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THE 
 
 COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGAEET HILL McCARTER 
 
 Illustrations by Lydia Wehe Crabill 
 
 TOPEKA, 1903 
 
 GBANS A COMPANY, PBINTSBIB 
 TOPEKA, KANSAS 
 
Copyright 1903, 
 
 By MARGARET HIEL McCARTER, 
 Topeka, Kansas. 
 
rr}/27c. 
 
 4 
 
 ( 
 
 I 
 
 
 Cottontoooli’0 &tot^. 
 
 TELL it just as the cotton- 
 wood told it to me. I 
 made my peace with 
 trees long ago. They are 
 my cool sure friends, never -moody 
 nor wayward nor unfaithful. I 
 listen to their gentle messages, and I 
 know that Ruskin, or whoever it may 
 have been, was right when he said : 
 
 “There is something more than 
 ‘wood to hew’ in the forests that 
 cover the mountains like the shadow 
 of God ; something more than ‘water 
 to draw ’ in the rivers that move like 
 His eternity.” 
 
 I lived days and days with the 
 cottonwood, and it told me all the 
 story. Only my translation is harsh 
 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 and barren of beauty. If you heard 
 it yourself you would catch the pat- 
 tering sound of leaves, so like rain- 
 drops on dry roofs in the summer- 
 time, the rippling glint of glossy 
 green color, the moan of twisting 
 white branches before the storm, and 
 even the soft spirit-music of drifting 
 cotton that sounds only into ears that 
 listen for its noiseless melody. The 
 great tree spoke, and this is the tale 
 it told. 
 
 
 4 
 
EeatU00 25ousli0. 
 
 WIND - SWEPT prairie 
 :hi that rippled away into 
 the purple distance. 
 Shallow streams lying 
 like thin ribbons flung carelessly 
 across the landscape. Shifting gold 
 and green and crimson, and the 
 steel-blue line of the stone out- 
 crop coloring the earth. A brazen, 
 cloudless sky, with a wonderful 
 tinting of pink along its sun- 
 set rim. — These were what I saw 
 when I first peeped over the brow of 
 that slope. The gossipy breezes told 
 of coyotes and wolves and westward- 
 moving lines of Indians, but I never 
 caught a glimpse of them ; nor did I 
 grow sad at the sighing loneliness of 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 the winds moaning for the glory and 
 power lost when they came eastward. 
 The big, bulgy-headed tumbleweeds 
 took them seriously, and rolled help- 
 lessly down to that long draw away 
 below my feet, where the October 
 prairie-fires always found them. 
 
 But I ever loved this place, and, 
 sheltered from the north by that 
 swell of ground, my head above the 
 slope so that all the wide plain was 
 before me, my feet deep in the earth 
 where the unfailing cisterns are, — 
 trust a cottonwood to find their se- 
 cretest hiding-places, — I fiung my 
 bare young branches upward and 
 caught the light and warm sweet air. 
 And when the northeast rains sobbed 
 and wept for the great lakes they 
 missed so much, and when the north- 
 west blizzard curled and uncurled its 
 
 6 
 
LEAFLESS BOUGHS 
 
 long whiplashes of fierce, cutting 
 cold; and most of all, when the hot 
 south blasts came singing, singing 
 of the scorched distant plain, I let 
 them all pass by me without ever 
 wishing to go where they had been 
 and to see what they had seen. All 
 the sap in my veins was tingling 
 with hope and belief in my own coun- 
 try, and I bent before the rain and 
 the cold and the heat; but I never 
 broke, — not I. 
 
 And one day Sam came. 
 
 I knew him by no other name in 
 all the years that followed, nor his 
 people except as Sam’s folks. The 
 East Wind said that Sam’s father 
 had chronic liver complaint, his 
 mother chronic laziness, and his 
 brothers and sisters more or less of 
 both. But then the East Wind likes 
 
 7 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 to talk ill of people. It is the fault- 
 finder of the air. 
 
 The folks came in a funny scoopy- 
 topped covered wagon ; they drove a 
 horse and a mule, and behind the 
 wagon was a brown brindled cow 
 and under the wagon a brown brin- 
 dled dog. And all of them, the folks, 
 the horse and the mule, the brown 
 cow and the brown dog, and even 
 little Sam himself, turned browner 
 and took root and became a part of 
 the soil at my feet. They would 
 have been safe from the eye of In- 
 dian or wild beast, for their color 
 scheme was perfect. 
 
 They burrowed into the earth and 
 made a home for themselves, and 
 covered it over with prairie sod and 
 called it a dugout. They scratched 
 
 a little at the rich soil, and com and 
 
 8 
 
LEAFLESS BOUGHS 
 
 weeds grew together in the scratches. 
 They fished and trapped, and in the 
 hot summer days they lay where my 
 shadows covered them, and slept 
 away the hours. They were a tri- 
 fling lot, the breezy West Wind 
 thought, and they talked much of 
 going back home to Missouri; but 
 they never went. At first I wished 
 they might do it, but later I came 
 to love them in spite of themselves. 
 
 I was growing taller all the time, 
 and I could see farther and farther 
 across the plains. There are seven 
 towns and villages in sight now, be- 
 sides that big city over there, with 
 its round-topped dome forever 
 watching the valley. 
 
 How I have loved the people who 
 filled up this land ! For them I sent 
 my children far and wide, and wher- 
 
 9 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’ 8 STORY 
 
 ever these children took root the 
 early comers knew there was living 
 water. For them the cottonwood 
 was shelter and lumber and firewood 
 and wind-break. For them it was 
 the symbol of vigor and sturdy per- 
 sistence. For them it coaxed the 
 rain from unpitying skies. It stood 
 up fearless in storm or drouth, a 
 thing to weather all changes. It sent 
 out its sympathetic spirit to the ach- 
 ing, homesick hearts longing for the 
 woodlands far away in the East. 
 
 The whole countryside is check- 
 ered with freeholds now, hut in those 
 days I can recall the first hamlet, so 
 far and far away. I remember as 
 if it had been only yesterday the 
 long lines of white-covered wagons 
 that crossed my prairie, the first 
 
 cornfields, the fenced-in farms and 
 10 
 
LEAFLESS BOUGHS 
 
 the roads settling straight and defi- 
 nite where the trails had only strag- 
 gled aimlessly. I remember the first 
 little church-spire, and not very long 
 after that the little red school-house 
 where the river trail and the long 
 southwest trail crossed each other. 
 The air was always clear to me 
 around that school-house, and I 
 could look into its two small south 
 windows every day. 
 
 But Sam’s folks cared nothing for 
 all this. They kept on the other side 
 of the divide. None of them could 
 read; the brothers didn’t want to 
 and the sisters didn’t need to. 
 
 “ Girls don’t haf to have no leam- 
 in’,” Sam’s mother said, “an’ the 
 hoys are cute enough already.” 
 
 Little Sam used to climb up into 
 
 my strong houghs and hug me close. 
 
 11 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 He was lonely, for the other children 
 were almost men and women, and 
 the few neighbors were miles away 
 from one another. Sam was a 
 happy brownie, but when he had 
 worn out all of the games he could 
 invent he would come running to me 
 with outstretched hands and nestle 
 down among my thin branches. 
 Then he would cry foolish tears that 
 didn’t know why they came. You 
 see that bend up there in my big 
 right arm? It just fitted Sam’s head 
 when he curled himself up like a cat 
 on the limbs. I have always loved 
 children. It is the business of trees 
 to do that, but I was younger then, 
 and little brown Sam was the only 
 child I knew. I was especially fond 
 of him, for he was my first love. He 
 
 told me all his secrets, and I came 
 12 
 
LEAFLESS BOUGHS 
 
 to know as mucli of the inside of 
 that dugout as if I had lived in it. 
 
 The folks were very poor, and in 
 the nippy winter weather they were 
 often cold and hungry. But they 
 wasted the fine summer days when 
 crops grow for the mere cultivation ; 
 so they just managed to live from 
 year to year, contented when they 
 were comfortable and growling 
 when they weren’t. Only Sam had 
 a child’s heart-sickness that nobody 
 knew of except myself. 
 
 One cold winter-time Sam saved 
 my life. The father had gone to 
 mill a long, long way to the east, and 
 the brothers were too lazy to pro- 
 vide wood for the fire. They had to 
 do something to keep from freezing, 
 so they decided to try me. ‘‘ Green 
 cottonwood is better than no wood 
 
 13 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 at all,” they declared, as they sharp- 
 ened their axes with saliva and a 
 “whet-rock,” as they called it. I 
 shivered in every fiber when they 
 came near, hut I had not reckoned 
 on little Sam. He bounded in front 
 of them and climbed clear into my 
 swaying icy top, and there he clung. 
 The brothers coaxed and threatened 
 and swore, but it had no effect on 
 Sam. 
 
 “You sha’n’t cut down my tree. 
 If you do, I ’ll go down with it,” was 
 all he would say. 
 
 The hoys gave up at last, and 
 sawed up the posts their father had 
 just planted for the clothesline to he 
 fastened upon. Sam came in and sat 
 by their fire and warmed himself 
 with a contented heart. 
 
 One day, when he was up in the 
 
 14 
 
LEAFLESS BOUGHS 
 
 higher branches looking out with 
 lonely eyes across the sweep of land, 
 he spied the red school-house. How 
 his heart thumped against my 
 smooth bark as he watched the hoys 
 and girls come out of its door and 
 dwindle away across the prairie to 
 their humble homes. Sam looked 
 after them as long as he could see 
 them. Then he sat among the 
 boughs and watched the sun go 
 down the west and all the rich pur- 
 ple tints of evening fill the land. He 
 had no eye for this beauty. Sunset 
 meant only supper-time to him, yet 
 its quiet influence was upon him 
 nevertheless. The few twinkling 
 lamps in the distant houses shone 
 like earth-stars in the misty gray 
 softness of the twilight, and the boy 
 wondered if the stars above might 
 
 15 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 not be the lamps about which the 
 happy souls in heaven sit together 
 in family groups through the long 
 evenings of eternity. The soft air, 
 warm and moist out of the west, 
 rippled about Sam’s head aad kissed 
 his fuzzy brown hair. He climbed 
 slowly to the ground, and entered 
 the dugout with the emphatic dec- 
 laration : 
 
 “Dad, I'm goin’ to go to school!’’ 
 
 16 
 

 HEEE was a tempest, not 
 C\j B in a teapot, but in a dug- 
 out, before Sam’s inten- 
 tion was realized. His 
 mother, in her lazy way, took it as a 
 sort of insult that ber son should 
 have an intellectual ambition. 
 
 “You couldn’t beat learnin’ into 
 no Missourian’s head, not with a 
 wilier club soaked in potash,” she 
 said; and she ordered Sam to stay 
 at home. 
 
 “He’ll git a misery in his side 
 walkin’ so fur, jist like I ’ve had all 
 these years,” his father put in com- 
 plainingly ; and he added a mild en- 
 treaty “not to go potterin’ ’round 
 no school.” 
 
 17 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 “ Sam ’s a fool and a ejit,” the 
 brothers and sisters declared. And 
 the little boy, thoroughly disheart- 
 ened, went to bed. 
 
 But something in the springiness 
 of the morning air put thrills into 
 Sam’s muscles when he awoke the 
 next day. After breakfast he 
 slipped a piece of corn bread into his 
 pocket and came out and leaned 
 against me. 
 
 “I’m goin’ up to the top of the 
 divide,” he said. “If the wind’s 
 from the north I ’ll stay at home. If 
 it’s from the south it’ll blow me 
 right down to that school-house 
 whether Dad and Mam want it or 
 not. I’m not goin’ to stay on the 
 edge of that draw down there for- 
 ever.” 
 
 There was a ripple of laughter in 
 18 
 
BUDDING DATS 
 
 every budding twig, for the South 
 Wind was singing through the 
 upper branches. Little Sam from 
 the top of the swell waved his arms 
 at me and trudged away before it, 
 whistling like a mocking-bird. 
 
 I watched the red school-house all 
 that day, and I was one quiver of 
 eagerness for the little brownie’s 
 home-coming. But I might have 
 known that neither the father nor 
 the mother had energy enough to 
 make more than a feeble protest. 
 They would have done no more if 
 their boy had been going headlong 
 into sin. 
 
 Let him alone,” the mother said, 
 as the easiest way out of it all. “ Let 
 him alone an’ he’ll git tired of it 
 soon enough.” 
 
 And so he did. Not of the chil- 
 
 19 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 dren, nor of the life — real, active, 
 busy life — ^in the red school-house on 
 the other side of the slope ; but learn- 
 ing came hard, and Sam had nothing 
 to help him. That dreary, dirty 
 dugout was a poor sort of home, 
 even when two rooms had been built 
 in a crazy fashion in front of it. 
 When Sam’s father went seriously 
 to work, his liver was sure to get 
 troublesome. Things stayed half 
 completed for months round that 
 little freehold. And idleness does 
 not make people happy. The whole 
 atmosphere at my feet was one of 
 discomfort. 
 
 Sam had no encouragement to 
 study, no sympathetic interest in his 
 efforts, and no inherent mentality 
 nor inbred sense of order. Nobody 
 
 except myself knew how dreadful 
 20 
 
BUDDING DAYS 
 
 those days were for the hoy. Trees 
 do not need words to understand 
 children. We take in their thoughts 
 as we do light and air — through all 
 our open leaf-pores. 
 
 Sam wanted knowledge and he 
 wanted the fellowship of the chil- 
 dren, hut he could not learn the hard 
 lessons in books ; so he gave up try- 
 ing, and stayed at home. He was 
 dropping into the family way out of 
 which the days in the red school- 
 house had lifted him a little, when 
 one afternoon I saw the teacher com- 
 ing up the road toward me. She 
 kept her eyes on me and I heard her 
 say, 
 
 “ He always came over the hill by 
 that cottonwood tree.” 
 
 Then I knew she was looking for 
 
 Sam, and I waved my boughs in 
 21 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 courtesy to her. She rested for a 
 moment here when she had topped 
 the divide, and here Sam saw her. 
 He came shyly at her call, and the 
 two talked together for a long time. 
 She was not pretty, nor graceful, nor 
 stylish. Her face was freckled and 
 her hair was genuinely red. But 
 her gray eyes were full of light and 
 her smile was kindly and sweet. 
 She was just a plain, breezy, intelli- 
 gent country girl, and she had a no- 
 tion that teaching school is a high 
 calling, helping the children of these 
 pioneer people into what Saint Paul 
 calls “The life that is life.” She 
 didn’t tell Sam this, for he could not 
 yet comprehend the life that isn’t 
 life. 
 
 She went with him down to the 
 
 house, and ate supper in the kitchen 
 22 
 
BUDDING DAYS 
 
 dugout. Her shrewdness in meeting 
 the folks would have done credit to 
 what men under that dome over 
 there call “ a political mixer.” They 
 all praised her after she went away, 
 and they were less indifferent to 
 Sam’s mental progress than they 
 had been, although none of them 
 could help him. 
 
 It is wonderful what the little red 
 school-house may put into a boy’s 
 life when the little red-headed 
 school-ma’am puts her soul into her 
 work. Watching Sam from day to 
 day, nobody noted the change 
 wrought in him. Only I, the cotton- 
 wood, saw the budding promise of 
 his mind. Trees understand all 
 about slow growths. They look 
 farther and feel deeper than people 
 do. And sometimes, when the 
 
 23 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 teacher herself was discouraged over 
 this poor ignorant child, I alone 
 knew the steady unfolding power by 
 which my little brown boy was com- 
 ing into his kingdom. 
 
 One winter day it came my turn 
 to do for Sam what he had done for 
 me when he climbed into my topmost 
 branches and kept his brothers from 
 cutting me into firewood. There had 
 been days of warm, wet January 
 weather, so sultry that fires were a 
 burden. When Sam came from 
 school in the evening he found his 
 mother full of complaining. Her 
 clothesline posts — shaky, rotten 
 sticks — had broken under the weight 
 of the week’s wash, and all the gar- 
 ments had fallen into the mud. 
 
 Sam,” said his mother as he came 
 into the steamy, wet kitchen, full of 
 
 24 
 
B U DD ING DATS 
 
 the week’s laundry, “ Sam, can’t you 
 fix me a line that will stay put? I ’m 
 plumb done up tryin’ to fool with 
 them rotten poles.” 
 
 Sam went out after supper and 
 fastened one end of the rope securely 
 to the low corner of the new shed on 
 my side of the house. The other he 
 knotted with a tie of his own inven- 
 tion round my lowest limb. Then he 
 told his mother that her clothesline 
 troubles were over. 
 
 The next afternoon a blizzard 
 came whirling out of the northwest, 
 and twilight settled down in the mid- 
 dle of the afternoon. The scholars 
 were sent away early. Only Sam 
 stayed with the teacher until all the 
 children were safely housed. It was 
 dark when the two were left alone. 
 Sam’s home was nearer than the 
 
 25 
 
THE C0TT0HW00D>8 STORY 
 
 teacher’s, and together they tried to 
 reach it. The snow came in great 
 flapping, swirling sheets, the cold cut 
 like splintered glass, and the wind 
 from every point of the compass heat 
 the earth with the fury of a demon. 
 
 I watched the two struggling up 
 through the pathless drifts, wander- 
 ing wide of the way and circling 
 round and round until they lost their 
 bearings altogether and did not know 
 where they were. I moaned aloud 
 and tossed up my white arms in 
 agony. But they could not see me, 
 and in the thick of the storm I lost 
 them. I bowed my head before the 
 gale, and felt the sleet glazing every 
 twig. Suddenly a cold hand clutched 
 my lower bough, and Sam’s voice 
 cried cheerily: 
 
 “I do believe it’s my cottonwood 
 26 
 
BUDDING DAYS 
 
 tree. Hold fast to me. I ’ll know it 
 by the clothesline. If I can find that, 
 it will talfe us to the house.” 
 
 I held down every limb to guide 
 him to the rope, and soon he and his 
 teacher were safe inside the little 
 shelter. 
 
 I cannot tell you of all that came 
 and went in those years of Sam’s 
 schooling. But one day he said to 
 his father and mother, 
 
 “ I ’m going to the High School in 
 town.” 
 
 “We just can’t spare you no 
 more,” his father said. All the 
 brothers and sisters had homes of 
 their own now, patterned very much 
 after the parental roof. 
 
 “You’ve got all the schoolin’ you 
 need to run this ranch,” his mother 
 declared. 
 
 27 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 So the old battle had to he fought 
 over again. It was hot August 
 weather, and Sam slept every night 
 on the ground at my feet. On this 
 night he climbed high up among my 
 branches and watched the moon come 
 out of the east and fill all the prairie 
 with an exquisite glory. No wooded 
 land nor broken mountain region 
 ever gets the full splendor of the 
 moonlight as the open prairie does, 
 — the radiance that is softer than 
 sunlight and richer than starlight. 
 And no tree ever sheds off that 
 chastened glory like the glistening, 
 silvery green of the cottonwood’s 
 leaves. Something of my spirit 
 thrilled through Sam’s spirit as he 
 looked out on the plain I had rejoiced 
 in year after year. 
 
 “Over there’s the High School,” 
 28 
 
BVDDINa DAYS 
 
 he said, bending his head to the 
 north, and I ’m going to go there.” 
 
 His mouth had a determined line 
 about it that was marked on no other 
 face among Sam’s folks. 
 
 And he did go. Through objec- 
 tions and obstructions for four years 
 longer his schooling lasted. And one 
 night he came home with a diploma 
 tied in white and green. 
 
 “ Class colors,” he told his mother, 
 who ‘‘allowed” that the green was 
 all right enough, but where was the 
 sense in the white? 
 
 After that came the hardest battle 
 in all Sam’s life — ^the struggle where 
 gaining is losing. Sam wanted to go 
 to the University. It had been his 
 dream in the High School to follow 
 a profession. High schools put such 
 notions into a boy’s head. In the 
 
 29 
 
30 
 
B DDDINO DAYS 
 
 very springtime of his manhood his 
 ambition was for completer educa- 
 tion. 
 
 This time he met with no opposi- 
 tion at home. His parents said not a 
 word against his wishes. The strife 
 was all within himself. He could 
 have worked his way through college 
 easily enough. That wasn’t the 
 point. Old age was now upon the 
 father and mother — old age for 
 which they had never made provi- 
 sion. Among the married children 
 one of the hoys was dead, one had 
 gone wrong, and the third was living 
 in the same shiftless way his father 
 had done. The girls were both heads 
 of households now, one in Missouri 
 and the other in far-away Oregon. 
 
 Sam was the only prop the parents 
 had in their growing feebleness. If 
 
 31 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 he should go to the University he 
 could do no more than to maintain 
 himself. In all the years he could 
 remember, his home had done so 
 little for him that his very soul re- 
 belled against the claim it had now 
 upon his time and strength. And 
 yet the claim was there, and the 
 struggle in the boy’s mind was terri- 
 ble. 
 
 I shall never forget the day that 
 conflict ended. Sam had risen early, 
 before the twilight gloom had left the 
 draw. He came up the slope where 
 the dawn first breaks, and leaned 
 against my trunk and watched the 
 magniflcent splendor of the new day 
 swing grandly out of the horizon, 
 and felt the sweet cool breeze that 
 freshens all the slumbering land at 
 
 82 
 
BUDDING DAYS 
 
 waMng-tiine, and heard the musical 
 twitterings of the bird-songs. 
 
 On the dim sun-kissed heights far 
 to the southeast stood the Univer- 
 sity ; down in the shadowy gloom at 
 his feet was his home and his father 
 and mother, to whom he felt that he 
 owed so little ; and yet they were his 
 father and mother. In the bitterness 
 of his spirit he wrenched a young 
 limb from my trunk. The scar is 
 there still. So is the scar on his 
 heart. At last he gave one long, 
 agonizing look at the distant east 
 where the college domes were dimly 
 outlined against the pink heavens. 
 Then master of himself, he turned 
 toward his home. The shadows were 
 all gone now; the new day with its 
 new work was before him. He 
 looked no more to the eastward, but 
 
 33 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S 8T0BT 
 
 resolutely put his hand to the task 
 and his shoulder to the burden, and 
 followed the way that daily opened 
 before him. 
 
 34 
 
:51oie(0om Tlimt, 
 
 ^ KNOW how you would tell 
 || U this story. You would 
 idealize, for you have im- 
 agination, and you would 
 end with putting Sam in the Presi- 
 dential chair. Trees can only hold to 
 the tale that writes itself out about 
 them. And while the way “ from the 
 towpath to the White House” is a 
 possibility, the East Wind tells me 
 that not one hoy out of a million who 
 follows the towpath is on the par- 
 ticular one that leads to the White 
 House. Sam’s school days were 
 ended when he left the High School ; 
 and I tell you what I know, not what 
 I dream of. I said before, that trees 
 
 35 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 understand all about slow growths. 
 Sam was only a boy, and all his de- 
 velopment had really come from the 
 other side of the slope. No wonder 
 his heart failed when he looked at his 
 father’s farm. Broken fences trailing 
 around fields luxuriant with weeds, 
 shabby stock of low breeding, tum- 
 ble-down stables, and an unpainted, 
 unadorned dwelling-house. A com- 
 plaining, sickly father, and a feeble, 
 querulous mother, resenting change 
 or innovation above all things. An 
 upside-down bank account, and no 
 experience in self-reliant direction of 
 affairs. These were what Sam had 
 to face when he turned his back on 
 the University and cast his lot with 
 his parents. 
 
 How slow the work of reclaiming 
 a neglected farm is! It takes so 
 
 36 
 
BLOSaOM TIME 
 
 many furrows to break up all the soil 
 of the field, so many strokes to build 
 up or repair dilapidated sheds and 
 fences, so much time and effort to re- 
 stock a place with improved breeds 
 of cattle and horses and hogs. 
 Slowly the wave of improvement 
 crept across the freehold. Patiently 
 the young man put into his day the 
 results of the discipline and inspira- 
 tion of his years at school, but he 
 could not note the development about 
 him, it was so gradual. 
 
 At the end of five years the whole 
 scene was changed. Only the inside 
 of the home under the mother’s con- 
 trol was still unlovely in its plain- 
 ness and shiftless disorder. Sam 
 had failed to make any progress 
 here. He didn’t know how to go 
 about such things. All he did know 
 
 37 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 38 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 was that he had conquered the weeds, 
 and that the long, even rows of corn, 
 the fruitful orchard, and the sleek 
 animals tempted him to an outdoor 
 life. He wanted vines and flowers, 
 hut his mother thought otherwise, 
 and Sam could do nothing there. In 
 fact, his days were so short and so 
 full of care that he had little time 
 for missing any of the pleasures. 
 Neighbors praised the young man 
 behind his hack, and his father and 
 mother charged it all to their 
 “ hringin’ up,” but they had few com- 
 pliments for their son. It is the way 
 of parents to see their own reflection 
 in their good children, but to forget 
 to praise merit if it is in a blood 
 relation. 
 
 For two years Sam had been a reg- 
 ular attendant at the country church 
 
 39 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 whose low spire first looked skyward 
 in all my prairie, now marked by 
 many spires. He sang tenor in the 
 choir, with the minister’s sweet-faced 
 daughter leading the soprano. Her 
 name was Nellie, and Sam thought it 
 the prettiest name ever given to a 
 girl. Once in a while the choir prac- 
 ticed at the minister’s home. Sam al- 
 ways felt a cold shiver go over him 
 when he came into his mother’s do- 
 main after an evening at Nellie’s 
 house. 
 
 Once in a while, too, he walked 
 home with Nellie from choir practice 
 at other places. One moonlit evening 
 he never forgot. The young people 
 had played and sung until late. The 
 road to the minister’s house was a 
 long one. The dewy night was won- 
 derfully still and beautiful. Did 
 
 40 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 Sam dream it, or did Nellie really 
 let some offers of company escape 
 her as if she wanted him for an es- 
 cort? Sam could not tell. He only 
 knew that he had never seen a night 
 so delicious. Their way led by his 
 home. When they reached me Nellie 
 paused, and, leaning against my 
 bark, she clasped and unclasped her 
 hands a little, hesitatingly. She 
 plucked a twig from a branch and 
 turned it between her fingers. Then 
 she said softly: 
 
 “ Sam, everybody says you are a 
 very good boy, and that you deserve 
 great credit for your kindness to 
 your parents. I think you are good.” 
 
 Sam looked down toward the house 
 in silence. His father and mother 
 had been more than ordinarily try- 
 ing in the past few days. It seemed 
 
 41 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 to him that when he tried to please 
 them he only made them more irri- 
 table and exacting. Like a flash it 
 came to his mind what life would 
 mean with such a girl as Nellie to 
 rule a home! He clutched at my 
 lower bough, and said nothing. 
 Then Nellie spoke again : 
 
 “It’s none of my business, Sam, 
 and I oughtn’t to say it, but I am 
 glad you are kind to your father and 
 mother. You don’t mind my saying 
 it, do you? ” 
 
 Sam gripped my bark with his 
 great strong hands. 
 
 “Of course not, Nellie,” he said 
 hoarsely. It was the sweetest re- 
 ward he had ever known. “I wish 
 things were different down there, 
 but I do the best I can.” Then, with 
 the overmastering love in his heart 
 
 42 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 shining out through his eyes he 
 added, “I ’m glad you said that, 
 Nellie.” 
 
 Sam stopped his plow in the fur- 
 row the next day, and leaning on its 
 handles he recalled all that had taken 
 place on the night before. 
 
 His eye was bright and his step 
 buoyant when he came in to dinner. 
 There was no meal ready and nobody 
 in sight. Passing into the front 
 room, he found his father yellow- 
 gray with fever. Complaining had 
 been so habitual to him that Sam 
 had hardly noticed his recent decline. 
 Now that his father was stricken, 
 the boy’s conscience smote him 
 fiercely, as if his neglect might have 
 caused it all. 
 
 The days that followed were al- 
 ways as a horrible nightmare to 
 
 43 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 Sam’s memory. Nursing the sick, 
 cooking his own meals, caring for 
 the stock and tending the growing 
 crop filled every moment of his wak- 
 ing hours; and his waking hours 
 filled up three-fourths of the twenty- 
 four. 
 
 The mother soon gave way before 
 the burden of it all. She had never 
 in her life met and resisted any try- 
 ing thing, so Sam’s care was doubled. 
 The thought of Nellie and every 
 other pleasant memory went out of 
 his mind entirely, and only dread 
 and weariness and persistent strug- 
 gle remained for him. 
 
 The neighbors were very kind, 
 and did many kind services for the 
 family. But their own work must 
 go on, and the father and mother 
 
 44 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 were both alike in refusing minis- 
 trations from any hand but Sam’s. 
 
 April and May slipped by, and 
 now it was mid- June. One night in 
 the busiest of wheat harvest Sam 
 watched alone with the two shattered 
 wrecks of humanity. Just at mid- 
 night his father said, feebly : 
 
 “ Sam, I ’ve never done much for 
 you. You’ve been a good boy to 
 me an’ mother. Some day you ’ll git 
 your reward.” 
 
 He turned his face away, but not 
 before he caught Sam’s low reply: 
 
 “ I ’ve had my reward already.” 
 
 A little later the mother called : 
 
 “Sam, oh, Sam, I’m so weak! 
 Take care of him — good-by.” She 
 pointed feebly toward the father, 
 and was gone. 
 
 The young man bent over his 
 
 46 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 father’s form. A smile was on his 
 face, hut his eyes saw nothing 
 earthly any more forever. 
 
 In the soft still darkness of the 
 night Sam groped his way up to me 
 and leaned, numb and cold, against 
 my trunk. Then, as in his boyhood 
 when he was my little brownie, he 
 climbed up and rested among my 
 branches and laid his head in the 
 bend of my right arm. 
 
 In the early morning the Doctor 
 came, and later came the neighbors. 
 Two days afterward all the country- 
 side turned out after its fashion, 
 only more numerously because this 
 was a double funeral. Since the 
 death of his parents Sam had been 
 like a figure cast in bronze, so 
 strange and meaningless were all the 
 hours to him now. He did not hear 
 
 46 
 
B LO 8 8 0 M TIME 
 
 the minister’s prayer. He did not 
 note who made up the crowd, nor 
 how loud and noisy was the lament 
 put up by his shiftless older brother 
 and his wife. This brother and 
 sister-in-law, living two townships 
 away, had been too busy to come 
 home more than once during the 
 family sickness. To-day Sam hardly 
 knew of their presence, so paralyzed 
 were his powers. It was only when 
 Nellie’s voice began the hymn, 
 
 "Abide with me. Fast falls the eventide/’ 
 
 that his numbness slipped away and 
 a burning fever filled his veins. 
 
 He came home from the burial, 
 and walked into the house. After 
 that he knew nothing for many days. 
 When he came to himself again his 
 old home seemed to have vanished 
 with the mother who ruled it, and 
 
 47 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S 8T0BT 
 
 a sweet, orderly cleanliness sur- 
 rounded him. A neighbor-woman 
 whose house was always full of chil- 
 dren and whose face was always full 
 of cheer (she said the children kept 
 that in it) was moving softly about. 
 
 “ How could you do all this ? ” Sam 
 asked, feebly raising his hand. 
 
 “ Oh, I had help,” the woman re- 
 plied. There was a tonic in her very 
 voice. “The preacher’s girl come 
 nearly every day to tidy up. Your 
 ma was sick so long things got run 
 down.” 
 
 In a little while Nellie came in. 
 Sam looked at her eagerly. He had 
 a feeling that if she would only stay 
 with him there would always he red 
 salvia on the clock-shelf and a bowl 
 of purple-and-gold pansies on the 
 center-table. But she had only come 
 
 48 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 to bring some books for bim to read 
 wben he grew stronger. Yes, she 
 would come again when papa could 
 come with her; and she went away. 
 She did come again, as did a dozen 
 of the other neighbor-girls. 
 
 A little later a buxom, gossipy, 
 good-natured widow came to keep 
 house for Sam, and by degrees he 
 fitted himself into his old lines of 
 work again. 
 
 The next spring, when my red 
 blossomy catkins with invisible fin- 
 gers clung to my branches or lay in 
 little velvet rolls on the brown 
 grasses at my feet, Sam and Nellie 
 stood in the golden evening-light and 
 looked out on the prairie I have 
 watched over and loved so long. 
 
 49 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 The odor of freshly plowed ground 
 was in the air. The orchards were 
 pink with their burden of bloom. 
 All the land was rippling with life 
 and color, over which the sunset 
 cast its indefinable radiance, melting 
 into softer tones as the moments 
 slipped away. How changed the 
 scene about me from the one I had 
 looked on in the days of the first set- 
 tlers! But no more changed than 
 this splendidly built young man from 
 the little brownie who years before 
 had played at my feet with that 
 brindled dog that had tagged the 
 family all the way from Missouri. 
 There were lines in Sam’s face that 
 the cares of his years had graven 
 there. They gave a certain manly 
 seriousness to his countenance. 
 
 60 
 
BL0880M TIME 
 
 Looking down at the fair young 
 girl beside him, he said: 
 
 “Nellie, I’ve loved this old tree 
 since I was a child, I always 
 climbed up on that crooked limb to 
 have the blues. I was sitting here 
 the first time I ever saw the school- 
 honse and determined to go to school. 
 I followed the clothesline trail from 
 here to the kitchen once when I was 
 lost in a blizzard. I was here when 
 I made up my mind to take the High- 
 School course in town. I stood up 
 here one time and gave up the Uni- 
 versity notion; and I came out to 
 this tree the night my father and 
 mother died. This is my battle- 
 ground, you see. 
 
 “Nellie,” (how tender his voice 
 was!) “I want you to be my wife, 
 
 51 
 
 U. Of <LL Li3. 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 and I can ask you better here than 
 I could anywhere else, because I am 
 not worthy of you; and if you do 
 not love me, tell me so here. This 
 old cottonwood is my next of kin.” 
 
 I shook my little wine-red rolls of 
 bloom down on Nellie’s crown of 
 sunny hair, and gently brushed her 
 cheek with falling flowers. She 
 looked up into Sam’s face and 
 smiled. I shall never forget that 
 smile. 
 
 “ Tell your next of kin,” she said 
 archly, “ that it has a rival now, for 
 I ’m going to stay with you and share 
 your warfare.” 
 
 A sudden after-sunset glory in the 
 west, a sweep of soft south-wind, a 
 musical break of bird’s-song some- 
 where up the sky, and Sam and 
 
 52 
 
BLOSSOM TIME 
 
 Nellie passed down the grassy way 
 to the house, thinking as men and 
 women have ever done, that their 
 love was rarer and sweeter than any 
 other loves since time began. 
 
 53 
 
IKnsitUns 
 
 ROM all the ways my cot- 
 ton blows I gather that 
 many hooks are written 
 to tell of the joy of life 
 on the farm. 
 
 “If the hooks were not written,” 
 the East Wind says, “ nobody on the 
 farm would ever find out about the 
 joy. It’s all in the books.” 
 
 I don’t mind the East Wind: I 
 like it. It isn’t a zephyr from the 
 south; but then it doesn’t pretend 
 to be one. And I’ve felt the north 
 edge of a south air in March that 
 had saw-teeth in every fold. You 
 know what ’s in that breeze from the 
 east, and you turn up that side of 
 
 54 
 
BVSTLINO LEAVES 
 
 your coat-collar witliout experiment- 
 ing any. 
 
 And I know — for haven’t I stood 
 sentinel over the ranches on both 
 sides of the slope all these years ? — 
 I know that the East Wind’s notion 
 about the “joy” isn’t altogether a 
 false one. I’ve seen the stalwart, 
 fresh-cheeked young fellows come 
 out here from Pennsylvania and In- 
 diana (wherever in the province of 
 the winds those places may be), and 
 I ’ve watched them bend and shrivel 
 and harden in the hot summers and 
 sharp, bitter, changeable winters, 
 until their shoulders were always 
 stooped and they hadn’t complexions 
 any more — just hides. I’ve seen 
 the fair Ohio lassies, bright-eyed, 
 pink-cheeked girls, grow old and 
 turn yellow-brown when they should 
 
 55 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 have been blooming still. It wasn’t 
 my prairie that did it. For when 
 these went “ back East ” to visit they 
 were many of them vigorous and 
 buoyant against their old-time asso- 
 ciates there. That is, if they still had 
 old-time associates. Most men are 
 living with their second wives, and 
 women with their second husbands, 
 “hack East.” You’ve noticed that. 
 It’s the fittest that survives back 
 there. We ’re all the “ fittest ” here. 
 But farm life has its same dull, hard 
 side everywhere. The pleasure in 
 it is as yet only a sort of dream. 
 When people have learned all the les- 
 sons the trees may teach, they will 
 find a joy in the heaviest work, and 
 the real country life and the ideal 
 will come nearer together. Then the 
 bird’s song will not suggest scare- 
 
 56 
 
RUSTLING LEAVES 
 
 crows for the cherry trees, nor the 
 lowing herds mean only milking- 
 time. 
 
 The days ran into years, and the 
 treadmill work on the farm was no 
 lighter for Sam and Nellie than it 
 was for their hard-working neigh- 
 bors. Little children, their children, 
 played about me. The farm was 
 never so thrifty before. Flowers 
 grew in the front yard now, and 
 vines shaded the porches. The 
 young love had ripened into that 
 mature, thoughtful affection that 
 makes the home the most enduring 
 institution on earth. But the long 
 days were full of duties, and leisure 
 was an elusive delight just out of 
 reach. Scant as their opportunity 
 was, however, they both found time 
 to read a little and to talk with each 
 
 57 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 other of what they had read. I saw 
 less and less of Sam now. He 
 seemed to have forgotten me. But 
 one day I gathered from the chil- 
 dren that their father had a new no- 
 tion. Then I knew he would come 
 here sooner or later; and he did. 
 One Sabbath afternoon in the early 
 fall he and Nellie sat at my feet and 
 talked of their plans. 
 
 Sam had been making a study of 
 minerals. I recalled then how the 
 little red-topped school-ma’am had 
 once said that he had a head for bot- 
 any and geology and physics. I 
 know these without a text-hook, and 
 I forget how little is the knowledge 
 people have, tied as they are to 
 printed pages. I found out now that 
 between whiles in the hard work (the 
 behveens are much shorter than the 
 
 58 
 
RUSTLING LEAVES 
 
 whiles on the farm), Sam had been 
 thinking and reading of what lay be- 
 neath the soil he harrowed every 
 year. Now he was convinced that 
 there was coal down by the draw. I 
 knew it long ago. The alfalfa had 
 found that out, and told it all over 
 the place. But if people don’t listen 
 to trees, of course they can’t hear the 
 grasses. 
 
 However, the thing that made me 
 shiver until my leaves clicked to- 
 gether like chattering teeth, was that 
 the farm was to be leased and the 
 family were to move to town. 
 
 For thirty years I had watched 
 Sam daily come and go. I thought 
 he belonged to me and I stretched out 
 my arms to him in entreaty. At that 
 moment I could have wished him 
 buried at my feet, for then I could 
 
 59 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STOBT 
 
 have wrapped my roots lovingly 
 around him. It was only for the mo- 
 ment, however, for I know too well 
 that the ones I love are never buried 
 in the soil. It is just the cast-off 
 garment that men put there. They 
 live on in the shelter of that Tree 
 whose leaves are for the healing of 
 the nations. 
 
 On the day the family left the 
 farm, busy as Sam was, he stopped 
 just one moment at the top of the 
 swell and waved both arms at me as 
 he had done when he was a little 
 child on his way to the red school- 
 house. 
 
 “ Good-by, old tree — I ’ll think of 
 you every time I see your fuzzy cot- 
 ton blowing about the streets.” Mid- 
 dle-aged man that he was, I caught 
 the minor chord of sadness in his 
 tone. 60 
 
RUSTLING LEAVES 
 
 As for Nellie, slie had cried very 
 softly, womaa-like, when she came 
 up the evening before and stayed a 
 moment in the twilight by my side. 
 She didn’t say anything to Sam 
 about it. Women imagine that men 
 forget where their loves began ; and 
 they generally do. It is only the 
 women who remember. But I felt 
 sure of them both, and I watched 
 them as far as I could see them 
 when they went down the long way 
 toward their distant home. 
 
 When Sam first became a coal- 
 dealer and contractor of coal lands, 
 his competitors called him “ the Mis- 
 souri farmer,” and ridiculed the no- 
 tion of his success. That was be- 
 cause they didn’t know Sam. In the 
 country the neighbors missed him. 
 
 A few called him a fool, while an- 
 61 
 
THE COTTOEW OOD^ S STORY 
 
 62 
 
RUSTLING LEAVES 
 
 other few said he was too lazy to 
 work, just like his father. That to 
 them was the reason of this moving 
 to town. These held the singular no- 
 tion that the business man’s life is 
 one of easy comfort. They never un- 
 derstand the exacting anxiety of a 
 merchant’s day. It was only the few, 
 however, who thought thus. The 
 most of the countryside had found in 
 Sam a friend and helper, and they 
 were proud of him. 
 
 Sam made some mistakes and lost 
 some money, but his farm had the 
 genuine fuel in it, and as the years 
 went by, his wealth and influence 
 established themselves. He wasn’t a 
 millionaire, nor a social leader, nor a 
 political “ boss,” but he gave and de- 
 manded a hundred cents on the dol- 
 lar. He did not seek prominence, 
 
 63 
 
TSB C0TT02f WOOD’S STORY 
 
 and by-and-by it came to Mm as it 
 sometimes does to tbe modest. 
 
 His older children were in the Uni- 
 versity now — that University their 
 father once gave up. The younger 
 ones were in the High School, or 
 close up to it. As for Nellie, she 
 found herself very much at home in 
 the surroundings the city gave her. 
 The farm, even the old cottonwood, 
 became a part of the past. The 
 neighbors complained a little of this, 
 but I bided my time. Trees never 
 hurry events. They are content to 
 wait. 
 
 One day, when Sam’s name had 
 become one to conjure with in all 
 the city and country hereabout, a 
 shabby old covered wagon stopped 
 before his handsome office. It was 
 drawn by a horse and a mule just 
 
 64 
 
RUSTLING LEAVES 
 
 like those that came out of Missouri 
 long ago. In the front of the wagon 
 sat a shabby old man and a forlorn 
 old woman, while four little children 
 peeped over their shoulders at the 
 scene about them. 
 
 Sam knew them at a glance. It 
 was his shiftless elder brother and 
 his wife. These children must be 
 some motherless grandchildren, 
 Sam thought — as indeed they 
 proved to be. The family had 
 moved nine times since the death of 
 the parents; had lived in Nebraska 
 (they called it Newbraska) and In- 
 dian Territory and Iowa. They 
 came now from Missouri, “to be 
 near Sam, agin,” they said. Sam 
 knew what that meant. 
 
 “Ye never had much sense,” the 
 older man said, patronizingly, “but 
 
 65 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 ye’ve been so darned lucky ye kin 
 afford to help us a leetle. We’ve 
 never had no show. You got the 
 farm, you know.” 
 
 Sam thought unutterable things. 
 Among them was of how his good- 
 natured father had stinted the fam- 
 ily each time a child left home, in 
 order to buy out that child’s inter- 
 est in the home place. It was the 
 only stroke of business in which the 
 father ever succeeded, and that came 
 at a price. Here now was the 
 brother, old and ignorant. A 
 wasted life behind him, and no 
 capacity for hread-winning. What 
 claim had he upon Sam! and, in- 
 deed, what could Sam do for him? 
 
 The younger brother in his com- 
 fortable prosperity resented this call 
 
 upon him. He remembered only too 
 66 
 
RU8TLINO LEAVES 
 
 well the labor of mind and muscle 
 that had gone into the building-up 
 of his fortune. He would have been 
 willing to give a large cheek to his 
 relative and send him away. But 
 that wasn’t a part of the older man’s 
 idea. Sam was rich and owed him 
 a living, and he meant to stay by 
 Sam and feed on him. 
 
 A note was sent to Nellie, and the 
 “outfit” turned toward his home. 
 Then Sam locked himself in his pri- 
 vate office to work out his problem 
 alone. 
 
 6T 
 
SDtitting Cotton. 
 
 AM’S mind went back to 
 B the dreary night when 
 his brothers and sisters 
 had called him an idiot 
 because he wanted to go to school. 
 How clear in his memory was the 
 scene of that evening in the little 
 dugout with its one tallow candle 
 burning dimly on the table ! At the 
 thought of it Sam glanced up at the 
 electric fixtures of his handsome 
 chandelier above his polished oak 
 desk. He remembered, too, the dirty 
 floor, the unpainted chairs, the 
 broken window-panes in the two lit- 
 tle windows. But more than these 
 he remembered the sneers and ridi- 
 
 68 
 
DBIFTIN& COTTON 
 
 cule from all of the family except 
 his meek, indifferent father, and his 
 own discouraged spirit unable to 
 stand up against them. His eye fell 
 now on the Brussels carpet, the 
 leather upholstered couch, the sweep 
 of curtains from the wide windows. 
 He thought of his business rating 
 and his social standing, of his grow- 
 ing wealth and promising future, of 
 all the effort it had cost for him to 
 reach the place he held now. 
 
 ‘‘I fought my battle out alone,” 
 he said bitterly; “I don’t owe him 
 anything. Why should I keep him? 
 He ’ll be a pauper soon enough with- 
 out my help. I needn’t hurry mat- 
 ters for him.” 
 
 He gazed out at the open window, 
 a firm, determined line settling 
 deeper round his mouth. 
 
 69 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 “I’ll go down to the house and 
 have it out with him,” he said de- 
 liberately. “ It ’s a brutish thing to 
 do, and yet he ’s past help from me. 
 But — how about those little chil- 
 dren?” 
 
 Just then a drifting fuzzy flake of 
 my cotton sailed in through the open 
 window and settled at Sam’s feet. 
 He watched it dreamily, and his 
 mind came back to me. The thirty 
 years we had lived together passed 
 before him in quick review. His 
 lonely childhood, his longing for an 
 education, his dumb sorrow when 
 his parents lay dead, the sweet 
 young love when Nellie and he stood 
 by me in the warm evening-light, — 
 all came back again at the sight of 
 the silent swing of that zephyr- 
 blown cotton. 
 
 70 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 When he went home to dinner he 
 said to his wife: 
 
 “Nellie, I’ll put my brother to 
 looking after the teams down at the 
 yards. It’s the only thing he can 
 do. And they can live in that little 
 property of ours over on Elm street. 
 I’ve just lost a tenant from that 
 place.” 
 
 So the elder brother settled him- 
 self for the rest of his days and took 
 his good fortune as the payment of a 
 debt long overdue. 
 
 Among the grandchildren of the 
 family in the Elm street house was 
 a round-eyed serious-looking boy, 
 whose grave face and roly-poly body 
 made an odd combination. Next to 
 his “ Gran’pop ” this boy adored 
 Uncle Sam. He used to steal into 
 Sam’s office on rare occasions and 
 
 71 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 search through the scraps of paper 
 in the big waste-basket, hunting for 
 pictures. Sometimes he would take 
 bits of blank sheets and with a piece 
 of coal from the grate try to copy the 
 designs and illustrations he found on 
 the advertisements. When Sam 
 found out what the child was doing 
 he began to watch him closely, not 
 because he fancied that the hoy had 
 any talent, but because he was in- 
 terested in his efforts. One day he 
 gave his nephew a box of crayons 
 and tablets of clean drawing-paper, 
 and so made h i m self a king in that 
 little artist’s eyes forever. 
 
 It was not to be expected that the 
 elder brother would take kindly to 
 his position, after the newness wore 
 off. But his duties were light and 
 not nearly equal to the price paid 
 
 72 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 for them, and inasmuch as he had 
 never resisted ill-fortune he was not 
 likely to put up a fight against bet- 
 ter luck than he had ever known be- 
 fore. So he stuck to his place and 
 grumbled at it. Along with his 
 grumbling he assumed a patronizing 
 air, and made Sam’s business the 
 subject of his dictation and criti- 
 cism. His wife and three of the 
 gjrandchildren, listening to this fault- 
 finding, came to regard their land- 
 lord kinsman as a sort of robber, but 
 the boy whose fingers were always 
 black with charcoal only looked seri- 
 ously surprised. He said nothing at 
 all, and in his heart he clung to his 
 Uncle Sam. 
 
 The next summer the ten-year 
 lease on the farm expired, and Sam 
 hesitated between flattering offers 
 
 73 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 for a re-lease and a downright sale 
 of the place. "While he was debating 
 the matter with himself, loath to let 
 the farm go out of his hands and 
 favoring a new lease, a strange thing 
 happened. The company that for 
 nearly a year had been eagerly press- 
 ing its desire to contract a new lease 
 suddenly sent a short, clear-cut with- 
 drawal of its offer. It took Sam’s 
 breath away. 
 
 “I wonder why they did that?” 
 he said to his secretary. 
 
 “I do not understand it at all,” 
 replied the secretary as he was 
 leaving the room to do an errand. 
 
 “I do,” spoke up Sam’s nephew, 
 taking his head out of the waste- 
 basket into which he had been div- 
 ing. “An old mau came from the 
 coimtry last night with a letter for 
 
 74 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 you, and told Gran’pop the ooal on 
 the farm was give all out. He said 
 it was a secret, and he was cornin’ 
 to tell you ’cause he wanted you to 
 let it again if you wanted to. Gran’- 
 pop said he’d tell you himself, an’ 
 he took the letter the man had for 
 you. But this mornin’ he told Gran’- 
 ma he was goin’ to tell them men that 
 wanted to lease the farm himself. I 
 said I was goin’ to tell you, but 
 Gran’pop said he’d lick me if I did, 
 ’cause it wasn’t none of my business. 
 I didn’t tell you, did 1 1 But I come 
 over here this momin’ to see that you 
 found it out. Gran’pop says you 
 are rich enough anyhow for a stingy 
 man. But I don’t think you are 
 stingy. I just wish I could do 
 somethin’ for you, you are so good.” 
 
 The child’s face was grave and his 
 
 75 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 tones were so simple that Sam’s heart 
 warmed toward him more than ever. 
 
 Ten minutes later the delayed mes- 
 sage from the farm confirming the 
 boy’s story, was sent up by one of 
 the men from the yard. Hardly had 
 it been delivered before the expect- 
 ant purchaser of the land entered the 
 office. 
 
 “ I ’ve come to close up our deal,” 
 he said. “ If you sign with me before 
 twelve o’clock I ’ll put another thou- 
 sand on the price. I ’m going to start 
 East at two o’clock. It’s to-day or 
 not at all.” 
 
 Sam was smarting imder two 
 whips. The ingratitude and trickery 
 of the brother whom he had be- 
 friended stimg him bitterly. The 
 sudden failure of the coal supply 
 meant a financial loss all the more 
 
 76 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 embarrassing because his expecta- 
 tions had been at the other extreme, 
 and his business interests had ad- 
 justed themselves accordingly. 
 
 You wonder how I know all this? 
 Have you ever tried to measure the 
 area over which I send my children? 
 All that they know I know, besides 
 what the winds and the birds tell me. 
 I had English sparrows nesting with 
 me that season who had cousins in 
 town. And what the English spar- 
 rows can’t find out isn’t worth a de- 
 tective’s efforts. 
 
 As Sam listened to the flattering 
 offer a great temptation came to 
 him. Why not sell the farm now? 
 No official notice of the coal failure 
 had reached him. He was not yet 
 supposed to know of it. The farm 
 was worth the price offered. There 
 
 77 
 
TBE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 was a fortune in the soil if the rocks 
 below had ceased to be productive. 
 He had done a man’s duty by his 
 brother, and only evil had come of 
 it. Was he not justified now in 
 looking out for himself, especially 
 since he alone knew that he was 
 blamable? Nobody else could ac- 
 cuse him of double-dealing. Yes, he 
 would close the deal at once. So the 
 contract was begun. 
 
 As Sam turned to his desk to fig- 
 ure on some trivial feature of it, the 
 other man remarked : 
 
 “Of course I wouldn’t buy the 
 place at all if it wasn’t for the coal 
 prospect. The farm ’s all right for 
 a farm, but coal land ’s too plentiful 
 not to have it, and that’s the pres- 
 tiest coal prospect I know of.” 
 
 Sam turned cold. His figures lost 
 
 78 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 meaning. He forgot what he was 
 trying to do, but he set his teeth 
 firmly. The man would be East for 
 two or three months. The condition 
 of the mines could be announced 
 late enough to cover him safely. He 
 would go on now. The purchaser 
 strolled to the window. 
 
 “Well, just look at that drift of 
 cotton against the iron fence over 
 there round the court-house!” he 
 said. “ Say, when that place out 
 there is mine I’ll cut down all the 
 cottonwoods the first thing I do. 
 There ’s a big one up above the house 
 a ways that ’ll come down first. 
 D’ you remember it?” 
 
 Sam did remember it, and his 
 heart seemed to stop beating alto- 
 gether. He walked to the window 
 
 and saw the feathery cotton powder- 
 79 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 ing all the bluegrass of the court- 
 house yard, while a drift like the first 
 soft December snow lay heaped 
 against the stone foundation of the 
 iron railing about the square. All 
 the best impulses of his life, first put 
 there by the little red-headed school- 
 teacher long ago, and fostered by his 
 own efforts, had been toward clean, 
 honest living. This morning’s work 
 was the first dealing of which he was 
 ashamed. Until to-day he had been 
 genuine. Now he was becoming an 
 alloy, one part of which made him 
 blush. 
 
 So his heart came back to me, as 
 I knew it would. Trees can wait. 
 Out from his office, where the at- 
 mosphere was thick with temptation, 
 his soul came again to the top of the 
 
 old divide. The air is pure and 
 80 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 sweet there, and a man may breathe 
 his fill of it without fear of conta- 
 gion. A mist was before Sam’s eyes. 
 He did not see the street, nor the 
 buildings across the way, hut a vision 
 of sunlight glimmering on glossy 
 leaves, and the droop and swell of 
 wind-blown branches. 
 
 Turning to the table, he tore the 
 contract into fragments. 
 
 “I can’t sell the place,” he said 
 bluntly. “ The deal is off.” 
 
 The man stared at Sam. “ So,” he 
 said, “the other fellows offer you a 
 better thing in a lease, do they? ” 
 
 “They don’t offer me anything; 
 they have withdrawn their offer,” he 
 replied. 
 
 “ Then I think you must he a fool,” 
 the man said curtly. 
 
 81 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 “ I know I am one,” Sam re- 
 sponded. And the two separated. 
 
 Then came days and days of dis- 
 couragement. 
 
 There was a fortune in the soil of 
 that farm, as Sam had said, hut the 
 returns were slower than the pro- 
 ceeds from the coal-mining had been, 
 even when growing alfalfa and fat 
 thoroughbreds helped to swell the 
 fimds. 
 
 The story of Sam’s loss soon 
 spread, and his business credit suf- 
 fered a more than temporary shock. 
 But he looked up into the clear sky 
 and thanked Heaven he was a free 
 man. Yet the bitterness of rebuild- 
 ing influence and fighting debt re 
 remained, until Sam wondered some- 
 times if he were not the only man 
 
 whose life was just one battle. I 
 82 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 know, of course, how few there are 
 whose lives are anything else. And 
 I know, too, how useless these few 
 are to the world. If my hoy had 
 only come to me he would have found 
 this out, but he was too busy to think 
 of me. 
 
 Just when his business affairs 
 were most embarrassed, a final 
 struggle came. A delegation of his 
 old neighbors called upon him one 
 day in the interests of the new inter- 
 urban electric line that was about 
 to connect the north and south sides 
 of the divide. The neighbors hadn’t 
 lost faith in Sam. He had lived 
 among them. He had opened up 
 their coal lands for them. They had 
 gloried in his success, and they hon- 
 ored him for not re-leasing nor sell- 
 ing his farm when he might have 
 
 83 
 
TBE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 done one or tlie other easily enough. 
 The truth about that leaked out 
 somehow. 
 
 Sam was one of the local direct- 
 ors of this new road, and his voice 
 meant his own and at least a dozen 
 other votes on any phase of the 
 business. 
 
 The proposed route lay along the 
 east side of the highway. That fact 
 had brought out the delegation. 
 They wanted it changed to the west 
 side. That would save the shade 
 trees of a dozen farmhouses, includ- 
 ing myself and others of our free- 
 hold. The local company preferred 
 the east-side route because there were 
 draws to bridge and fills to be made 
 on the west route. It meant at least 
 twenty or thirty thousand dollars 
 
 84 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 more expense. Naturally, they de- 
 termined to avoid it. 
 
 Sam listened to the farmers and 
 gave them his word to help them. 
 
 “ I ’ll do all I can for you fellows ; 
 don’t expect too much of me,” he 
 said. And they went away confident. 
 
 Close on their heels came a dele- 
 gation representing the company. 
 There were only three of them, and 
 they talked with Sam behind locked 
 doors. They knew his position and 
 influence, the votes he could control. 
 Very gently and adroitly they recog- 
 nized, too, Sam’s reversals and great 
 need of money. The capitalists in 
 the Eastern cities were ready to ad- 
 vance twenty-five thousand for the 
 west side. It mattered nothing to 
 them where the road lay. If Sam 
 would find it convenient to throw his 
 
 85 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 force with them and build the east- 
 side way, he would find ten thou- 
 sand dollars ready for his use, and 
 no questions put. What would he 
 done with the other fifteen thousand 
 they did not say, but Sam counted 
 the three and knew how many times 
 three is contained in fifteen and no 
 remainder. 
 
 “ Of course the farmers would 
 kick about their trees,” they said. 
 “ That was to be expected. They ’d 
 kick about something else if they 
 didn’t have that to fuss over. That 
 was the way with farmers. But they 
 were paid for their land, — a mighty 
 good price, too, for that gumbo. 
 And what were a few old cotton- 
 woods to them anyhow! The air 
 was full of their infernal fuzz now.” 
 
 So they talked, and Sam listened ; 
 
 86 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 and all the while my silvery cotton 
 floated by the Avindow. He did need 
 money — never more than now. 
 This sort of thing was practiced 
 everywhere by local management — 
 he knew that. But at the mention of 
 “ the fuzzy old cottonwoods ” he 
 brought his fist down like a sledge- 
 hammer on his polished oak desk. 
 He had not fought with himself all 
 these years to find the victory always 
 hard to win. 
 
 Gentlemen,” he said in a steady 
 voice, “you may as well go home. 
 I ’m against you, and I ’ll fight to a 
 finish for the west route over the 
 divide. You know where I’ll be 
 when the votes are counted. You 
 know what sort of a majority I can 
 depend on. I do need money; you 
 are right about that. But I ’ve never 
 
 87 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 yet banked a dollar that was tar- 
 nished or that stuck to my hands, 
 and I’m too old to begin that busi- 
 ness now.” 
 
 “More than that,” — his voice had 
 just a half-tone’s deepening, — “I 
 stand for the trees, for their beauty 
 and their shade. Glentlemen, you 
 and I might live and die a few thou- 
 sands richer than we are, but money 
 value doesn’t enter into the comfort 
 those trees can give to the farmers’ 
 wives along our right-of-way, nor 
 the delight and iuspiration they are 
 to the children. It is nearly fifty 
 years since I came here out of a Mis- 
 souri swamp. All the best impulses 
 of my fifty years lead me back to one 
 old cottonwood tree. It developed 
 my muscles when I climbed it as a 
 
 boy. It gave me an outlook on a 
 88 
 
DRIFTING COTTON 
 
 landscape that put a wider horizon 
 into my life. It sheltered me from 
 the heat, it saved me from a win- 
 ter’s blizzard, and its drifting cotton 
 has sailed in between me and temp- 
 tation and kept my manhood for 
 me. And when I die I ask for noth- 
 ing better than that the musical 
 rustle of cottonwood leaves shall 
 sound above my grave and sing my 
 requiem. You may call this notion 
 of mine by any name you want to, 
 and you may call me anything you 
 choose, but don’t forget that our 
 right-of-way lies on the west side of 
 that north-and-south road for the 
 next twenty years, with the privilege 
 of renewing the same for another 
 twenty.” 
 
 What the three men thought when 
 they went away was what the pro- 
 
 89 
 
THE COTTOSWOOD’B STORY 
 
 spective purchaser of the farm had 
 thought, — namely, that Sam was a 
 fool ; but this time he knew he 
 wasn’t. 
 
 90 
 
atttumn’0 CSoIti. 
 
 OOKING only on the self- 
 :xi ish actions of men, it is 
 hard to believe that hon- 
 esty is the best policy; 
 but the trees know it is a truth. We 
 see the results that are ages in mak- 
 ing. That ’s why we never get in a 
 hurry and ask for ten rings of 
 growth a year instead of one. Men 
 want to double their size in a given 
 time, and if they cannot do it they 
 try to inflate themselves and then pad 
 up the hollowness until they appear 
 to do it anyhow. Sooner or later the 
 sham size, the false growth, is 
 known, and then the disgrace of it 
 hangs on forever. 
 
 91 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 Sam had. learned my lesson of 
 waiting, and his clean life came at 
 last to be 
 
 “ his bond upon his bond.” 
 
 Fearlessness and business integrity 
 bring their own reward, and the 
 brand of solid metal was on his 
 wares. Nobody went to him for ' 
 plated goods. 
 
 The children came home from the 
 University crowning his head with 
 honors. They had vigor of charac- 
 ter as well as of mentality, and their 
 sound physical health fostered both. 
 None of them inherited the old affec- 
 tion of the liver brought out of Mis- 
 souri by the grandfather. Trees be- 
 lieve not a little in the mental stimu- 
 lus against disordered livers, and 
 there is nothing they abhor so much 
 as hideous signboards plastered over 
 
 92 
 
AUTUMN’S GOLD 
 
 with advertisements of patent reme- 
 dies for such disorders. But then 
 trees have no livers. 
 
 The four grandchildren of the 
 shiftless elder brother were not so 
 fortunate as Sam’s children had 
 been, and they withered away one by 
 one. Even the little artist nephew 
 just turned sixteen before he died, 
 leaving as a token of his one talent 
 a picture of the tree his Uncle Sam 
 had loved so long. It hangs above 
 Sam’s desk now, where he may see it 
 every day. It would hardly take the 
 water-color prize in its class at the 
 Exposition, hut what of that? Has 
 not the “Master of all good work- 
 men ” set him at his masterpiece for 
 all eternity? 
 
 When Sam’s oldest boy, a grad- 
 uate of the school of mines, came 
 
 93 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 home, he gave his father’s farm a 
 little study before going west to fol- 
 low his profession. 
 
 “ Father,” he said one night, 
 “your coal gave out one year, and 
 we had to go to work for ourselves 
 at school. That turned me from the 
 notion of being a Greek professor to 
 a study of mines. I thought then it 
 was hard luck to have you fail us 
 right in the closing of the sophomore 
 year. ‘ Sophs ’ need so much money, 
 you know. Mother wrote us it was 
 God’s providence the farm wasn’t 
 sold then, and I believe it now. 
 Father, there’s oil, millions of oil 
 down those old coal-shafts. You 
 saved a fortune for all of us when 
 you didn’t sell the farm. 
 
 “ You ’ll be the richest man in the 
 country yet, and then have plenty of 
 
 94 
 
AUTUMN’S GOLD 
 
 money for your illustrious son, the 
 professor of mining business, and 
 for his equally illustrious brother, 
 hunting bugs down in South Amer- 
 ica. There are enough bugs in all 
 conscience out here on the prairie 
 to satisfy the most fastidious, with- 
 out going beetle-hunting in Brazil. 
 And there ’ll be money left over, too, 
 for the third boy, who is going to 
 Chicago to reform all the slums 
 there. We ’re a gay lot of Missouri- 
 ans, diving after bugs and slums and 
 the ill-smelling oil down in the 
 mines. We reveal our plebeian stock 
 clearly. But with money my sister 
 can marry an earl. I guess a Mis- 
 souri. girl and an English Duke 
 would match up all right with a good 
 oil well to lubricate the machinery.” 
 
 He rattled on gaily in the exuber- 
 
 95 
 
AUTVMlf’S GOLD 
 
 ance of wholesome young life and 
 promise, hut the older man scarcely 
 heard what he said. What Sam did 
 hear was the feeble voice of his dy- 
 ing father saying, “ You ’ll git your 
 reward some day,” and his own an- 
 swer, ‘‘ I ’ve had my reward al- 
 ready.” 
 
 All the young man’s dream I knew 
 would he realized, for the wealth was 
 there. And now, day and night the 
 black smoke rises in a column toward 
 the sky, and the draw isn’t a water- 
 drainage any more. It ’s a stream of 
 waste oil. 
 
 Up here I stand and watch the 
 plain, and dream of the days gone 
 by and of the days to come. How 
 changed from the prairie of long ago, 
 when the first settlers crept across it, 
 is the fertile, busy, thrifty eountry- 
 
 97 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 side of to-day. This land to me is the 
 fairest under all the dome of heaven. 
 With the wealth that lies below the 
 soil are the riches in it and upon it ; 
 the land that grows the best grain 
 and the choicest fruit and the finest 
 stock, and, most of all, grows men 
 and tuomen, no matter how poor and 
 unpromising their first outlook on 
 life may be. Here they develop and 
 strengthen and ripen at last like the 
 corn in autumn. I have loved it all 
 since first I was tall enough to lift 
 my head above the divide and look 
 out upon it. 
 
 It is October now, and the splen- 
 dor of yellow leaves is mine. The 
 clear sweet air, the changing land- 
 scape, the glorious sweep of rainbow- 
 tinted skies, the purple haze over the 
 
 9S 
 
AUTUMN’S GOLD 
 
 vanishing distances, and thrpugh all 
 and all, the autumn’s calm, the year’s 
 “ well done ” that fills with an ineffa- 
 ble peace the soul of him who can 
 take it in, — these things belong to 
 my days of golden leaves. 
 
 You see that white gravestone 
 gleaming through the grasses at my 
 feet! It marks the place where Nel- 
 lie lies. No. Not Nellie, but the 
 garb of flesh she wore on earth. It 
 was just such a grand October as 
 this when I lined her open grave 
 with my leaves of shimmering gold, 
 and dropped them on her coffin-lid. 
 
 Sam is a gray-haired man, vigor- 
 ous and useful and strong in the au- 
 tumn of his days. He too will come 
 back to me in a little while, and an- 
 other white stone will be planted at 
 my feet. Men will laud his life and 
 
 99 
 
THE COTTONWOOD’S STORY 
 
 honor Ms memory. His loved ones 
 will mourn for him and long to have 
 him here again. Only I, the old cot- 
 tonwood, will bud and blossom and 
 send my drifting, feathery cotton far 
 and wide; will grow green in the 
 springtime and golden in the au- 
 tumn, and grieve not at all for Sam. 
 His body will be where the shadows 
 of my boughs will ruffle the waves of 
 sunshine that sweep across the sod; 
 but with the memory of his noble 
 life graven deep in the hearts of all 
 who knew him will run the Psalm- 
 ist’s legend: 
 
 “He shall he like a tree planted hy 
 the rivers of water; . . his leaf 
 also shall not wither; and whatso- 
 ever he doeth shall prosper.” 
 
 W W S 
 
 100 
 

 
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