100.9. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
423 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE HOPE FARM MAN’S STORY. 
Part II. 
The soles and uppers were brought to 
us from town, and we pegged them to¬ 
gether. I saw the death of that indus¬ 
try when machines were invented to use 
steel pegs or screws. Then we braided 
straw and sewed it imo hats, and braid¬ 
ed corn husks and made them into 
round door mats. The man I lived 
with had a small lathe rigged in his 
barn, and did such turning as the neigh¬ 
borhood demanded—from a baseball bat 
to a nest egg or a doorknob. We 
worked the lathe with our feet! That 
was the foundation of my knowledge of 
“agriculture.” It was a day of small 
incomes and small things. I have spent 
some days picking up droppings in the 
road. I was taught to pick up and save 
every bone and every old nail I could 
find. They were sold at a good price. 
My boys cannot understand what it 
means to save things in this way. I 
don’t know how it happened, but in 
spite of all this shoe-pegging and hat¬ 
making and carpentering I never learned 
to do things well. I never could make 
a shoe in spite of all the pegging, or 
turn out a doorknob or make a hat, or 
even drive a nail that I can brag about. 
I can make a good husk mat, but that 
is nearly the limit of my mechanical 
ability. I learned how to raise straw¬ 
berries,. and I saw, even as a child, 
something of the possibilities of a piece 
of land. I went to the common district 
school, and one term in a so-called high 
school, and then, at 14, it was necessary 
for me to become a bread-winner. That 
was a part of the legacy which most 
dead soldiers left to their children, and 
it was, in its way, a good one. Few 
things amuse me more in these days 
than the way some people discuss the 
future of Billy or John. As a rule these 
boys have had no cares or troubles and 
have done very little work. Yet you 
would think them the most important 
hostages ever offered to the future. In¬ 
stead of putting them out to show as a 
matter of self-preservation, what they 
are really made of, their parents, usually 
the mother, plan to fit them for certain 
things whether they carry the timber for 
them or not. Nobody asked me what I 
wanted to do, for in those days, without 
speaking of it, every soldier’s son knew 
that he was expected to obey orders. 
At that time, as T remember it, there 
was little or no incentive for an am¬ 
bitious boy to remain on the farm in 
that section. It seemed to be decreed 
that the West was to feed the nation 
and that the East was to supply the in¬ 
ventive genius and the manufactured 
goods. 1 luis we were taught that 
if a smart boy wanted to farm he 
ought to _ go where farming was the 
main business, and not try to do it 
under the shadow of a factory. I have 
since learned the meaning of the word 
“osmose,” and have seen how fluids 
mix. It has been much the same with 
industry in this country. The profits of 
manufacturing and trade have created 
expensive tastes of food, clothing and 
habits. This has given opportunities to 
the little farms such as I went away 
from greater than were ever known 
before. Tt has also sent manufacturing 
to the West in order to put the goods 
closer to the consumers. I remember 
when furniture was made in New Eng¬ 
land where the hard wood was cut. 
When the wood ran out the business 
went to Michigan—following the wood. 
Now, even when the wood has been cut 
it stays there because the workingmen 
do not want to leave their homes. 
I was sent as errand boy in a Boston 
book store, where I earned $3 a week! 
Some day I shall make a book out of 
the details of all this story. I was once 
sent out to buy a bag of peanuts for 
the poet Longfellow, and also, I regret 
to say, a. jug of beer for some equally 
famous literary gentlemen. I accepted 
some of the peanuts, but there wasn’t 
poetry enough in the entire collection to 
make me taste the jug. I know just 
what it means for a boy to be alone in a 
great city. Yet I find young men now 
m the. country who know far more 
about it than I can tell them. I knew 
all through these years that my mother 
was grieving because she could not 
bring up her children on a farm—in a 
home of her own. Had there been a 
small farm for us somewhere our fam¬ 
ily might have been held together. We 
could all have worked to develop the 
place and then, had it been necessary to 
separate, we would have had that piece 
of land back of us. That failure to 
have the home was like a shadow and 
I made up my mind as a boy that some 
day T would have a piece of land of my 
mvn. You will begin to see what I 
mean in saying that all these things lie 
underneath the farm just as evident to 
me as the stone walls which the former 
owners put right in my way. 
When I was about 20 years old I 
looked about the store where I worked 
and saw a curious thing. Of the young 
men behind the desks and counters the 
great majority appeared to be relatives 
of the boss, or related to him in some 
social way. I also saw that I had no 
trade. Very likely there were 50,000 
young men in Boston who could do my 
work as well as I was doing it with a 
month’s practice. I didn’t know enough 
then to get hold of some simple thing 
and master it so no one could do it bet¬ 
ter. A period of hard times had come, 
and I fell in with some men who 
preached country life in colonies. Their 
plan was to send northern people to 
Delaware and other States where they 
were to take up land and make towns. 
There was to be enough of them so that 
the politics of these States could be 
changed. It was something like the old 
plan followed in Kansas before the war. 
I kept out of that, but finally went to 
Colorado and hired out as herder and 
milker on a dairy ranch. That was only 
a. few years after Colorado was made a 
State, and life was free and rough. I 
suppose. I ought to pose as an “old 
pioneer,”, and have a long assortment of 
hair-raising experiences to relate—at 
this distance in time and space from the 
scene. My boys seem a little disgusted 
because I never killed a grizzly bear or 
fought an Indian or shot a buffalo or 
was eaten tip by wolves. In truth, I 
never carried a pistol, never had any¬ 
one shoot at me, and would not guaran¬ 
tee to hit a barn door with a rifle ball 
to-day. I could milk as well as anyone 
in. that section, and I learned how to 
raise crops under irrigation. To tell the 
exact truth I must admit that a man did 
come near shooting at me. When I 
first went to Colorado I was such a ten¬ 
derfoot that I did not know grain from 
grass. I had the cows out one day, 
and saw what seemed to me a fine spot 
of rich feed. I got the cattle on it. but 
in about 10 minutes a man came riding 
like a madman brandishing his gun. I 
had my cattle on his wheatfield and 
didn’t know it! I have felt sometimes 
that the years I spent in that book store 
were pretty much wasted. In some ways 
I would have been better off if I had 
learned a trade, yet being among those 
books gave me a love and respect for 
them which I have always been thank¬ 
ful for. I read hundreds of them both 
there and while herding cattle in Colo¬ 
rado and it was this reading which 
started me to. try to go on. I found 
myself along in the twenties with no 
skill of the hands except that I was a 
good milker, and able to do the work 
of a hired man. My head was stuffed 
with a lot of undigested and unclassi¬ 
fied reading—and that was all I had. 
My cars had been frozen one night in 
a blizzard and the first flicker of an¬ 
other shadow had thus begun. I felt it 
then, and I am glad I realized it early 
that it wasn’t in me somehow to make 
a fortune, in money. As for what books 
would give I could readily see how 
much more useful it would be when 
classified and put out in an orderly 
manner. It seems as if a man must be 
taught the use of knowledge as he would 
be taught the use of tools. So I be¬ 
gan to have dreams of college. That 
dream was brought to a head by observ¬ 
ing the contrast between two old men. 
One was rich, but barely able to write 
his name. Denied the full use of his 
physical powers and untrained for read¬ 
ing or study, his spirit was sour—life 
had turned to ashes at his touch. The 
other man, at about the same age, had 
only a modest competence, but he had 
been a reader and student all his life. 
All that the world held in history and 
hope was within his grasp, and age was 
the golden part of his life. I do not 
know what has prompted other boys to 
struggle and endure for an education, 
but that contrast determined me and I 
could not then have kept out of a col¬ 
lege of some sort if a prairie fire had 
roared between. But what right has 
a hired man with $75 in savings 
to think of a college? As much 
right as a king’s son if he is clean and 
willing to work. At that time I fell 
in with a man from the Michigan Agri¬ 
cultural College who showed me his 
figures. T thought I could match them. 
True, he had a home to go to when 
refuge was necessary, while I had none, 
but hope was large and I got back to 
Michigan and entered. It will ever re¬ 
main a mystery to me how I ever 
passed that examination. T remember 
that one question was “State the differ¬ 
ence between concrete and abstract”— 
and to save my life T couldn’t give it! 
T shall always believe that the big- 
hearted men who examined us shut 
their eyes, God bless them, and let us go 
through. h. w. c. 
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Largest producers of asphalt, and largest manufacturers of ready roofing in the world. 
PHILADELPHIA 
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