain't breathed reglar fer a week! Jints all movin' with a squeak. Every time I move my jaw, feel's ez though I'd broke the law. Doc," says I, "it's up ter you ! Ef faint the pip and 'tain't the flu how yer goin' ter pull me through?" Doc he sets an' thinks er while ; then he answers with a smile, "Aint you the chap wrote a talk, couldn't eat and couldn't walk, waitin' fer the birds to sing, an' the comin' of the spring ; wanted to loaf by a larfin' stream, set an' fish an' fish an' dream, nuthin' but bees an' bugs an' things, thet live right where the wild stream sings. Maybe that ain't jest carreck, but sumthin' at least to that effeck." An' the doc he opens a bag he lugs. "What you need," sez he, "is a dose of bugs." An' sure enough I'm gettin' well ; ain't felt so peart for quite a spell. Wuz over a billion bugs, they say, in the shot doc gimme the other day. Reely feel I'm comin' to ; 'tain't the pip an' 'tain't the flu ; but jest er case where all I need is sumthin' off'n the flowery mead, an' when you can't inject the Spring nor a dose of blue- bird on the wing, nor brooks that run, ner vi'lets blue ter cure the pip er cure the flu, why! the next best thing the doctor lugs is a shot of erbout a billion bugs. An' as they sort o' crawl eround, I can somehow feel I'm on the ground, with all the rest that my fancy hugs, the birds an' the bees an' the billion bugs. ON "BENDS IN RIVERS" E SEEMS there are dreams and strange fan- tasies in them; drifting into Elysium; the coming suddenly upon new countries, explor- ation and achievement — all in the bends of calm rivers in June. I see them as we ride by them this dawn of a motionless day, no wind whatever and this river of ours as still and silent as though it were viscid. They are, perhaps, the most inviting things in the world. This river could not be more enticing were it the Congo or the Amazon. I watch it from the car windows and wish I could pass by these bends of rivers and study their shores as terra incognita. There is something in still waters in June and pad- dling on them, especially around the bendings of wind- ing streams, that attracts every person. We read tales of explorers. No book more fascinating than "West- ward Ho," with its adventure. And of all adventure nothing like adventuring up new and great rivers. And it is always the lure of what is beyond the bend. Mystery lies there. What strange monsters, what beast or bird or what manner of fish be just around the bend, all these are the lure that makes the bendings of rivers so alluring. This morning the river mirrored every tree. The sky floated in it. The shore boulders, the ferns, the spruces — all rested on the surface. It seemed as though never before did this river meander as today. It stretched like a silver thread from town to town and around tiny islands and into bayous and odd retreats. The thought was not original with me, that we would like to drift around the bends in the river. Others 6 JACK IN THE PULPIT suggested it ; so that it must be a very general senti- ment — a natural emotional attitude of man — this de- sire to follow rivers; to drift around their bendings; to see what lies beyond. The very obvious suggestion is that this is the way in life. I might make a commonplace application of the thought; but I will not weary you. My thought* as I press my face against the windows of the railroad train and see this absolutely placid river is not solely moral. It is rather emotional and aesthetic. I can't tell you why it makes me sad for departed youth, for Junes long past. I cannot tell you why, as I close my eyes, I seem barefoot, alone, running through brambles to the river or the brook, a young explorer. I cannot tell you why my mind encompasses the years, as the day encompasses my experience since then, and I see the reaches of men's coming and going and see tides broiling, sea-gulls flying, tall ships moving and long, wide bays suddenly breaking upon my view. We New Englanders have no conception of what we owe to the lakes, ponds, streams, estuaries of our na- tive domain. We have but to go into the inland, where sluggish rivers move if at all, dark and discolored, and where there are no clear- water lakes or ponds like those that we have here by the thousands. No wonder that a Maine river in June attracts even us. No wonder that we long for them when away ; dream of them by night and in half waking hours float around their bend- ings and see new lands as they come to view. The Lord was very kind when He made New England rivers. Never straight, never severe, but always sin- uous, curved, in lines of beauty and always appealing to our sense of mystery. The Lord is very good in making us desire to see what is beyond the river bend. ON "THE MARKS ON THE DOOR- JAMB" VERY New Year at least, they used to measure little boys to see how much they had grown in the past twelve months. On the old door- jamb in the kitchen or on some smooth boarded place therein, were the marks of the growth of children, pathetic reminders of passing youth and coming years and records to linger over of what has been but may never be any more. I recall the ceremony. "Come, sonny," said dad, "stand up here and let us see where all this good food has gone to. Let's see how much more boy we've got this year than we had last." And so we toddled over to the appointed place all marked up with records of previous growers of our family and at the place marked with my initials I stood while the blade of a case-knife was laid along the top of my little frowsly head and the scratch was made in the paint that marked my new height in the world of little men. I can see dad now as he gave a mighty jab of the handle of the knife so that the dull blade sank into the wood and left the records of the day thereon. And then it was dated and measured and left for the ages. I think that maybe there are such records now- adays, but I doubt it. I have asked several persons if they have any such memory arid they have not recalled any. But I have them and I can see the row of scratches on the door- jamb in the old kitchen and can still marvel at the monstrous climb of the marks of the passing years toward altitude of senescence. Some such marks stopped and never went on. In one family 8 JACK IN THE PULPIT that I used to visit there were several boys and girls and among them was the record of growth of a boy who was drowned and whom we all saw dragged out of the water one evening in summer and with whose brother I went home, wondering as he sobbed. I can fancy mothers looking at these marks as they scrubbed the door-way paint and pausing to think of the little babies, the chubby boys and the romping girls. Noth- ing that the mother would not rather yield up to time than the growth of her babies. Often mothers would tie them to their breasts and under their breasts for all time if they could, and yet the toil is so great ! But wee children about the house make it full of joy, and when they are gone the house is full of ghosts of flying forms that are no more even tho they live in name. I recall, however, peculiar pride in the evidences of growth, possibly because they were so few. I recall well — and it is a story I often tell to little folks — of the times when I used to go to visit my grandfather at the farm, he would call me over to weigh me. The only scales were a set of long steelyards with a heavy, sliding weight on them that would go rippling down the notches if a boy tried to handle them. They were used to weigh everything from the pig to the carpet- rags. They were like those the tin-peddler used in his negotiations of such lengthy concern and so potent in results as to domestic peace. Mother was very particular not to let the peddler get the better of her trade and usually needed a good deal of bolstering afterwards to calm her doubts. Grandfather would call me over and grandmother would suggest that the "little creeter" be fed up a bit JACK IN THE PULPIT 9 before "Pa" weighed him or he might not start the steelyards at all. He used to tie a piece of broom- stick firmly into the hook of the steelyards and call me to grab the stick, and then with a swing off the floor in his strong old arms I would float in the air like a sparerib and they would gather around and discuss the quarters of pounds or the balance of the steelyards while I hung there in mid-air. I remember but one weight that was recorded in connection with this and I think it rather curious as a common theme, that this figure should endure; for it must have been a good many years ago. That weight was thirty-five pounds. I was very proud of that thirty-five pounds. I reck- oned it was thirty-five pounds of good fighting weight ; for that was what I was advised that it was by my grandfather on the side as we talked it over subse- quently in the barn after he had done his chores and we stood a while to talk it over as to the prospects of a boy's behavior for the coming summer. I would like to know what those marks on the door- jambs, what those fugitive weights of small boys really are. I have speculated before on what becomes of the boy and what bourne receives the boy-soul and the little girl soul and what is I and what was that little boy that once was I and what the distance between the marks on the door- jamb really amount to in our lives. They are gone, those years and that growth, and yet not gone. And if gone, where ? And if not gone, what of the boy or girl that once was you? Tell me these things and I'll tell you about our growth into Heaven. ON "YOUTH" ECENTLY at a wedding in one of the loveliest colonial houses in New England the wedding party sat about the table in the dining room toasting the bride. The day was fair and the colors of the wedding gaiety were those of autumn. I am not very good on naming colors but these were ruddy and deep-toned like those of gardens of autumn by the sea, where the colors are always more intense and vivid. The bridesmaids, twelve or more, were like the flaming bush. And the bride was like the picture that I used to see in Grimm's Fairy Tales — the Sleeping Princess just as she had come wide awake and all of the castle had awakened, from the princess to the boy who had fallen asleep, turning the spit, in the great kitchen. Here in this colonial dining room deep, long and high, were festoons of color and festival array, in the middle of which arose from the table the wedding cake all silvery white like the crest of the Himalayas. It was difficult to get into the room, so many had crowded in to see the ceremony of toasting the bride — and yet the entrance thereto was limited to the younger set. There were many ushers, and the best man, and the bridegroom and some of the young friends of all of them. I, being of gray hair, stood outside and looked in with a lot of other gray-beards who saw and thought. Over in the farther end of the room the doors were guarded by two handsome matrons in gowns whose colors were foils to each other and they stood with their backs to the wall, one on each side of the portal, like warders at the entrance to the Tower of London, JACK IN THE PULPIT 11 and somehow fitted into the picture as tho it had been arranged by a Belasco. Toasting the bride is lovely as a spectacle. There was a background of young college men — and they sang songs of Old Eli. Crowding around the bridal party they lifted their glasses — I don't know with what the glasses were filled, for in this day of near-drinks, I am a poor judge of distance — but the glasses shone and the ceremony looked like pictures that I have seen of "Enter the King." Hymen was the king that day and I saw it all with some thought of things that I am hoping to express. Near me were two of my old school teachers. One was 84 years old, a teacher of my boyhood in Bath, Maine. The other is equally along in years and both of them endowed with minds as keen as ever and with a spirituality that has sweetened and refined with the passing of the years. I leave the contrast to you. Outside the door — age ! Inside the door — "Youth." And I said : "I wish I were an artist and were commissioned to paint a gay pic- ture of Youth. Here I would have my model. The straining eyes of age outside the doors looking in on this picture seen thru the streaming light of the No- vember sun with all of its color and joyousness. The flowers, the wedding finery, the lovely maidens, the gallant boys, the songs of college, the glasses lifted high, the wedding-cake silvered and uncut, the matrons at the door, the mother in the background, so tenderly considerate of parental giving; so hopeful of the fu- ture; so traditional of the past. Youth! Well, it comes and it goes and it leaves stranded on the shoals of time everything save two ele- ments supreme — the spirit and the memories. Love 12 JACK IN THE PULPIT endureth and the spirit grows greater with the years. Time is — and very little else is. And youth recreates itself and age passes out of the presence of the festival and stands outside. And yet age revels in youth as in nothing else and determines that it shall have its day. In the eyes of my two old ladies there were tears, not of sadness but of participation. Probably they, too, will carry long with them to the last the picture of the open room and Youth triumphant. To me it always incarnates the spirit of life itself, the coming, the go- ing of that endless procession. "With firm, regular step," says Walt Whitman, "they wend — they never stop, successions of men, one generation playing its part and passing on; another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn, with faces turned towards me to listen; with eyes retrospective toward me." Yes, Youth. And never shall I forget the scene so full of it, so incomparably beautiful in its loveliness and innocence. ON "PUMPS— ESPECIALLY CHAIN-PUMPS" nUMPS are several kinds, chain-pumps, blue- pumps, kitchen-pumps, detectives and dancing. When the ark leaked on its first voyage, there was no pump on hand, so the elephant put into use the original pump and kept the ark dry. He could suck the water out of the hold and squirt it out of the window. There is no mention of the pump in Scripture. The Red Sea was parted by the wind; not pumped dry by Moses. All kinds of ship- wreck occur in the biblical tales but no evidence that the pump was used to amuse the sailors while they drowned. The first historical account of a pump is Hero's ac- count of the force pump of Ctesibusus of Alexandria. That is as far as I am going into the history of the pump. I never liked the pump anyivay. I remember the days of the old chain-pump, when the efforts of a person in getting water enough to wash his face as far as his ears in the frosty morning could be heard sev- eral miles. I have gone out to the slippery well-curb, where a chain pump lay in wait for the unwary with a mound of gleaming ice spreading over the territory, and I have had the most terrible conflicts with that pump that I ever had with any animate or inanimate object in my life. In the first place it would be frozen up tighter than a mill-pond. Then the well would be frozen over. And then the chain would be frozen and then my ears would be frozen, and then, every time I 14 JACK IN THE PULPIT tried to turn the crank, my hands would freeze to the handle and then I would slip and turn a double-somer- sault on the well-curb and loop up over the pump and get mixed into the chain and get my hair frozen into the atmosphere and fall down the well and cut my lip on the pail and possibly lose my temper. Of all of the cursed-looking insignificant instru- ments of Satan a chain-pump in winter had them all skun to a bare fact. You had to thaw it out with hot water first. I have spent years of my valuable time as a boy thawing out chain-pumps. They would freeze even in summer. The only night of the year when I felt reasonably sure that our chain-pump would not freeze, was the night before the Fourth of July and possibly one or two sultry nights in summer when we boys slept, in puris naturalibus, in the old open attic and heard the crickets sweating blood outdoors. There WERE a few of those hot nights as I recall in which the chain-pump only just skimmed over and we could easily break the ice on the August morning. After you had thawed out a chain-pump, the next thing was to induce it by muscular artifice to give up well-water. It had a way of pulling the water part way up and then sticking just there. You wound and you wound ; you speeded up ; you threw off your outer vest- ments; your tongue began to hang out; your head began to buzz ; your breath began to come in knicker- bockers ; you tore at the job ; the well began to tremble ; the pump began to dance over the premises, and just as the water was beginning to flow out of the spout into the pail amid the terrifying racket, why — you slipped on the ice or your wind gave out and you had to begin all over again. JACK IN THE PULPIT 15 Another pleasant habit of a chain-pump was to ar- rive at the point of delivering water and then break the chain. I suppose I have fished more hours for a chain in a well than any other one thing I ever did as a boy. You know that a chain-pump is made of a chain — thank heaven, they are now obsolete — that ran over a sprocket and up through a spout that just about fitted the chain. The agitation of the sprocket by a boy was supposed to be sufficient to induce the water to come up and flow. If you broke the chain — well, I don't care to talk about it. I have fished for well-chains on days when there was perfectly good fish-fishing, and I don't care to endanger my present good disposition by re- curring to it. I am going to leave the chain in the well today. Of course this world is one of progress. I have been saying that for some years. I never am so con- vinced of it as I am every time I turn a faucet and con- sider how different it is from a chain-pump or even an old-fashioned pumpkin-wood pump. We always painted the pump blue! Every farmer boy was long on blue paint. I never knew why blue paint was so plentiful in childhood. Red paint has been dear enough since; but blue paint! We had slathers of it and we loved to paint. We painted the barn-doors, the front steps, the clothes reel, the fence, the pump, the rooster on the weather vane, the rain-water barrel by the back- door, the roll-way doors to the cellar-way, the back- door, the pig-pen, the hen-coop and the dog-house — all blue. Bright blue, too. But I don't know that it ever made me care any more fondly for the pump than usual. I remember the distance it stood from the even- ing fire; the cold pathway; the slipperiness of its ap- proach; the racking pull on a boy's arms. 16 JACK IN THE PULPIT Yea! Verily! The world is easier for boys, now. What would Percival say now to going to the pump for all of the water! But just the same, there was a tri- umph in getting the better of a chain-pump that noth- ing else can equal. Verily, the chief joy of life is in accomplishment and the greatest happiness is in work. ON "THANKSGIVING DAYS" p OMEHOW, every time I think of Thanksgiving days, I see an old-fashioned country dooryard, with a single wheel rut in it, marking the passage of the family wagon over the new- fallen snow. And standing in the door is a woman in an apron, the apron folded up over her bare arms, and looking off over the white hills. If I were drawing a picture of Thanksgiving, it would be that — ^mother in the doorway waiting for the boy from town. I would step in with you for a time as she closes the door and we shall see the house and smell the din- ner. It has been furbished up as well as it ever could be, as clean as mother alone could make it; and every tidy on the chairs and every pillow on the beds, and every hair-cloth chair in the parlor is as straight as her hands could make it. The yellow kitchen floor shines and the old clock ticking resolutely on and on, in the corner, has a clean if battered face and no need to hide behind its hands. The light of the Thanks- giving Day sun falls on the floor and makes squares of light from the window panes. The cat sleeps on the braided rug by the kitchen stove. Things are going JACK IN THE PULPIT 17 well. The turkey is doing nicely and is being basted with regularity; for mother has nothing more to do than to wait nervously and watch with infinite care lest things go wrong. Every time the oven-door is opened, the steam comes out and makes a savor that defies the art of Savarin. The pantry has bubbling pies of mince on the dressers. The table has an unaccustomed white hnen cloth already placed. The best pickle jar is in the center and the best castor near at hand. And what is that? The silver butter dish, by all that is holy! Mother looks at it fondly and believes that she will even get out her best napkins. Yes, by Jupiter, she will and does; and even so with a look of determina- tion and a smile of mischief she cuts loose with the best the family has or ever expects to have. What is the use of living if you cannot do a few extras on Thanks- giving? Why be eternally keeping the best for the minister? How slowly the clock ticks ! How calmly and irre- vocably Time does have its way! Again and again mother goes to the xvindow and looks down the quiet country road. It turns just at the bottom of the hill toward the "Corner" where Father went to the store and thence to the station for the incoming train. It is four miles away from the turn in the road. The Wil- sons are expecting "folks." Their chimney smokes beatifically into the sunlit skies this Thanksgiving Day. She sees Father in the old wagon, driving slowly through this early snow, with a happy look on his face and her heart warms to him and she fancies things of youth about him and remembers all of the other Thanksgiving Days that they have had here when the children were at home. 18 JACK IN THE PULPIT And so she goes back and busies herself and looks at herself in the looking-glass and opens the oven-door and turns the turkey around in the baking pan and gives it a chance for a little extra brown. This is all a part of giving thanks — this infinite care as to the nicety of the dinner. It is all that she can do, by the way. And yet Father considers that all of this must be very trifling to the son who has been living in a great city. But maybe mother knows quite as well as he. I can hear the wheels coming far down the road, and can even hear the conversation between the man and the son. Maybe mother can hear it, or could hear it, if her heart were not beating so wildly. She will hardly go to the window ; she will hardly go to the door. Perhaps he rather see her just as he used to see her, when he was a little boy — ^just busy about the kitchen and all seeming so homelike. And so! the door opens with a rush of eager air and a boy springs into the room and the cat jumps from the braided rug and the old clock ticks a bit louder or seems to halt, and father stands in the doorway with an expectant and proud look and the little mother is enfolded in the strong young arms and her head goes to its haven where it has longed to be and he says "Little Mamma" and they wipe away the tears of joy. That's Thanksgiving. And that's what makes this old world go along! Nothing else but this eager hunger for the love of our own, the happiness of our own, the uprightness and the constancy of our own. And any boy or girl who can come home to that kitchen fireside and be proud of it ; and who can look into the mother's eyes and not flinch, has cause to lift his heart in thanks to Him from whom floweth all mercy and all thanksgiving. ON "READING ALOUD" ITERATURE began before books were printed. The Arabian Nights are a collection of tales told around the evening camp fire in the deserts and handed down by tale-tellers. Homer was brought along by men who recited it in the original Greek with indescribable grandeur. People thus cultivated the art of listening, which is rapidly passing. The speaking stage has be- gun to go and people gather in darkened houses to see. They are not so inclined to hear. It is almost an insult in the average family to ask the young people to listen to the reading of anything. They begin to yawn and look about for escape. It usually comes by the way of the telephone which jangles its rude interruptions and the doorbell that admits the caller uninvited. I would advocate the return to the old habit of read- ing aloud. I find in daily life that there is a very great decline in the art of direct expression. Fewer people are able today to tell a story simply and directly. Schools of salesmanship are instituted to teach sales- men how to sell goods. I saw in a Boston bookseller's, Wednesday, three samples of conversations that the salesmen were to use in selling a set of the works of Jules Verne. I was asked to read them to give my opinion as to which were the better. It seemed incon- ceivable that the booksellers should take this care to teach men what to say ; to have them learn it by rote. I chose the shorter. No other means, equal to reading aloud, is at hand to teach a person expression and speech. It is aston- ishing what definite progress can be made in a short 20 JACK IN THE PULPIT time by the cultivation of this family practice. I recall that John Stuart Mill, who was educated by his father and who never went to school as a boy until he went away to the Paris Sorbonne, was educated by reading aloud chiefly. You may ask if John Stuart Mill came to know anything by this method, and I will say he was the most astonishing prodigy of all history. He did not know at the age of fourteen that he was better edu- cated than other boys, so simply had the process come about, but he had all of the knowledge of books that the average person of fifty years could have, speak- ing and reading all languages, all classics, all as well as his own native English. We may teach children the most wonderful of things by setting aside a certain por- tion of each day or week for reading aloud. Interruptions ! I have already spoken of them and it is not easy to shut off the telephone talker on the other end, with the usual lot of unnecessary verbiage at his command. But it can be done — if one will be firm and respectful. Much depends on the time and the place. Some places in some houses lend themselves to reading. There are quiet nooks where you may find the atmosphere essential to reading aloud. The book is your own business, but I would not read cheap fic- tion or useless matter. I would follow the line of good reading or not at all. It must be interesting, connected, engrossing as may be. Reading of fiction is the most satisfactory and I will defy any person to follow the habit of reading aloud and not find speedily that his speech is clearer, his voice more elastic and musical; his power to hold an audience if he ever desires to do any public speaking, more certain ; his appreciation of polite and agreeable phrase more keen. JACK IN THE PULPIT 21 You say this is all very well. This is not my busi- ness. But it happens to be your business. Every man is a salesman. He is selling himself to the public. It matters not what his vocation, if he can talk accu- rately, express himself clearly, use decent English, talk rationally without slang and without the use of phrases that mean nothing and are of no strength to his story, he will go farther and do better even if his present occupation be digging in the ditch. One of the best talkers that I ever heard is a shoe- maker in one of our shops. He comes in here occa- sionally. He is a most conclusive and able talker. I asked him if he did not read aloud evenings and Sun- days to his family. Said he, "That's the way I have learned all I know. We read aloud in my household nearly every evening. I take the children young and bring them up that way and we all take our turns at it." I do not know how much reading is taught in schools now. I have no interest in elocution as such, in this comment— excellent as it may be. This is a plea for the direction of reading in households by those who have a concern for the proper education of all. Reading aloud is almost a lost art. It should be restored. ON "OLD LADIES WITH SWEET FACES" NE OF THEM came in the other day to see me and tell me some things that I should know and I was pleased to sit at her feet, as one sat in days of old at the feet of Gamaliel. I know of nothing lovelier than an old lady with a sweet face. Some of them yet retain the flush of color in their cheeks, the dancing light in their eyes, the subtle humor of experience in their talk and the gentleness of the Kingdom of God in their atti- tude. And some are wrinkled, alas! and have hard hands creased by work ; and yet, if there is the look of sweetness in the eyes and in the face, all is again love- liness. I reckon that if you have any sentiment in your souls there is some dear old lady whom these words call again back to you as you read. She may have passed on but she yet peoples your mind. She sits by some window sewing ; she tells little children her quaint old tales; she sits silent and dreamful looking out on the familiar scenes. She is there — all of the time. This dear old lady with the sweet face came in to see me the other day because she said that she wanted to see how the chap looked that wrote a piece that she had read about "Youth." We had the nicest time that you ever saw and, when she went away, she said, "I must not talk to you any more of these old-time things or you will be putting me in the paper." Said I, "I wish I could put into the paper, not what you said but what you mothers of mothers of mothers, JACK IN THE PULPIT 23 typify. You are a great, great grandmother — as you have said. I wish I could put what that means into a newspaper." I wish I could impress on all this world what it means to embody motherhood through the gen- erations — mother to one's own, mother to one's daugh- ter's or one's son's own ; mother, then, to the sons and daughters of their children. I wish I could tell the \world what triviality there is in all of this fol-de-rol of ill-considered reform work, of half-baked Ameri- canization schemes, of these costly systems to bring Utopias by revolutions and force-majeure, when all that is needed is a succession of good mothers, teach- ing children good things at their knees — and I care not in what language it is taught, by what religion it is measured, under what flag it is folded, so long as moth- erhood is sweet and good and childhood goes the way of the street called straight. O ! You can't make every- one over to suit your pattern. You and I don't wear the same size breeches or the same cut of coat nor do we like the same sort of food ; but if we like the same sort of a God, the same sort of humanity, the same sort of heaven on earth and have the same sort of an appreciation of love of neighbor and kindness to all men and women, good or bad, rich or poor, we shall be bringing motherhood to our hearts and kissing the lips that responded to our touch in days gone by. I cannot keep my hands off the shoulders or away from patting the hands of ladies of sweet faces who are over eighty. I do not dare to be more forward with those under eighty and over seventy. They are posi- tively the loveliest things on God's green earth or in the heavens that bend, save the stars and the empyrean. 24 JACK IN THE PULPIT They treasure memories that thrill. They are all pol- ished like the facets of the diamond that gets its light from hard rubs. I lived with one for years, a second mother, who combined all that makes angels into hu- mans and who, with her like, should never pass on to make angels again out of the flesh, until all who so love them have passed beyond the stage of missing them. Again — and finally what is it, dear friends, that makes the world go on and on? I have told you what I think about it, over and over again. It is what I see in the faces of old ladies who are motherly and sweet. It is what we hear in their cooings over children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is what the dove sings in the nest; what the heart sings when it sees the chimney-smoke rising in welcome; what the soul sings when it prays for better things for other souls. "I do not know why I am kept here," said my dear old lady, "I think it may be for some good; at least my great, great-grandchildren love me and I love them and can take care of them when their mother wants a little rest." Mothers of men! Mothers of churches! Mothers of human thoughtf ulness ! Mothers of the spirit of Christ ! Why stand we here idle when the world calls ? Why fret we with questions of tomorrow's bank ac- count while the hearth-fire gleams and the child prat- tles, and the tree shines with its candles and the stores are full of wonders and the heart is full of love ? To- morrow the hearth may be cold and nothing be hov- ering about it but the ghosts of the day when you had the chance to make happiness weigh down the scale of figures in a bank-book. And among those spirits that hover, there will be faces that wear the smiles of the JACK IN THE PULPIT 25 ones that bore us, glowing with the undying fire of that Love that saves this world; that makes its endless pro- cessions of its human-kind and that keeps the sweet, sweet look in the faces of dear old ladies. ON "OLD-TIME TORCHLIGHT PROCESSIONS" STARTED out marching with a tin hat and a torch over my shoulder, when I was about fourteen, all for the glory of Hayes and Wheeler. We used to meet in a sail-loft and drill, and the promise of a torch and a uni- form was sufficient to get together about three hundred boys. Some of the older graduated into the "cavalry" (I almost wrote that word "calvary") and rode horses that went sidewise at the blare of the trumpet and the bursting of the bomb. Horses were not so educated in those days. The glory of a torch-light parade was wholly in Its length, which was somewhat dependent on the way It stretched out. Sometimes in our republican town the democratic parades used to come along in sections' one-half of it tarumping afar while the other was tarumpmg in the near vicinity. There was always a good deal of friction between the two political parties as to which had the longer procession and which indi- cated victory in the fall. Boys participated in the debate. It was usually fought out on the back-lots. The sight of a staid citizen weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, stealing out of his peaceful home at about 6 p.m. to form in parade in the city 26 JACK IN THE PULPIT square at 7 p.m. prompt, was a sight to remember. He had a furtive look on his face and a uniform under his arm. Often he was gotten up as a knight with a tin sword and a helmet. His wife giggled at him with reason. Women did not vote in those days. Subsequently we may expect women to ride horses in political parades dressed in Joan of Arc regalia. All we can say is that they would look very attractive; far better than a fat man with a red face on the back of a ramping plug bouncing up and down and threat- ening to burst. We used to march miles and miles and cheer until we had no cheerfulness left. Every house with three candles on the window panes was sufficient for a cheer. I was captain of one company of boys and I had to get up in front as the cheer came down the line and yell "Three cheers for our patriotic citi- zen and true republican, William Scroggins!" We piped our tenor cheer like a flock of seabright hens. We had the right to carry our torches home — or at any rate we took the right — and I have known boys in my company to march in the democratic ranks for the sake of getting a torch. There were all kinds of torches — some that had a hole in the handle up which you could blow and make the flames stream. There was the story of the patriotic son of Ireland in a dem- ocratic parade who was found tied up in an agonized knot on the curbing. As they stood over him his friend Casey said : "Poor divil ! He sucked his toorch." All this was supposed to stimulate adherence to the cause and to create the crowd psychology, which is such a fearful thing that even college professors write books about it and offer remedies for it — unaware, poor things, that it is a part of human JACK IN THE PULPIT 27 nature and can be cured quite as well as we can cure the sun from giving us a coat of tan. We all like to be winners and always will. Public opinion is a sort of concentrated human desire. The crowd spirit is not the crowd gone crazy, whatever the mob-mind may be. We wore white hats for Blaine because we wanted Blaine to win. And some men wanted him to win a whole lot when they put on those fuzzy mon- strosities and went abroad in them. I have seen men in Blaine hats who ought to have been in museums. They were museum-pieces all right. Henry Wood of our town marched in a parade once and his little boy marched with him, holding his hand. The way was long and Henry had enjoyed all of the thrills that he could hold for one night. He was coming around a corner of an old home street, plod- ding along thinking — for he was a thinker, all right. Suddenly his little boy, weary with the eternal march, said: "Where are we going now, daddy?" Henry looked at his boy tenderly and said: "Damned if I know, darling." That was it. We didn't know. We just marched. Many of us are doing the same today. We have marched a long way; we have carried the torch; we have even sucked the torch, the wrong way; we have plodded in the dust ; we have lost step with the band ; we have cheered lights along the way for folks we have never seen before or since; we have rejoiced in victories that were barren for us, but we are still going. And as we hold the hands of children and they ask us, "Where are we going now, daddy?" we say without the expletive, "Umphed if I know, darling." And that's the fun of it. ON "MY AUNT'S MILLINERY SHOP" Y AUNT was a pretty little woman with a certain degree of style for the country. She walked with a little hurried step and when she went to the post-office in the village in the afternoon she looked like a robin run- ning thru the rain after an early worm. She was so neat and trim and sprightly that she was my notion of a pretty woman. And she was as good as she was pretty. In her early life she went over to Franklin, Mass., into a straw-shop. All of the country girls did that and came home in the summer after earning good wages in the winter making hats. Here she learned her millinery. She had two different shops in the village at different times and as I look back on them, I am confused by the two. Sometimes I see her biting off thread in one window and sometimes in the other, and often I see the screen of cloth in the rear in which the occasional helper worked, away from the gaze of the populace, which sometimes numbered two or three down the drowsy street. I wonder that I am writing about such personal things. There is no reason except there may be a certain anthology of a country town about it that per- haps is a fading memory and deserves to be preserved as a part of the simple annals that I have been endeav- oring to preserve in my own way — let alone what others may do about them. Be that as it may, the thought of that millinery shop stirs memories of singular things. JACK IN THE PULPIT 29 There is a horse hitched to a post, flicking flies with the swish of his tail. There is the village dignitary, Steve Carr, sitting on the steps of his store, smoking a cigar and not a customer in sight. There is the little river gleaming in the hot sun at the foot of the street. There is the boy coming from the train, with the afternoon mail. There is T. Tyler, tailor, coming out of his shop with his T. D. in his mouth and his hair disheveled. It is so dull that I go into my aunt's mil- linery shop and watch her work. I don't believe that more human nature can be found in any place more emphatically suggested in its oddities than in the millinery shop. I have never appreciated the paucity of old-time finery more keenly than in comparing those days with the attitude of a modern girl buying a hat. In those days there were no trimmed hats in glass cases, thousands of them to be tried on and cast disdainfully aside. The old-time girl went in and had a hat or a bonnet built from the foundation up. She looked at a picture of a hand- some girl with a becoming hat on her head and for the. moment had the notion that she was going to look like that. But often she did not, in the final analysis. Old ladies never had a new hat or bonnet. They came in with the relics of all of the bonnets they had ever had and, by the addition of a new shape and a possible flower, got the ultimate goods. My aunt was a gay chatterer and she sold the goods to old ladies as well as young. She used to take their old wares and try her best to make them "do." She would turn flowers and twist feathers and save for poor old souls. She built wedding bonnets that were dreams in those days and that never by any stretch of 30 JACK IN THE PULPIT extravagance cost over four dollars. And that is only one-fifth the price of a "bang hat" nowadays. I can see her now sitting by the window, pretty thing, making bonnets in a hurry to wear to funerals. Everybody seemed to be in a hurry for bonnets to wear to funerals. I used to come in and ask in my way, "How's funerals?" The corpse was surely hon- ored with furbelows in those days. Aunt snipped and sewed and sang and even went to market once a year and came home all full of the romance and the spice of the great town. On the opposite side of the shop she sold toys. I used to go over there and look them over. I never knew what she was thinking about, but I have never forgotten one rebuke for a childish subtlety that I indulged in in her shop. I was looking over her toys. If there was anything in the world I wanted, it was a jack-knife. She sold 'em but evidently did not give them away. I was looking over one of them that pleased me, quite unaware that she was watching me out of the corner of her eye. I was aware that it had happened that if you suddenly asked what was in a package and someone said "jack-knife" the next words might be "Don't you want it? You may have it." I tried it and aunt looked at me and said: "Yes, sonny, that is a jack-knife. Didn't you think it was when you were looking at it?" The street still drowsily stretches up and down hill in my memory. And all are dust that dwelt therein. And I had no jack-knife when I wanted it and when I can have one I don't want it. Ah me! The funeral "bunnits !" And the silent customers that JACK IN THE PULPIT 31 are no more ! And the jack-knives that we didn't get ! And the waters that ran to the sea by the way of the gleaming river. It is all one with Francois Villon — "Where are the snows of yester year!" Where are the "bunnits" of my aunt whom I saw laid away under the roses years ago. 99 ON "A RIDE TO BATH HAVE been to Bath before by electrics and have had rides that were dreams; "all aboard" at Lewiston; a passing glimpse of the Byzantine towers and turrets of Lisbon Falls and then "all out" at Bath — just like that; my nose all of the time in a book. Perfectly lovely, excellent service, up hill, down dale, with the broomstick train. Hence ! And therefore ! This account of a recent trip to Bath has no concern with the average trip and is no criticism of the trolley line called L. A. and W., which some foolish people think means Late Always and Wherever. Not so. This trip was Special. It was unique, like Peary's Dash for the North Pole; Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; Eliza's Trip Across the Ice, Pursued by Bloodhounds; The Voyage of the Mayflower; George Washington's Crossing of the Delaware. We were going to Bath last Saturday and the problem was to get from Lewiston to Bath by noon, twenty-eight miles. We might have done it by ox- team in 1840, or by limousine in 1920. My limousine is laid up with the lumbago and besides, I have no 32 JACK IN THE PULPIT limousine and never had. No editor should have a limousine. He should be at work. And if I had owned a limousine, I was advised that it would have been too icy on the roads to have driven it. The Maine Central Railroad once ran between Lewiston and Bath. It "runs" no longer. It simply leaves here and goes off into Alice in Wonderland and remains there and you wake up elsewhere with the Cheshire Cat. There is a train from here to Bath sometime before daybreak but it goes nowhere in particular and waits two hours on the way and comes back to Lewiston in the same fashion. Its schedule rips along at the rate of eight miles an hour. The price is a dollar a minute. Any man who travels between Lewiston and Bath by the Maine Central will age alarmingly. If you started out to visit a young mother with a new-born infant in Bath, the child would meet you at the train with whiskers — if male; and with hair out over its ears, if female. If I want to get to Bath by train for Christmas, I start on the previous Fourth of July. A lady friend of mine started from Bath in the prime of health to visit me in Lewiston and when she reached here she was just barely able to get admission into the Old Ladies' Home. So we took the electrics at 8.35 and planned to get to Bath at 11 A.M. — not speedy but safe! One hun- dred and fifty minutes for thirty miles. Twelve miles an hour! Fine! We bowled along at this lightning speed until we reached Topsham. At Lisbon Falls they changed conductors and motormen, and I am not sure that they did not change them at Lisbon, at Pejepscot and at the Crooked Bridge. I didn't mind. JACK IN THE PULPIT 33 1 Nobody seemed to know just when a new conductor and a new motorman might appear out of the woods and ask toll. I have nothing to say about the trip until we reached the middle of the bridge at Topsham, except that we were then twenty-five minutes late and I could hear the wedding march reverberating thru the distances, in fancy. On the bridge we had to get out and change cars. The other car was wrong end to, and we went into it and faced back home. Then we waited. I don't know what we waited for; but it seemed to be a discussion of "Who's Who in Motor- men." One motorman came up and looked our car over and backed into the river. Another came over and raped our controller-handle and ran off with it. Then he went behind a brick building and looked at the river. Then a motorman came in and opened a window and looked dreamily at the landscape and went away. Then a motorman and a conductor came along and talked it over. "Tum-tum-te-tum ! Here comes the groom," says I, "stiff as a broom." By and by the motorman picked out his conductor and languidly the twain shouted "This car for Bath !" and together, began to inch us up the hill back to. Every time the motorman gave her the juice, it snapped my neck back until the joints rattled. The motorman opened the window and let the cold air in on my feet. But I did not mind that. We were moving, at any rate. Thus we backed up hill into Brunswick and the village clock said 45 minutes late. Unusual ! Most unusual ! Then we went in on the Freeport track and they changed motormen and conductors again. And the new conductor came briskly in and shouted "This car 34 JACK IN THE PULPIT for Bath!" And then we waited ten minutes and then ran out on the Bath Hne and waited while they changed conductors and motormen. Then they ran fifty feet when we saw another car coming from Bath. The two cars ran up closely together and the conduc- tors and motormen discussed which one should retreat and which advance. Then I think they went over to the moving pictures. Finally, we retreated again to the Freeport line. Then the conductor of the Bath car came over into ours and ours went into the Lew- iston car and they exchanged overcoats, trolley irons, and controller handles. Then the Lewiston-bound car went bounding past us on its way to Lewiston and we were surprised by the conductor coming in and shouting violently "Brunswick! This car for Bath!" We went rattling along like a deer over windfalls until we got to the Maine Central. It would be impos- sible for the Maine Central to get out of the way of anything in Brunswick; so we had to wait for two trains and a shifter and a coal-train and a load of pulp and a snow-plow to pass us while the gates were down. The conductor again came in — I think he was the same conductor — and said, "This car for Bath." They certainly have fine service. We were just ready to be off and away on our dashing pathway of steel when there was a shout from the Maine Central station. Fifteen or twenty passengers from the train were leap- ing our way with baggage. We waited five minutes for them and took them on. Now we're off! We changed conductors and motormen at Merrymeeting and again at Cook's. It seems that every conductor and motorman was off his feed time ! "Da-da-dee-da 1 Here comes the bride!" We had taken on ten or JACK IN THE PULPIT 35 twelve more wedding guests. The Ancient Mariner (that's I) regaled them with hopes. And finally we rounded the corner of the street where the church stands. And lo ! We were in plenty of time. We would not have been there a moment earlier. And that's the beauty of the travel from Lewis- ton to Bath — you always get there in plenty of season for what you want to do in Bath ! Wonderful, I say. The Electrics know their business. I just love their variety and their certainty ! ON "THE QUALMS OF GOLF" OMEHOW I dread the return of golf to these cities, for it means a revival of conversation that is as catching as the seven-years itch. When I used to play golf, and others played golf, the means of escape from golf-talk were as good as the means of escape from the lower dungeon of a modern penal institution. If I went into the reading room of a club someone was telling how he made the third hole in three, and if I went over into the smoking room of the club someone was telling how he made the fourth hole in four. And if I went into the billiard room someone was telling how he made the fifth hole in five. One drove into a bunker; another drove into the rough; another drove into a pigsty and another drove into a baby-carriage. One halved a hole with the brassies and another won a hole with a niblick and another lost a hole with a putter and another won a match with a chew of tobacco. I could not escape it ; I had to take up the game. 36 JACK IN THE PULPIT We had a country club that was positively lovely in view ; but weak on greens. They said we needed sheep for it; but about all we had was sheep or we never would have lost the club and its property. I suppose we lost our interest in golf because it was not golf. As far as I was concerned, I had as soon take a violent run over a sheep-pasture as to play a game on this land. But the wind was soothing and it was good for my indi- gestion and I could talk golf just as well over that nine- holes as anywhere else. I believe that the most wonderful game of golf ever played was on these links. You see it was this way. I was playing — I notice that you are moving away, so I will defer the story to some other time, and that is why I have qualms about the revival of golf in these cities. We shall have golf talk right along all of the time every- where; but I don't know but what it will be a relief from motor talk. Anything makes me sick — never hav- ing had a motor car — is to hear men sit down and talk about the internal parts of an automobile. Well, sir, I was playing a foursome, a mixed four- some for the championship of the second division of the handicap element of the club, and as I was driving off the third hole and — Pardon me, but if you are not interested, I will de- sist. You see there is so much that one might say about golf that is really valuable that I am willing to break the silence of years to dilate on the topic, and that is why I have additional qualms. Golf is a game of parts. You part from temper, golf balls, money, time, opportunity. You belong to a club and every moment you don't play you are losing JACK IN THE PULPIT 37 money, and every moment you do play you are losing money, and there you are. It was like this. After I drove off in that foursome and landed behind a tree as usual, I took my niblick which was named Sir Thomas, because it was very short in the handle and had a peculiar head on it — why it was called by such a name I never knew, but so it was, and when I whacked the ball it struck against the tree and went into my pocket. That was not so pecu- liar as was the fact that nobody saw where it went and we all thought that it was buried in the tree. We called it two and I threw out and drove again and struck a fat man in the stomach, and he was so mad that he threw the ball into the woods and we could not find it. We called it three and I was playing four and on my next stroke — If this wearies you, I just as soon talk about some- thing else. I can see that you would prefer that I dis- cuss some other topic and I will do so, limiting my reservations to the League of Nations. I will not dis- cuss that or the size of Harding's plurality or the rea- sons why the majority was so enormous, with anyone. I feel that we are approaching a revival of the pre- Raphaelite art and that the general scale of living is to come down and that we are likely to have hard times this winter, and that if a person owes you anything, you better collect it speedily, but I will not talk about the League of Nations. It might interest you to know, however, that on my next stroke in that hole in that mixed foursome, I did an amazing thing. I drove into a limousine and woke up the chauffeur and when he revived we found the ball between his teeth. 38 JACK IN THE PULPIT It is, therefore, not without reason that one has qualms about the coming of golf into the social life of a town. ON "STILTS" LONG about this time, old-fashioned boys used to take to stilts. I say along about this time, but as a matter of fact there was no special time. When a boy got restless and out-of- sorts and was compelled to divert himself, he must take either to piracy, barn-burning, tight-rope walking, running away to sea or walking on stilts. And I say stilts because it is my subject. A boy might start to make a box-trap, or to raise rabbits or to hunt skunks or any one of a thousand things. In this season between hay and snow ; between taws and bob-sleds, when out of doors do not attract and when life is almighty tough for a boy, there is not much for him to live for. He is not appreciated. He is not understood. Nobody seems to sympathize with him. He gets moody very rapidly. There is something that boils up in him like the water in a pan recently set upon the fire. It steams and makes a noise and dis- turbs the other functions. You should then see to it immediately that the safety-valve is not tied down. Stilts are as good as anything, as I have said before ; a box-trap will do for certain boys. But for boys who want something dangerous, exciting, blood-stirring and semi-boastful, the stilts are alone adequate for a brief experience. Any boy can make stilts — with a good deal of fuss. He has to find two pieces of straight board about four JACK IN THE PULPIT 39 inches wide and two inches thick and he has to have two clumps of wood to nail on them at the requisite height from the ground where he can put his feet, and he has to have nails and a hammer and some room. And he has to have a jack-knife for the purpose of rounding off the handles. And then he has to have a door-yard and an audience. Stilts are no good with- out an audience, and herein lies my application of the boy-on-stilts to the scheme of life in general, as you may discover later on if this talk comes out anywhere near what I have in mind. It is no great trick to learn to walk on stilts; in- deed, it comes rather too easily. A few varied con- tortions, a few wild leaps into space, a couple of falls wherein one can easily drop his stilts and get to the ground safely, are all of the usual experiences. And once setting forth, on stilts, a boy may walk amid an admiring group of girls, nonchalently as possible, wobbly in reality, but conceivably with the grace of a courtier as he eyes the landscape and studies the clouds or leans gracefully against a fence or wall. In reality I never saw a boy who had any grace whatever on stilts, I never saw a boy who really per- severed in learning to walk on stilts. I have never seen a boy who enjoyed walking on stilts; but I never knew a boy who at some time or other did not try it. And the reason is instinctive and intuitional. There is an egotism in stilts that is natural to man. It lifts him above his fellow-boys. It indulges his notion of look- ing over the heads of other persons. It makes his stride magnificent and regal. It pleases his desire for prominence. It attracts the notice of the men beneath, dogs, cats and insects also included. 40 JACK IN THE PULPIT There are a great many persons who are walking most of the time on stilts. Lofty in conversation, stilted in expression, wobbly in logic, looking over the heads of the every-day folk, trying to see what is be- yond, when in reality the things over there are just the same as the common things here underfoot. I have known men who never talked the common verbiage of the every-day person, conversational stilt-walking. I have known people who never admire anything unless it comes from afar and never wish to be anywhere ex- cept in some strangely distant land. They are on mental stilts. I have seen people who never esteem the home folks but take in the stranger and are taken in by the stranger, and who walk thus on stilts of the pro- fessional lion-hunter and are often gobbled up by the lion. Many people used to walk on theological stilts. The Puritans who, almost three hundred years ago, drove Anne Hutchinson to her death and hung Mary Dyer in the morning for their declaration of "Covenant by Grace" as opposed to "Covenant by Works," walked on theological stilts and strutted about, thus ludicrous, severe and wicked in their devotion, not to the ideas of God, but to the stilts on which they walked. Let the children have stilts. Let them blow off steam with them. Get up on them yourself if the earth seems dull and the height seems low to your weary vision. I have no criticism of your desire for a change ; but for heaven's sake and the sake of us who live on earth, do not stay up there. Come down often and stay long with us common folk; enjoy us if you can; bear with our shortcomings and our short stature and quit your strolling and your wobbling. For the feet of JACK IN THE PULPIT 41 man must be on earth with the common things of life even tho his head is in the air ; yea ! even tho his im- agination hath wings like the bird ! ON "MY BEST UMBRELLA" BOUGHT it thirty-four years ago and it is still my best umbrella — my only, own um- brella, the relic of my youth, the shelter of my years, and when I carry it (as I occasionally do) and show it to my friends as an umberell of age and distinction, they look at me doubt- fully and curiously. The other day I left it on the window of the room of the Governor's Executive Council at Augusta, and invading an executive session of the Council to rescue it, I told that august body that, had the Governor mis- appropriated it, I would hardly have held him guilty — it is such a temptation to own such an umberell. It would confer distinction on even a Governor of Maine, with large responsibilities and a corresponding con- tingent account. For it is a large, noble, obese um- berell ; and it has all the appurtenances of its years — angina pectoris, arterio sleroris and ankylosis of the ribs. And yet, withal, it is wonderful. They don't make such umbrellas nowadays. It has an ivory head, which is considered appropriate to me. On it is carved a monkey holding a nut. Still appropriate. The mon- key roosts on a stick. There the appropriateness ceases. Its stock is stout; its size is ample, its beauty is chaste and sufficient. 42 JACK IN THE PULPIT You ask what is there of public interest in my thirty-four-year-old umbrella and I say this — it is sig- nificant of a certain social attitude of the community and a certain reg^ard for the umbrella. I ask you, where can you find another umbrella that is thirty-four years old and still a man's "best umbrella," fit to take to church — if he dared take it there, lest some deacon might mistake it for his own ! A community that has respected my property right to an umbrella for two grenerations, merits mention, and such a community is this. A person who has never forgotten or lost or mis- laid his umbrella for thirty-four years is worthy of appreciation, even if I have to call it to your attention as I am now doing. Thirty-four years under one umbrella! The days of my youth ! Alas, the fleeting years ! The girls that have been sheltered beneath it; the storms that have beaten upon it; the thoughts I have had beneath it! Do you have no fondness for umbrellas in general? Is there nothing sweet in the antiquity of two beneath the same shelter of night when the rains beat upon the silken house and the near-by river sobs ; and the waters roar against the bridge piers, and the lamps of the streets are dim, and the pavements glisten like polished sheet steel in the slanting rains. This is the very um- brella that took us home, when we stood by the door and I saw reflected in her eyes, something that every rainstorm, since then, has brought back to mind — and then I heard the bull-dog and the old man both coming, at the same time. I hardly appreciated my best umbrella until the other day, when I again took it from its home security and wore it to Augusta. People noticed it. It had a JACK IN THE PULPIT 43 colonial atmosphere. It had a look like the fan-shaped windows over the doorways of the houses in Wiscasset, It looked like the portraits of old governors, like John Fairfield and William King. It conferred on one a sug- gestion of a past, mysterious and traditional. No won- der I felt free to tell the Governor's Executive Council about the angel (I should say umberell) they had been entertaining unawares. There is something in years even of umbrellas to respect. There is a dignity in the age of personal belongings that we do not appreciate. One of the richest men in Maine drives his first auto- mobile (one-cylinder) coughing along and, my word for it, he has my respect for his attachment. Old houses, old friends, old furniture, old books, old wine, old tapestries, old songs, old truths, old faces, old mem- ories, old — yet ever new if only there entered into them the thoroughness of the craftsman, the undying fire of the Word, the fadeless element of beauty, the never- ending continuity of human or divine worth of the thing itself. I would not care for my umberell if it had not been ivory and silk, fit to endure as properly made and bespeaking original family connections. You will not love your old books unless they are worthy. And old faces! They sweeten as the days come and go ; enduring not by any other reason than because the thorough work of the soul shines out of them, the beauty that is brother and sister of the Truth that is eternal! So much for the umberell which now I fold and lay away for my posterity. ON "A SERMON ON THE SEED" HE other day, Dr. Twitchell of Auburn, who conducts a nine-acre farm at Monmouth, Me., summers, and does well with it, showed me a simple thing that has kept me thinking at odd moments. It was a picture of a great number of Hub- bard squash raised from a single seed. I think that they weighed 146 pounds, lovely to the frugal eye of the mind, a part of the greatest thing in all the world — the crops of earth. This great assemblage of Hubbard squash in the photograph came from a single seed weighing but a trifling part of a single ounce. What an alchemy! What a more wonderful thing than the transmutation of a base metal into gold! What mystic power is it that takes this seed, as it is placed in the ground, and from out the seemingly insoluble earth and some un- dying fire of Life makes it into vine and gourd. Think of what it constructs! The vine, the leaf, the flower and the colors of gold, of emerald, and the salmon hues of the firm flesh of the food. It paints the outside of the squash with a waterproof material impervious to moisture of the earth and of the rains. It increases its food power six thousand times. It creates within it- self its own powers of reproduction thousands of times. It feeds the bees and the birds. It holds within the cups of its flowers the dews and the rains for its own pollenization. It lays all this before mankind and will go on and on with care until the end of the sunshine and the dews. JACK IN THE PULPIT 45 These things make us wonder. And wonder is an element of culture and of intelligence that lies at the root of both science and philosophy. Wonder is the light of life and when it dies life dies. And the greatest source and provocative of wonder is this application of power behind the universe — the power that we call God. We are prone, in this day, to look at symbols of power as power itself. We look on money that can purchase work of other hands and purchase the work of other brains, as power ; but the power is in the hand and brain and in the seed in the ground and in the illimitable forces of the universe. We do not think much about it, but the abundance of power about us is amazing and a source of wonder, even to the scientist. Recently a popular magazine has had an article on the wonder of the human heart and the human arteries and the human intestines, if you please. He compares the heart to the highest-duty dynamo ever devised by man, and by the comparison, man's efforts, even with elec- tricity, are puerile. You could not make a piece of hose or other conduit that would by any possible means do the marvelous work that the human arteries perform, resilient, carrying circulation to remotest portions of the body by tubes, infinitely smaller than any that we can conceive ; and yet capable of such extension by elas- ticity in periods of stress and excitement as to make them wonderful, beyond words. Do you know any per- son who can make an object like the certain class of microbes, that can pass through the most carefully con- structed filter, and that within a short time can yet create millions of their kind with enough virulent power to kill an ox. Aristotle thought that there were 46 JACK IN THE PULPIT about 500 kinds of life. Yet today we know that there are more forms of one family of insects than there are stars, visible to the naked eye. The immensity of things! We may be seeing to- night the twinkling of a star that went out ages ago, and yet light travels 186,000 miles a second. When we see the light of a star such as Alpha Centauri, which lies nearer us by ten billion miles than any other fixed star, we see light that started from that star four years ago. If the telescope reveals the hundreds of millions of heavenly bodies, of which we see but a corner, the miscroscope reveals the millions of the lesser world. What is this universe in which we are placed? It is a matter for us children to ponder over as our own chil- dren ponder over this world, cupped in blue over us and peopled infinitely, from Dr. Twitchell's squash to the wonders of the cold depths of the sea. If we pass into cell-action we are lost ! If we pick up the leaf of grass we have a cosmos fit to inspire another Walt Whitman to sing the songs of a cosmos of undying life ! Interelations ! Universal flux and reflux! Progress and evolution of forms! Seed and squash. Cat's fur and human hair from the same bread and milk ! And we so idle, so vain, so mistaken in our estimates of values, so eager for the dollar that counts for nothing unless that squash grows, those insects thrive, those stars shine, those arteries work, and that heart beats ; and unless the Undying Fire lives in the roots of the grasses. Agriculture is our handmaiden. It is the noblest of our professions. Life is the divine gift to man and the seed in the ground is the symbol of the mightiest transmutation; as is the seed that of life in all living JACK IN THE PULPIT 47 organisms. Unless we till we perish ! Unless we seek the soil we die. If we forget the fields the cities shall starve. By the sweat of our faces shall we earn our daily bread. Yet in the midst of marvels we cease to wonder and to worship. But — unless we do, we shall perish ! ON "THE FIRST FROSTS" MIND me these November mornings of many memories of early frosty mornings in the country, when as a boy, the world turned white in a night — not with snow, but with that mysterious coating of rare white crystals, that stood up separate and distinct, along the fence rails and on the grasses. There would be sun over the intervales and stream- ing down the road to the village, where the wheel-ruts would be dark and warm looking with a mark of an early passing wheel. We knew that the frost would soon go, but on the door-steps a boy could slide and an anxious sled-runner could be hauled over the frosts of the door-yard. It was as tho the hand of some painter had come in the night and had coated the world with hexagons of diamonds and aquamarine. They caught the light of the sun and flashed all over a commonplace homeside in the country and beat anything that Aladdin ever did in a single night. All of the dew of the world had been transformed in a twinkling into gems. A boy would stand in the midst of it and look over the familiar fields and shout with delight at the promise of variety in a dull life that was in reality a succession of marvels. 48 JACK IN THE PULPIT He saw before him rude buffetings of winter-storm, roads covered hip-deep in snows, ponds ringing to the twang of the skater's heel, deep fires in the fire-place, long evenings and all of the other promise of snug win- ter in which a boy turns to school with a sense of re- lief from haying and harvesting, I have a vivid picture of the frost on the nails on the barn-door — a peculiar effect to linger in one's mem- ory — but so it happens to be. Nails that protruded from the door that were built up into little fluffy mounds like the pussy-willow. And I know how clear and still were these frosty mornings. The air trans- mits sounds better when it is chill. All sounds are clearer and sharper. Summer sounds are still. The birds have gone. There are a few belated crows caw- ing over in a near-by field and worrying over the rem- nants of the harvest where the furrows are streaked with the first frost. But the old hum of summer has passed away. Here is still suggestion of the death and burial of the nascent. It is a world coming back to bread and water after a banquet. Here is the promise of the first snows that will cover all ugliness of with- ered cornstalk and dead stubble and that will soon be ruffling and fluting the fence-rails and the tilled land in the most fantastic of fashions. My ! But a boy's toes tingle on this first frost and the bam seems warm and cosy and the cattle steam with their breaths in the tie-up and the tomato plants in the old garden lie over, done for at last. The little pond in the meadow shows gleaming and tinkly around the edges with a thin ice. And as the sun advances, everything herbaceous falls over and wilts and the day comes to find it growing black and dead. The ferns JACK IN THE PULPIT 49 give up the ghost ; the long grasses are dead and black ; the beechnuts rattle down ; the squirrels come out and get busy; the fields are slippery as grease to the foot where the frost lies under the sod; the earth rings like a drum as your heel impinges on it. And by and by all is as before except the look of discouragement that comes with the returning sun and warmth of noon-day. But — there is in the back of the mind of every observant person some keen memory of some frosty morning — the first white frost of some year. It sig- nifies exhilaration and hope. The prospect of change enters into it. Nature itself wakes up, too. The deer come out of the swamps and begin to look for their mates. The bear crawls into his den and goes to sleep. The ponds get ready to transform themselves into wagon-roads. And vegetation begins to return to the earth what it has taken from it, the slow trans- mutation of substance back to the storehouse in the form of the plant-sheaf and root, the vegetation not of use for food returning to the soil. First frosts kill a great deal that is of little value. It is so in life. We have a great many first frosts in our experiences, disappointments of life that come along and come along with periodical disturbance, killing ambitions and plans and futile purposes. Job had a tremendous experience with a white frost on all of his earthly plans. But it was only a cleaning up of the things that should return to God. The undy- ing life principle remains. Even after long winters, out comes the spring. The stars ever shine after the twilight ! The dawn comes after the dark. ON "AN OLD BASEBALL STORY" ERE is a baseball story that is worth while. It touches on the forbidden ground of gam- bling and shows that twenty-five years ago, the bad man was just as bad and the good man was just as good as he is now. It happened in the year when Mike Gar- rity of Portland was manager for the Lewiston team and when our dearest hope was to beat Portland. There came a time when the Lewiston team with Willie Maines on its pitching staff was making good headway against the Portland team. Maines was a big, lank, raw-boned man from Windham, Maine. He was a powerful hitter and a good pitcher and had every requisite for the big league except perhaps the courage. He did try out in the major league and came back home because he was happier here. Portland sent up to Boston in the middle of the season, one day in August, for a pitcher named Big Mike Sullivan, who had been pitching on the Boston National League team and who had been most suc- cessful in college baseball. He was a really wonderful pitcher and a great ball player. Garrity had just sent for a new pitcher named Daniels. He was expected on the day of the game and it was Garrity's intention to pitch Daniels. Just before the game a well-known Portland sport- ing man, who, of course, knew Garrity well, for Gar- rity had managed baseball thru several pennant races and had always been successful there, came to Garrity and said to him that much money had been bet on JACK IN THE PULPIT 51 the game and that it would be worth a large sum to Garrity if he would not pitch Maines for that game. Garrity had never intended to pitch Maines, but the suggestion touched him deeply. He could see nothing for him but to pitch Maines. He said nothing to anyone. Indeed he never told this story in his life to anyone until he told it to I. B. Isaacson of Lewiston in connection with the recent baseball scandals in the Chicago White Sox. He went to Maines and told him that he expected him to pitch. Maines demurred. It was not his turn to pitch. Garrity told Maines that if he refused to pitch and made any more trouble about it, he would send him home and that he never should pitch another game of professional baseball as long as he lived. This frightened Willie and of course Garrity had no means of making good on the threat; but it went with Maines and he finally said that he would pitch and Garrity told him additionally that if he didn't win, it could make no difference; but that if he didn't pitch as he never pitched before, woe be unto him and he would make his life miserable. I recall the game somewhat indistinctly as to the features; but with vivid distinctness as to Sullivan and Maines. I scored it ; but as was my custom, I put these things out of mind when completed and one game forced the memories of others away. But I do recall Sullivan and I do recall Maines as they met that after- noon. We had a strong team with Paddy Shea on third. I do not know but what there were better hit- ters than Shea but there were few who could hit harder or run slower than he. 52 JACK IN THE PULPIT The game went to a tie all along. It was won by Lewiston on a terrific hit by Shea who went to third and came home on a short hit into the infield that won the game by some such score as 1 to or 2 to 1. The point of the tale is the integrity of the man- ager, Mr. Garrity, his matter-of-fact silence about the affair, his commonplace regard for his duty and his eagerness to balk the purposes of the sporting frater- nity. After that game, Shea and Maines were show- ered with money by the Lewiston fans. The game attracted wide attention. Maines pitched as never before. And the Portland sporting men who came up here fully expecting to lug away about all of the betting-money in Lewiston, left most of it here. Betting on sports kills the sport. It has its tenta- cles on football. It has about killed baseball. It ruined horse-racing. It broke up the single-scull rowing features of the United States. It has made the prize- ring notorious. It will kill football and even tennis if it is permitted to operate. Manager Garrity — one of the squarest baseball men that ever lived and one of the shrewdest managers that ever assembled a team — knows all about it and fought it all of his days and will fight it again, if need be. ON "YOUR FIRST TROUSERS' OU recall maybe when you wore dresses — I am now talking exclusively to men — for old- fashioned boys began life in dresses just as they do now, only they retained them to later periods in adolescence. There were old- fashioned mothers who kept boys in gingham dresses and long curls until some of the boys were strong enough to saw wood and chase girls. Remember those boys kept over long in dresses? Tough, was it not? They had hard times in school and especially after school. They went around flirt- ing their skirts when they ought to have been in over- alls. I never remember to have pitied any boy as I did one of these over-ripe chaps who had long red curls falling over his shoulders. He chewed tobacco, too. It was a sight to see this freckle-faced kid in his long, shiny red curls with a mug on him that looked like a rogue's gallery. He just hated his curls but his mother loved them. We had a legend that his mother was disappointed that he did not prove to be a girl and that she delayed the self-deception as long as possible. One day this boy came to school with his hair shingled. Say! If he wasn't a tough-looking youngster ! If you ever wore skirts after you wore cowhide boots with copper toes, as many boys did in the region where I was brought up, you will remember perhaps the day, the hour when you donned the habiliments of man and discarded those of Eve. I have a positive memory of the picture that those old-fashioned ging- ham-skirted boys made clomping down the aisles at 54 JACK IN THE PULPIT school in their skirts. And I remember the occur- rences that bef el the lad who came to the early school in his first trousers. Our trousers in the early days were not tailor made. It is my memory that mother made 'em. Usually a pair of dad's or elder brother's was razeed to make the holiday. A boy stole into them as into the fond embrace of a couple of elbows of stove-pipe. They lined pants with silesia, in those days. Know what silesia is — or was? Fancy making underclothes out of the stuff they now make holland curtains of and you have some idea. They didn't wear underclothes — boys didn't in those days. Nay! Nay! They lined our little panties with whatever came handy. It was supposed to be unsanitary to wear underclothes all winter. So they lined the pants and you went to bed while they were laundered. I never could look on a pair of boy's pants hung on a clothes-line, turned wrong side out for proper airing and drying, without thinking of the cool bed and the hot brick. Once you had a pair of pants I will say one thing for them, they were yours. Nobody else wanted them. Unlike the calf that father gave you for your own, you retained them until they became antiques. And then if they had withstood the wear and tear as did many of those old fabrics, they went down the line or were passed on into some other family. I remember to have seen early pants of mine stalking around for years after I had outgrown them; and I didn't grow very fast, either. I think I have mentioned a pair of early-rose pants that mother made me out of one of her old beaver coats. They were about half an inch thick and they stood alone. Laid on the floor at night JACK IN THE PULPIT 55 they looked just like two woodchuck holes. If you got up in the night and stubbed your toe over them, you had to have your toe done up in a rag. I used to try to file a hole thru those pants with a rat-tail file, but it couldn't be done. They slid with me seat-wise over more than a thousand miles of Maine granite and never broke a stitch. A bad boy could have shot me in the seat with a 30-30 rifle and I would never have known it. The teacher could larrup me on the seat of my breeches with a trunk strap by the hour and all she could do was to raise a dust — never a howl. When I waded to school in those pants and walked up the aisle I looked just like a section of a double- barreled canon. The boys envied me and I envied them. But I was proud of the pants because they were mine and because they were not gingham skirts. With a pair of red-topped copper-toed kip boots flap- ping about my shanks and these pants avoiding my shins equally well, the winds that blew up my little legs were fierce. We strutted around a good deal in our first pants and stood around where we could be seen, and it was a good deal of satisfaction when some elderly person suggested that some one was "consid- erably grown up." Strange how we children loved to be getting older. Now we would stay the swift hurrying years if we might. I do not know if the angels wear skirts or pants. I hope they wear both or either as they please. ON "THE SPECTRES IN OUR PATH" ^ HESE talks are intended to have a certain general application as well as a specific value. We waste much of our time worrying about things that never happen — spectres in our path, that turn out to be nothing but vague forms, mists, odd arrangement of branches, stumps and other material that resolve into nothing harmful when we come nearer. The most ghostly of all spectres in the way of a young man starting out in life is "poverty." It is only a ghost. The easiest thing in the world for an able-bodied young man to overcome is poverty. The biographies of great men in history are all full of proof that poverty is a help. Lack of the easy way to an education returns such interest on the invest- ment of hard work, sacrifices, appreciation of values, diligence, toil, frugality that prove there is nothing in the ghost. Rather is it a beckoning hand along the way. Low birth and grinding poverty have really created most of the truly great in history. You can't possibly be poorer than Pope Gregory the Seventh, the mightiest of the pontiffs; or than Martin Luther, the obscure monk who split in twain the Church; or Gutenburg, who discovered printing; or Lord Kenyon, the bootblack who became chief jus- tice of England; or John Leyden, the great scientist, who walked six miles back and forth daily across the Scottish moors to learn to read ; or Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, who had not even clothes for his back when on the eve of his triumphs; or than Vice-President Henry Wilson of Massachusetts; or JACK IN THE PULPIT 57 than Abe Lincoln, or than Daniel Webster, or than President Garfield, or than ten thousand more whom I might name. Balzac, the famous novelist, said in his garret, in the chill of cold and hunger, "A man may be either king or hodman; very well! I will be king." There were no ghosts in his way. Another ghost is the feeling that one has no spe- cial talent. This will frighten no able-bodied man or woman. We hear persons saying, "If I only had the brilliancy of so-and-so." There is nothing in it. We have a few geniuses ; but most genius is a capacity for hard work. I can find for you in biography, exam- ples of scores and scores of famous men, who were intolerably dull as boys. Stupid urchins in school have made the most illustrious of men. Dull scholars ! Bobby Burns, Justus von Liebeg, called "Booby Liebeg," Dean Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Napoleon, Wellington, Grant, Robert Clive, Walter Scott, Oliver Goldsmith; Professor Dalzell said of the young Sir Walter Scott, "Dunce he is and dunce he will remain." Years later, when Scott was at the height of his fame, he visited the same school and asked to see the "dunce." Shown him, the great man passed the lad a sovereign, saying, "There, take that for keeping my seat warm." The spectres in the path, the lions in the way, are all nothing to the able-bodied man. And even invalids have fought their way to fame. The greatest trouble of all comes to those who give up at the first mishap. I know a student who will not compete in the classes of college because he hears, forsooth, in literary work, essays which he esteems more brilliant than anything 58 JACK IN THE PULPIT he can ever hope to write. He competes and fails and gives it up. He does not know that it is by con- stantly going on the route that the spectres disappear. Ask any writer of today how many declinations he has had. There is a young writer who has just been coming into the leading magazines and who is esteemed to be a coming man. He has papered his room with over three hundred polite letters of MSS. declined, all coming before he got an acceptance. And yet I can hear a certain young lady who is trying to write bemoaning her first manuscript which has been returned as not available and feeling the disgrace so keenly that perhaps she will never try again. Ask Hugh Pendexter up at Norway, Maine, how many of his early stories he had sent back. Ask him how many published stories he peddled until he found the buyer. So many a young man quits on the first mishap. The time to quit is never. There is some place for energy and some place for reliability and common- sense. There is hardly a great orator who did not fail on his first attempt. Those who succeed from the start usually have no emotions toward oratory or no power to become greater than the average. There are cases of the bankrupt coming back time after time. Don't quit, then, until you are down and out. And then turn over on your back, and you will see the stars that bid you rise again and go to your work. ON "CO-OPERATION AFTER A FASHION" WO men in a Maine town decided to run a garden together and to raise four pigs on shares, and they professed to be actuated by that honest communistic feeling that makes the Bolshevists proclaim with such fervor the brotherhood of men. These men are very near us in location so that I will not indicate the fair hillside that they chose nor the breed of pigs that they selected; I will only sketch broadly the impulses and the results of their altruistic emotions as they set forth in the spring to demonstrate the values of co-operative industry. One man happened to have more cash than the other; so he bought the seed, and as they planted it to potatoes, it cost a pretty penny to lay the ground in all its promise. One of the men is a big, blue-eyed, natural born gardener; the other is a slender scholas- tic person who has a tendency to books and who has no heritage of blood of them that till the soil. It takes something of that sort to make things grow. And this the blue-eyed chap happened to have — the nat- ural intuitions for the soil, a knowledge of when to plant and when to hoe and when to dig. The other man had nothing but a desire to share. So they went into partnership and the blue-eyed man saw to it that the seed was paid for ; the land was prepared; the potatoes were planted and that the ground was tilled. He did most of the hoeing and the cultivating as the summer progressed and the other man worked in a desultory and nervous way — 60 JACK IN THE PULPIT now doing something and now doing nothing and all of the time anticipating. Then they bought the pigs. Each went forth to buy his own and the blue-eyed chap selected big, strong pigs with crooked tails and the other man selected smaller pigs with straight tails and they put the four pigs into the pen and waited for them to grow. Pigs is pigs — with certain differences by way of peculiar- ity. The blue-eyed man knew more about pigs than did the other chap. This was strictly co-operative and so he used his knowledge wisely. But it did not prevent him, just the same, from maintaining a certain proprietary interest in the two pigs that he happened to have selected. It was with no mean spirit that he watched his two pigs shoulder the other two pigs away from the co-operative and communistic trough, at feeding-time. A stronger pig is apt to do this in the commune of the pig, where there are no class-distinc- tions except ability to get the grub, and willingness to work for it. The blue-eyed man was always there when the pigs were fed and he saw that the pigs got an equal chance to get the results of their honest effort. The other chap was rarely there and he trusted to the Marxian doctrine that capital is the surplusage of the labor of all, for whatever comfort the pigs might get out of the feed. The seasons grew and the blue-eyed man's hoeing bore fruit and the blue-eyed man's pigs grew very much faster than the clerkly man's pigs, and the pota- toes blossomed and the pigs' tails straightened or crooked as the heritage of the pig indicated in the scheme of the Lord God Almighty, that makes some- how one pig to differ from another in size and fatness, JACK IN THE PULPIT 61 instead of making them all on the basis of a minimum wage and efficiency. And when the season was over and the co-operative association of the blue-eyed man and the clerkly man, and the crooked-tailed pigs and the straight-tailed pigs, and the well-hoed and the scantily-hoed potatoes came to a day of reckoning, there was a question over whose pigs were these and whose were those, and where the co-operation began and where it ended. The blue-eyed man confessed to a certain subtlety in selection of the pig that could get the most out of the trough and saw indistinctly the analogy between the pigs and his own attitude in selecting them. He considered it good business, however, and perfectly legitimate, and hardly could see where the value of his own brain-effort should be set at naught in the matter. Indeed he reckoned that it had a property value in the unearned increment of the pig by reason of selection. But this was co-operation. Did the blue-eyed man hoe for the other man ; did he select pigs for the other man ; did he contribute his intuitional knowledge of seed- time and harvest to the other man; did he feed the pigs for the other man? All these issues are abeyance. The wives of the men have entered into the discussion and one of them favors dividing the pigs on the basis of a crooked- tailer and a straight-tailer to each; but the proposal has not yet been accepted. Co-operation goes well when brains and toil are on a dead level. Brains some- how seem to disturb it fearfully. I wonder why? ON "HAVING NOTHING TO DO" HAVE been in the woods for two weeks, in a log-house on a bluff fronting a rippling stream. From its door we look upon a pond, and beyond the pond, we see a mountain whose feet seem to stand in the pond, and whose sides are covered with golden-leaved aspens, crimson maples and deep garnet oak. And all of this 3,000-foot bouquet swims in the placid mirror of that pond and leads the eye down to cav- erns of lush color, below the waters. Up here in this camp in the woods are no tele- phones, no trolleys, no newspapers, no callers, no stock markets, no bank-accounts, no bills, no daily grist of business-letters. The silent forests stand about. The moose-birds flit silently about the camp. The wild duck swims in the pool. The stars rise in the twilight and complete their torch-like processional thru the long, still night and the dawn breaks not like thunder "out of China cross the bay," but comes like a debu- tante into the quiet room or else standing tip-toe on the mountain tops flings its streaming banners thru the trees and across the misty ponds. I often reproach myself, when I go into this camp in October, at the selfishness that fills my heart with its drug-like appeal. I go after wasting my effort in getting ready for the absence: the doing of a month's work in two weeks; in the preparation of "copy" in advance; and when I really lay down this work and look out of the rear door of the car of the train that speeds away to woodland, I wonder if it is right to be so eager for something that I so often preach JACK IN THE PULPIT 63 against — the almost lost art of doing nothing what- soever. Let me picture to you the long room in the cabin filled with men of the first morning in camp, most of them up and about, getting ready for breakfast, and I lying there, suddenly aroused from an unaccustomed deep sleep, wondering just where I am. One shakes himself into semi-consciousness and as the full truth of the situation breaks upon him he snuggles into his bed and says to himself, "I have not even a single, tiny, infinitesimal, microscopical, darned thing to do." Did you ever feel that way? And if so, how many times in your life have you felt that way? At home even on a Sunday morning, you don't get that feeling. You have to get up. Here you don't have to get up — someone will bring you your coffee in bed. At home you have to eat. Here, you don't have to eat! At home you have to shave. Here you don't have to shave. At home you have to dress. Here you don't have to dress. You can't think of a single duty run- ning counter to your wishes. You don't have to wash your face or brush your teeth. You don't have to think, even. Not one of the customary cares of home en- croaches upon your time. You don't have to speak. You don't have to meditate, even. All you have to do is lie there, and swim in the luxury of doing exactly as you please. It occurs to me that we get very little of that in this world even in our vacationing and that is why I advocate this sort of a vacation rather than one that sends people skurrying by railroad trains with fixed schedules over long-drawn tours, housed often in hotels with strict social customs that must be observed. 64 JACK IN THE PULPIT I would say that we are torn and frazzled by our daily round of duties and by the ceaseless beating upon our nerves of the ten million tiny impacts of the noises of civilization, the telephone bells, the slamming of doors, the interruption of visitors, the demands of business upon our judgment, and the never-ending feeling of unaccomplished work. Under this, men and women suddenly find themselves unbalanced, the physical subordinate at last to the tense strumming of the nerves vibrated until they refuse to cease vibrations. The remedy lies in "nothing to do," selfish as it may seem. Absolutely nothing imperative! Away from the town, in the deep hospital of the healing woods of Maine; away from telephone and telegraph, when big things stand about soothingly and steadfast, like big trees, big mountains, big, silent ponds, big game stalking thru the forest aisles, big silences. This joyous morning rest that I have indicated; this snug- gling into a bed with a feeling that you are no truant from business but that this IS your business, makes you into a child-like person. You feel like the small boy who stays in bed with a painless illness, that is ever afterward remembered as so delicious an experi- ence — perhaps the happiest event of your childhood because you then had "nothing to do" ; no school ; no chores ; nothing but just to turn over and sleep again. Thus have I spent two weeks and found it philo- sophically perfect; rich in renewal of boyhood mem- ories; drowsy in comfort; happy in its freedom; and ending only when, at last, the mood passed and the tug of the town again overcame the tendency to rest. Other vacations have I had — seashore, with its fitful JACK IN THE PULPIT 65 activities, travel, city life, automobiling, but none like that of the deep woods that ever call to me like the memories of the arms of a mother lulling her child upon her bosom. ON "SOME OLD NEWSPAPERS" VERY nov^ and then some excited person comes into this office with a copy of "The Ulster County Gazette," printed with turned rules, in mourning for George Washington. The other day, a Maine newspaper "fell for it," giving a description of this "rare copy." I suppose I have at least six copies of it somewhere about the premises. It is merely a reproduction, issued about fifty years ago and sold by thousands. But, I WOULD like a copy of the Falmouth Ga- zette if anyone has one, or a copy of John Neal's Yan- kee; for I have no doubt that if one were interested in reading newspaper accounts of the burial of George Washington (which I am not) these newspapers car- ried mention of the same. The Falmouth Gazette dated back to January, 1785, at Portland, first newspaper ever issued in the District of Maine. Benjamin Tit- comb founded it and he was more of a preacher than editor and more of a printer than either. Thomas B. Wait had more to do with starting the paper than did Titcomb, for he was a stationer and had an interest in news. The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertise?^ which Titcomb "pulled off" from the old hand press Jan. 1st, 1785, has endured in a certain way up to now, through various names. Wait was really an editor and 66 JACK IN THE PULPIT a writer and a man of great courage and constancy. In the election of 1792 when Maine was a single Con- gressional district, Wait stood for Judge Thatcher who had become very unpopular. Wait took a licking or two but re-elected Judge Thatcher. Nathaniel Willis, father of N. P. Willis, the poet, and Fanny Fern (Mrs. Parton) the author, worked on this paper as a writer and an editor. I would like a first copy of the Portland Argus first pubhshed in September, 1803, which Nathaniel Wilhs and Calvin Day started. This paper was established just as all those old newspapers were established just after we became a nation, to serve the interests of a political party, in the case of the Argus, the so-called Jacobin or democratic party derisively so called after the liberalists of France. The editor of the Argus went to jail for the freedom of his sentiments and he played it to the limit. The Argus could appear each week with its flaming leader second, fourth, sixth week (as it might be) of the imprisonment of the editor to avow sentiments of political freedom. The men in the shop also had to work under guard to repel assailants of the other political party, supposed to be lying in wait for them. I would like a copy of Seba Smith's paper, The Courier, issued at Portland in 1829, the first daily paper in Maine. Here was a genius — like John Neal — a hu- morist, author of the Jack Downing papers, a copy of which I once saw as a boy and whose value I did not then know ; probably gone to the scrap-heap, for I saw them in an old house in the country. Seba Smith grad- uated at Bowdoin in 1818. His wife was Ehzabeth Oakes Smith, a most talented writer. JACK IN THE PULPIT 67 John Neal issued his Yankee in 1828, James Adams, Jr., backing it. John Neal was a fiery genius, a tran- scendentalist, a dreamer, a patriot, a toiler of Titanic power. Mr. Daggett has just written a charming mon- ograph on him that ranks high among the literary pro- ductions of the year. Neal feared no man and despised everything but truth and honor. I would like a copy of Horatio King's old Jeffer- sonian first published at Paris Hill ; or a copy of that mysterious Portland publication. The World in a Nut- shell, that kept its secret as well as did the letters of Junius. Then, too, who has lying about his garret a copy of the Eastern Star, published in Hallowell in 1794, or of Wait & Baker's Tocsin, Hallowell, 1795, or of Peter Edes's Intelligencer in Hallowell (now Augusta) in about 1795. Peter Edes was a son of Benjamin Edes, the historic Boston patriot and publisher of the Boston Gazette, if I recall. Peter was a lank, thin-legged printer, "spindle shanked," who had the pertinacity of a starved cat. He was forced out of Augusta by poor business and moved to Bangor where he started the Bangor Weekly Register, in 1815. I have seen a copy of the old Peter Edes paper. If anyone has one to give away, send it hither. These early papers should be gathered by the Maine Press Association, if possible, and kept in memoriam to the early printers who fought, died and even went to jail in the service of freedom of opinion. ON "BACK TO THE OLD SCHOOL" F YOU go back to your old school these com- mencement days, the chances are that you will go to the old chapel and look at the seat where you sat on the morning of the first day. Here is the place ! It is very dim here and your eyes can hardly penetrate the distance, except that far up in the arches come rays of light through stained-glass windows that catch the floating pollen of the summer and the tiny diist of the sanc- tuary and drop like shafts of light on the old black walnut benches. After a while, the eyes accustomed, are at home. At first it happens that I am alone, but not for long. One by one, others come stealing in, softly as furtive students stole in, late of a morning, long ago. And they stand about in the dimness or sit in some familiar seat or contemplate as one contemplates a shrine. Here is a fellow-townsman of mine whom I never suspected of sentimentalism whom I find with a tear in his eye, matching the cheeks of others. He says that he never fails to visit chapel on commencement day and always unaccompanied. I hear someone say that it is as one pays a visit to the grave of his dead youth. Not so ! Rather to his living manhood ! For it is true that we all go back to our old schools as "boys" and "girls" to celebrate our memories. And what I wish to emphasize is this : Is it not true that the finest memories of old schools cluster about the diviner part of these shrines of a living faith and memorials of the manhood and womanhood of cour- age and consecration? To me, this is the best proof JACK IN THE PULPIT 69 that I can summon from old schools of vitality of Faith in God. Here today, as I write in memory of my youth, I do not count it dead but living. There, on that seat, sits now a child called "me." It is forty years ago! His face is unfamiliar; his pockets empty; his clothes mean; his heart timid; his outlook hopeless. I see spring to life long lines of other boys, who today are gray. Did not each of us know his own problems ? Did not each heart know its own trouble? And yet! And yet ! believe me ! I can hear high-intoning the voice of the preacher, the white-haired saint whom I saw lying one fair morning with face to the sea and the peace of God in his eyes — all mysteries revealed, I can hear his voice speaking of the sacred things that kept me on and on. Yea, they encouraged and sustained many a boy, to whom the future held no financial promise even though the comfort were to be found in the "sparrow's fall." It is all a medley. But it is a shrine. It all brings back the loitering scholar shuffling in to escape the eye of the monitor ; the student cribbing his delayed studies under the prayer book ; the ruffled hair ; the inadequate garb hidden by long coats. And yet we recall little but that deeper religious significance, deeper than we would then have admitted, that we brushed aside as boys and girls and find again among our treasures as the day declines. O ! Boys of the old eighties ! You did sneak back into chapel, this year when you went back again to school, did you not? You took your hat off in rever- ence and stood awhile with a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye as you sought a seat where once a child sat. Who was he! What was he! A homely child. 70 JACK IN THE PULPIT perchance ! A strange looking simulacrum of what is now "you." Poor little homesick onery chap! Poor little devil ; poor little cuss. Your pity does you honor if coupled with it is the conviction that it is not merely a matter of forty years. If you were "you" then, and you are "you" now, what may not you be, in some fairer land? How may not God reclothe you? What garb may this indomitable spirit of ours not assume — this thing that dies not but stands aside today and pities and loves and weeps the passing body. Yes ! Yes ! I saw it all there in our old chapel, in the dim light and amid the ghostly forms of old boys. I saw victorious crews march up the broad aisle to music. I saw lock-stepped boys, arms about each other, passing out of chapel for the last time as students in the saddest custom of school life ! I heard Harry Chap- man sing. And I am sure that I saw Faith re-incar- nate and the body put under the feet of the spirit and the soul enlarged and the life of man as a span in the infinite. You should always go back to chapel and there bow at the shrine of your eternal youth of spirit, the spirit of your college and your intrepid faith. There are no dead upon these seats among the ghostly lads who seem to shine up with tender faces into yours! For they say to you : "Son of my youth ! Be strong ! for amid all things that pass there abideth these three, faith, hope, love." And for my part, I can bend over the old, time-worn bench and take the lad to myself and go out quite satisfied with gray hairs, having the lad yet in my heart. ON "SPRING AND DAISIES" HIS is a title of one of Leigh Hunt's lovely fa- miliar essays, and none was more simple in his appeal or more fine in his discriminations than this gentle soul who wrote so persist- ently of the common themes of his times. His English daisy does not come so far from our common weed as you may suppose, and Eng- lishmen love them so much. We do not affect the Mar- guerite as they do and we rather dislike it in the fields among the hay crop. But the English cultivate it for its extra large size and its true beauty — one of the love- liest of the common weeds of America. The finer, smaller English daisy we cultivate equally in our gardens. Leigh Hunt calls on Shakespeare for most of his inspiration in his essay and then runs through all of the poets — so that the daisy of our fields and gardens is probably of all flowers most in poetry. Chaucer has his say; Spenser has his; Shakespeare is at it all of the time; what a wonderful little flower that thus comes and goes and sends the thoughts of all of these poets winging afar ! Of course, after all, it is not the flower at all. It is spring running through the poet's mind. Leigh Hunt says (and see how he wrote much as we might write today) : "Then the young green!" This is the most apt and perfect mark of the season — the true issuing of spring. The trees and bushes are putting forth their crisp fans ; the lilac is loaded with buds ; the meadows are thick with the bright young grass, running into 72 JACK IN THE PULPIT sweeps of white and gold with the daisies and the but- tercups. The orchards announce their riches in a shower of blossoms. The earth in fertile woods is spread yellow and blue with carpets of primroses, vio- lets and anemones, over which the birch trees, like stooping nymphs, hang with their thickening hair. Lilies of the valley, columbines, stocks, lady-smocks and the intensely red peony which seems to anticipate the full glow of summer time, all come out to wait on the season, like fairies from their subterranean pal- aces. Who is to wonder that the idea of love mingles itself with that of this cheerful and kind time of the year, setting aside even common associations. It is not only its youth and its beauty and budding life and the passion of the groves that exclaim with the poet, "let those love now who never loved before, and those who always loved, now love the more." But, I did not set out to speak of the spring so much as the daisy. One can write about spring a great deal better in the winter than he can when the fields are "with daisies pied" or "with lady-smocks all silver white." The winter makes me think of spring and fills my throat with all of its longings ; while in sum- mer, I see the long sweep of the majestic snows out of hyperborean lands come riding on the gale and with lullaby softer than the cooing birds, lascivious with their love-making. The Latins called this common white flower of ours with its heart of gold "bellus" or belHs, which means "sweet one," or "nice one," or "beautiful one." The French gave it the same name as that which they give to a pearl. Marguerite, or Margarita, or by way of special endearment, Margherita. Chaucer says of it JACK IN THE PULPIT 73 ill his lovely poem of the Flower and the Leaf, as of the lady who began to sing right womanly a bargaret in the praising of the daisie : "As for me," says Chaucer, "thought I among her notes sweet, she said, *Si douset est la Margarete." In other words the lady said, "Our Margaret is so sweet." Ben Jonson says of them, "Day's-eyes and the lippes of cows." We cannot make a floral album of the poets. We can, however, go afield this summer with a new love for the common flower that has inspired so much from Chaucer to Burns toward love of Nature. I would in all ways, turn your thoughts in that way — to the yellow and white of fields, to the blue of hills, to the pageant of nature. You will be so much better content at things that you can never change by rebellion or scold- ings or reprisals. It would do all of us good to love Beauty more and money less. It would make us all forget so many brief ills of earth, if we loved the com- mon daisy a bit more and saw in Spring something of the revival of our own spirituality- ON "PEONIES" OMETHING sort of choked in my throat today as once again I saw the peonies coming into bloom in the garden, for peonies that bloom have mostly been planted by other hands, long since laid folded away under other blos- soms. Grandmother called them "pinies" and they were her treasures, huge red "pinies" that she felt sure to be superior to any other that grew. They blos- somed alongside the graveled walk that led up through the little garden of hollyhock, tall and gaudy, peonies red as blood and deep in their hearts the stamens of yet unfolded beauty. We brushed them as we walked and saw them as mere flowers. To her they were as gifts out of her store of God's special beneficence. She took them to church for the minister's desk; she took them to school for the closing day's exhibition; she took them to weddings and funerals and in the old par- lor a great mass of them stood in a great blue bowl — pinies, sweet and lovely pinies, that gave her a certain unique standing in the community. So, I see them today coming along again and I notice how little attention we busier people give to this his- toric flower — so old as to pass far back into history. Cleopatra may have worn them; other and earlier queens of Asia and Africa may have picked them and pressed them to their bosoms. Queens of the Ming dynasty may have dug about their roots in the long ago; for they came early from lands of the Mongols, the Tartars, the Chinese and all through Southern Europe. I fancy that some early Puritan lifted the peony from the English garden and brought the bulb JACK IN THE PULPIT 75 along to add a touch of home to the rough world of Plymouth. There are peonies in New England so old that no man knoweth their genesis. We used to know only the red peony. But it has no finer ancestry than the white peony. Do flowers chiefly take their color from the country — these racial flowers like the peony? The white peony came from snowy Siberia where it was given perfume to com- pensate it for the loss of that superb and opulent crim- son, that fairly sparkles like the deeps of old wine. The snow is in its heart ; but the odor of roses is on its effluence. Do you know anything more lovely than the white peony, the tips of its petals slightly violet or pink, deepening into a suspicion of rose, its centre as of pure cream and shading into ivory ! Can you fancy anything lovelier than these flowers. And so, admit- ting their perfection, can you avoid a sense of wonder as to why God made them, unless he intends us all to be finally built up into a similar state of beauty? I have a peony patch that calls to mind those long since gone. These peonies came from my old home. They were planted long ago in that town by one most dear to me. I always wanted some of them in my garden. One day, unknown to me, some of their roots were brought up here and planted by a friend. It was in the autumn. In the spring they began to grow and when I first saw their blossoms, I thought it was a miracle. I knew them ! Great white, wonderful, lovely peonies ! Immediately I set about solving the mystery and learned it from my old home. Those peonies blooming so gorgeously carry, therefore, reminiscences beyond any other flower in the world. They speak of a line of succession far back beyond my memory. They 76 JACK IN THE PULPIT link the present with the past. They call to mind a suc- cession of Junes, dreamy and young, in old gardens, where roses bloomed and apple trees flung their petals about like snow, and lilacs scented the air, and where moonlight lay upon the old flagging that led through the sagging gate to the open door. Alas and alas ! How little we know what may stir our children's children. How little we know what simple thing may be our own memorial. It may be a tall elm in the dooryard, a peony bloom by the garden path. Sufficient if, in some later day, when we are gone and nigh forgotten, someone stirs vagrant mem- ories by recalling us through the simple flower; or stops, in June, to look deep into the heart of the peony, to see once again, the visions of the old homes, and old family circles which time has dissolved, leaving only the perennial of beauty in the flower and in the hearts of children and of children's children. ON "THE VALUE OF CHARACTER" OMMERCIAL value of character is my sub- ject — not the spiritual and abstract value, such as it may be. Years ago, in this city, lived two good men — Deacon William Libbey, first cashier of the Manufacturers National Bank, and Deacon Badger, a customer at that bank. Each was a man of deep, abiding Christian faith, each with char- acter, each a deacon of the Baptist church. One day, late in the afternoon, Deacon Badger rat- tled the door of the bank and Deacon Libbey who was still on the job, behind locked doors, saw who it was and opened the door as has been done a thousand times. The customer came in, the cashier passed behind his desk and they did business. As the result. Deacon Badger was passed over through the wicket, in the regular course of business, two hundred dollars, in new banknotes, crisp and crinkly. Deacon Badger gathered up the money and stood a while talking about church matters. Then he be- thought himself to count the money as a matter of habit. He always had counted money; he always would. It was twenty dollars short. Deacon Libbey took the money over to count in the full amount and he, too, found it twenty dollars short. He looked at Deacon Badger and said, "You have dropped the other twenty on the floor. I gave you ten of them, I counted them twice. Look about a bit. You will find it." Together they searched Deacon Badger's pockets, they searched the floor, the money 78 JACK IN THE PULPIT drawer; the surroundings. The twenty dollars was gone. Deacon Libbey said that he had given Badger the twenty ; Deacon Badger said he had never received it, and so the two old Christians stood like lions at bay, each looking the other in the eye ; each declaring that the other was wrong; each beginning to harbor faint suspicions that the other had at last fallen from grace and begun to tread the primrose path that leads to — we all know where. I have often told this story and it takes on added humor to me each time that I tell it. I can fancy noth- ing more funny than these two old-fashioned incor- ruptibles alone there in that bank harboring suspicions each of the other. If you had known them — their type — you would yourself see the humor of it as keenly. They were both genuine goodly men — REALLY good men, I mean. Deacon Badger could not call Deacon Libbey a liar and a thief, because Deacon Libbey could not call Dea- con Badger a liar and a thief. In the tense air of the little bank so many years ago, all that each of these men had for support in the time of trial was the spot- less trail behind him. Had Deacon Badger or Deacon Libbey ever so much as leaned once toward wrong, he would have gone down to a dishonored grave, for the solution of the mystery came not until long after both of them had passed on and been laid away in the odor of sanctity. This was the commercial value of char- acter. Only by reason of this was a tragedy averted. Deacon Badger said to Deacon Libbey, "William, you are a good man. You have never cheated or stolen. There is something about this that we do not under- stand. I will assume half the loss and you will assume the other half." JACK IN THE PULPIT 79 Deacon Libbey said to Deacon Badger: "Deacon, I know that you would not intentionally do wrong. I know that I counted the money correctly and that I passed it to you. There is something we do not under- stand. Possibly God is trying out our capacities for charity to each other, our trust in Him. I will stand half of the loss," So the old worthies after half an hour of breathless concern, agreed to forget it and each paying his half, went his way to think his own thoughts, ever tinged with the divine injunction, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." And as the years rolled on they died and the bank had a new cashier and finally outgrew its little quar- ters and moved over to larger ones. In the process of moving they tore away the old counters over which Deacon Libbey had passed the $200. And in behind the counter, laid snugly between the mahogany board- ing and the back of a drawer was a clean, new twenty dollar bill. Deacon Libbey's successor knew what it was. Often had the story been rehearsed to him. And he saw at once how it had occurred. In pushing over the new money the thin edge of one of the bank-notes had caught in the crack and the bill had been pushed down into this tiny space. And there it had lain for years and years. Moral! As you please. But character is worth something. ON "THE LITTLE VILLAGE" OU FIND them now and then, aloof, detached, those old-fashioned little hamlets, untouched, as it would seem, by the urban influence of the times. Dear little places, whose simplicity arouses a longing for their acquaintance and a dream in the back of the head of happiness therein, such as is not to be found in the rush and fret of cities. There was one as we went along our way the other day, upon which we came unexpectedly and where we lingered awhile shortly after the noon hour, unnoticed, save for a woman shaking a tablecloth from a near-by piazza, and a stray dog or two, that came sniffing around our automobile. And it made us homesick and ruminative. And all of the while the monotone of water running over a little dam by the mill and a clear May sky overhead. No railroad trains or trolleys run into one of these towns or villages, whichsoever you may choose to call them. They bask in the May sunshine as peacefully as they ever did and the rows of white houses with green blinds stretch away for a street and peter out into broader gardens and finally into fields. The elms are budding and leafing out. The lilacs are swelling. The dandelions are gemming the lawns with yellow. There is one store and but one. It has a long ve- randa with a hitching rail for horses, suggestive of the past. You find much in it that you did not expect to find and fail to find much that you might expect to find. In May, it will not be filled with loafers as it might be in winter, especially in February, just before JACK IN THE PULPIT 81 town-meeting. Somehow it smells of past worthies and of salt cod and leather boots. It also smells of grind- stones, hardware, kerosene oil, chocolate drops, chew- ing gum, blue denim and corn poppers. I can look it over with my mind's eye and see a freckled-faced lad looking longingly into the fly-specked showcase hun- gering for penny chocolate cream bars. There is a mill pond ! Ah, so quiet now. Save for the dripping of the cool water over the stones and the twittering of sparrows in the eaves. There is an "ice- cream parlor" which is the only truce to modernity in the place. And for the rest, the home of a village doctor who rides all over the surrounding country and who lives in a little white house with a sagging piazza, back of some apple trees in a scrubby front yard and whose yard is full of children. There is a blacksmith shop even yet in this village, though the ruts of the road are made by automobile and the blacksmith is willing to tinker the tin-lizzies as they come his way. The pond comes up to the street almost and the mill race empties into it, on the near side of the bridge. The churches lift their spires ; for there are always at least two of them. The schoolhouses fly their flags. The grange hall stands barn-like but suggestive of vil- lage oratory and happy socials. The cornshop is empty in May, but makes us think of busy days of August. The wind ruffles the waters of the pond. The clouds float fleecy-like overhead. Here, then, is a town, untouched by time. It holds within its guardian love the elements of old New Eng- land country life. It has no secrets from itself. It knows all of its own pains, hopes, griefs, births, deaths. 82 JACK IN THE PULPIT accidents, disappointments and successes. It calls it- self by its first name. It reads daily papers, but there are yet some who "take in" a weekly, from the neigh- boring shire town. It lives keenly and yet might do better in that respect. For how little it appreciates the hills that beckon ; the peace that sings it to sleep ; the birds that carol of a dawn; the high noon of sleepy, dozy dreaminess; the starlit nights when Arcturus winks in cloudless, dust-proof skies and the rainy Hyades belie the night. How little, indeed, it realizes the manifold blessings of its own aloofness — away from markets and from mischief ; away from care and fret of contact with problems of the times ; away from the passions of life, its call to the hatred of competi- tion and the fight for subsistence. Here nature with her generous hand spreads the table of the poor as well as of the rich ; here the realms of God come close to earth and mingle with it in a thousand ways. Here one might rest — yes, even rest. ON "A PERSONAL MATTER ff WUZ jest a week ergo terday, ut I come home an' hit the hay; I warn't sick! Fer, ez I said ter you, 'twarn't the pip an' 'twarn't the flu; jest a feelin' restless-like, waitin' fer the hour to strike, when I'd leave the harnts of men, and fish an' be a boy agen. Wa-a-1 ! Here I be, jest ez I was ; hain't no reason, hain't no cause, hain't got no tempera-toor, hain't got no disease, fer sure; more like a onery ailin' pup; nothin' seems ter chirk me up ; looked myself square in the face an' couldn't diagnose the case; called in the Doc, young Doc Joe. He says, "Inter bed yer go!'* Here I be jest ez I was, hain't no reason, hain't no cause. 'Tain't my head ; fer I think right smart ; 'tain't my liver an' 'tain't my heart; 'tain't stomach ner gout! Then, gol darn me, 'tain't nuthin' at all, as I kin see. An' yet here I lay, like a caow that's cast, without no trouble that's like ter last. Thought I'd found what the matter wuz; waitin' fer the bee ter buzz; but hain't perked up a little bit an' don't seem to keer if the bird don't flit; got no time ter lissen for crows, all I kin do is blow my nose ; don't keer a rap ef the ducks do swarm; too darn busy keepin' warm; ain't con- cerned erbout the vi'lets bloom, couldn't smell their sweet perfume; what's the use of the woods, in yer eager ear, if yer head's plugged up and yer fail ter hear. By thunder! I wonder! what's the matter, me jest a layin' here, flatter an' flatter ! By snum, I'm so sore in spots, reckon I must hev the botts ; every time I blow my nose, it pulls a toe nail off 'n my toes ; my eyes 84 JACK IN THE PULPIT both ache like an old burnt boot an' they're dancin' a clog on the bridge of my snoot; an' I don't want ter eat and I don't want ter drink, an' I don't want ter sleep an' I hate ter think, thet after what I said ter you, 'tain't the pip an' 'tain't the flu. Jest outside my winder pane, I kin see a wintry plain and a tall spruce tree that stands, bearing snows within its hands; and a barberry, crimson-red, with the frosts upon its head, and a long an' windin' hill, storm-swept, driftin' cold an' still, tall elms, arms like tattered sails bendin' to the winter gales, clouds that come a bendin' low, spittin' little flakes of snow; sun gone down an' in my room nothin' but a touch o' gloom ; many little gales that come, beat my windows like a drum; and they off en bring, ter me, far-off roarin' like the sea. So after manner o' my kind I can sorter be re- signed ; no man ain't exactly shet of everything that he can't get. If with Spring, the world ain't dressed, p'raps we'll favor winter best; here I be jest ez I was, hain't no reason, hain't no cause, but I kin shut my eyes, yer know, an' see the pine trees fight the snow, and seem to rest all snug an' still, on some wind-swept, pastur-hill; an' dream of lying safe and warm, well away from earthly harm. Funny how yer fancy builds camp-fires on these snowy hills. Funny how there's offen gain, when yer bones is full of pain. Funny what yer visions do, even when you've got the flu. Funny how the banners dip, even when you've got the pip. 'Tain't so drefful hard to lie, with your business passin' by; ef, by snum, yer only knew, 'TWUZ the pip, er 'TWUZ the flu. ON "THE ETIQUETTE OF SWIMMIN' " F I REMEMBER aright we had a high sign, useful in the slow hours of the afternoon in the old schoolhouse when the flies droned on the window pane and bumble bees came sail- ing on lazy wing past the sun-swept vista through the open windows. It may have been June ; probably was. It may have been a drowsy day when nature was surfeiting herself with sweets and when the cow-bell tinkled afar, suggesting velvet mead- ows and rioting buttercups and boys stretching on the sward, with waiting cur-dogs round about, loafing, too. What a liar was he who said "time flies." Time halts in such circumstance. Time moves backward in its flight, on such a day. The old clock never budges, as a boy with bursting head, waits the time when he shall leap forth, every fibre suddenly animated, every corpuscle rioting. In those moments, with everything calling, with thoughts of laving in waters that shall curl through our toes and cool our backs we threw the high sign, over the school. Two fingers of the right hand held up in the form of a "V" — ^the other fingers closed. Im- mediately, the faces clear ; the sign runs silently around the room. Frowsly red-heads lift. Freckle-faced boys become young Apollos. Animation takes the place of despondency and we know that there will be doings at the old swimmin' hole. It hath never been determined how old this sign may be. I doubt not it is three hundred or four hun- dred years old. I doubt not that boys still use it. 86 JACK IN THE PULPIT Caesar may have swung the high sign aloft when he put up a proposition to bathe with his classmates la the Tiber or Horace in the Digentia. But at least it has made many a boy happy. You do not have to be reminded how it eased the slow toiling hours of the afternoon. You do not have to be reminded with what a shout we burst out of the schoolhouse and away, cap in hand and trousers ready to fall at the sight of open water. Nor do you require much reminder of hap- penings at the old swimmin' hole. There was etiquette about it. Last one in! First one out ! Do I have to remind you of what sometimes happened. Much of it was primal. Much of it was animal — for boys are animals. We wore little but a pair of trousers and a cotton shirt with galluses strapped over the back most always made of cotton and never "boughten." We wore no underclothes in sum- mer, no shoes or stockings, and we required little prep- aration for the bath. In early spring a boy was for- tunate if he could have his head shingled and thereby avoid the troubles of drying his hair. For it was some- times a troublesome matter — the number of times a boy went in swimmin* in any given day. And mother often had a way of feeling of a boy's hair. If there were no tragedies at the swimmin' hole I am a liar. Many a boy have I seen who, having of- fended a brother, comes late from the water to find his clothes tied in knots. And believe me, a boy at one end of a cotton shirt-tail and another boy at the other, both pulling in opposite directions, can do a deal of knotti- ness. Oft have we seen, all of us, a bawling boy, shiv- ering in the wind, trying to untie the knots in his shirt or trousers, while the other boys chased home over the JACK IN THE PULPIT 87 meadows. There was etiquette about diving and about taking turns and about swimmin' under water and com- ing up under a boy and about pulling him under and about splashing water upon him when he had dried off. I heard the other day about a family of boys where they were not allowed to go in swimming until July 1st. The father of these children is a doctor. I can't understand it. How any father can believe that he can keep boys from going in swimming until the coming of July 1st, beats my reckoning. Of course when I was a boy we did not have baths in winter at all. The wash tub was frozen and the pump was not fitted with hot water. Mother used to give us the once-over Saturdays in winter — sometimes. She could not, dear soul, find time to chase a lot of boys around and make them bathe. So we always appointed Memorial Day as the date for the first swim, no matter how cold the water. I don't remember of dying or being drowned. We al- ways took a boat and went down river and had a picnic and went in swimming, on the side. Our ablution was a monster and our reaction was a fright. I have shaken so on cold Memorial Days that my teeth loosened. But it was a part of our etiquette — ^the same as the high sign, same as the punishment for snobby boys, and as the other rules of every-day swimmin'. I expect to go to Heaven. I expect to swim in the river of life some time. But I never expect to be happier even there, than I have been when the fingers went up, over the little old schoolhouse, and we leaped forth, a gang of boys, for the old swimmin' hole. ON "GOING BERRYING" F ALL things, the most conducive to philosophy and invention is going berrying. It is an in- tellectual pursuit mingled vi^ith practical ac- quisition. It comes in the class with deep- sea fishing, bee-hunting, digging clams and writing poetry. It cannot be exactly classi- fied. It is — just berrying. From the general consideration of this important subject, I exclude strawberrying. I call that work. It does not classify with any other kind of berrying. You have to dig down in the long grasses where no breezes blow and sweat and stifle with hay-fever to pick straw- berries. Nobody who is over eight years old can enjoy bending over to pick strawberries. Raspberrying has its objectionable features. The berries grow in difficult masses and the biggest berries are always in the centre of the bushes. To reach them, one must shut his eyes ; grab his pants tightly around him ; hang onto his coat- tails, and with a selection from the scripture by way of comfort, dash through the barbed wire entanglements to the point of raspberry objectives. I prefer black- berries as a matter of determination. The spines are more spur-like, it is true, but one can circumvent the high bush blackberry better than he can a bunch of treacherous raspberries. It is an exercise of pure strategy to pick blackberries and you get something when you reach them. They are not all squash-bugs and sometimes ten of them will fill a pint dipper- The best berrying is the huckleberry — the high bush huckleberry. Next to that give me the blueberry. You can sit down to the blueberry; you can stand to the JACK IN THE PULPIT 89 huckleberry. No briars, no stooping, no squash-bugs, but only a wind-swept knoll where no wild thyme grows — or something like it, and there you go to it and strip the glossy black berry called the huckleberry and hear them go tinkling into the pail. But this is not the thing. The thing in blueberry- ing or huckleberrying is the fun of it. It is best to go alone or to take some young person with you. It is unwise for two grown people to go huckleberrying together. It degenerates into a thing approaching work. What you want is a quiet, freckle-faced boy about ten years old. He will afford you oppportunity for philosophic divagation. He will give you oppor- tunity to think. He will call on you for information on common things. He will assist you in loafing. He will want to run about and stand on hilltops and let the wind blow around his ears and speculate on the clouds and ask what makes the humming sound when the breezes stir the pines. A boy is not so particular about filling his pail that he will not have time to chase a woodchuck. By all means take a small boy. Never go huckleberrying with your wife or anybody else's wife. It is no fun. So far as I am concerned, it is not a matter of get- ting the berries. It is the semi-contemplative mood that hypnotizes me into complete acquiescence with the plan of nature when I go berrying, that catches me every time I see a berry-patch. It provides you just enough physical relaxation to induce thought. It sets your mental machinery going just like a fine new dynamo running in the bath of a lubricant. It is not exactly "thought" that you do; it is that lovely, beau- tiful, delicious state of mind known as "meditation." 90 JACK IN THE PULPIT You pick a berry and you do it unconsciously while you see the cloud, hear the bee, watch the butterfly, wondering all the while about everything. On one hand, you have the physical action of a gentle sort; on the other you have the meditation and, the two combined, superinduce a state of such perfect equilib- rium that you feel like a sleeping street of a country village in noon of a September day. It's the poise that you get. You can't get it anywhere else. You settle questions about life that never could be settled elsewhere — settle them for yourself, I mean, not for other people. Yes : Fishing is fun ; hunting is fun ; golf is some- times fun; but all piffle as compared with the rare and unusual avocation of blueberrying and huckle- berrying. When the sky is full of clouds, when the sun is warm and the wind is fresh; after the hay is in and before the snows come — go berrying. And come home with a full mind, whether the pail be empty or not. ON "THE OLD PEDLERS' CART' FRIENDLY correspondent recalls to me the old-fashioned tin-pedler as a fading mem- ory — possibly still traveling up and down the macadam roadways, but by and large — becoming extinct. I have wondered if it is not, perhaps, a distinct service to preserve memories of these old- fashioned things. As the days come and go, it does seem as tho there come more frequent responses from readers along the line of those things that seem to recall the quainter features of that simpler New England life, such as occasional letters, frequent passing comment. It is as tho recollection stirred deeper sympathies and the finer instincts of those who love to recall the days that are gone. Perhaps if someone who has the faculty, were to write a book on old Maine habits, customs, social life, dress, pecuHari- ties and penchants, it might in some day be of value to historians and even to scholars. I seem to remember swift-flying feet from down the dusty road and the voice of a brother shouting, "The Pedler's here !" and to see thru the leafy barrage of the apple trees the red sheen of the pedler's cart drawn up before our old back door. To those who dwelt far in the country, the dust of the pedler's cart was never unwelcome as his slow-shuffling old gray horse — it seems always to have been gray — came our way. It was a terrible disappointment if we boys were away fishing, or after the cows, or at the swim- min' hole, when the pedler came. He had Jonathan Crookes knives, for instance, and altho we had small 92 JACK IN THE PULPIT chance of getting one, it was a pleasure to see one. He had drawers that pulled out of the back of his cart that had treasures far beyond the dreams of avarice. He had a silent way of indifference about him that never seemed to sit well on a person acquainted with such ineffables. The old tin pedler's cart was always about the same in appearance ; high over the horse ; seat perched well up in the air; top covered with barrels and pails perched on stakes ; bait for the horse ; bundles of rags and barter from the house-wife; butter kits; firkins; and for the rest a smooth, well-enclosed vehicle almost always painted red. Just beneath the seat was the name of the pedler (sometimes — not always) and usually these mystic letters, "Licensed by C. C." — what it meant, a mystery to me now as then — ^but variously interpreted, until at last we came to consider it a special fact to be aired among boys; to be mentioned as a show of information and to be hollered out behind the cart as it went along the way. The pedler had a very slow method of trade. Mother always came out and stood under the apple-tree with her apron up under her arms and in summer little beads of sweat on her chin — very anxious to have her tussle at trade and barter with the pedler. Mother was a very shrewd buyer — so we thought. How she would haggle and debate with the peddler. Didn't she give him some good ones ! How we would chuckle and roll on the grass and shout as she talked back to him and told him how high his prices were and what a cheat he was. The pedler would unlock the side of the animal that he called a cart, but which we thought more wonder- ful than the wooden horse that captured Troy and JACK IN THE PULPIT 93 that we knew about in our school books. The insides of the creature fairly shone with tin pans and pots and kettles and brooms and crocks and pails and churn-dashers and wooden butter bowls and butter stamps and strainers and mortars and pestles and coffee-grinders and tea-pots and glass ware and well — what was there not? Never was such glistening tin-ware ; it does not shine so dazzingly, nowadays. And then he would go around to the back of the cart and open up the back-doors and begin to pull out little drawers in the contraption — such stores of essen- tial domesticities! Thread and needles; pins and hair-pins; hanks of linen thread — cutlery, jack- knives — oh, dear! It is like a dream — all of it, out there with mother a regular spendthrift of egg-money and the savings of the meagre cash that came to her hand. Such eggs as she would pass over to the pedler in barter! Such butter as she would lovingly pack into the pedler's bucket for him to sell at the village store, whither he was traveling. Eggs that now are worth their weight in gold; butter that, in our house, had the sweetness of the clover and the fragrance of the honey of the honey-comb. Under the apple-trees with the bees a-humming and the branches swaying and the old horse with loosened head-stall cropping the lush greensward of the old door-yard ; only a picture out of the past ! The pedler has gone. The old farm has gone. The old folks are gone. What remains! Only the memories that are sacred! Nothing whatever left to us, save the hope that the picture may be flashed on the screen again, elsewhere ! with the pedler's nag cropping the pastures 94 JACK IN THE PULPIT of the Asphodel ; mother again in the foreground with apron in her folded arms, and the visualization as permanent as the eternities themselves! ON "THE VAGABOND" E is no mere tramp, carrying his rags and his urbanity all over the earth, reading news- papers, riding on trains, merely escaping the servitude of work, without losing the crowds and the impulse of others. The Vagabond is none of these. Those who think so, lose sight of the crown and sceptre of the vagabond. The vagabond carries his soul with him and is a vagabond because he would take his soul out into the open and give it freedom under the clear airs of heaven. It is a primal force, this vagabondage. Some na- tions have been vagabonds from time immemorial and may be time without end. They are nomad from inheritance; they live under the stars and in the des- erts or on mountain sides where one mountain is like another, each calling as to some dear distant pasture which is ever yet more beautiful. Free highlanders have ever been the most delightful and warlike of vagabonds as have certain nations who have been vaga- bonds of the sea. These are the rovers who have never any joy, except in things beyond the horizon, strange ports won after struggle, idyls in spice-lands, dreams of royal delights under languorous moons. Every person whom you see moving around, is not alive. Far from it. Some merely exist; others are JACK IN THE PULPIT 95 quite dead. They have a fixity of life comparable to the cucumber-vine that never gets beyond the spread of its root. "Afoot and light-hearted," sings Walt Whitman, "I take to the open road. Healthy and free, the world before me, the long brown path leading wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good for- tune — I, myself, am good fortune. Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. Strong and content, I travel the open road. * * * The soul travels. The body does not travel so much as the soul. The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away, at last, for the journeys of the soul. Allons ! The road is before us ! it is safe — I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well." This is the song of Life, the voyaging of the soul and body ; the epic of vagabondage. I would not counsel over much vagabondage — pos- sibly there is enough as it is, except the swimming of the soul beyond the limits of the shore which costs but little either of time, money or effort; but unlimited roving amid contemplation lessens production. It is the lotus life. Yet there is plenty of excuse. Nature is very much of a vagabond. All things with wings are of vagabondia ; tumbling bees, loitering butterflies, evening breezes ruffling the lilacs and sending vaga- bond perfumes stealing over the memories of one's vagabond heart. Things that come across a summer day, such as painted moths and jeweled humming- birds, hopping toads on quests of the Infinite ; floating gulls white as snow against the blue, eagles in the air, distant sails on summer seas, tides against the shore, coming from other limits of earth, — no matter where 96 JACK IN THE PULPIT you are, summer or winter, whether it be the vaga- bond rain-drops out of the sky, or the snow-flake that comes whirling down, as tho the angels were moult- ing, — all vagabond! Man is truly vagabond — not a tramp but out- journeying with his soul for company — only when he has mastered the truth that his Spirit is himself. He has become initiate with Life and will set out to build more stately mansions for his soul. He need not go far. A little way around the corner, if it please him. He may not be gone for such a time as to be missed from home. He may not sleep out of a night — altho we should advise it for the soul's good. He may not go farther than a forest of trees, that merely shuts out the light of the town and lets only the upper- radiance filter in; sobeit, his soul gets the benefit — he is of vagabondia. The vagabond takes no vows, but will learn all that vows could require — humility, gentleness, a song, a smile, a love-light in his eyes — for Love is a vagabond of vagabonds. I wish that all men and women would be vagabond some of the time. I wish that they would untie them- selves from all of their pet illusions, the necessities of. etiquette that mean nothing, the frumpery of toys and trumpets, and seek the beautiful secret of rest in this life, instead of waiting for it in the next. One need not go far. I do not urge a racketing around the world. But out there, outside of the ceaseless consid- eration of bank-balances; outside of the struggle for preferment; outside of the immediate issues of the day, there are hills, forests, pastures, the golden rap- ture of filtering lights and shades, and brooks and rivers and blue peaks and songs that sing thru forests JACK IN THE PULPIT 97 as thru ^olian harps, set in niches of temples. And out there are comradeships and people that come and go, and souls that shiver at the thought of solitude. ON "MY FIRST JACKKNIFE" WAS about as big as a pint of cider — sweet cider, of course, to be within the law — and it was my first term in the grammar school, seven years old, barefoot in summer, and naturally big-eyed in a new school. I declare I never knew anything about scholarship prizes until one day the teacher, whose name was Julia Baker, and whom the boys called "Judy," took me on her lap and told me that I had won the prize for the first year of scholarship. And then she put in my sweaty little hand a new Jonathan Crookes jackknife, if you know what a Jonathan Crookes jackknife was fifty years ago ! None better ! None COULD be better! Two blades! keen, bright, shining, good stuff ! No other boy's knife could cut it, according to the old trick of putting edges together and seeing which edge could cut the other. Honor, dignity, good repute, a certain "class" rested on the boy who had a genuine Jonathan Crookes with its name stamped on the blade. There were traditions of "Barlows," but Jonathan Crookes would do! You bet ! Swift feet took me home that day, swift-flying feet to the anticipated plaudits of home, to the comfort of mother's arms, to the joy of father's good word, to the envy of brothers, to the high-stepped autocracy of 98 JACK IN THE PULPIT the neighborhood. I reckon I didn't talce that knife around much that day. I kept it on the "mantel- piece" and kept going to it every hour to see if it were safe. Well! Life is a curious thing in the matter of possessions. I think sometimes that it is worth while to go without that you may enjoy the occasional prize well won. It is not well to shower toys on children lest they become cloyed — or as they used to say, "elide." But there was small fear in those days, as I recall. A jackknife, brand-new, was as a king's patent. No boy in my social set had its equal. Three days passed and I began to gain sufficient temerity to carry the Jonathan Crookes about with me in my trousers pocket. And then, one summer day, not one week after I got the knife, which was in July, I went berrying on the shores of Woolwich. The day passed comfortably. From time to time I felt for my knife and found it secure. Every hour I took it out and looked it over to see if its brightness were fading or if I were using it carelessly on damp twigs, that were liable to rust it. It shone, ineffably. And then, well along toward dusk, I felt for it and — my blood stopped in its courses, the sky and the river and the trees faded and the world grew black. It was gone ! Gone ! Gone ! and there a hole, just new- grown, in the corner of my pocket ! You needn't smile! This was the tragedy of my life. You possibly have had similar ones. Tell them, if you please, and I will hsten. But this one — alas! never anything else compared with it. I came to my senses and recalled feeling something slip down my JACK IN THE PULPIT 99 leg. I thought I knew where I was when this hap- pened. I fled back blindly over rocks ; thru brambles ; in circles, here, there, everjrwhere, searching, and the night coming on. Not a trace of it. Often since then I have tried to picture myself, a child running frantic- ally over that wild, deserted region, mile on mile of bare rocks, thick underbrush, blueberry, blackberry and raspberry bushes, searching for that knife and sobbing like a fountain choked with weeds. I can see myself finally at a standstill, hope all gone, desolate, bereft, alone by the silent river, rather pathetic viewed impersonally, and later pulling the skiff home in the gathering night. I recall the frantic searchings of my family; the stories of the hunting party, thinking I was drowned, and I remember the scene as I told my tale in the apron of my mother. Many other days I searched those cliffs in vain. The little two-blader lies there today in rust. I never had another Jonathan Crookes. Nobody said: "Never mind; we'll get you another." Parents did not do things that way in those days. I fought out my dis- appointment and, by degrees, won against it; but a part of my little boy's heart lay with the Jonathan Crookes for many a day thereafter — tho perhaps I personally was strengthened and matured by its loss. Who can tell! Perhaps that was why I had it and why I lost it. We often grow richer by the things we lose, rather than by the things we have. Do not those whom we lay away with a piece of our hearts about them sometimes strengthen and bless us from where the grasses lift and the bluebells wave above them? I think so. ON "OLD-TIME BREAKING OUT OF ROADS" FTER a storm in old New England days, the roads were broken oiit with teams of oxen, breasting the deep drifts and burying their noses often half out of sight, while the winds flirted the snows and blew them high — a gay sight for those who love the pictures of bat- tling elements. I have counted twenty yokes of oxen on the lead trailing a huge triangle, that was drawn by main strength thru the piled-up barricade of cold, pure whiteness. On the sled rode the surveyor, giving his orders, while none but trained teamsters waved the ox- goads, their pants tucked in their boots, their faces red with the tang of the New England air, their scarves, usually red, blowing behind them like blotches of blood against the ermine of the snow. These team- sters needed but few words; they knew their teams; for long experience in the woods had made the team and teamster act as one. The mingled words of com- mand to the cattle made a sound of polyglot. You could hear them coming afar, with an occasional low of an ox, or the shout of a surveyor breaking clear on the frosty air as the team brfeasted a huge drift that called on all for united effort. The community sentiment in the breaking-out of roads was suggestive, and it always seemed wonderful that with so many men and so many oxen, the team- work could be effected in a village where there were no telephones; but it was a matter of understanding and pre-arrangement. The teamsters knew that they JACK IN THE PULPIT 101 and their oxen would be needed after the night of the storm, when the winds had wailed and the windows had rattled and the eaves had moaned and the windows that looked out of the house had been darkened. The man of the house always bedded the cattle down a little better; gave a little extra grain to the oxen and was ready bright and early with the breaking of the storm for the attack. Sometimes it came with the dawn ; sometimes with the noon — immediately the sun, then came the breaking-out teams. A correspondent who writes us often of the old days, recalls the route of his district in Oxford County, Me., where the district started at Timothy Walker's barn and ended at Bethel town line. It might as well be any other district as this, either in Maine or Ver- mont or old Massachusetts. He says that altho the prohibitory law was working in Oxford County in those days, now and then an oasis appeared even in the bone-dry districts and the old hotel was a rendez- vous, maybe an inducement at the end of the route. Here on breaking-out days, a roaring fire burned in the old open fire-place, one of those monsters of rock-maple that threw heat dry, radiant, alive (as wood-fire blaze seems peculiarly to be), out into the open room where the teamsters gathered, stomping the snow from their feet and laying aside their frozen mittens and scarves. There was a bar, in the corner — yes, a bar! Here "George" stood, ready and waiting ; a red-faced George, fat and smiling, spicy and succulent "George." The cattle smoked with steam in the yard, swinging their heads, many of them blanketed and some of them fed with small wisps of hay. The crowd that had fol- lowed the teams flocked into the hotel. The air was 102 JACK IN THE PULPIT in motion with the going and coming. The women came from the kitchen to see friends. Gossip passed to and fro from all over the district. Aches and pains and "doing well" or "rather poorly" were the phrases most often heard. The jokers had their way. The odor of nutmeg and other obsolete perfume, was on the air. If they "stayed to dinner" it was a great affair. Yes! They had fun; and they did service and they enjoyed it, and they were strong men and the women of strong men. And the hotel-yard was always well broken out. Cold did not frighten people much in those days. It is only a few years ago, seemingly, that we all went to the "oyster supper and a dance," at Chase's Mills — a mere sleigh ride of twenty miles below zero, with a girl tucked in by your side, and with a fast horse and the sleigh-bells all in tune, team after team, all in a race, up to the hotel, out and into the warmth of the fire, a dance in the hall, a supper, a dance after inter- mission, until the day began to break and home again — none the worse for the evening and no cripples in the bunch. Many a sleigh-ride have we seen with sixty turn-outs in it, all off for a dance until daylight, to a four-piece orchestra — down and up the outside; down and up the middle. Do we break out much of any nowadays? Very little! Life is being arranged so that even the snow is jazzed out of place by machinery. We are avoiding the drifts. We are softened by the fear of contact with the eager air. I am not going to get into the habit of bemoaning the old days. The present are lovely — many of them better than the old; but the breaking-out team does typify an element of that stern JACK IN THE PULPIT 103 old life, that was not afraid of discomforts ; that never shirked the toil ; that never feared the cold ; that found fun where it was to be found, and that perhaps tasted sweeter companionship with your grandmother, fair and red-cheeked as a girl, tucked under the buffalo robe for a ten-mile sleigh ride to the music of the bells, than daughter does today, in an electric-heated coupe, behind closed windows, while the young man smokes a cigarette and dallies with the gas. ON "WHEN THE MINISTER CAME" N OLD New England the most important event in the household was the coming of the min- ister. He was apportioned to households, during protracted meetings, quarterly con- ferences and occasionally for mere pastoral visits to the community, agreeable to him and his scantily-fed wife — an ekeing out also of his salary, by way of savings. The Bible says of the Master, "Take no thought of what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink." But with certain casuistry, the housewife looked at this strictly from the minister's point of view. He was supposed to be following the direction of the Master confidently and the housewife did not intend that Faith in the providence of the Lord should suffer thru her inade- quacy. If the minister was to come in confidence, and without heed as to what he should eat or drink, she must do the cooking or the minister would be taking his Faith to another market and she would be in disgrace in the Sewing Circle. 104 JACK IN THE PULPIT So there was tremendous preparation. The kitchen fairly rang with the batter of spoons on tin-ware while the trot of the good mother's footsteps gave no latitude to boys-under-foot. Father kept to the barn and went around with a subdued look of impending religion on his countenance. He knocked off swear- ing and the general conversation at the table was given a brushing up. "You must not say such things" was the common reproof. "You MIGHT forget and say it when the minister was here" — a mild hypocrisy, common enough in life and not altogether reprehen- sible, for it is good as far as it goes. Father sometimes cut out chewing fine-cut for a day or so, and nibbled at B. L. instead; as being more orthodox and hard-shell than fine-cut. Father always kept pretty still on the prelude to the minister's coming because mother gen- erally remarked that she might — not that she would have, bless her soul — but she might have married a minister once, or at least a chap who afterwards be- came a minister. Father sang small and, as I have said, kept to the barn. The cattle, at least, under- stood him. So did mother. Of course, in every old-fashioned New England family, everybody took a general bath, before the min- ister came, and the blue wash-tub was the busiest utensil in the family. Everybody from Sis to Bub was given the twice over; everybody worked but father; he went round as he was. Children considered the minister's coming as a mixed blessing — the bitter being a repression of animus, the sweet being an expression of appetite. One could not talk so much, but that was given over willingly for the opportunity to eat more. Savory JACK IN THE PULPIT 105 odors, long smelt, never tasted, came to fruition. "Preserves" came out! A friend of mine, v^ho was brought up on an old-fashioned baby-farm (they were common in olden days) , recalls the barberry jam that was produced only when the minister came. He says that the little chaps on the "farm" never tasted it at other times and that they never permitted any to go to the dish-pan. They did the Jack Spratt act. It would have made a picture for Dickens' Nicholas Nickelby, at Squeer's school; those little urchins lap- ping the plates of the bright red barberry jam after the holy man had filled his stomach tight and then gone away to preach a sermon on "Feed My Lambs." Such things as happened when the minister visited ! Folk lore should be full of them, whereas we have chiefly the rather profane "Woodchuck story" where the boy simply HAD to get the woodchuck because the anathematized minister was coming to the house. We were sanctimonious little "cusses," so to speak, when the minister came. And what a tremendous impression it made on our lives. There is a man in our town who recalls that on his first trip to Boston, with his distinguished uncle, a great lawyer of National fame, now dead, he was set down at a wondrous table in a great New York hotel and given his choice of viands. And the poor little chap, with no other standards except the "minister's visits" as great occa- sions, ordered what mother used to cook for the min- ister — cold boiled ox-tongue. Yes! That was the best thing we knew of — appropriate to the orthodox! Cold tongue, soft and soothing, eminently innocent ; in life a symbol, in death a food! A little chap cannot invent viands, beyond his experience. 106 JACK IN THE PULPIT The minister "eats around" now but infrequently. Bishops dine out and have dilRculty in holding the napkin upon their shiny aprons. Hotels are not inap- propriate to the clergy. Homes are closed tighter than in old New England days. Lucky if the old days were back; for then we of the pews might get more of the spirit and the clergy more of the flesh. The home circle certainly does need more irruptions of grace, both before and after meat. ON "THE PUSSY WILLOW" AYBE you have already seen children coming along the streets that lead homeward from the outlying brooks and ponds these March days, with arms full of pussy-willows, and you have felt suddenly tender again toward life and considerate of how steadily the calm world of Nature pursues her way, unvexed by all of the ant-like skurrying to and fro, of man and nations of men. Out of the past rise memories of yourself as a child searching for the first signs of the little furry catkins and eagerly bringing them home, to tempt again the old-time miracle of faith ; that if put where it was exactly warm enough — in the cuddly toe of a little shoe by the warm fireside — out of the night and all its wonders, might emerge, by way of the immacu- late conception of the pussy-willow, a dear little roly- poly kitten, with very bright eyes and a spiky little tail firmly standing erect, waiting there or else rolling over (kitten, tail and all) before the fire when you arose in the morning. Disappointment never raised a doubt. There was ever a reason and ever a failure. JACK IN THE PULPIT 107 So we see, each recurring spring, the coming of the children, bearing the pussy-willow as a rite and religion of childhood, of the spirit of resurrection, in the very heart of the world. And the pussy-willow has a perfect right, of its own dear little self, to have a place of distinction in the episode. For it is first on the spot; first of all vegetation to feel the kiss of the lovely Sprite that tiptoes first to the brookside and along the oozy borders of the ponds. Here, screened from March gales and winter snows, in response to touch of spring, the pussy-willow puts off her brown winter coat and begins to glisten in the furry little coat that is so soft, warm and beautiful. And it is odd that where Spring first finds her way out, there she also departs, for, along the borders of the pond, the last glimpse of vegetation endures in autumn, as it shows first in the spring. Another thing that may interest us all about our little friend the pussy-willow, is that childhood, every- where, the world over, has the same love for it. There is not a place in the world where the willow does not grow in some form. It is along the equator, in the far-off polar regions as far as any vegetation what- ever endures of the tree-type, and with many uses, from material for weaving baskets and reeds to making charcoal and bringing great returns to some people who have raised the willow commercially. In olden days, it was used instead of the palm in the church festivals and appropriately as a symbol of the resur- rection, for it has strange powers latent within it. You can hardly kill a willow twig. Put it away and allow it nearly to dry and desiccate and yet put it into the earth and give it moisture and from the bare 108 JACK IN THE PULPIT twig will set out roots and buds and it will struggle into fresh green again in the bravest and most reso- lute way. It has a singular reserve in leaf-buds. It keeps many of them against day of need. If fire sweeps in willow, or it becomes parched by drought and seemingly dies, the first touch of moisture will start out the reserve buds and again it is on its way as tho nothing had happened. You have seen the willow-tree cut off at its base and left in a condition that would discourage the ordinary tree; and yet, in a year or two, there it is again, all foliage, springing from the slender withes about the trunk. After the children have brought in the pussy- willow and the miracle of spring is on its way, the catkins become either silver or yellow. You find them swollen and fat. The golden ones are loaded with the stamens ; the silver with the pistils. And soon the bees are busy; flying from the silver to the gold, fertiliz- ing them with the pollen on their feet, while they get the first honey of the new year. And then, by and by, much later in the year, the willows are again shining in the golden light with long, waving burdens of the seeds that float away on land rivers and are so pro- lific that by nature's scheme if one in a billion lodges happily and grows, the balance of nature is preserved, so far as the pussy-willow tree is concerned. So — here it is again, the new March-time in the arms of childhood, coming down the street, the pussy- willow! Wonder what is within the furry coat! What mystery of life; what casket of the Lord God's own placing! "Who knoweth the balancings of the clouds and how thy garments are warm when He quieteth the earth by the south wind? Hath the rain JACK IN THE PULPIT 109 a father and who hath begotten the drop of dew?" How little we know — less even than Job ! Little chil- dren know more than we — for they at least see miracles in the pussy-willow — while we often pass even the little children by and see no miracles, only Things. ON "CARVING ONE'S FIRST TURKEY" F COURSE no one expects ever to carve an- other turkey — the bird is extinct at the price ; but historically a disquisition on the subject may while away a moment of your time. Your job lay before you. Down the board gleamed a pile of white linen with waiting faces of children. It was your first attempt. The book told you how to do it; first take your fork; jab it into the breast; take the drumstick firmly in your hand; insert the knife in the second joint and give it a spry twist and lo ! the wing falls into the platter. Cross hands, fork in the right hand; knife in the left — carve off the white meat, gently dislocating the bird at all of its anatomical points of vulnerability, all of the time keeping up a running fire of brisk con- versation, telling the latest stories and congratulating the ladies upon their youth and beauty. This is the way the book tells you, but the way you do it is different. You grab the knife in your right hand at imminent danger of cutting the man's throat next to you. You pull up your sleeves, pull down your vest; draw a long breath and try to still the 110 JACK IN THE PULPIT ominous throbbing in your ears. You make a jab at the bird with a fork and it slips off, and thru the mist of the declining year you hear the voice of your wife saying, "Perhaps, dear, if you took the fork instead of the steel it might go into the bird better." It is too bad that the age of a turkey is not writ- ten upon its breast in indelible ink or some other form of proper certificate. It is usually the oldest birds that lie in wait for the young Benedict's first Thanks- giving. If there is an antique in the turkey orchard about to die, he unquestionably selects his burial place in the family of the young man who is to entertain. 'Tis thus that he gets his revenge. They do need such a lot of carving. They are such wear-resisters. They are so strong on the rush line and have such a strong secondary defence that it is almost impossible to make distance on them in anything like three downs. They are more apt to break thru the rush line and tackle you in the shirt front. It is strange how all of the old Thomas Turkeys fall to amateur carvers at holiday seasons. It must be because they are so fair to look upon and thus so easily deceive the amateur buyer who does not know that often beneath a rugged exterior in fowl there lies a tender heart. The age of turkeys and geese should be indelibly carved on their breasts. It is an anal- ogy. Tough things fall usually to the inexperienced. Every job that we tackle first in life is hard. Nobody ever went to work at a new job, without having the hardest bird to tackle, first day out. If you get your bird dislocated without landing him in the lap of the guest of honor and without having to get under the table to catch him as he goes around for the third JACK IN THE PULPIT 111 time, you are lucky — the first carving. If you don't splash gravy on the dado and stuffing on the picture of "Home, Sweet Home," you are doing w^ell. If you don't give the neck to the rich relative and the v^^hite meat to the cook, you are playing in luck. If you don't upset the water-glass and spill the jelly, and knock over the bouquet, you are deft. If you don't swear, you are some Christian; and if you don't cry, you are some doughboy. If you don't come to with a string of sausages around your neck and dark meat in your whiskers, you are getting away with the job like some little carver. The thing, dear reader, is to have complacency and a sharp knife. I am never going to lose a chance to philosophize and draw my moral as well as my week's pay. Study your technique, in this 'world, and keep a sharp butcher-knife. If I couldn't have but one, I would have the knife. But you can have both. The world has as many joints as an old Tom Turkey — locate them and whet your scimitar. Then go for the old bird! Sometimes he is wonderfully tender, ready to fall into your platter. It is all according to what kind of a bird you draw. But most of us get old Toms. They callous the hand and sicken the heart. We sweat while others around the board joke and banter. We take the neck ; they get the choice bits. But always remember that you are carving; you are on the job; and that the day will come when you, too, will sit and wait while some other poor devil tackles his first Old Tom — the World, the Flesh and the Devil. ON "ABRAHAM AND LOT" ODERN instances are not altogether unique. Find me an ungrateful heir, a youngster who thinks that he knows more than his elders about everything on earth, and I will ask you to turn with me to Genesis and consider for a time the story of Abraham and Lot. Abraham (originally Abram, the "ham" being thrown in for good behavior), was a remarkable business man, a loyal and good man, a wonderful vis- ionist, a leader. He had a handsome wife, Sarah, but no children at the opening of this story. His wife was so good looking that she worried Abraham, for fear that Pharoah might take her away from him. Per- haps she was not so good-looking as Abraham thought ; for after Pharoah had looked her over, he told Abra- ham to take her along and not worry any more about her. Possibly Pharoah did not like blondes. Lot was Abraham's nephew and Abraham cher- ished him as a son, taking him when they all went up out of Egypt. Now, Lot was not, in my opinion, so much as he thought himself. In the first place he was the original High-Roller and what is worse, the alle- gorical equivalent of all human selfishness and ego- tism. He is introduced into Genesis, not alone for the historical perspective but also for the moral contrast between the uncommonly big Abraham, and the com- monly little Lot. As things progressed. Lot made a lot of trouble for Abraham. Abraham was a very rich man. He had cattle, gold, silver, power, command, the backing of Jehovah. He looked big to everyone except Lot. This JACK IN THE PULPIT 113 is frequently the case in modern lives, as between big fathers and little sons. Property was regarded as di- vinely sacred in those days, as it always will be except by revolutionists and Marx Socialists — I say divine because it is said in the word of God to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." Nothing is said about taking away by violence the bread that other men have won by thrift and toil. Everything Lot had, was from Abraham, and yet Lot considered Abraham old-fashioned, effete, non compos mentis, a punk business man, and not au courant with "effi- ciency." He and his men fought Abraham and his men until it was necessary that they separate. You have seen just such Jaspers as this in these days, — no gratitude; nothing but egotism and self-in- terest. Abraham saw through him but was patient. He said that if they must separate. Lot might choose the land, east or west side of the Jordan, as he chose and he, Abraham, would take what was left. Generous of Abraham ! I call it glorious ! How about Lot ? He took the best land — all of it, and left Abraham the barrens. Did this wind up Abraham and make Lot richer? Not so. Abraham kept right on, growing richer, and Lot kept on getting no richer a great deal faster. And why was this? The answer is simple — Abraham was thrifty and a worker ; and Lot was cultivating the habit of going out nights. Genesis says, "Lot pitched his tent over toward Sodom," and according to Genesis, Sodom was a bad burg. And then, too, mixed up with his red-light habits. Lot got into a League of Nations scrape where there were a lot of scrappy kings who fell on each other and Lot woke up to find himself a 114 JACK IN THE PULPIT captive, with all of his wives and servants and cattle and sheep. Who came to his rescue? Nobody else ex- cept that old-fashioned fossil named Abraham, who went over with a crew of men, chased Lot's captors "unto Dan"; routed them; walloped the life out of them ; got Lot out ; restored all his property to him and would not take a cent for doing it. Some old has-been ! Eh! You might think that this would straighten out Lot ; but not at all, not at all! It wasn't any time until Jehovah was after Lot and this meant business. Je- hovah was sick of the red-light district of Sodom and he proposed to send a rain of fire and other incendiary bombs on the residential section of Sodom. And so the poor old has-wasser of an Abraham had to come over and get Lot out of trouble again. He did it by means of his own righteous life and his own leader- ship and his standing with God. And there is no finer picture in history than this forgiving nobleman of God, leading Lot and his fresh wife out of Sodom, the Man caring for the Dude, and the subsequently saline spouse. And yet there is no assurance that Lot ever appre- ciated Abraham. If he did, the Bible does not indicate when. Abraham is an immortal. Lot died after he took to drink and in incestuous manner founded the tribes of Moab and Ammon, that afterwards gave Je- hovah and Moses and Joshua so much trouble by their worship of strange gods. Thus is epitomized a type of young man which is still extant — who think that they are wiser than their fathers and who believe that "things have changed"; whereas there is no change and never will be any JACK IN THE PULPIT 115 change in Duty, Loyalty, decent living and respect to elders, in gratitude and love. There never can be any day when it won't pay to be decent. ON "THE OLD BRICK OVEN" T NEVER was my job to build a fire in the old brick oven, though it had been the job for seme of the older boys; but there the oven 8|^«|j yawned in the side of the kitchen, its one eye