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 HIGHWAY 
 
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FIELD-PATH AND HIGHWAY 
 
FIELD-PATH AND 
 HIGHWAY 
 
 By E. E. miller 
 
 E. E. MILLER 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA 
 
 1912 
 

 Copyright, iqiz, 
 
 BT 
 
 E. E. Miller. 
 
 (n: ni A *5. Q f! 4 .-> Q 
 
The Apologp. 
 
 In publishing these Httle sketches — most of 
 them reprinted — I am quite complacent in my 
 confidence that they will not appeal to those 
 who demand action and excitement of the 
 books they read. Nor do I expect them to be 
 much esteemed by the learned and the critical. 
 I am optimistic enough, however, to believe 
 that a few people will care for them because I 
 wrote them, and to trust that a few others — 
 leisurely souls who know the paths through 
 the fields and are glad of the sun and the wind 
 — will find in them something not wholly for- 
 eign to their own thought and experience. 
 
 E. E. M. 
 
Contents. 
 
 Page. 
 
 An Autumn Ride 9 
 
 The Unchanging Love 19 
 
 "Not Unavailing" 29 
 
 When the Circus Came to Tov/n Z7 
 
 A Teller of Tales 45 
 
 The Master's Discipline 55 
 
 For Love of Margery 61 
 
 Days of Happiness 71 
 
 The Lure of To-Morrow 75 
 
 The Chords of Memory 87 
 
^n Autumn Ride. 
 
 S I swung the girl into her saddle 
 the breeze came over the hilltop 
 aromatic with the odors of Sep- 
 tember, hints of juicy apples and 
 ripened grapes, and the delicate, elusive fra- 
 grance of the fields. From far-away purple 
 horizons it came, blowing her hair in tiny rip- 
 ples about her face, coloring her cheeks, and 
 bringing the dancing light of gladness into her 
 eyes. Poems have been written about the 
 sweetness of the autumnal air — poems touched 
 with all the mellow beauty of the season — and 
 there remain yet many to be written. 
 
 We did not have time to think of all this, 
 however. We were only glad to be alive on 
 such a morning — glad to have the sky above us 
 and the sunshine in our faces, glad to feel the 
 tug of our horses against the reins and the 
 swing of their motion beneath us. They, too, 
 were fresh and eager. The bracing air was 
 
to Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 like wine to them as to us. The girl leaned 
 back in her saddle with the reins grasped 
 tightly in both gauntleted hands, laughing with 
 the pure joy of mastery. 
 
 The first requisite of a good saddle horse is 
 not speed, not even ease of motion; it is the 
 desire to go forward. Give me a good horse, 
 clean-limbed, wide-nostriled, strong-muscled, 
 eager, enjoying the road, a firm, smooth path, 
 and the wind of early autumn in my face, and 
 I cannot help forgetting all my little quarrels 
 with fortune and all the little annoyances and 
 wearinesses of life. 
 
 It is a treat, for that matter, to ride at any 
 time with the girl. She sits her saddle with 
 the grace of the born horsewoman, and her 
 eyes and thoughts are for all around her — for 
 the wide reaches of the rustling, rasping corn- 
 fields and for the late daisies that grow beside 
 the road. I know, too, that she feels, as I do, 
 the subtle intoxication of the season's beauty 
 as it creeps into her blood and tingles through 
 every nerve with the thrill of life which per- 
 
An Anttimn Ride. it 
 
 vades the softest air at this time. It is some- 
 thing more than a coincidence that the sections 
 where the finest saddle horses are raised can also 
 lay strong claim to having the fairest women. 
 No girl who rides well can be other than pretty 
 — while she is riding. 
 
 Two miles down the hard white road and 
 our horses were still pressing on fresh and 
 eager, but steadily, rhythmically, keeping step 
 together, easily swayed by the lightest grasp 
 of the finger tips against the reins. A lane, 
 narrow, grass-grown, with scattered thickets 
 and neglected fence rows on either side, turned 
 off to climb a long hill. "Let us go this way," 
 I said. So we slowed down to a walk and 
 turned off into the beauty of the neglected way. 
 
 Here the sassafras, the black gum, and the 
 sumac were putting on the red and brown of 
 autumn. Tall ironweeds were opening their 
 purple flowers, the wild carrot was blooming 
 everywhere, and the goldenrods, hesitating a 
 little while before displaying their full splen- 
 dor, showed glimpses of yellow against the 
 
12 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 prevailing green. Artichokes lifted their stars 
 of pure gold. The quaint, misnamed "river- 
 weed" waved ragged crowns of darker hue, and 
 through the tangle of vines and bushes stray 
 gleams of blue and yellow or white caught the 
 eye. The golden fruit of the bitter-sweet hung 
 thickly over the decaying fences, ready to burst 
 a little later into a brave show of scarlet. 
 Chinquapins gleamed from between their 
 opened burrs; and over a tall sassafras a wild 
 grapevine had climbed and spread and fruited 
 until the whole tree was laden with the rich- 
 hued clusters. We drew our horses up beside 
 it and gathered the cool, piquant, nectar-fla- 
 vored fruit, so delicious in the tang of its wild 
 individuality. 
 
 The grapes of our vineyards and gardens 
 have in them the flavor of mellowed soils and 
 careful tendings and all the long years of 
 watchful training. The wild grape is truly 
 wild, not only in its growth, but in its very 
 nature. It tastes of unchecked breezes and 
 untilled soils, of dews that form on starry 
 
An Autumn Ride. 13 
 
 nights and of sunlight that trickles down 
 through layers of swaying leaves. Of it, I am 
 sure, the fauns and dryads make their wine, 
 if fauns and dryads haunt our American 
 thickets and forests. 
 
 A lane climbed over the hill and dipped down 
 into a little valley where a small stream ran 
 between banks which in a week or so would be 
 a wonderful riot of color. Goldenrods and 
 artichokes and ironweeds and asters, white 
 and purple, and a dozen others, all in blue or 
 white or yellow, will hang over that brook and 
 mark its course with hues such as ''no painter 
 has the colorin' to mock." Yet for all this 
 beauty, if the farmers who own those meadows 
 had done their duty, they would have cut those 
 weeds and bordered the stream with plain red- 
 top and timothy. 
 
 We followed a narrow footpath up the creek 
 till we came to a little mill — an old-fashioned 
 mill which ground corn into the unbolted meal 
 from which the "mush" of our childhood days 
 was made. Down over the moss-grown wheel 
 
14 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 the water tumbled, breaking into shining drops 
 of crystal and tinkling and splashing like silver 
 through all the creaking and rumbling and 
 groaning of wheel and pinion. "O! let's go 
 in," cried the girl when we had persuaded our 
 suspicious horses that the thing was not going 
 to eat them for allthe racket it made, and that 
 even the spray from the falling water would not 
 hurt them. A towheaded boy — just such a boy 
 as I used to be when I rode to mill on a big horse 
 with my bare legs sticking straight out and a 
 sack of grain tied on, because I was not big 
 enough to balance it — watched my manner of 
 helping the girl to the ground in open-eyed 
 wonder and then held our horses while we went 
 inside. 
 
 The miller and a farmer waiting for his 
 *'turn" greeted the girl with subdued deference 
 and myself with offhand familiarity. The 
 mill was nothing new to me. So while she 
 studied the whitened walls and the powdered 
 rafters or watched the corn trickle down out of 
 the hopper, and the big burr revolve, and the 
 
'" An Autumn Ride. 15 
 
 coarse, fragrant meal pour out below, I talked 
 crops and politics. 
 
 The farmer told with smiling eyes of how 
 poor his corn was going to be, and the miller 
 laughingly predicted all sorts of hard times for 
 both man and beast. They were not afraid, 
 though, for all the damage the drouth had 
 done, and wisely preferred laughing at their 
 disappointments to moping over them. Coun- 
 try folk learn both patient humility and quiet 
 contentment from their dealings with the 
 weather. Man may control steam and electric- 
 ity and harness them to do his bidding; but 
 the winds and the clouds, the sun and the rain 
 smile or frown as they will, and men may as 
 well be content. 
 
 "I don't expect to hitch up at all to bring in 
 my corn," said the farmer. 'T'm just goin' 
 to take a sack an' carry it in an' be done with 
 it." Then we all laughed. I swung the girl 
 into the saddle. The white-haired boy opened 
 his eyes to their utmost degree of roundness, 
 and with a merry wave of hands we rode away. 
 
1 6 Field-Path and Highzvay, 
 
 Soon we were on the main road again with 
 our horses' heads turned toward home. "Sin- 
 gle-foot," said the girl. And we went on be- 
 tween pastures and cornfields and lands newly 
 plowed for wheat, the rhythmic clicking of the 
 horses' hoofs making music and the easy gait 
 carrying us on swiftly, smoothly, delightfully. 
 The single-foot is the poem of gaits for a 
 saddle horse. A fragment of verse came into 
 my mind and I repeated aloud the tender, 
 plaintive lines : 
 
 "No ghost there lingers of the smile that died 
 On the sweet, pale lip where his kisses were ; 
 
 Yet still she turns her delicate head aside, 
 If she may hear him come with j ingling spur : 
 
 Through the fresh fairness of the spring to ride, 
 As in the old days when he rode with her." 
 
 The girl looked out across the fields and 
 sighed. There is nothing so deeply interesting 
 to hopeful, life-pulsating youth as the tender 
 sadness of unavailing love. This touch of 
 pathos was needed to tune our hearts to the 
 faint minor melody that breathes through ev- 
 
An Autumn Ride. ly 
 
 ery song of autumn. And as we came in sight 
 of home she sighed again. 
 
 "Life and laughter and songs of love, 
 Then silence and loneliness ending it all." 
 
 But these moods of gentle sadness endure 
 for but a moment and serve only to make life 
 and laughter and love the sweeter. For life is 
 good, wonderfully good, to even the poorest 
 of us all. So it is, that with the friendship of 
 a girl who can ride and think and dream, with 
 a horse and the freedom of road and lane, with 
 the beauty of field and wood and far-off, sky- 
 touched hill about me, with September skies 
 above me, and with all the gladness and pathos 
 of the season for my own, I often forget that 
 I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow and 
 not one of fortune's favorites. 
 
 2 
 
The Unchanging Love. 
 
 BEEKEEPER whom I visited 
 once went out among his hives, 
 where the bees were flying all 
 about, walked fearlessly up to 
 them, put his finger down at the entrance of a 
 hive, and let a bee crawl up on it. Then he 
 held it up to show me the bee's good points" ; 
 and when it flew away he ''caught" another the 
 same way and continued his discourse, calling 
 them pet names and praising their virtues. 
 Not being afraid of bees, and being doubly 
 reassured by the company of so intimate a 
 friend of the little honey-makers, I put my 
 finger out too, and the bees climbed up it, in- 
 vestigated a little, and flew away. Yet half 
 the people I know would have begun striking 
 and dodging the moment a bee flew near, and 
 would have had a swarm buzzing about their 
 ears in a very few minutes. 
 
 Bees demand certain things of those who 
 
20 Field-Path and Highzuay. 
 
 would be their friends : confidence, self-control, 
 quietness, gentleness, and due regard of apian 
 feelings and whims. One may possess all these 
 qualities except the last and utterly fail to win 
 the confidence and the love of living things. 
 A dog may obey and slavishly follow a man 
 who has no feeling for and no appreciation of 
 him. But before the man can make the dog 
 his friend he must show himself capable of 
 understanding that a dog, too, has perceptions 
 and prejudices, sentiments and sensibilities — 
 yes, that he has vague, strange dreams of things 
 not understood, just as men have. 
 
 There was something of truth in the answer 
 of the vagabond dog trainer to the college pro- 
 fessor. 
 
 The ragged mendicant had his dog doing all 
 sorts of tricks in the street. The professor 
 came by and stopped to watch. "How is it," 
 he asked after a while, ''that you can get your 
 dog to do so many things ? I have never been 
 able to teach mine a single trick." 
 
 The man with the dog looked at him a 
 
The Unchanging Love. 21 
 
 moment and said: "Well, it's this way: if you 
 don't know no more than the dog, you can't 
 learn him nothin'." 
 
 And true it is, that many a man who has 
 many kinds of knowledge fails utterly ever to 
 come into any intimate relationship with either 
 animate or inanimate nature. He sees the vio- 
 lets blooming, perhaps, and thinks them beauti- 
 ful; but his interest in the violets ends there. 
 He walks through the woods in the spring and 
 notes that the leaves are putting out; but all 
 their wonderful range of color, red and brown 
 and yellow and green and gray and rose and 
 purple — for all of these are there — he never 
 sees. Nor does he catch the varied fragrance 
 that floats from opening flower and expanding 
 leaf and awakening soil. Such men may write 
 learned books about plants and know them thor- 
 oughly from a scientific point of view, but they 
 will never have that intimate relationship with 
 plant life which enables the quiet, rosy-faced 
 old maid to keep her garden or her window-bed 
 a glory of foliage and blossom. 
 
22 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 This subtle appreciation and understanding 
 of living things, when it reaches out to nature 
 generally — to all plants and animals and insects, 
 not simply to roses or dogs or bees — makes the 
 true seer of nature, the Thoreau or the Bur- 
 roughs. 
 
 It is, indeed, a wonderful thing, this real 
 understanding of the world about us, which is 
 the basis of the truest and deepest nature-love. 
 Keats puts the common lack of it into lines of 
 haunting beauty: 
 
 "The wind, 
 Whose language is to thee a barren noise, 
 Though it blows legend-laden through the trees." 
 
 Some who have written glittering verses or 
 purple prose in praise of nature's charms have, 
 I feel sure, heard only the wind as it blew, 
 while barefooted farmer boys and grizzled old 
 woodsmen have heard and understood, in part 
 at least, the tales it told. For one's love of 
 nature is not always to be judged by his words. 
 The silent lover may love most truly and woo 
 most successfully. 
 
The Unchanging Love. 23 
 
 Two people I have known who seemed to 
 me to possess beyond all others I knew this 
 deep, confident, unswerving intimacy with the 
 world about them. One of them was a fellow, 
 half gentleman and half vagabond, who had a 
 strong aversion to work and a perpetual delight 
 in hunting and fishing. He Avas called shiftless 
 and lazy and all that ; but I think most folks had 
 a touch of respect for him, because he loafed 
 so openly and unabashed. As another man 
 might go to his ofiice or take his team to the 
 fields, he shouldered his rifle or took his fishing 
 rod and went his way, unashamed, indifferent 
 to the gibes of those who toiled. When he 
 needed a little money, he might be persuaded 
 to do a few days' work ; and he worked faith- 
 fully, but with an evident lack of joy in his 
 tasks. It was to him an unpleasant matter 
 made necessary by circumstances, but a sheer 
 loss of time that might have been devoted to 
 better things. I have seen him sitting on a fall- 
 en log, his long-barreled squirrel rifle in his 
 hand, waiting as still almost as a stump for the 
 
24 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 reappearance of a squirrel that had dodged into 
 a hole ; and he seemed, from the placid patience 
 with which he waited, to have no care of the 
 lapsing hours. I have seen him, too, on myste- 
 rious trips afield or through the woods when 
 there was nothing to kill. It was in the woods 
 and fields that he belonged; and whenever he 
 could, there he went. He might have been an- 
 other Thoreau if he had had the ability of ex- 
 pression, but he was unlettered. I doubt, too, 
 if in his calm detachment from what most peo- 
 ple regard as the important things of life he 
 would have thought it worth while to try to 
 make these hurried, busy men understand the 
 things that filled his heart. 
 
 So he lived and died, a shiftless, improvident 
 fellow whose name was synonymous with in- 
 dolence and worthlessness. Yet I have won- 
 dered if he was not worthy to be accounted a 
 success, since his life evidently brought to him- 
 self no sense of failure; and he walked amid 
 his fellows with unimpaired self-respect, for 
 all his laziness, "a gentleman unafraid." 
 
The Unchanging Love. 25 
 
 Loving nature with an equal fervor, but in 
 a very different fashion, was one whom I first 
 knew as a girl of sixteen — a wholesome girl, 
 full of life and youth and gladness, who rev- 
 eled in growing crops and shadowy woods and 
 sunny fields, and made friends of all the ani- 
 mals on the farm. She handled the horses 
 without fear; the cows would follow her in 
 from the fields, while the boys had to drive 
 them ; her chickens and turkeys seemed to tlirive 
 from her very presence among them, and all 
 the dogs on the place were her willing slaves. 
 She had a reading nook half hidden in the 
 willows down by the brook. Followed by the 
 dogs, she would take long rambles over the 
 fields and through the patch of near-by wood- 
 land; and I have seen her, with flushed face 
 and glowing eyes, breaking a path through the 
 snow that covered pasture and meadow when 
 she had no other reason for doing it than that 
 it was good to be out of doors. 
 
 Why a girl like this should be taken to town 
 by parents who thought they could get rich by 
 
26 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 a business of which they knew nothing, and 
 who speedily lost the competency they had in 
 the attempt, is past understanding; but so it 
 was. At twenty-three she was in an office 
 supporting a widowed mother and looking out 
 in her few breathing spells on blank walls and 
 paved streets. This might have been no real 
 hardship for many girls, but it was for her. 
 It was by accident that I found her, and the 
 compressed lips, the pale face, the wistful eyes 
 prevented my knowing her at first. Because 
 I was of the country and had shared in the 
 pleasures and to a certain extent the hopes of 
 her girlhood days, she told me all — all the 
 dreams and the longings and the weariness of 
 this cramped and alien life with which she 
 dared not burden her mother. I, too, was of 
 the country and would understand. Sick at 
 heart that I could not help her, I went my way ; 
 and though the weary, wistful face came often 
 before me, I did not see her again for two 
 years. 
 
 Then I saw her with startled pain. There 
 
The Unchanging Love. 27 
 
 was hardness in her hps, hints of unfathomable 
 bitterness in her eyes. She did not turn to me 
 with trustful friendship this time ; she was half 
 defiant, half fearful. The reckless laugh cut 
 me deeper than the fitful sighs she could not 
 stifle. I asked no questions, because I feared 
 to learn the truth. 
 
 "Nell," said I, "y^^^ ^''^^^ "° °"^ ^^^^^ "°^^ ' 
 you are going back to the country." 
 
 Gladness flamed into her eyes for a minute 
 and then faded into the ashes of a hopeless 
 
 grief. 
 
 "I can't," she said. "I've nowhere to go, 
 
 nothing to do." 
 
 "Do you remember the Widow Bennett?" I 
 asked. She was a simple, loving soul with a 
 fund of nature-wisdom who lived in a little 
 cottage on the edge of the village where Nell 
 and I had often gone to buy groceries or to get 
 
 the mail. 
 
 "She wouldn't have me." But there was 
 
 hope in her voice. 
 
 "We'll try," I said. "Can you be ready by 
 Sunday?" 
 
28 Field-Path and Highzvay, 
 
 We went. The unassuming old saint in the 
 blue calico dress heard our story and hesitated 
 for a minute. Then she said: "Yes, Nell; I 
 guess you're a pretty good farm hand, and I'm 
 sure it'll be better for you here." She put her 
 arm about the girl, who went down on her 
 knees in an outburst of tears. 
 
 I felt the tears smarting my eyes too as I 
 went away, but I was glad. The country had 
 her own again ; and there is wonderful healing 
 for tired mind and sickened spirit, as well as 
 for overworked muscles and jaded nerves, in 
 the companionship of the pastures and the gar- 
 den. 
 
''Not Unavailing^ 
 
 IHE most cheerless of all days in 
 this latitude are the days of winter 
 rain — cold, gray, with fitful winds 
 and slow, munnuring, "shivery" 
 showers. A muddy earth, damp, raw air, and 
 skies hidden ever so deeply by wind-driven 
 masses of shadowy mist— surely there is no 
 other time when a good fire and a good book 
 are so comforting. 
 
 On such a day I sat with my book dangling 
 idly in my hand and looking at the fire. Fire- 
 o-azing- is one of the most cheerful recreations 
 for people of all ages and conditions. Little 
 children can see wonderful things in a blaze or 
 a bed of coals, and I am sure that we older folks 
 could too if we would only take the time to look 
 for them. I saw none of those wonderful 
 things this day, however, for I was thinking of 
 other fires I had known in other days — big, 
 cheerful wood fires that crackled and blazed 
 
30 Field-Path and Highzvay. 
 
 and threw flickering shadows over the walls 
 and ceilings. Such fires are getting sadly un- 
 common. Coal is winning its way far into the 
 country districts, even in the wooded sections. 
 We did not appreciate the forests until we had 
 almost destroyed them, and the worst of it is 
 that even to-day the forces of destruction are 
 more potent than are those of renewal and 
 conservation. A coal fire in an open grate is 
 by no means to be despised. Ik Marvel has 
 celebrated its beauties in a book that keeps its 
 youth and freshness despite its abounding 
 faults. I have no desire to imitate him. I 
 have known better fires — fires in great stone 
 fireplaces in humble hill country cabins where 
 there were big four-foot logs ablaze. Cheerful, 
 indeed, those fires ; but O how wasteful ! 
 
 It is a long reach from the Tennessee hills 
 to the arid plains and rugged mountains of Old 
 Spain; but I had only to turn to my book to 
 make the change, for the neglected volume in 
 my hand was ''Don Quixote." 
 
 There are great books and good books, and 
 
''Not Unavailing." 31 
 
 the two terms are by no means synonymous. 
 So there are interesting books and comfortable 
 books, and they are not ahvays the same. I 
 remember my first dip into Dante. For hours 
 I hung over the ^'Inferno" with eager ardor; 
 and for two or three days the shadow of that 
 terrific vision lay on my mind like a great stu- 
 pefying cloud. There are books that inspire 
 me to do things — to dream, to write, to work — 
 but the "Divine Comedy," "Paradise Lost," 
 and "Macbeth" are not in that class. They 
 fill me instead with a sort of helpless awe and 
 wonder. Great books they are, with the great- 
 ness of the unmeasured elemental forces, and 
 perennially fascinating. Yet who would dare 
 call them comfortable books, or go to them for 
 recreation in a lazy hour ? 
 
 "Don Quixote" is at once a great book and 
 a comfortable one. The wise and the simple 
 may both find interest and profit in it, food for 
 studious reflection or amusement for hours of 
 idle leisure. When I first read it as a mere 
 child (and how much better it is for a child 
 
32 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 to read ''Don Quixote" than to be brought up 
 on most of the so-called juvenile literature of 
 the present day!) I found in it only a laugh- 
 able account of a crazy old man and his foolish 
 servant. I only wondered what ridiculous 
 thing would happen next ; and if I felt any pity 
 for them, it passed away before the overpow- 
 ering realization of their absurdity. 
 
 The humor of the book does not diminish or 
 stale, but as one grows older there comes to 
 him a new conception of the deeper meaning of 
 it. For, as Prof. George E. Woodberry has 
 said, "Don Quixote" is, after all, a sad book. 
 This poor old crazy knight, fighting wind- 
 mills and doing penance, has more good qual- 
 ities than most of us will ever possess. He is 
 twice as knightly as Lancelot. All that Sidney 
 had he has, except sanity. Nobler ambitions 
 and purer purposes nowhere exist. Yet they 
 make of him a laughingstock for the ages. 
 Never was there such a comedy, and yet it is a 
 tragedy as deep and of the same kind as "Ham- 
 let" or "Lear." Are we not all Don Quixotes, 
 
''Not Unavailing." 33 
 
 ridiculous to every one but ourselves, fit sub- 
 jects for laughter or for tears ? What do all of 
 our most self -satisfying exertions amount to in 
 the end? How foolishly futile may all our 
 most earnest strivings for better things yet be! 
 
 Reaching this point in my reflections, I turned 
 from the now smoldering fire and looked out- 
 side, where a listless shower was stirred now 
 and then by a keen, ill-tempered gust of wind, 
 which passed away with a long, peevish wail. 
 I put on a raincoat, drew my hat down over 
 my face, and splashed out into a little patch of 
 woods just across the way. 
 
 This wood is only a little oasis of trees — • 
 oak, chestnut, and pine— on a gravelly hillside, 
 surrounded by fields and streets and houses. 
 The undergrowth is almost crushed out by the 
 ever-passing feet from the town. The thin 
 coating of fallen leaves, drifted into little 
 heaps here and there, was water-logged. Tiny 
 streams crept slowly down the wet trunks. 
 Under the pines the brown carpet was soft and 
 oozy. In places moss covered the rocky slope, 
 
 3 
 
34 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 and it was fresh and green between the bright, 
 clean-washed pebbles. All else was dull and 
 colorless. The force of the wind was broken, 
 although it stirred the branches overhead. 
 There was an incessant, soft, sibilant murmur 
 that made it all seem strangely lonely, as if I 
 were in the heart of a sure-enough forest in- 
 stead of within easy call of half a dozen houses. 
 In a little patch of briers and dead grasses a 
 covey of quail ran about, frightened, it seemed, 
 but unwilling to fly. A slender pine had lost its 
 grip in the unceasing struggle for existence, 
 and had been crowded to death by its sturdier 
 companions. I could almost pull it over. Its 
 efforts, too, had been in vain. 
 
 I went back to the edge of the wood, and a 
 sharper gust drove the cold rain into my face. 
 Instinctively I threw back my head and drew 
 a deeper breath. Then I made a rush against 
 the wind and rain and tumbled into the porch 
 flushed and laughing. 
 
 Inside I took up my book again and read to 
 two or three children the notable adventure of 
 
''Not Unavailing." 35 
 
 the peerless knight with the lethargic lions. 
 They seemed to enjoy it even if they did not 
 understand it. Yet why should that matter? 
 I am by no means sure that I understood it 
 myself. Enjoyment does not depend altogether 
 on understanding. At any rate, with a smile I 
 laid the book away. The luckless hero has 
 brought cheer to unnumbered thousands, and 
 will continue to do so through all the ages. 
 Who, then, will say that Don Quixote de la 
 Mancha fought in vain ? 
 
When the Circus Came to Town. 
 
 WAS wakened in the cool gray 
 dawn by the rattle of wagons and 
 the clatter of hoofs on the hard 
 road. People were already stream- 
 ing toward town, some of them having come 
 for miles. As the sun rose, their numbers in- 
 creased and their pace accelerated. All through 
 the early part of the glorious October day they 
 went on, a motley multitude, singly and in 
 groups, in wagons and carriages, on horseback 
 and on foot— all eager to get away from the 
 everyday beauties of cloudless skies and purple 
 horizons, of russet fields, of woods yellow and 
 scarlet and brown, and to reach the more un- 
 usual charms of tinsel trappings and shrill- 
 toned music. 
 
 I went with the latest of them and soon lost 
 myself in the changing, jostling crowd which 
 hurried here and loitered there, at one place 
 breaking into little groups, at another thicken- 
 
38 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 ing into an impenetrable mass. There were 
 people of all kinds, fashions of all dates, and 
 colors of every conceivable shade. The people 
 of the town looked with smiling pity on the 
 folks from " 'way back in the hills," who went 
 their way in peaceful ignorance of their urban 
 critics. The near-by farmers and their wives 
 stood in groups at the street corners shaking 
 hands and laughing and talking. The children 
 surged restlessly in an undercurrent about the 
 more sturdy forms of their elders. Every- 
 where was crowding, pushing, and good- 
 natured chaffing. 
 
 At length the parade came by. Between two 
 solid lines of gaping humanity it passed with 
 all its sham glory, its bizarre costumings, its 
 tarnished finery. The great lumbering car- 
 riages, the screeching calliope, the blaring, 
 thundering bands, the grotesque clowns — all 
 received their share of admiration. Deeper 
 interest, however, centered in the animals, from 
 the familiar horses to the unknown yak. I 
 knew that more than one boy, as he saw the 
 
When the Circus Came to Town. 39 
 
 great elephants pass with majestic tread, caught 
 wonderful glimpses of Indian jungles, strange 
 and shadowy and unreal; or, as he looked at 
 the polar bear in his pool, tingled with a longing 
 for the great white solitudes of the North and 
 recalled all he had read of the heroes of that 
 desolate clime. And who of us can see un- 
 moved the lords of the tropical forests, with all 
 their elemental fierceness still burning in their 
 eyes, crouch and cower before the man who has 
 tamed them ? 
 
 So the procession passed while all stared and 
 wondered and stood on tiptoe. Rich and poor, 
 white and black, aristocrat and outcast stood 
 side by side with one common interest until it 
 had gone. 
 
 Later came the performance; and who can 
 describe the glory of it all? Wonderful ani- 
 mals, daring deeds, impossible feats, the whole 
 enthralling atmosphere of the ring — these may 
 not have thrilled those poor creatures who were 
 indifferent, because they had seen many such 
 things ; but the boys and girls and all who had 
 
40 Field-Path and Highway, 
 
 kept the faith and simphcity of childhood knew 
 and felt their magic spell. It is the person who 
 is not afraid to yield himself to the sensations 
 of the hour who can succeed in having a good 
 time; others only try. The hill folk, simple, 
 uncultured, sometimes uncouth, find an almost 
 excessive joy in escaping for a day from the 
 strong, orderly dominion of nature into the 
 freedom of the noisy, crowded, glittering town. 
 The darkies too, with their barbaric delight in 
 show and sound, in pomp and pretense, and 
 their childlike love for the new and the mar- 
 velous, derive from the circus an intense hap- 
 piness. How inferior is the pleasure it gives to 
 the stylishly dressed young lady who surveys 
 the crowd with disdainful eyes and comments 
 on "the queer old creature with the red-and- 
 yellow shawl, the green waist, and the purple 
 plumes !" 
 
 For all, however, "show day" is a day of 
 unreality, of detachment from the common 
 round of life. That is why the fakers can that 
 day sell all sorts of things that nobody needs. 
 
When the Circus Came to Town. 41 
 
 and why so many are ready to spend their last 
 dollar to see the circus, or to buy presents for 
 wife or babies, or candy and lemonade for 
 "the girls" and "the rest of the fellers." To- 
 morrow will come the old familiar duties and 
 cares. To-day we will forget it all and live 
 only for to-day. We will make the most of 
 this strange, new, crowded, feverish wofld 
 while it is passing, for there will be many days 
 in which to work and think and live our wonted 
 lives. Of course the hard-headed business men 
 of the town and the prudent, conservative farm- 
 ers do not yield themselves to this feeling; 
 but the young and the thoughtless, the improv- 
 ident and the simple embrace it with abandon. 
 
 Next winter many a hard-earned dollar that 
 has been spent for an hour of strange sights or 
 for worthless baubles will be needed to buy the 
 necessaries of life. Is it wasted then? I am 
 not so sure. It is a great thing to have pleasant 
 memories and beautiful dreams, even if the 
 memories are only of a day of thoughtless 
 pleasure and the dreams are inspired by the 
 tawdry glitter and dazzle of a circus. 
 
4^ Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 I went through the day as did my friends. 
 My object was to have a good time. Accident- 
 ally I came upon a boy and a girl. They were 
 sitting on a goods box in the rear of a store and 
 had evidently forgotten all about the circus and 
 the crowd. He was holding her hand, and both 
 were looking over the housetops at the placid 
 sky. Occasionally, however, they glanced at 
 each other, and then both smiled frankly and 
 happily. They were dressed simply, in very 
 evident country style, and the few words I 
 heard them speak were in undeniable defiance 
 of the first rules of grammar. There was a 
 little bag of something — candy, I supposed — 
 sitting between them, and as she lifted her hand 
 to push back the hair which the breeze was 
 blowing into her eyes and mouth she knocked it 
 over. Neither noticed it, and her hand fell 
 back into his. It was evident that both were 
 poor. He was not handsome, and she was not 
 pretty ; but what did these things matter ? They 
 were in love. 
 
 As quickly and quietly as possible I with- 
 
When the Circus Came to Town. 43 
 
 drew, though they would have heeded me no 
 more than they did the bustle and noise of the 
 crowd. They will remember that day, not for 
 its sights and sounds, but because it was a day 
 of the heart. For under all the panoramic 
 changes of outward circumstance the great real- 
 ities of life steadfastly endure. 
 
JI Teller of Tales. 
 
 ^ HAVE had the pleasure of know- 
 ing a few great men and the honor 
 of knowing a great many men who 
 were not great. Among them all 
 there was none more worthy of honor than one 
 of the plainest and most unassuming of the 
 friends of my boyhood. Because I knew him 
 I am sure that my whole life has been bright- 
 er, and I have had through all the years a 
 fuller and truer appreciation of the sweetness 
 of life — the laughter and the smiles that lurk in 
 the commonest tasks of everyday existence. 
 
 He was not great either by birth or achieve- 
 ment. A simple carpenter, he loved his work 
 and evidently spent little time in futile dream- 
 ing. Neither would his features, if they had 
 been preserved in marble or bronze, have 
 charmed the world by their beauty or majesty. 
 Not more than five feet two in height, with the 
 hands of the toiler, bald head and snowy 
 
46 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 beard, kindly wrinkled face and twinkling eyes 
 — such is the picture memory paints of my hero. 
 Plain, with no great talents, without wealth 
 or fame or great influence; but I never heard 
 any one accuse him of wrongdoing or speak 
 unkindly of him. Temper he had and stern 
 determination, but I think few people suspected 
 it. Strictly honest, doing good to all — these 
 are noble traits, but I have known others who 
 shared them. But never have I known any one 
 so saturated with good humor, so redolent of 
 good cheer, so fond of telling a good story, and 
 with so many good stories to tell. A chance re- 
 mark, a passing neighbor, a piece of work, a 
 change in the weather — all these reminded him 
 of more stories. A dozen times a day some- 
 thing would happen to call forth the familiar 
 "That reminds me of" — Then as the laugh 
 went round he would go back to his saw or 
 chisel, ready to be reminded of something else. 
 All his stories were worth while. I never saw 
 a man bored by one of them ; and higher praise 
 than this, within the bounds of truth, would be 
 
A Teller of Tales. 47 
 
 hard to find. They were clean, too ; not raked 
 from cesspool and gutter, but fresh from field 
 and market place and fireside. And if the story 
 made you laugh at your neighbor, it was a 
 laugh in which he could join. 
 
 Folks wondered where he got them all, for 
 the supply seemed inexhaustible. Whatever he 
 may have forgotten, he must have remembered 
 every good story he ever heard. His delight at 
 hearing a new one was equaled only by his joy 
 in telling it, and it always left him better for 
 its sojourn with him. None of them will ever 
 be as fresh or as pertinent when put into dead 
 letters as when they fell in living words from 
 his lips. They were mostly little anecdotes of 
 common life which often one cannot recall 
 when he wishes, but which come up when least 
 expected to make one laugh all to himself. 
 
 A favorite was the tale of the young store- 
 keeper in the land of the Malungeons, who had 
 the misfortune to lose an eye. He went across 
 the hills and procured a glass one. After he 
 had come back to his old place, an old lady came 
 
48 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 into the store one day to wonder at this mar- 
 velous thing. The storekeeper answered her 
 questions patiently until she wound up by ask- 
 ing: ''And, Mr. Blank, kin ye see as well out 
 of thet eye as out of the other'n?" 
 
 It might have been at the same store that one 
 of those good-natured, worthless fellows whose 
 main purpose in life is to avoid labor, owed a 
 bill which had been running for some years. 
 In an unguarded moment he sold the store- 
 keeper some hogs, and that thrifty man pro- 
 ceeded to collect his account when he paid for 
 them. The old citizen stood it with the best 
 grace he could muster and then walked out to 
 where a crowd of his cronies were standing. 
 "Well, boys," he announced, 'T've paid Bill 
 Green up. I don't owe him anything now but 
 good will, and mighty darned little of that." 
 
 Over in the same region lived a pair oi law- 
 yers of rather indifferent reputation. They 
 were defending a pretty tough character in a 
 case that looked hopeless. During the trial, as 
 was often done, they took him into a little side 
 
A Teller of Tales. 49 
 
 room for consultation. The junior member 
 of the firm soon returned, but the older man 
 stayed out a long time. Suddenly he came 
 running in, exclaiming that the fellow had 
 jumped out of the window and ''skedaddled." 
 There was, of course, great excitement, and the 
 placid innocency of the lawyers' faces excited 
 the judge's suspicion. Turning to them in an- 
 ger, he exclaimed : 'Tf I knew that either of 
 you had anything to do with this, you should 
 be disbarred from the courts of this State for- 
 ever." The older lawyer arose and bowed 
 politely. "If it please your honor, you shall 
 never know it." Later it was learned that they 
 had turned the trick, just as the judge suspected. 
 Of more practical application was the account 
 of the boy who was apprenticed to a carpenter. 
 When he came home at the end of his first week, 
 his father wanted to know what he had learned. 
 "I've learned how to make a wedge just an 
 inch long." "Huh! I can do that," retorted 
 the old man. "Let's see you." The father 
 sawed off a block an inch in length and went 
 
 4 
 
50 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 to work with his hatchet. About the third lick 
 he cut a chunk off his thumb and jumped up in 
 a rage. "Here ! you get down here and make 
 one," he ordered. The boy picked up a long 
 stick, made his wedge, and then sawed it off 
 an inch long. ''Well, you have learned some- 
 thing," admitted the man. 
 
 There was a moral, too, in the tale of the 
 man who fed his slaves very scantily and 
 watched them while they were at work. One 
 day two of them were sawing wood with true 
 darky slowness when one caught a glimpse of 
 the master peering through the bushes. ''Sam," 
 he demanded, "what's dis saw sayin' ?" Sam 
 listened to the slow strokes and shook his head. 
 "It says, 'D-r-y b-r-e-a-d, d-r-y b-r-e-a-d.' " 
 The owner slipped off home, had a big dinner 
 cooked, and that afternoon listened again. The 
 saw was going at a lively pace. The first darky 
 asked once more : "What's dis saw sayin' now, 
 Sam ?" Sam gave an extra sweep to his stroke 
 as he answered : "It says, 'Bacon an' beans, sop 
 an' puddin' ; bacon an' beans, sop an' puddin'.' " 
 
A Teller of Tales. 51 
 
 Wholly without uplift or inspiration was the 
 account of the hill farmer's band of roving 
 sheep which a neighbor, angered by a raid upon 
 his crops, put up and held for ransom. Receiv- 
 ing word of what had happened, the shepherd 
 went to town and sought for inspiration. He 
 received it, too, for that evening he came back 
 riding rather unsteadily, and called his angry 
 neighbor to the gate. "Bill," he asked in tones 
 of maudlin penitence, "don't you love me?" 
 The neighbor evaded the question, but he per- 
 sisted : "So you don't love me. Bill?" "Yes," 
 said the neighbor, tiring of his questions and 
 presence, "I love yoii; go on home." "So you 
 love me, Bill ?" "Yes," with much impatience. 
 "Then why don't you feed my sheep?" The 
 next morning the released sheep went wander- 
 ing homeward. 
 
 Nor was there much of sanctity in the story 
 of a big revival during which one of the breth- 
 ren became very much excited and very fervent 
 in prayer. "O Lord," he shouted, "send down a 
 blessing as big as Brother Jackson's foot, so 
 
52 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 that this house may not be able to contain it." 
 And over in the corner another brother piped 
 in a shrill voice: "The Lord grant it — ah!" 
 
 This ''ah" at the end of a sentence, or rath- 
 er of a respiration, familiar to all v^ho have 
 heard Dunker or "Hardshell" Baptist preachers, 
 added a unique flavor to more than one yarn. 
 For example, that of the inspired minister in 
 some far-away mountain cove who, in speaking 
 with prophetic vision of the days to come, rose 
 to this height of eloquence: "And, my breth- 
 ering — ah — the day will come — ah — when the 
 sound of the gritter — ah — and the tinkling of 
 the sang hoe — ah — shall be heard in these hills 
 and hollers no more, no more forever — ^ah." 
 
 "No more forever" will the cheery face and 
 the hearty laugh of the old carpenter be seen or 
 heard, but so long as one who knew him lives 
 he will be remembered. Better still, he will al- 
 ways be remembered with a smile. Possibly, 
 too, with a sigh ; for though he lived out man's 
 allotted time, it seemed strange and sad that 
 gne so radiant of life and joy should die. 
 
A Teller of Tales. 53 
 
 Yet if there is a touch of sadness in our 
 memory of him, there is nothing of bitterness. 
 There could be none in the memory of a man 
 who gathered and reflected all of life's sun- 
 shine, and who went through the world gladly, 
 hopefully, dispensing laughter on every side, 
 and yet 
 
 "Through all this tract of years 
 Wearing the white flower of a blameless life." 
 
77?^ Master's Discipline. 
 
 OR twenty years Edmund Garnett 
 had ruled over the school at the old 
 academy. Then he decided that he 
 needed rest, and a new teacher was 
 secured. This new hand naturally failed to 
 give satisfaction, and there was a general de- 
 mand for the old master to take his accustomed 
 place. He was glad to do it, too, for his year's 
 rest had told on him more than had any three 
 years of work. 
 
 On the first morning of the school we were 
 all early in our places waiting for his arrival. 
 Larry King, the oldest student, had told us 
 what to do, and we were ready. As soon as 
 the familiar figure entered the door we began a 
 great stamping of feet and clapping of hands 
 by way of welcome. He gave a quick glance 
 over the room, brought his old hickory pointer 
 down across the table which served him for a 
 desk, and said sharply : "Enough of that, now !" 
 In an instant we were all sitting silent and 
 
56 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 rigid. Yet for all his terrible frown I do not 
 think he was much displeased. He knew there 
 was no mockery in our welcome, even if he 
 could not tolerate such a breach of discipline. 
 
 Discipline was Mr. Garnett's strong point, 
 and his methods and rules were all his own. 
 We had many privileges, but there were a few 
 things we must not do. First-year pupils were 
 exempt from all but the mildest punishments; 
 but for all others, to throw across the room, to 
 cheat at lessons or at play, to strike or tease a 
 smaller child, or willfully to disobey any com- 
 mand was a capital offense, and the punishment 
 was certain and unvarying. The culprit, if a 
 girl, big or little, was sent home for a day ; but 
 when a boy was guilty the teacher would pick 
 up that same stout pointer, beckon with it to the 
 offender, and say in a voice hard and tense: 
 "Come up here, sir!" Then the room would 
 be vibrant with the rhythmic swish and thud of 
 a four-foot switch. The bigger the boy, the 
 more he got; but aside from this, no partiality 
 was shown. 
 
The Master's Discipline. S7 
 
 Mr. Garnett had a sharp voice, too, and could 
 bring that deadly pointer down on the table with 
 a *'Well, now !" that was guaranteed to frighten 
 any six- or seven-year-old half out of his wits. 
 Yet with these same noisy, restless tots he was 
 the most patient of men. He never tired of 
 explaining the mysteries of elementary mathe- 
 matics or of rubbing in the alphabetic formulae. 
 The little ones may have feared him during 
 school hours, but when he laid aside his hickory 
 scepter there was always a clamorous insistence 
 for him' to "come and play." He often went; 
 and once, when a little girl was accidentally 
 knocked over and hurt, he picked her up and 
 carried her home, nearly a mile, while we stood 
 about and waited for his return. 
 
 There was, for a while, little or no difference 
 in that last year from all the years that had 
 gone before. True, he lingered more fondly 
 over the torturous and knotty problems he loved, 
 and told with more thrilling emphasis those old 
 history stories of courage and devotion which 
 under his magic touch had always worn for us 
 
58 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 the garments of romance and poetry. True, 
 his hair was whiter and his eyes dimmer than 
 they had been; but his voice was as sharp, his 
 discipHne as exacting, and his sHm, wiry figure 
 as active as ever. 
 
 Suddenly with a stinging shock the change 
 came. Bob Harris was caught at his old trick 
 of flipping gravel across at the girls. The 
 teacher stepped to his desk, picked up his point- 
 er, and said in the old, familiar way: "Bob, 
 come up here, sir." Bob came and stood before 
 him. He raised the pointer once, twice, and 
 lowered it each time. Standing grim and si- 
 lent, he looked at the long-legged, muscular 
 chap of fourteen whom he had seen grow up 
 from a chubby, red-faced youngster of six, 
 and into whose stubborn, wrong-set head he 
 had drilled and coaxed and frailed all of the 
 little knowledge it held. Then, as Bob looked 
 around, he said brokenly : "I am not able to do 
 it. I shall never whip you again, Bob. Go back 
 to your seat and behave yourself." And Bob, 
 who had taken many whippings and grinned 
 
The Master's Discipline. 59 
 
 complacently under the hardest of them, went 
 to his seat, put his head down on his anns, and 
 cried like a baby. That was on Tuesday. All 
 the rest of the week the teacher was very gentle, 
 and we were all so good that it was positively 
 painful. The next Monday morning Larry 
 King took charge of the school. 
 
 The old master did not get sick. He 
 only sat around by some friendly fireside and 
 dozed or told tales of Roman or American his- 
 tory while the flame of life burned lower and 
 lower. He had no home. Most of the time he 
 stayed with his crony, Squire King, although he 
 occasionally visited about in his old fashion. 
 It never, I think, entered his mind that he could 
 be unwelcome anywhere; and if any of his 
 people had felt that it would be a burden to 
 care for him a whole year, I am sure they 
 would have been ashamed to say so. 
 
 Singly or in little groups all of us visited 
 him occasionally, and he greeted us as equals, 
 not as pupils. I do not know whether any one 
 told him of our growing realization of what 
 
6o Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 we all owed him, but we tried in every other 
 way to make him feel it. And none of us tried 
 harder than did Bob Harris. 
 
 Poor old Bob! He was the old man's faith- 
 ful attendant until that sunny June day when 
 we stood around the open grave in the quiet old 
 churchyard. Since then he has won his way 
 and made his mark, has become the great man 
 among all of us who left the peaceful neighbor- 
 hood of the old schoolhouse to go out into the 
 great world. But when I talked with him a 
 few days ago the tears came into his eyes 
 as he spoke of the old master who had la- 
 bored so long and patiently with him, and of 
 that last thrashing which he did not get. 
 
For Love of Margery. 
 
 T was the middle of April, and the 
 wild crab tree was in full bloom. 
 Standing in a little thicket of plum 
 bushes in the midst of the rolling, 
 rich-green pasture on which the cattle had not 
 yet been turned, it gripped the outcropping 
 limestone with knotty roots and lifted its won- 
 derful crown of pink above the white blossoms 
 of its humbler neighbors. In its branches the 
 bees came and went with untiring murmur of 
 delight. The shadowed space beneath was a 
 veritable temple of fragrance, warm, rich, 
 sensuous. The sunlight patterned a soft mo- 
 saic on bare brown earth and gray lichened 
 stone. 
 
 The girl sitting there was, however, only 
 vaguely conscious of all this; and while the boy 
 beside her now and then lifted his head and 
 drew in a deeper breath, his thoughts too were 
 plainly of other things. To both of them, 
 
62 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 springtime and summertime, the fertile stretch- 
 es of pasture and meadow and fresh-harrowed 
 cornfields, the vivid green of the young wheat 
 and the varied hues of the half -grown leaves in 
 the woodlands, even the beauty and sweetness 
 of their own blossom-bo wered retreat, were 
 matters of little concern. 
 
 Lawrence had been unfolding his plans, and 
 to them Lena had been forced to listen with 
 thoughts of admiration and words of approval. 
 But the more he talked, the more keenly she 
 felt that, whether or not he so willed it, he 
 was planning a life with which she would have 
 less and less connection; that if he did the 
 things he had set his heart upon doing, he must 
 be lost to her. 
 
 Sweethearts they had been from childhood. 
 They had played together, gone to school to- 
 gether, and felt themselves now pledged to each 
 other even without formal words of betrothal. 
 Both had known more of privation and strug- 
 gle than came to most of the young folks of 
 their neighborhood. Lena's mother was a 
 
For Love of Margery. 63 
 
 widow who had made her Hving by helping the 
 wives of the prosperous farmers of the com- 
 munity with their household tasks; and circum- 
 stances had forced the girl, young as she was, 
 to bend her shoulders to the yoke of labor. 
 Lawrence, equally poor, had struggled well 
 against the odds of fortune, and was now at 
 twenty a leader in some respects among the 
 sturdy boys who had enjoyed far greater op- 
 portunities. There was decision in his chin and 
 confidence in his eyes; and when he flung up 
 his head and announced that he was going to 
 college and that he had plans even beyond that, 
 the eirl at his side had no doubt that he would 
 do it. She knew enough of life, too, to know 
 that a man of the kind he meant to be would 
 seek other companionship than hers. Nor had 
 she failed to note lately a less demonstrative 
 affection, an air of meditative preoccupation, 
 and eyes that turned in silent admiration too 
 often to another face. Lena had not given up 
 her lover; but she felt that he was surely slip- 
 ping away from her, that the childhood love 
 
64 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 which had deepened in her heart as the years 
 passed by was gradually ebbing away from his. 
 
 It was cruel, too; for Lawrence was all she 
 had, and Margery — Margery had everything! 
 Wealth, beauty, a rich dower of culture, above 
 all a sweet simplicity of nature and a purity of 
 soul which made her loved of all who knew her. 
 Lena herself loved Margery ; for when the dark 
 days had come the petted darling of fortune 
 had gone into the little cabin home tenderly and 
 helpfully as a sister might have done and, de- 
 spite the differences in their lives and their for- 
 tunes, had become the best of all of Lena's girl 
 friends. 
 
 None could know how much the love of 
 Margery had helped the proud, hot-tempered 
 little girl to bear the slights and the unspoken 
 scorn of other more fortunate maidens, how 
 much comfort she had had from the unaffected, 
 unselfish friendship of one who was the ac- 
 knowledged leader among all the girls she 
 knew. Until Margery had shown her, she had 
 not known how beautiful she might be. It was 
 
For Love of Margery. 65 
 
 Margery who taught her how to dress her hair 
 in the way Lawrence Hked best, Margery who 
 helped her to make her simple frocks so fit and 
 tasteful, Margery who had spurred her to 
 carry on her early neglected education. Yet 
 all this had been no hardship to Margery. Lena 
 could not feel that she should be asked to pay 
 for it with all her hopes of the future. 
 
 But she could not blame Margery, and she 
 never dreamed of blaming her sweetheart. To 
 her he had long been so nearly perfect that his 
 actions went unquestioned; and when she felt 
 that he was going away from her, she blamed 
 herself, not him. 
 
 So she praised his high ideals and encour- 
 aged his ambitions, while her heart cried out: 
 "O ! why not a little home here for you and me, 
 and for us the old familiar life with only love 
 to make its burdens easier?" 
 
 Perhaps the boy divined something of this, 
 
 for a shadow came across his face and his eyes 
 
 grew troubled. He laid his hand on hers. "I 
 
 wish you could go too, Lena. Maybe I can find 
 
 5 
 
66 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 some way to make it easier for you. If you 
 could only have a year at school and get to rest 
 a little!" 
 
 "You know I can't leave mother," she said. 
 
 "No," he agreed, and both were silent. 
 
 Directly she arose. "I must go home." 
 
 "I'll go with you." 
 
 "No, not this time, Lawrence. I'll see you 
 at church to-morrow." 
 
 He was mystified and half piqued by her re- 
 fusal. He did not guess that she only wanted 
 to cry. 
 
 Scarcely had she passed from sight when he 
 caught a glimpse of a little green jacket in the 
 valley road. In an instant he was on his feet 
 watching with parted lips, for Margery was 
 riding there. Had Lena seen him then, her 
 tears might have fallen even more profusely. 
 Yet for love of Margery, Lena, reaching home 
 with reddened eyes and troubled spirit and 
 finding her friend there, greeted her with more 
 than usual kindness. 
 
 The summer grew old, and all the neighbor- 
 
For Love of Margery. 67 
 
 hood gossips said that it was for love of Mar- 
 gery that Lawrence toiled so fiercely and stud- 
 ied so earnestly. When he left in the fall, these 
 wise ones said she had smiled on his going. 
 Lena mattered little to them. They could not 
 know the loneliness of that wounded heart, 
 torn between gratitude and a fierce primal sense 
 of wrong, suffering- alone with no friend to 
 confide in, and with a confiding friend whose 
 gentlest hint of joy was as the thrust of a knife. 
 Still Lena heard without one word which might 
 have brought doubt or trouble, repressing brave- 
 ly her constant desire to cry aloud: ''You ha^-e 
 everything, and he was all I had ; yet you take 
 him away from me and still pretend to be my 
 friend." 
 
 Two years had passed, and again a youth 
 and a maiden sat under the blossoming crab 
 tree. Lena had seen them going that way, and 
 somehow she felt that the end had come— the 
 end, not of life, but of dreams, a far sadder 
 thing. From the window of the little cabin 
 she saw them leaving, hand in hand, just as 
 
68 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 the sun touched the hills in the west and threw 
 over the delicate beauty of the blossoming tree 
 a shimmering mesh of translucent gold. She 
 gripped her hands and, looking out across the 
 shadow-barred landscape, saw the long, dull 
 years that waited her, the ceaseless round of 
 toil, the slow relapse into the slipshod manners 
 and vacant thoughts of drudgery's daughters, 
 the ever-recurring sense of wrong and pain at 
 each sight of the happiness in which she had 
 once fancied she should share. She cried aloud 
 and buried her face in her arms, sobbing with- 
 out restraint. Then as the faint voice of her 
 mother came to her in frightened inquiry, she 
 dried her eyes and softly murmured false ex- 
 cuses while she soothed the troubled invalid 
 back into calmness. This, it seemed, was the 
 one good thing life now held for her. 
 
 All the neighborhood gossips said that for 
 love of Margery Lawrence had toiled and 
 wrought and made himself a man — he who 
 had been the very synonym for poverty and 
 lowliness of birth. They did not know that for 
 
For Love of Margery. 69 
 
 love of Margery a little, loving, rebellious girl 
 had done a far finer and an incomparably hard- 
 er thing — that Lena had been able to greet 
 Margery with smiling lips, to seek to add to 
 her already overflowing happiness, and even 
 partly to forgive. 
 
 For all that he had done, moreover, the man 
 had his abundant reward; but to the lonely 
 woman there could be no recompense. Even 
 neighborhood gossips do not see all that is 
 taking place before their eyes, nor has any rev- 
 elation yet answered for us the simplest riddle 
 of the humblest life. 
 
Dags of Happiness. 
 
 % 
 
 Y happiest day? It is hard to say, 
 for into each day both joy and 
 sorrow enter. Looking backward 
 through the years, it is often hard 
 to decide whether a particular day holds more 
 of happiness or of sadness. Still there are a 
 few days which I remember as preeminently 
 days of gladness. 
 
 I was certainly happy that August afternoon 
 when my friend and I lay in the shade of the 
 big elm tree in the meadow and talked of our 
 plans and hopes for the future. We both had 
 high aspirations and great ambitions. And as 
 we lay there and watched the white clouds 
 drift across the sky and the black shadows si- 
 lently lengthen as the slow hours went by, they 
 seemed easy of attainment. He was to be rich 
 and powerful; I was to delve deeply into rare 
 old volumes of antiquated lore and forgotten 
 wisdom and from them to draw the inspira- 
 
72 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 tion that should make me wise and famous. 
 Knowledge and wealth, honor and power 
 seemed to us then all that were to be desired; 
 and we had no doubt that they would one day 
 be ours. We did not dream that we were as 
 near them then as we should ever be, or that, 
 should we attain them, they would bring no joy 
 equal to that of our fond and vain anticipation. 
 Soon we had to take our places in the prosaic, 
 workaday world and turn our hands and our 
 thoughts to life's common tasks. Still it was 
 not until long years had come and gone that 
 our bright dreams faded and our thoughts fit- 
 ted themselves to the real world about us. 
 
 Another happy day was that on which a let- 
 ter came to me bringing the first note of ac- 
 ceptance for one of my verses. The kind 
 words of the editor brought a deep, quiet joy 
 to my heart and seemed to foretell the realiza- 
 tion of another radiant dream. It seemed to 
 me then that the world must see my verses and 
 note them and feel their thrill as I had felt it. 
 Perhaps it will—for that was several years ago, 
 
Days of Happiness. 73 
 
 and they are yet unpublished — but I doubt it. 
 Others equally good have been published and 
 no one apparently has heeded them, while 
 some of those which seemed to my partial mind 
 to hold most of sweetness and beauty are still 
 with me after many rejections. 
 
 Joy clings, too, about the memory of that 
 night when some half dozen of us stood in a 
 little room, silent but with smiling faces and 
 buoyant hearts. For months we had labored — 
 all of us ardently ; all of us, as I believe, unself- 
 ishly — for a cause which had seemed to us wor- 
 thy of such devotion. Now it had triumphed ; 
 and each of us, I doubt not, felt that he had 
 done something tangible to make the world 
 happier and better. We fancied that by our 
 help it had taken an unmistakable step toward 
 the better day, but now we know that it felt 
 our efforts only "as the sea's self would heed a 
 pebble cast." I still think that we did well; 
 but what seemed so much then is now very 
 
 little. 
 
 Happiest of all days, perhaps— and yet most 
 
;^4 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 deeply sorrowful — was one in mid-autumn, 
 when the woods were ablaze with color and the 
 distant hills blended into the purple sky. She 
 sat on a stone, I on the grass at her feet. The 
 breeze, soft, clinging, fragrant, blew her hair 
 about her face and chased tiny shadows across 
 her dimpled chin. Her eyes were as blue as the 
 zenith, as deep and tender as the haze of the val- 
 leys. It seemed then that the earth was only 
 goodness and beauty and love and joy. To-day 
 was sweet, and all to-morrows should be as 
 to-day. But we were young, and the years 
 were long and wrought great changes; and it 
 is easy to love, but hard to be brave and patient 
 and true. 
 
 So sorrow and darkness came, and the 
 knowledge that the real tragedies of life lie not 
 in defeat or failure or death, but in broken 
 faith and in thoughtless cmelty to those we 
 love. 
 
The Lure of To-Morrow. 
 
 NE'S ideals and ambitions change 
 wonderfully with the passing of 
 the years. The boy growing to 
 manhood outgrows his ideas of 
 life and his aspirations for himself just as 
 surely as he outgrows his coat and shoes. 
 The man, too, if his spirit be not wholly stag- 
 nant, flows on, almost imperceptibly to himself 
 perhaps, from one viewpoint and one stage of 
 desire to another and another; and while each 
 successive conception or longing is likely to 
 be closely related to the one preceding it, this 
 gradual progress may lead him on to opinions 
 and hopes as different from those of his youth 
 as the marshes at the river's mouth are differ- 
 ent from the hills among which it had its 
 source. 
 
 Generally, too, the aspirations of youth are 
 lofty and picturesque, and those of maturity 
 are flat and commonplace. The young col- 
 legian, if our jests have any basis in fact, has 
 
76 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 an ambition to reform his fellow men, to 
 change the destiny of the State, to make him- 
 self famous and powerful. We laugh at the 
 ambition; but for all that it seems to us a 
 splendid thing, a much more splendid thing, 
 than the modest ambition of the same collegian 
 when he has become a man of middle age and 
 is likely to be ceaselessly busy with such prob- 
 lems as those of family support, neighborhood 
 welfare, and the adjustment of his work to his 
 strength. Truly these are small affairs com- 
 pared with the guiding of the State or the writ- 
 ing of an epic. Yet is it so certain, after all, 
 that because the life current flows more 
 smoothly, with less of rippling sound and bub- 
 bling brilliance, it flows with less power or is 
 less pure and refreshing? 
 
 This is the preachment which was meant to 
 be a logical conclusion to the matter following 
 — that is, that the desire to do a little thing, if 
 the thing be necessary to be done, may be as 
 laudable and as truly heroic as the desire to do 
 a great thing. 
 
The Lure of To-Morrozv. yy 
 
 The moral has been placed at the beginning 
 lest any should fail to come to it, and also to 
 assure those who dislike consequential moraliz- 
 ings that the worst they have to fear has been 
 reached. If the moral displease any, let him 
 leave the fable unread: for beyond the lesson 
 he will find only the happy recollections of a 
 boyhood day and the soberer meditations of one 
 of manhood's leisure hours, and these recol- 
 lections and meditations, to one who has not felt 
 the like, may prove but tiresome things. 
 
 I. 
 
 Down into the little hollow, carpeted thick 
 with leaves of lustrous brown and darkened 
 red and shaded yellow, the sunlight crept to 
 cling and linger. The few leaves yet hanging 
 on the oaks and dogwoods and hickories loos- 
 ened themselves one by one and came down to 
 the earth softly, slowly, turning round and 
 round, sinking to rest with only the faintest 
 murmur of content. Now and then a nut or 
 an acorn fell swiftly with a sharp click. A 
 
78 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 wood sparrow or two moved about in the under- 
 growth; from a distance came the chirring of 
 a squirrel; a noisy jay flew overhead once with 
 a sharp, hoarse cry. The winding woodland 
 ways were hazy with the autumn smokiness, 
 softly bright with the slanting sunshine, restful 
 with drowsy warmth, sweet with the faint fra- 
 grance of leaf and bough and ripened forest 
 fruit. From the leaf -flecked masses at the base 
 of the white oaks on up to their topmost glis- 
 tening twigs the peace of perfect maturity and 
 of ended effort reached, filling the hollow as 
 completely and as perceptibly as did the gold 
 and purple of the sun- woven haze. 
 
 The boy sitting on the old log with the gun 
 across his knees let the squirrel grate on un- 
 heeded, and did not even raise his eyes to watch 
 the course of the screaming jay. He seemed a 
 part of the landscape, so still he was, so dream- 
 ily intent on things of other days. But while 
 the dreams of tree and shrub were plainly rem- 
 iniscent of summer, his thoughts were all of the 
 future. 
 
The Lure of To-Morrow. 79 
 
 One would scarcely have fancied it from his 
 idle hands and listless pose, but he was even 
 then looking at himself through the eyes of 
 happy anticipation and seeing a man strong, 
 active, wise, standing like Saul among his fel- 
 lows, and leading them by force of his own 
 great name wherever he would. Parts of the 
 pictures moving before his eyes were vague and 
 fomiless: but always there was in the center, 
 clearly outlined, the image of the man he meant 
 to be. And ever this man was doing some he- 
 roic thing, something from which lesser men 
 shrank or for which their strength would not 
 avail. 
 
 Not once did he falter — this brave, wise man 
 — not once did he stoop to aught that was little 
 or mean. True to his own high ideals, he, the 
 champion of a people's rights, faced, calm and 
 resolute, the forces of evil and, though sorely 
 beset and often hindered, marched steadfastly 
 on to complete victory. Standing before the 
 men of his time when they were in the wrong, 
 this hero spoke to them with words so wise, so 
 
8o Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 true, so sweetly persuasive, and so irresistibly 
 convincing that all saw the soundness of his 
 reason, and those who had come to question or 
 to scoff remained to pay him the homage of 
 applause. 
 
 So the pictures passed, one after another, as 
 clear unto the spirit's rapt vision as were the 
 clustered tree trunks and the inviting vistas 
 between them to the placid eyes that looked 
 out into the forest's depths. Statesman, orator, 
 soldier, poet, counselor, friend of all good, foe 
 of all evil — what was not this man to be ? The 
 best of every hero the lad had known went into 
 his make-up; he could not but be greater than 
 them all. 
 
 A vain dream? Yes, but a noble one — one 
 of that splendid race of dreams tO' which all 
 our worthiest actions and our truest ambitions 
 trace their language. Heroic deeds are not 
 born of unworthy ideals, nor did shameful hope 
 ever beget noble achievement. 
 
 So the afternoon crept gently by, while the 
 brooding sunshine paled and died away; and 
 
The Lure of To-Morrow. 8i 
 
 the boy, with gun and game forgotten, held 
 high converse with the noblest of mankind. 
 
 A glorious dream; for however much it 
 might fail of realization, his life could not but 
 be better because of it. 
 
 When at length the sun dropped out of sight 
 and he waked from his reverie, rose from his 
 primitive seat, and turned his face homeward, 
 his eyes were those of one who has seen a vi- 
 sion, and his step was that of a conquering 
 king. 
 
 II. 
 
 A gray day in mid-October with threats of 
 rain and hints of coming frost. The woods 
 were mostly green as yet, although the dog- 
 woods and sourwoods were brilliant in red 
 and the walnuts and hickories were light yel- 
 low. Other trees, too, were preparing them- 
 selves for the autumn festival, unusually de- 
 layed. The persimmons and sassafras bushes 
 were splotched with brownish red and dark 
 yellow; lemon-tinted leaves spotted the sweet 
 gums ; the ash trees at a little distance showed 
 6 
 
82 Field-Paih and Highway. 
 
 silvery gray with hints of rose ; even a few of 
 the oaks displayed patches of gay color against 
 their sober green. To the man striding rapidly 
 down the narrow footpath through the wood 
 the trunks all seemed gray — light gray with 
 tints of green those of the ash and sweet gum, 
 darker those of the aged chestnuts, almost black 
 those of the slender walnut and stalwart black 
 oak. Under his feet bright, new-fallen leaves 
 lay on the faded foliage of former autumns. 
 
 The man, walking with quick, decisive steps, 
 noticed all these things, but gave them little real 
 heed. He was too busy with his plans and 
 dreams. Little, indeed, did these dreams resem- 
 ble the gorgeous pictures that unrolled them- 
 selves before the boyish vision. The man had 
 no thought of leading his fellows, of swaying 
 them with fervid eloquence, of dazzling them 
 with brilliant achievements. He found it hard 
 enough, in the rasping contact of business life, 
 to make those with whom> he dealt sure of his 
 honesty and good will. It was not always easy 
 at the same time to render to others what he 
 
The Lure of To-Morrow. 83 
 
 felt due to them and to protect himself from 
 injury. Taking an earnest interest in the great 
 world movements of the race, he hoped to exert 
 no influence beyond the narrow circle of his 
 own acquaintance. He dwelt as fondly on the 
 idea of providing a better school for his own 
 and his neighbors' children as the boy had dwelt 
 on the inspiring message of the man who was 
 to bend wrong-thinking multitudes to his will. 
 
 Even the darling dream of the man — the one 
 dearest ambition, whose promised realization 
 now lent vigor to his step and luster to his eye 
 — would have seemed to the boy a trifling thing. 
 It was only to make a little home, to add to its 
 beauty and charm and cheer, to make it a place 
 of comfort and repose to those he loved, to 
 watch it grow ever sweeter and dearer to them, 
 and to have it send abroad from open door and 
 shining window a light of welcome or of kindly 
 sympathy to every guest or passer-by. Should 
 not any man in this land of opportunity be able 
 to do all this and to count it but part of his day's 
 work and achievement? So it would have 
 
84 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 seemed to the boy ; but to the man the prospect 
 was one of supreme allurement. Could he but 
 do this, he would feel that all his years of effort 
 had been well repaid. 
 
 By no means an unworthy ambition; but 
 could it be the deepest and most abiding this 
 strong man knew ? He said to himself that it 
 was; but perhaps he was mistaken, for there 
 still remained to him one boyish dream. To 
 write something, however small it might be, 
 "that the world would not willingly let die ;" to 
 leave behind him with even a few of earth's 
 myriads one little gleam of cheerful memory 
 and a half -forgotten name — deep down in his 
 heart this longing still abode and would not let 
 him rest. Often and often he had felt that the 
 miracle was wrought and had written down the 
 wonderful new thought with eager hand and 
 panting breath, glad beyond the conception of 
 those who think only of the sordid things of 
 life. But ever, when the spell had been broken, 
 when the instant's white-fused heat had died 
 out of the fashioned words, he had looked upon 
 
The Lure of To-Morrow. 85 
 
 them and sighed and known that the dream had 
 not yet come true. For always the finest and 
 purest of the golden thought or the crystal 
 emotion had been lost in the making of phrase 
 and sentence; and always the written word, 
 form and polish it as he might, was lacking in 
 the celestial gleam. 
 
 Still the dream endured. Perhaps, he was 
 thinking even now, when the roses should gar- 
 land the fence of the cottage yard and the 
 village children should stop to watch the pi- 
 geons on the roof, there might come the finer 
 inspiration and life's great aspiration be real- 
 ized. 
 
 And so, indeed, it might ; for the possibilities 
 of youth are beyond the solemn computation of 
 the wise, and he is still young who retains even 
 one of his vouthful dreams. 
 
The Chords of Memory. 
 
 |N places the branches of the oaks 
 and chestnuts met across the nar- 
 row road, and here my horse 
 walked over a rustling carpet of 
 yellow and brown and dark, dull red. Again, 
 the road wound along the hillside, and I could 
 look down into the gray and brown clearings 
 of the valleys or across above them to the op- 
 posite hills glorious in all the colors of the 
 mountain autumn. Once I rode for a little 
 while along the crest of one of the higher 
 ridges and saw, beyond the gold and crimson 
 foothills, the mighty summits of the Smokies 
 rising in purple majesty until they faded away 
 into an indistinct union with the purpler sky. 
 
 The leaves fell ceaselessly and with a soft, 
 whispering sound that seemed part of the pre- 
 vailing silence. Once or twice a jay called 
 harshly or darted, a gust of vivid blue, through 
 the glowing branches. Shy quail and timid 
 
88 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 ground squirrels, with coloring as rich as that 
 of the leaves, scurried fearfully away at my 
 approach, and gray squirrels whisked them- 
 selves out of sight around the trunks of pro- 
 tecting trees. A yoke of little oxen I met, 
 dragging a two-wheeled cart, on which were a 
 bag of corn, the boy who was driving, and two 
 little girls in pink dresses and sunbonnets. And 
 a mile farther on a long, lanky mountaineer, 
 clad in a striped shirt and blue trousers which 
 lacked two inches of meeting his shoes, crossed 
 the road in front of me. He had an old squirrel 
 rifle on his shoulder, and passed without turn- 
 ing his head. The rest of the way I saw no one, 
 except once, half a mile down the valley, I saw 
 a woman building a fire under a big kettle out 
 in the yard. 
 
 I was just beginning to wonder if I had 
 missed the way when I saw the little clearing 
 far up on the side of the hill — the gray cabin 
 with the orchard behind it and the flaunting 
 cosmos and rich-hued marigolds in front. Half 
 a dozen hounds sprang from nowhere into loud- 
 
The Chords of Memory. 89 
 
 mouthed evidence as I rode up, and then my 
 friend, the mountaineer, came around the cor- 
 ner of the house. 
 
 He seated me in a spHt-bottomed chair on the 
 narrow porch, and while the dogs gravely ex- 
 amined me he told of their wonderful qualities. 
 I know nothing of hounds except that they 
 make fine music when they run of nights ; but a 
 kindred spirit of vagabondage had drawn their 
 owner and myself together. We both loved the 
 woods and the long, leisurely days of idle pre- 
 tense at hunting. So in a world of men who 
 seem to have little time to get acquainted with 
 the kindly old earth and small desire to quit 
 working and thinking and just to live through 
 the mellow, rich-flavored autumn days, we two 
 had become in a short week or so the best of 
 friends — friends who did not pretend to under- 
 stand each other, but who were glad to accept 
 and be accepted on trust. 
 
 Around the corner of the cabin came, as the 
 hunter had come, his wife, wrinkled, keen-eyed, 
 thin, and with the sharp, whining speech so 
 
90 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 common among the women of the hills, and his 
 daughter, graceful, slender, with eyes that 
 sparkled and cheeks as rosy as the apples she 
 carried. Beautiful she was with that beauty 
 which is purely of the flesh, and which, 
 among the women of her class, usually fades 
 so early. I envied her sweetheart, but I could 
 not but feel sorry for her. Scarcely eighteen, 
 "she Was a woman now, with the hopes and the 
 heart of a woman." At forty she would be 
 old, wrinkled, perhaps hard of feature and 
 sharp of speech like her mother. 
 
 We sat there eating apples, crisp and juicy 
 and flavored with all the aromatic wine that 
 nature could distill from the soil and the air 
 of the mountains, and saw the sun go down in 
 a far-flung splendor of flame and scarlet be- 
 hind hills where orange and red and gold and 
 green were mingled in a prodigal profusion of 
 richness. Then as the western sky faded from 
 flame to rose, from rose to pink, and from pink 
 to a clear, cold gray, we saw the darkness thick- 
 en in the valley and slowly creep up the hillsides 
 
The Chords of Memory. gi 
 
 until the world was an indistinct tumult of 
 formless shadows and the stars shone bright 
 and keen from the depths of the infinite vast- 
 ness. 
 
 We ate supper in the kitchen with the flames 
 clambering about the pot that swung from the 
 old crane in the fireplace and the dogs lying on 
 the hearth. The meal finished, the mountaineer 
 and I went into the little front room, where 
 another fire was burning; for warm as the 
 afternoon had been, the air now had in it the 
 touch of frost. 
 
 "Must I bring the lamp in here?" the girl 
 asked. 
 
 "No," said the hunter. 
 
 She withdrew, and he went over to a chest 
 in the corner. I had not thought of him before 
 as a musician, but when I saw the old brown 
 fiddle I was glad. He handled it with the ten- 
 derness of a lover, and there in the dimness of 
 the firelight his grizzled face took on a new 
 aspect and his eyes grew softer at once and 
 brighter. Out in the woods he was a warrior, 
 
92 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 pitting his skill and strength against that of 
 the animal he would kill or capture ; here he was 
 a king, and the marvelous and mystic bow did 
 his bidding. 
 
 Old dance tunes he played first — "Arkansas 
 Traveler," "Farmer John," and "Sourwood 
 Mountain" — melodies that have grown, because 
 of their intimate relationship with the soil, to 
 be a part of the life of the people; folklore 
 tunes that are handed down "by ear" from one 
 player to another just as the old ballads were 
 passed on from one singer to another, to be 
 changed and adapted by each according to his 
 taste and feeling. 
 
 These were the old strains I had heard when 
 I first tried to dance the Virginia reel with a 
 girl whose bright eyes were long since clouded 
 by a life of shame and sorrow. And one night 
 I had sat outside in the honeysuckle-scented 
 shadows and taken my first kiss from another 
 fiddler's daughter while he played "Sourwood 
 Mountain" inside and the couples swung and 
 changed and promenaded in the dusty dimness 
 
The Chords of Memory. 93 
 
 of the lantern-lighted room. Ah, what a girl 
 she was! Dark hair that rippled and waved, 
 eyes brown and soft and full of dreams, and 
 a slow, sweet voice and little hands that trem- 
 bled when I touched them! That was a deli- 
 cious summer. But the fiddler, her father, was 
 a ne'er-do-well, and he moved five whole miles 
 away from where I lived; and a few years 
 later she married a big, raw-boned fellow with 
 a voice that grated like a rasp, and they moved 
 to Texas. 
 
 So are born our dreams of love, and so they 
 die. But as I remembered this and a hundred 
 other incidents of those early days, when there 
 was always the promise of to-morrow to heal 
 the disappointment of to-day, the old fiddler 
 wandered off into other strains — plaintive 
 chords that sighed with vain wistf ulness, break- 
 ing now and then into sobs of pain or the long 
 moan of helpless endurance. There is many an 
 untaught master of the violin who can put into 
 sound the thoughts and emotions that no master 
 has ever yet put into words; and as the old 
 
94 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 man went on I knew that he was telHng the 
 story of his life — the real life, that of the emo- 
 tions. He let the last long wail die away into 
 silence and sat gazing into the fire for a long 
 time. 
 
 "When I was about twenty," he said at 
 length in a voice I had never heard, "ol' man 
 Wheeler that you saw 3aste'day lived over 
 back of Gray's Knob, and his Lizzie was the 
 purtiest girl in the whole kentry. I ust to go 
 to see her onct ev'ry week and sometimes 
 twict, till I had a racket with the ol' man, an' 
 he'd never let me go back. I'd git to see 
 Lizzie now and then, but not much, for he 
 watched her like a hawk. Then in the spring 
 I went off up in the mountains to peel tanbark ; 
 and one night, jist about this time, we was all 
 settin' around the fire and some feller was 
 playin' the fiddle when Bill Wheeler (he was her 
 brother) come in. He called me out and said, 
 'Lizzie's sick and wants to see you. The ol' 
 man said for you to come.' We rode all that 
 night, but when we got there she was dead." 
 
The Chords of Memory. 95 
 
 The old man wiped his eyes frankly and 
 without shame, but as his wife opened the 
 kitchen door he picked up the fiddle again. 
 
 ''She used to sing this," he said softly and 
 slipped into the tender chords of ''Sherwin 
 Valley :" 
 
 "Then remember the sweet Sherwin Valley, 
 And the girl who has loved you so true." 
 
 Another girl had sung that song in the days 
 of long ago — a girl with tender eyes and gentle 
 ways — and she too was silent for evermore. 
 I knew that the golden leaves of the big 
 tulip trees were even now falling on her 
 grave. 
 
 When I had gone to bed, I lay and looked 
 into the fire as brand after brand darkened and 
 faded, and slowly there came to me the reali- 
 zation of why my friend so loved the woods 
 and the streams and the silent companionship 
 of the hills. To have dreamed and hoped, 
 and to have seen the dream fade into nothing- 
 ness, and felt the hope wither into the dead 
 
96 Field-Path and Highway. 
 
 certainty of impossibility is to have lived a life 
 that cannot be shared with men, that asks in its 
 unmeasured sadness for the solace of the vast, 
 kindly earth and the enduring comfort of the 
 infinite, tender sky. 
 
DEC 26 1912 
 
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