70 
ri-ihC Hi URAL NEW-YORKER 
January 17, 
rain. 
has turned to a puddle, 
comes, and a tierce, cold 
With church some miles 
gave up the trip. The 
the windows and the wind 
doors, but we are all dry and 
Hope Farm Notes 
•—■ —i ■ i - 4 
This is nice weather! How can any¬ 
one make good resolutions, with a “stick” 
in them, when the first Sunday of the 
new year turns up like this? Instead of 
snow and ice, last night brought a fierce 
This morning every little hollow 
Still the rain 
wind has risen, 
away, our folks 
rain pounds at 
shakes the 
warm. The 
cows have stalks and mangels to amuse 
them, and we have a good supply of books 
and a warm open fire. < )n a day like 
this tlip average man is likely to sleep, 
find fault, or raise “a grouch”; or he will 
read something that can take his mind 
away from himself. Of course a man is 
harmless while he is asleep, but the 
■“grouch” is one of the social worms 
which gnaw the family heart out. The 
great resource for a day like this is read¬ 
ing. Looking back a good many years 
now. I can see that one blessed thing that 
came out of my hard childhood was the 
fixing of a reading habit. What is there 
on the surface of this good earth that I 
could buy with a million dollars which 
could even equal the satisfaction of sit¬ 
ting before my fire on a day like this, and 
wandering off into an unseen country 
with the author of a good book? When 
I was a boy the old folks made me read 
such books as “The History of Josephus, 
or “Transactions of the General Court.” 
Such literature will start no reading 
habit in a boy. I suppose I ought not to 
tell it. but my habit was started on stolen 
fruit. It somehow came to that childish 
mind that there must be, somewhere, 
books which carried a message that was 
not like taking medicine! That kind 
seemed to go right into the fire if they 
got inside the house. I went out into the 
barn, and with a hay-knife cut a tunnel 
or hole under the hay, with a good-sized 
space at the end. near a window, which 
gave light enough for reading. The old 
gentleman who brought me up was. lame, 
and I was expected to do most of the 
chores. I got a great reputation for in¬ 
dustry in currying the cow and sweeping 
the barn, when in truth I fear I was 
curled up in my hole under the hay en¬ 
joying stolen fruit. For there I nibbled 
at “specked” apples, and read such books 
as I could pick up in the neighborhood. 
To you that would have seemed like a 
dusty and dreary prison. To me it was 
like fairyland. As I read I could forget 
the wild storm outside; the narrow hole 
in the hay mow “faded away to marble 
balls.” The author of these books took 
mo right by the hand and led me up to 
the pleasant places of life. This will be 
read by gray-haired men, who perhaps 
were placed as I was years ago. We were 
made orphans by the Civil War, and 
■“given out” because the home could not 
carry us all. These men will know how 
such hoys needed the sentiment and 
thought which came through a reading 
habit, and what would have happened had 
it been denied thorn. 
Two books which I read over and over 
in those days were Dana’s “Two Years 
Before the Mast.” and a ragged and 
thumb-worn “History of Paraguay.” To¬ 
day, on this cold, wet Sunday, it seems 
very much like <»ld times to take up "Two 
Years Before the Mast” and imagine my¬ 
self back in the old hay-mow once more. 
It is a surprising thing , but the old book 
seems just as fascinating now as in those 
old days half a century back. Here I am 
reading about the flogging aboard the 
brig Pilgrim, throwing the hides down the 
cliff at San Pedro, the fearful struggle to 
get around Cape Horn, the fight on deck 
between the big overgrown lad from 
Cape Cod and the boy from the Boston 
school. It is no wonder Dr. Eliot has 
put this among the “classics,” to rank 
with the few great 
cannot be forgotten 
takes hold of you. 
true that you 
with mittens 
masterpieces which 
or lost., This book 
It is so simple and 
may lie in your hav-mow 
uid overcoat on, and sail 
away under California skies with no 
thought of zero weather. The cow in the 
basement may not be carded, and the calf 
may bellow for her hay. but you are off 
iu the future where great things are to be 
done. 
Dana took his voyage in 18:14. At that 
time California was considered a part of 
Mexico, and little was known about it iu 
the Atlantic States. When gold was dis¬ 
covered in Upper California, “Two Years 
Before the Mast” was practically the only 
book which gave true information about 
the Pacific Coast. While Dana gave the 
actual facts—true pen pictures of what 
he saw—we must smile now to read his 
reasoning from these facts. This is what 
he said of California in 1835A 
“In the hands of an enterprising peo¬ 
ple, what a country this might be. we are 
ready to say. Yet how long would a peo 
pie remain so in such 
Americans (as those 
States are called) and 
are fast filling up the 
and getting the trade 
are indeed more industrious and effective 
than the Spaniards; yet their children 
are brought up Spaniards in every re¬ 
spect ; and if the ‘California fever’ (lazi¬ 
ness) spares the first generation, it al¬ 
ways attacks the second.” 
Nearly 80 years ago that seemed ac¬ 
curate reasoning from the facts, yet how 
time has disproved it all. Dana could not 
foresee rhat the gold discoveries would 
moan to California, and he did not realize 
the full, enduring power of the white race 
under the spur of labor and necessity. 
Had California become a slave State 
Dana’s estimate would have been nearer 
right, for there can be no permanent 
progress or stability of government ex¬ 
cept where the great middle class of peo¬ 
ple labor willingly and with fair profit. 
What comes to me to-day on this wet 
and dismal January Sunday is that nei¬ 
ther Dana on the California coast nor 
the boy in the New England hay-mow 
could reason accurately from the facts 
then at hand. Suppose Dana in his day 
could have read Smith’s “Conquest of 
Arid America,” or suppose the boy could 
have read with understanding such a hook 
as “The Promised Land.” One book tolls 
what is to happen to the Far AYest when 
intelligent white men turn water upon 
the desert sand. The other gives a vision 
of the effect upon New England of the 
swarms which are to come from Europe 
to do the labor which “Americans” grow 
away from. Both Dana and this boy 
would have been far better off and would 
have made broader and more capable men 
could they have worked away front the 
shell of that old prejudice which prompts 
men to conclude that whatever is hard or 
out-of the ordinary comprehension must 
be impossible. Eighty years ago Dana, 
the highest authority, could see little if 
any future for California. Look at the 
State now! "Who can read such books 
and not ask himself: “If this be true, 
what is to happen 80 years from now?” 
It is a large thought, and some of you 
may say. “What is that to me?” Your 
children and their children, your property 
and your plans, your life work, are all to 
be tested in that far-off time. The rain 
that is beating against m.v window may 
be evaporated and condensed one thou¬ 
sand times over before that time, or it 
may work through one hundred different 
bodies. You cannot affect that, but the 
man who watches it from his fire SO 
years hence may he a little short of what 
he ought to he if you sit and lot your 
mind stagnate, or laze in sleep, or a 
“grouch” when a strong book would glad¬ 
ly take you in band. 
I do not even know who wrote that 
“History of Paraguay,"” but it told of the 
war with Brazil. The tyrant Lopez com¬ 
manded. and for years the people fought 
on until over 00 per cent, of the men 
were killed. In the last battle white- 
haired •men, women and boys of 10 fought 
side by side against the Brazilians. As 
a boy, in my hole in the hay, I used to 
drop the book and wonder why these 
people could fight like that. Lopez was 
a brutal tyrant. He had robbed and de¬ 
graded his country. There was no hope 
under his rule, yet what frightful mis¬ 
eries these poor people endured fighting 
for their native land! That is one coun¬ 
try I have always wanted to see, in order 
that I might learn what there is about it 
than can arouse such patriotism. Now 
comes Joe AVing’s book, “In Many 
Lands,” which gives the host idea of the 
South American people I have yet seen. 
Joe AYing went to Patagonia and Argen¬ 
tina for a study of the sheep and wool 
industry, and this book is written as sim¬ 
ply as “Two Years Before the Mast.” It 
is full of pen pictures which might well 
take a man away from a stormy Sunday. 
Imagine a little seaport without protec- 
tioi*on the lower Pacific. A few strag¬ 
gling houses with iron roofs stand in the 
fierce and perpetual wind. A broad high¬ 
way, fenced on either side, runs from the 
ocean straight . back hundreds of miles 
away to the mountains. Down this high¬ 
way toiling oxen haul great loads of wool, 
and great flocks of sheep 'come walking 
out of the dim, mysterious interior to the 
slaughterhouses. What have we to do 
with such a hateful place? I can remem¬ 
ber when James G. Blaine was Secretary 
of State, and the speech he made to the 
delegates from. South America. His 
prophecy of close trade relation with the 
country south of us has not yet come 
true, but it has only been delayed. Our 
children are to find in these Southern Re¬ 
publics a most wonderful opportunity for 
trade and development. To reason only 
from the facts of the present would be as 
futile as Dana’s statement about Cali¬ 
fornia 80 years ago. I regard Joe Wing’s 
hook as one of the most useful volumes 
that this century has given us thus far. 
I saw Mr. Wing a short time ago, and 
told 
of Para- 
a country? The 
from the United 
Englishmen, who 
■ principal towns, 
into their hands, 
him of that old “History 
guay.” Then 1 asked him how lie ac¬ 
counted for the fact that these people 
endured such fearful privations for a 
brutal dictator like Lopez. But here we 
are at the end of our space, with dinner 
ready, too. A\ T e must let this go awhile. 
H. w. c. 
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86 
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-// 
