GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



October, 1919 



c 



O- 

 months ago, 

 we talked 

 about the word 

 "amateur''; 

 what it really 

 meant and how 

 it came to be, in 

 the misty long 

 ago when the 



needs of the people shaped it out of ami 

 into their young, growing vocabulary. An- 

 other word has been picturing itself to me 

 these last few days, my fresh interest in it 

 being due to a little incident told at a lunch- 

 eon by a charming woman writer whom I 

 know. It happened in the recent first regis- 

 tration of women as voters in Tennessee. 

 One of the registrars in her ward, she said, 

 looked much like a little hickory nut, and 

 the other had a pet goatee. The Hickory 

 Nut asked how long she had been living 

 at her present residence. Eight years, she 

 told him. "Where did you live before you 

 moved there?" he inquired further. 



' ' Paris, France, ' ' she said. Whereupon 

 he looked so flustered that the Goatee came 

 to his rescue. 



' ' Write down Paris, Tennessee, ' ' he di- 

 rected in an aside. (We have a Paris, Ten- 

 nessee, you know, fully the size of a lady 's 

 pocket handkerchief.) 



' ' She said Paris, France, ' ' the Hickory 

 Nut insisted, in a hollow, unbelieving voice, 

 and wrote accordingly. "And what," he 

 continued funereally, with painfully distinct 

 syllabification, "what is your a-vo-ca-tion? " 



' ' I wanted to tell him, in all honesty, 

 that I hadn't any avocation," my friend 

 said; "but I knew he meant vocation, so I 

 told him I was a free lance. ' ' 



"A what?" gasped Hickory Nut, looking 

 as tho he might possibly be registering Joan 

 of Are herself. 



But Goatee knew better the ways and 

 phrase of the world. ' ' She means, ' ' he ex- 

 plained, "that she is a writer. She writes 

 for a paper called 'Free Lance.' "! 



I thought that was funny, but it grew still 

 funnier when I found out later that there 

 used to be a negro paper published in Nash- 

 ville called "Free Lance"! And my friend 

 is so — so — well, so not that way, you know. 

 (Yet I wish everyone might know how un- 

 swervingly, during the war, the finest of 

 Nashville's white women, including this 

 lovely woman herself, served negro soldiers 

 at the Canteen, wrapped overseas Christmas 

 packages for negro women, and supplied the 

 present negro paper with Eed Cross notes 

 for their columns. And even as it was done 

 in Nashville, so it was done thruout the 

 South.) 



Well, Hickory Nut's "a-vo-ca-tion" kept 

 running thru my mind, till I began to won- 

 der if there might be any possible justifica- 

 tion for using it synonymously with voca- 

 tion, as one's main occupation, instead of 

 the only way I knew it — as a sideline. My 

 interest was further challenged by the fact 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



Grace Allen 



S 



^=^^^^^^^ 



that in different 

 conversations on 

 the subject, I 

 found one man 

 who thought an 

 avocation was a 

 former vocation, 

 something a per- 

 son used to do 

 before he did 

 whatever he was doing now; and a woman 

 who thought the word applied only to the 

 trades. So I went to the dictionary. While 

 Webster didn 't exactly back the Hickory 

 Nut, he didn 't exactly back me, either. He 

 had room for us both in his first, second, 

 and third definitions; tho he does reassure 

 me by saying that the use of avocation for 

 vocation is contrary to good usage. 



But the thing that interested me most, 

 and carried me on the wings of wonder and 

 imagination away back into the long ago, 

 was the derivation. I had never happened 

 to think of it before, apparent tho it is. 

 Take vocation first — coming down to us of 

 this day thru the Latin vocatio, a bid- 

 ding, a calling, an invitation, from vlo- 

 care, to call. Don't you see the poetry in it, 

 and feel life itself pulsing thru it? We, 

 too, speak of a person 's calling, but do we 

 think of it in the vivid way of those ancient 

 people whose constant literal use of the ex- 

 pression actually made the word? Into 

 their hearts and across their lives a call 

 was sounding — some work called them and 

 they followed it; that was why it was their 

 calling, their vocation. 



Can 't you imagine their grave elders, the 

 white-bearded patriarchs of a long-forgotten 

 age, asking the different boys of that day, 

 "What work is it that calls you, my son? 

 Which of them all is calling to you?" And 

 some sturdy lad must have said, "I hear 

 the earth calling — I shall be a tiller of the 

 soil." And another, "I hear the voice of 

 fine gold ringing in my ears — I shall be a 

 goldsmith." And one may have said, 

 "There is a voice sounding from the pot- 

 ter's wheel — it calls me day by day; I shall 

 fashion the clay into clean vessels." While 

 still another may have heard the anvil's 

 clanging voice inviting him to be a smith. 

 Doesn 't the thought of it all recall the old 

 beautiful words? 



All these put their trust in their hands, 

 And each becometh wise in his own work. 

 Yea, tho they be not sought for in the 



council of the people. 

 Nor be exalted in the assembly ; 

 Tho they sit not on the seat of the judge. 

 Nor undea'stand the covenant of judgment. 

 *********** 



Yet without these shall not a city be 



inhabited. 

 Nor shall men sojourn or walk up and 



down therein. 

 For these maintain the fabric of the world. 

 And in the handiwork of their craft is 



their prayer. 



Surely, too, some youth in those old days, 

 even as also in these, must have said, "I 



