19u2 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
835 
Hope Farm Notes 
Thanksgiving.— The last celebrat'on of 
this holiday was about the most startling 
that any of the Hope Farmers remember. 
I have passed Thanksgiving under quite 
varied conditions. “Boy” on a New Eng¬ 
land farm and in a boarding house, cattle 
herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a 
lumber camp, teacher in a country school 
district, hired man and book agent on a 
Michigan farm, “elocutionist” in a dra¬ 
matic company, “professor of modern lan¬ 
guages” (with a slim grip on English 
alone) in a young ladies’ seminary, print¬ 
er’s devil in a southern newspaper office, 
ditcher in a swamp, and other capacities 
too numerous to mention. A man may per¬ 
haps lay claim to a bit of helpful philos¬ 
ophy if he can find some fun in all such 
days and carry along in his mental pocket 
“much to be thankful for.” He is sure to 
come to a time in life when these “treas¬ 
ures of memory” will be very useful. I 
would not refer to family matters that 
might well be marked “private” and lock¬ 
ed away with the skeleton in the closet if 
I did not know that the plain, simple mat¬ 
ters of family record are things that all 
the world have In common. 
Beating a Dull Day.—A pirate or a man 
trying to hide himself might have seen vir¬ 
tues in the dull, misty fog that settled up¬ 
on the city the night before Thanksgiving. 
Grandmother had been slowly failing 
through the day. The night brought her 
greater pain than ever. All through these 
long months we had been able to keep from 
her the real nature and name of her hor- 
riole disease. I took it upon myself to 
keep the children happy. If we grown-ups 
found it hard to be thankful we would see 
that the little folks put out enough thanks 
for the whole family. I took them down 
to the market to pick out a turkey! We 
had a great time, and finally found a tur¬ 
key fat enough to be on good terms with 
its old enemy—Greece! The market man 
gave each of the children a handful of nuts 
—and they now want Mother to give him 
all her trade. They went home fairly ra¬ 
diant with happiness. Was it not better 
for them to go to sleep with the pleasant 
side of the day in their hearts rather than 
the shadow which the rest of us could feel 
near us? 
Strange Sights.— The morning came 
dark and dismal. It didn’t seem like 
Thanksgiving as the Bud and I went after 
the doctor. The clerks and professional 
people seemed to be taking a holiday, but 
the drivers, the diggers and heavy work¬ 
men were at their jobs as usual. The 
streets were filled with children dressed up 
in ridiculous costumes, wearing masks or 
with faces blackened. These urchins went 
about begging money from passers-by. 
Our little folks were rather shocked at 
this way of celebrating Thanksgiving. 
Where this ridiculous mummery cam# 
from or how it crept into a Thanksgiving 
celebration is more than I can say. It may 
be as close as a city child can come to 
thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest! 
Charlie and his family came in from the 
farm, and Jack came from his school. 
Grandmother made a desperate struggle 
and was finally able to sit up so that her 
children and grandchildren might be about 
her. As the children grew restless In the 
house I took them out and we walked 
along the river. My mind was busy with 
other matters relating to other days, but 
the little folks, happily, saw only the great 
bright side of the future. Their past was 
too small to cast any shadow. We went 
as far as Grant's Tomb and passed through 
the room where the great General’s re¬ 
mains are lying. As we passed in the 
Graft and the Scion saw the men take off 
their hats and they did the same. 
“Why do they make you take off your 
hat?” asked the Graft, when we came out. 
1 tried to explain to him that this was 
one of the things that people should not 
be made to do. They should do it because 
they want to show their respect or rever¬ 
ence. I doubt if I made him understand 
it, for when a boy is hungry and other 
boys are playing football in a nearby va¬ 
cant lot even the gentlest sermon loses Its 
point. Our dinner was such a success that 
we did not have chairs enough to go 
around. The children had to sit on boxes 
and baskets. A taste of everything from 
turkey down went in to Grandmother, but 
she could eat little. The plates came back 
again and again until the Hope Farm man 
was obliged to say: 
“Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this 
turkey over after all.” 
lie had not only to turn it over but 
scrape many of the bones clean. The farm 
folks finally went home and Jack too was 
obliged to go. Happily the little folks were 
tired out and they were asleep early. About 
two o’clock the Madame woke me. She did 
not do it before, because it might have 
alarmed Grandmother, who did not, I 
think, clearly understand her true condi¬ 
tion. There was apparently no pain or 
struggle at the end. We noticed that her 
face lighted up with a strange puzzled look 
of surprise and w r onder—and well it might 
when one is called upon to lay down tin' 
troubles and toil of such a life as hers in 
the dim mysterious country which one 
must die to enter. 
Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to 
tell the children about it. They must have 
known that some strange thing was hap¬ 
pening. They woke up early and saw’ the 
undertaker passing through the room. 
Then the Madame got them together and 
told them that poor Grandmother had suf¬ 
fered so long that God pitied her and had 
taken her to him. The little folks sat with 
thoughtful faces for a while and then one 
of them said with wide-open eyes: 
“Is Grandmother dead then?” 
And so the body of poor Grandmother 
passed aw r ay from us while her spirit and 
memory passed deeper than ever into the 
lives of the Hope Farm folks. Life with 
her had ceased to be comfortable. It was 
merely a steady, hopeless struggle against 
pain and depression. “It w r as the time to 
die!” The Madame was able to go through 
these long months calmly and hopefully 
because she knows that her mother had 
every service that love could render. It is 
with that thought in mind that I feel like 
saying a solemn word to those whom I 
have never met, yet who seem to be as 
close as personal friends can be. Do not 
for an instant begrudge the money, the 
time or toil which you may spend upon 
those of your loved ones who need your 
help. That is a part of the cross which 
you must carry cheerfully or reject. Do 
not let those whom you serve see that It 
is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. 
It is not merely a part of hard, cold duty, 
but the vital force in the development of 
character. It may be that I am now talk¬ 
ing to some one who is putting personal 
comfort above the self-denial which goes 
with the sacred trust which God has put 
into our lives. Where will the flag of 
“comfort" lead them when the discomfort¬ 
ing days come? A conscience is a troub e- 
sorne thing at best, but one that has been 
gently and truly developed through self- 
sacrifice is a better companion than the 
barbed finger of trouble thrust into the 
very soul at last by the relentless hand of 
fate! 
Grandmother.—A novelist could weave 
a startling romance out of the plain life 
record of this typical American woman. 
She was born in Massachusetts—coming 
from the best stock this country has ever 
pioduced. This is not the narrow-eyed, 
cent-shavlng Yankee, but the children 
from the hillside farms who went to the 
valleys and at the little water powers laid 
the foundations of New England’s manu¬ 
facturing. These sturdy people saw clear¬ 
ly into the future, and as they harnessed 
and trained the power of the valley 
streams they cultivated and restained their 
own powers until the man as well as the 
machine became a tremendous force. Hon¬ 
orable misfortune befell this manufactur¬ 
ing family, but could not crush it. In 
those days the boys, under such circum¬ 
stances, dropped all their own ambitions 
and took the first job that presented itself, 
without a murmur and with joy that they 
could do it. The girls did the same, though 
there were few openings for women then 
outside of housework and the school room. 
Grandmother had a taste for music, and 
became a music teacher. She finally se¬ 
cured a position as teacher in a little town 
in Mississippi, and in about the year that 
the Hope Farm man was born she went 
Into what was then a strange country for 
the daughter of a Massachusetts Aboli¬ 
tionist! What a journey that must have 
been, before the Civil War, for a young 
woman such as Grandmother was then. 
The South was in a blaze of excitement, yet 
this quiet, gentle northern girl won the 
love and respect of all. There she met the 
man who was to be her husband—a young 
lawyer, able and ambitious, but Weighted 
down by family cares, political convictions 
and ill health. He was a Union man whose 
family had made their slaves free and who 
opposed secession to the last. Grandmoth¬ 
er was married and went to the South just 
before the storm broke. What a life that 
was in the dreary little town during those 
years of fighting! Her husband was at one 
time drafted into the Confederate service 
.and sent to the front only to have a sur¬ 
geon declare him too feeble and sick for 
even that desperate service. He cobbled 
shoes, leached the soil in old smoke houses 
for salt and “lived” as best he could. Once 
he took Grandmother through the lin:s 
with a bale of cotton which he sold to pay 
passage money to the North. After the 
war he was State Senator and Judge under 
the patched-up government which follow¬ 
ed. Carpet baggers and rascals from th" 
North lined their pockets with gold and 
brought shame upon their party and to.-- 
ture and death to the ignorant black me 1 
who followed them. In the midst of this 
carnival of shame and thieving Grand¬ 
mother’s husband never touched a dishon¬ 
est dollar and did his best to give char¬ 
acter to a despised and degraded race. Of 
course he failed, for the race did not have 
strength enough to see that what he tried 
to offer them was better than the hatred 
of their old masters and the dollars which 
the carpet baggers held out. It was not 
all lost, for when he was buried I am told 
that around his grave there was a thick 
fringe of white people and back—at a re¬ 
spectful distance—acres of black, shining 
faces which betrayed the crude, awkward 
stirring of manhood in hearts untrained to 
appreciate true service to country. 
I speak of these things to make my point 
clear that Grandmother was a woman call¬ 
able of supporting her husband through 
these trials and still capable of holding 
the love of those who opposed him. In the 
face of an opposition so frightful that few 
of us can realize it this quiet, unflinching 
woman kept steadily on, respected and 
trusted by all. She took up her burdens 
without complaint, hid her troubles in her 
heart, and walked bravely on in her quiet 
humble way, until at last she found a safe 
haven with her children. A true and sin¬ 
cere Christian woman she lived and acted 
out her faith and did her life’s duty with 
dignity and cheerfulness. The little folks 
as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm 
and talk of Grandmother will have only 
blessed memories of her. h. w. c. 
For the land’s sake, use Bowke^’s Fer¬ 
tilizers. They enrich the earth.— Adv. 
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3 
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SGE PLOWS 
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Write for discounts. 
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ICC 
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