The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
837 
Phillips brought a great mass of violets. 
The old man put his little flag beside the 
headstone, where Henry read the inscrip¬ 
tion : 
George James Stanley 
“He did his duty” 
Henry was thinking that just about 
this time old General Gardner was about 
winding up. It would be time to intro¬ 
duce “our brilliant young college friend.” 
The girls would be looking at him ! And 
here he was in this lonely place with this 
old man and woman and these two pau¬ 
pers—denied the right of association with 
loyal old soldiers. And yet somehow he 
was not impatient, but strangely happy. 
The old man took off his hat, bent liis 
head and made a short prayer. 1 wish 1 
could give it here. It would stir us all 
to a greater love of country, Then Ma, 
the sweet-faced old lady, began singing 
“America” : 
“My country ’tis of thee!” 
Oh ! If you could only have heard that 
quartette of cracked, feeble voices! I am 
sure that Comrade Drake once owned a 
good strong bass, while Comrade Phillips 
had sung tenor at the singing schools halt 
a century before. You should have heard 
them as they cracked and mumbled the 
song, to the accompaniment of the birds 
which sang among the apple blooms. As 
music it was ridiculous; as a clumsy at¬ 
tempt to expiate their sins and show their 
devotion to country it was sublime. And 
then the old man turned to Henry. 
“And now we’re going to listen to the 
orator of the day. this here young man. 
They say he’s good.” 
But Henry Rawson. the brilliant col¬ 
lege orator, the ready-tongued speaker, 
found himself dumb and tongue-tied. 
How could he address this little group as 
“Ladies and gentlemen”? They were 
more than that. How foolish and flat 
his platitudes seemed beeide this lonely 
grave. Comrade Drake was better fitted 
to fill the place of orator of the day. A 
quick, burning shame fell over him. Here 
in the presence of true, homely life, his 
spirit was humbled to the ground. He 
could only take off his hat and bow his 
head beside that grave. 
* $ * * I* 
“I think you done wise,” said the old 
man as they marched back down the lane. 
“Your silent prayer suited us better than 
a speech.” 
At the house Comrades Drake and 
Phillips were treated to custard pie and 
doughnuts. Henry lingered. Somehow 
he did not feel like mixing with the crowd 
after that ceremony. He had failed as 
an orator. What could he do of service 
to show his respect for the day? Out 
back of the house he saw a piece of bare 
ground, evidently the garden. 
“I see your garden isn’t plowed yet!” 
“Well, no; my rheumatism has been so 
had I couldn’t get to it.” 
And Henry saw his chance for service. 
In the barn he found an old white horse. 
There was a plow in the shed. Ma 
brought him a pair of the old man’s over¬ 
alls, and all through the hot afternoon 
“the orator of the day” plowed and har¬ 
rowed and helped the old man plant that 
• garden. He had failed in his attempts to 
reach the clouds, but he had learned that 
success lies on the ground. Once the 
sound of the band in town reached him, 
but he kept on. At night he trudged back 
along the country road. At the crossroad 
he met a shining buggy and a polished 
horse, and in the buggy was the near¬ 
best girl and the young town banker. The 
girl turned her face away from the ora¬ 
torical failure, but he went on, strangely 
happy, as Ma’s face rose before him. 
* * * * * 
But there are the girls down on the 
lawn waving an apron to show that sup¬ 
per is ready. And I am quite ready for 
the baked beans and rhubarb sauce. 1 
can beat you running down our lane! I 
do not feel like a man who has been 
planting strawberries all day. Somehow 
the memory of Henry the orator has 
taken the tired feeling away. With all of 
us the great chance for usefulness lies 
right on the ground. You may think out 
the application in your own way. 
H. w. C. 
A Product of the Great City 
Probably most of our readers have read 
of the famous “bobbed-haired bandit.” 
The papers have been full of her mis¬ 
deeds. A young woman of 20, named 
Cecilia Cooney, aided by her young hus¬ 
band, committed crimes almost without 
number. She held up and robbed more 
than a dozen people, and shot several 
more. All this was done openly in this 
great city, yet she escaped for months, 
only to be caught at last in Florida. The 
newspapers gave column after column to 
stories about this miserable degenerate, 
and one paper actually paid her $1,000 
for a so-called story of her life. All this 
time hundreds of women in this great city 
were making heroic struggles to live hon¬ 
estly and happily. Others were living 
lives of noble sacrifice, yet not one word 
was printed about them. The crimes and 
scandals are pictured in full, while the 
worthy things which men and women do 
are rarely mentioned. Cecilia Cooney 
was finally captured. She had a fair 
trial and has been sent to States Prison 
for from 10 to 20 years. This might well 
end the public life of Cecilia Cooney, but 
the New York World takes occasion to 
present the following commentary on her 
life and some of its lessons : 
In the 20 years she has lived in this 
city she has come at one time or another 
within reach of all the agencies of righte¬ 
ousness. Five years before she w\as born 
her father was summoned to court for 
drunkenness and neglect; the Charities 
Department recommended then that her 
older brothers and sisters be committed 
to an institution. That did not prevent 
her parents bringing, with the full con¬ 
sent of the law, three or four more chil¬ 
dren into the world. Cecilia herself, the 
youngest of eight, came at four years of 
age into the custody of the Children’s So¬ 
ciety. Six months later, on the recom¬ 
mendation of the Department of Public 
Charity, she was turned back to her 
mother, who promptly deserted her. 
She was next taken to Brooklyn by her 
aunt and for 10 years or so attended 
parochial school. At the age of 14 her 
mother brought her back to New York, 
took her to a furnished room, stole her 
clothes and deserted her. A year later, 
aged 15, Cecilia became a child-laborer 
in a brush factory in Brooklyn, and w r as 
associating at night with sailors picked 
up on the water-front. At 16 Cecilia was 
back in New York, living with her moth¬ 
er, working as laundress for a few months 
at a stretch in various hospitals. At 20 
she was married, had borne a child, $ad 
committed a series of robberies, and is 
condemned to spend the rest of her youth 
in prison. 
This is what twentieth century civiliza¬ 
tion in New York achieved in the case of 
Cecilia Cooney. Fully warned by the be¬ 
havior of her parents long before her 
birth, the law allowed her parents to re¬ 
produce their kind. Fully warned when 
she was an infant, society allowed her to 
drift out of its hands into a life of dirt, 
neglect, dark basements, begging, stealing, 
ignorance, poor little tawdry excitements 
and twisted romance. The courts had 
their chance and they missed it. Charity 
had its chance and missed it. Schools 
had their chance and missed it. The 
church had its chance and missed it. The 
absent-minded routine of all that is well 
meaning and respectable did not deflect 
by an inch her inexorable progress from 
the basement where she was born to the 
jail where she will expiate her crimes 
and ours. 
For her crimes are on our heads, too. 
No record could be clearer or more elo¬ 
quent. None could leave less room for 
doubt that Cecilia Cooney is a product 
of this city, of its neglect and its care¬ 
lessness, of its indifference and its under¬ 
currents of misery. We recommend her 
story to the pulpits of New York, to the 
school men of New York, to the lawmak¬ 
ers of New York, to the social workers of 
New York, to those who are tempted to 
boast of its wealth, its magnificence and 
its power. 
All of this and more is true. The 
World might well have included the great 
daily papers in its arraignment, for when 
they parade the filth and crime record of 
the great city are not they, too, partly re¬ 
sponsible? And there is another point 
about all this. If these great agencies for 
righteousness and sober living are failing 
in city education and civilization, why do 
the uplifters and educators not clean 
their own house before trying to force 
their theories and their laws upon the 
country people? There is greater need of 
reform in city schools than there ever 
was in rural schools. This pious cry 
about giving the country child equal edu¬ 
cational advantages with those enjoyed 
by the city child loses much of its force 
in the face of such an arraignment as 
that of the New York World. The Dia¬ 
mond brothers, recently convicted of an 
atrocious murder here, boasted that they 
are graduates of a high school. So did a 
young bootlegger recently caught off the 
coast of Long Island. We do not hear of 
many farmers in prison or many gradu¬ 
ates of rural schools in crime! “They 
are not smart enough !” is one answer we 
get. Well, we do not want them taught 
that brand of smartness ! 
Mrs. Billfuzz : “Those government 
flower seeds they sent me from Washing¬ 
ton were no good. They claimed to be 
‘early blooming.’ and yet these ‘four- 
o’clocks’ never open up till five p. m.” 
Mr. Nayber: “Yes, but you forget that 
we are now going by daylight saving 
time. That accounts for the difference.” 
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ORGANIZED CO-OPERATION 
A NEW BOOK 
This book is written in three parts. 
PAI^T ONE—The Development of the Ag¬ 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 333 West 30th Street, New York 
“Why ain’t you going with Mary no 
more?” “Well, she wasn’t pretty, didn’t 
have no money, and married .Toe. So I 
just took the advice of my friends and 
dropped her.”—Stanford Chaparral. 
When you write advertisers mention 
quick reply and a “square deal. ” 
The R. N. - Y. and you 'll get a 
See guarantee editorial page. 
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