760 
The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
May 10, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
“The Lilacs” 
Part II 
It was not an easy search into local 
history. Perhaps I never have obtained 
the whole story. Very likely imagination 
has helped out somewhat with it. The 
oldest inhabitant never was quite clear 
about it. I took him over to the place 
one day, and he sat on the pile of stones 
which marked the old well and smoked 
his pipe as he surveyed the scene. 
If he ever had any sentiment about 
such things it had long since died out. 
There had not been a flower in front of 
his house for years. I asked him once 
what he had to leave as a monument to 
his earthly labors, and he could think 
of nothing except a tumble-down stone 
wall. 
“That cellar wall was a ’prentice job 
for sure. Now, I could build a wall that 
old Satan himself couldn’t throw down. 
And this ain’t no place for a house no 
(vay. But them laylocks are kinder pret¬ 
ty, ain't they? My father said this man 
rhht built this house was some sort of a 
Dutchman—I don't know what-” 
At any rate, as I get it, this effort to 
make a home in the woods dates back to 
the time just before our Civil War. I 
think the builder was a hired man—a 
European—quite likely one of the men 
who were forced to leave the Fatherland 
in the German revolution of 1848. Just 
why such a man should try pioneering on 
a New Jersey hillside I cannot say. 
Thousands of those revolutionary Ger¬ 
mans made their way to the Western 
plains, and today great cities mark the 
lonely places where their cabins were 
first built. But at any rate this man, 
whoever he was, married an American 
girl and moved hopefully out into these 
woods to make a home. No man ever 
does more than that for America. The 
quality and richness of the home may 
vary, but the impulse which draws the 
man on to it, and the hope to secure a 
piece of land, is a fundamental part of 
Americanism. This man cleraed a place 
in the woods, dug his cellar and helped 
build the little house over it. He cut off 
more and more of the woods and gradu¬ 
ally extended his gardeu and little faiun. 
He worked out for other farmers in the 
rough and crude farming of that day. It 
must have been a dull, prosaic life—the 
daylight bursting into this little hole 
in the woods and lingering slowly through 
the long afternoons. It must have been 
lonely for the woman in the little house. 
One would think it would be harder in 
such a place than out on the great West¬ 
ern prairies, or in the great, somber tim¬ 
ber of the Northwest, for there things 
were somehow larger—the future held 
more of hope and possibility with the 
coming of the great empire which all 
looked forward to. There could not have 
been much of hope in this old and long- 
settled country. The man worked on and 
the woman helped him. She did her part, 
as women do, and it is often the hardest 
part. She kept her home. When things 
went wrong she tried to be cheerful. Sue 
brought up her children and trained them 
as best she could. She did her best to 
made an “annex to Heaven” within this 
lonely corner on a Jersey hillside. What 
more can any woman do? 
Some of them think they do far more 
when they embark on larger enterprises 
and let the home care for itself or go to 
hirelings, but I doubt it. I knew of a 
woman who spent so much time trying to 
“uplift” other women that her own 
daughter was neglected—and ran away 
with a peddler. 
* $ * * * 
And they prospered after their humble 
fashion. You and I would not call it 
prosperity, but they did not want. They 
had enough for self-respect._ The little 
farm succeeded after its fashion, with its 
small crops of rye and potatoes, beans 
and hay. I have no doubt those fields 
were well tilled, and that the man took 
pride in his work. And the woman, as I 
am told, took some of her little fund of 
money, bought these two lilac bushes and 
planted them in front of her door. Per¬ 
haps her husband smiled at her extrava¬ 
gance ; no doubt neighbors shook their 
heads and laughed. 
“That’s no way to get ahead; spend¬ 
ing good money for flowers!” 
She had that kind of noble courage 
which gives one the power to rise above 
ridicule of an ideal, and she cared for 
those lilacs as she would have tended a 
sick baby. They were inoculated with 
love. They fed upon the overflow from 
a hungry heart; they shared the very 
waters of life with a thirsty soul. They 
grew before that little house and finally 
burst into bloom. Who can ever tell of 
'the joy they brought to that home? 
Through sickness and health, through sor¬ 
row and gladness they stood, as one 
might say. like angels before that door. 
Through the long lonely Winter the wom¬ 
an would look out from her “narrow 
kitchen walls” and see these lilac bushes 
shivering in the wind, only to take new 
heart at the thought that, sure as God’s 
eternal promise, in good time the snow 
would melt, the sap run up through these 
dry branches and the perfumed flowers 
burst into bloom once more. These flow¬ 
ers were cut for brides who went out 
from their father’s home in order that a 
new household might find its place. W T hen 
death claimed a neighbor for the last long 
journey in lilac time, these bushes yielded 
their tokens of love and remembrance. 
And so on through the busy years, these 
lilacs stood in front of that home like 
gentle messengers from Heaven, bearing 
their fragrant gifts of love and their 
healing balm for grief. 
* * * -t * 
Hundreds of women who read this will 
fully understand what I mean, for do 
they not know how the flowers around 
the home and in the garden have seemed 
to them like companions who have 
stepped out of another and better world 
to bring comfort and peace which earth¬ 
ly friends cannot offer. 
Misfortune finally fell upon that home. 
I am not sure, but I think the man vol¬ 
unteered as a soldier in the Civil War. 
You are probably too young to realize 
how thousands of men came at Lincoln’s 
call out of these silent, lonely places 
where for years they had unconsciously 
brooded over great problems of life. The 
thought of fighting for what they con¬ 
ceived to be freedom and human rights 
came upon them like a flood in these 
lonely clearings where man works close 
beside God, with few of the calculating 
and cowardly objections which come in 
the crowded town. At any rate, the man 
left home and never returned. The wom¬ 
an made a brave struggle to keep her lit¬ 
tle home together, but she failed. She 
followed her husband. The children were 
scattered ; the home was broken up. It 
was evidently too lonely a place to at¬ 
tract anyone except some man and wom¬ 
an who are led into solitude and incon¬ 
venience by some spiritual desire to help 
others. Perhaps you know why so many 
baek-to-the-landers of middle age fail to 
root permanently when they try to plant 
themselves in the country. They have 
no children or dependents to sufFer and 
sacrifice for, and the failure to do that is 
what unnerves them for the struggle. 
Whenever I see city women or profes¬ 
sional uplifters attempting in their con¬ 
descending way to “improve” the lives of 
women who live in lonely country places, 
it would seem about the most ridiculous 
thing in the world if it were not the most 
pathetic. The little home was abandoned. 
One night a tramp slept in it and care¬ 
lessly tossed aside a lighted match. He 
woke up with house ablaze and skulked 
off into the bushes. The house burned to 
the ground. Slowly the frost loosened 
the stones in the cellar wall. It may have 
been a “ ’prentice job,” as my neighbor 
says; at any rate the walls fell in. The 
cedars, the briars, the wild tangle of 
vines, climbed over the fence and ran riot 
in the garden. The seedling apple trees 
sucked up the substance from the soil 
and turned it into sour and worthless 
fruit. The snake and the toad and the 
woodchuck came to live in the old ruin. 
Year by year the tangle grew, until when 
my children discovered it there was 
nothing in sight to show them that this 
was once a home—a human habitation. 
Nothing but the two lilac bushes which 
the trusting woman had planted at ner 
door—standing sweetly and serenely all 
through these years, the only evidence 
that this haunt of wild beasts was once a 
human home. 
* * * * * 
There has always been to me a fas¬ 
cination, a mystery about that lonely 
place. I have been there at night when 
the moonlight shines down through the 
trees. Wild animals break away from 
the ruins, uncanny sounds and shadows 
are there, yet it is a restful place as I 
try to think it out. All record of the 
man’s labor has been blotted out. You 
might perhaps find a few rotting stumps 
or perhaps a stone pile or two, but who 
can tell what crops he grew; who today 
can measure the labor of his hands? We 
know nothing of it. The record of what 
he did has been wiped from the earth. 
All, all is gone except the lilacs which 
the woman planted at her door! Noth¬ 
ing but this simple labor of love has sur¬ 
vived the biting years! And the thing 
which gives me great comfort is the an¬ 
swer which comes when I ask this ques¬ 
tion. Why should the man’s work be blot¬ 
ted out; the strong, material things which 
hold life together, and only the feeble, 
*»»•»**’ 
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