730 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 3, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
“The Lilacs” 
Part I 
It is nearing lilac time once more, and 
partly because it would be appropriate to 
the season, but more for the benefit of 
the many neic subscribers who missed the 
article about the lilacs, could the Hope 
Farm man publish that sermon again? 
Possibly he never thought of it as a ser¬ 
mon, but to me it teas a very impressive 
one. So aptly illustrating how spiritual 
things survive when material things have 
passed away. Teaching that “we do not 
live by bread alone.” mrs. C. C. MARTIN. 
West Virginia. 
It must be 25 years since that little 
sketch was printed. I had forgotten it. 
That is a long time in the history of a 
farm. Here it is the night before Easter. 
My daughter, the baby and I went over 
to the local florist’s and bought a few 
flowers for tomorrow, so that even up 
among these lonely hills the true spirit of 
the day may come. I shall not reprint 
the little story ; I have not even read it. 
I will just try to tell it again, from mem¬ 
ory, and the experience which added 
years have brought. 
***** 
The first Winter on this farm was a 
hard one for all of us. December and 
January were unusually cold and stormy, 
and then came a long, dreary season of 
mud and gray skies. There was no way 
of getting about comfortably. The roads 
were just wide ribbons of yellow paste, 
two feet deep in the worst places. We 
were crowded into an old stone house 
with no conveniences whatever except 
one pipe carrying water from the well. 
It is claimed that George Washington 
passed a comfortable night in this house 
during the Revolution. That may be, but 
war conditions for Washington hardly 
suit a modern family, where there are 
four sturdy children. During the Win¬ 
ter we ran through all the emotions from 
deep despair to buoyant hope, such as 
come to all back-to-the-landers. But you 
might search the country from the low¬ 
est point in Patagonia where the native 
curls up in the seaweed, to Greenland, 
where the Eskimo squats in his house of 
ice, and never find a family happier than 
wie were when Spring finally danced into 
our valley and set us free. There was 
the entire farm to be explored, for we 
knew little about it. Every Sunday the 
children and I started out on little ex¬ 
cursions which took us to every stone 
wall and every corner. Our farm is near¬ 
ly a mile long, with 30 acres of woods, 
damp meadows where little springs hide, 
sun-swept hills and dark thickets filled 
with wild life. Right within cannon shot 
of the great city our children had all the 
thrills of anticipation which might come 
in an African lion hunt. None of us can 
ever forget that happy Spring when life 
was bright, and every corner of our old 
farm was new. 
***** 
One Sunday afternoon we found a new 
path or road at the back of the farm, and 
followed its winding course over a little 
hill and around a small pond hole. The 
children ran ahead, young explorers hap¬ 
py in their childish belief that Spring 
will always follow Winter and life be¬ 
come one long delightful search for the 
happiness which lies at the end of the 
road. They ran on ahead, dancing and 
shouting. I followed slowly, thinking of 
the struggle which generations before me 
had gone through to hold this land away 
from the wilderness—a farm. IIow these 
generations had toiled and bent their 
backs and crooked their fingers until they 
finally dropped out of the battle, beaten ! 
They picked up the stones and built them 
into walls—breastworks to defend their 
fields from the forces of nature. For a 
time they succeeded, yet finally, as relent¬ 
lessly as fate, the cedars, the brush and 
briars, all the wild growth which Nature 
sends out like a pack of hounds, had 
climbed over the stone walls and occu¬ 
pied the land. It seemed such folly for 
man to pit his feeble strength against this 
great cruel, unreasoning giant which so 
surely wipes out all record of human 
achievement and brings the wilderness to 
blot out all evidence of civilization. Even 
in this rough little corner of my farm 
was evidence of the utterly futile efforts 
of man to leave any permanent mark 
upon the world. Of what use is all this 
struggle for power and wealth if this is 
to he the end of it all? 
***** 
These were gloomy thoughts for Spring¬ 
time, and I am glad to feel that my chil¬ 
dren could not share them. What a hid¬ 
eous life prospect it would be if little 
children were forced to live for_ 50 years 
with the miserable sense of disappoint¬ 
ment and failure which at times comes to 
so many of us at middle age! These 
things were in mind as I slowly followed 
the children along that winding path. 
Far ahead I heard them shouting to me, 
and there was a strange new exultation 
in their voices, as though they had made 
some great discovery. Perhaps old ex¬ 
plorers coming back with the story of 
some remarkable discovery have had 
something of that strange thrill in their 
voices. Then I saw four little figures 
running back to me through the thick 
foliage which over hung the path. My 
little girl ran ahead with a bunch of 
flowers in her hand. 
“Oh, father! come quick! We have 
found two lilac bushes. Oh, ' come! 
come!” 
You may imagine that started me. The 
lilac crop is not likely to add great riches 
to a Jersey farmer, and I do not know 
that the lilac bush, like the chestnut tree 
or the pine, is a sure indication of the 
character of the soil or its needs, but I 
do know that you rarely if ever find a 
lilac bush that was not planted by the 
hand of man. Roses or other flowers 
may run off into the wilderness and find 
a habitation, but the lilac seems to me 
the surest evidence of a human home. I 
knew when my children brought those 
flowers out of that tangled corner that 
we were coming upon one of those human 
tragedies which all through the world’s 
history have saddened and puzzled all 
those who seek for happiness—an aban¬ 
doned home. The children tugged and 
pulled me into a run. At the end of the 
path we came to a little mound grown 
thick with wild growth. In front were 
two tall lilac bushes covered with bloom. 
They had grown up tall and straight 
above the tangle around them, as if too 
proud to permit this mob of inferior 
growth to choke them, or hide the mes¬ 
sage they carried to the world. Just be¬ 
hind them stood a broken old apple tree. 
Most of its limbs were dead and broken, 
but at the top a long, slender, upright 
limb still waved a cluster of apple bloom 
in triumph. Several seedling apple trees 
had grown up, but had lost the pride and 
character of their parent, and had merely 
become a part of the tangle which covered 
the little mound. There were dwarf ce¬ 
dars, blackberry bushes, sumac, white 
birch, all the dwarfed and hateful guer¬ 
illas which Nature sends over the fence 
to destroy the garden and the home when 
the human hand gives up the conflict. 
Here it was—right on my farm—an 
abandoned home. 
***** 
I knew what I should find, and it was 
all there. Back of the lilacs were several 
broad, flat stones. I knew that they led 
to what was once the kitchen door. Many 
a time the woman of the house had stood 
on those stones and looked off across the 
fields where her husband was at work. 
Here little children had played in the 
old days. There was only a pile of rough 
stones to mark where the house once 
stood. At one side was the last remnant | 
of the cellar wall—the rest a heap of j 
stones. The frost had evidently thrown 
the underpinning down ; one small piece 
of charred wood, evidently of an old 
sill, was all that was left of the wood¬ 
work. A little pile of stones and a 
mound of earth at one side marked all 
that remained of the well. The cellar 
was a tangle of brush and vines. As 1 
stood by the side of the old wall a rab¬ 
bit sprang out of the tangle and hurried 
away, while a blacksnake glided out of 
another corner into the tangle around us. 
In the apple tree beside the lilacs two 
chattering robins were building their 
nest. There was one partly cleared field 
where my neighbor had kept up a feeble 
form of culture, but all around us the 
great chestnuts stood nodding their heads 
in the breeze, as if to say: 
“Yes, indeed, we have seen it all. 
These people tried to invade bur king¬ 
dom, and for years they boasted of the 
power of man over Nature. Where are 
they now? What was once a human 
home is now only the abode of wild 
beasts! Where is the boasted power of 
man? Cut us down if you will, and im¬ 
mediately our children spring up, a mul¬ 
titude, to hold our home and defend it. 
You humans do not have that love for 
the soil. In the end we run them out v 
Their only protection is in the town, and 
even there, when at last they abandon 
their trust, we break through their pave¬ 
ments and their brick and stone and re¬ 
gain our own !” 
The sun was bright, the sky was clear. 
Little white clouds sailed happily over 
us. The robins scolded us, the bees 
hummed, the children laughed and shout¬ 
ed, and the lilacs spread their perfume 
through the air. Of all the happy throng 
I seemed the only one to realize what 
this little mound mean to the world, and 
very likely I could not grasp it all. We 
gathered a great bunch of the lilacs and 
went home through the darkening woods 
to Mother. She sat for a long time with 
the flowers in her lap, looking out of the 
window at the great honeysuckle vine in 
front of our house. That and a great 
Wistaria vine over the side door were the 
only touches of color near the house 
when we first came here. I do not know, 
but I think that among the hard, prac¬ 
tical people who for years occupied this 
house, there finally came some boy or 
girl with beauty and delight of color in 
the heart. I do not think they could be 
fully satisfied with the dull, drab life of 
this lonely farm, and that these flowers 
make up their contribution of beauty to 
posterity. Thinking of that made me 
realize a strange thing. I have but a 
mild interest in the lives of the long line 
of farmers who occupied this farm before 
we came here. I do not much care what 
Wow 1 
iWOW 
Heat it, 
'Maria,b«ti 
Seed coated with Stanleys Crow Repellent ggf 
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