1350 
The RURAL NEW*YORKER 
October 25, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
“THE CATARYZER” 
Part I 
The chemists have developed a curious 
principle in the chemical relations of va¬ 
rious substances. It is known as ca¬ 
talysis, which, I suppose, might be called 
action by contact. I am well aware that 
when I get off into chemistry I am over 
my head, and should quickly ‘‘swim out.” 
But, as I understand it, certain sub¬ 
stances have the power, by simply being 
mixed with others, to cause these other 
substances in the mixture to act chem¬ 
ically upon one another. The substance 
which causes this action is called a 
“catalyzer,” and is not itself always 
changed by the action which it causes. 
The chemists do not seem able to explain 
why this action occurs, and it is not for 
me to step in where chemists fear to 
tread. It seems remarkable, however, 
that by merely putting iron or sulphur or 
some other substance into a mixture we 
get a reaction which would not occur 
otherwise. And then we can take out the 
“catalyzer” which goes through the re¬ 
action as safely as if it had the nine lives 
of a cat. 
* * * tj: 
I think this theory will be developed 
more and more as time goes on and that 
it will lead to some remarkable things in 
the chemistry of common life, but I am 
more interested in its application to hu¬ 
man and animal life. For there evidently 
are living catalyzers—with flesh and 
blood and such influences as life may give. 
They may come into a family or into a 
community and greatly change the social 
relations of people. I have seen our big 
horse Broker and the old black cow 
Diana evidently quarreling and calling 
each other evil names in the silent lan¬ 
guage of brutes—not at all unlike some 
humans I have known. If they could 
break their halters and get at each other 
there would surely be a case of horn 
against hoof. Right in the heat of this 
family quarrel old Bruce, the solemn 
Airedale dog, will walk into the barn and 
sit on the floor, looking at the scolders. I 
do not know what he says in this curious 
language of silence, but it is evident that 
Broker and Diana are willing to postpone 
their argument. 1 cannot say that either 
one of them will push part qf their por¬ 
tion of hay or grain over to the other, but 
there is a better feeling, and it is clear 
that Bruce has played the part of cat¬ 
alyzer. He has exerted a great influence 
upon the social life of the barn, and is 
none the worst for it. And do you not 
know cases where some relative or friend 
has come to live in a household and 
through some influence pf personal cataly¬ 
sis upset the family proceedings? I see 
that a number of women in New Jersey 
have organized a Society of Mothers-in- 
Law in order to kill off the old joke about 
in-law parents being destructive cataly¬ 
zers. It is unfortunately true that in 
many cases some dependent relative 
dropped into a family of fixed habits may 
raise prejudice or ill feeling to the boil¬ 
ing point. In some other cases the intro¬ 
duction of such a catalyzer may reduce 
(lie temperature and friction and change 
hatred and suspicion into happiness: I 
worked for a farmer once who told me 
that all his wife's relations were “pizen” 
to him, except one—and that one seemed 
to be his wife’s younger sister, a very fine- 
appearing girl! 
i|e * * ❖ * 
Now the following incidents regarding 
a human catalyzer were given me by my 
old friend Billy Harris. He is the Hon. 
William Harris, Esq., now—a very sub¬ 
stantial figure in business and politics— 
but in the days when these things hap¬ 
pened he was a hired man on a Western 
farm. Billy was working through college 
and at times he had to drop out and earn 
a few dollars teaching or doing any sort 
of work that turned up. Billy worked for 
a farmer just under middle age, a pros¬ 
perous man who had worked up from 
nothing to the ownership of a good farm. 
True, his wife brought him a little money, 
but John Hall was a good farmer and a 
well-meaning man. But John and Helen, 
his wife, did not hitch somehow. They 
were just at that point before the “sec¬ 
ond blooming” when many married people 
are disappointed and love takes of its 
eye bandages and can only see - the defects 
of character as through a microscope. I 
suppose most married people go through 
that period of readjustment, unable to 
find the true joy and blessing of life 
through lack of some catalyzer which may 
start the needed action. You see there 
never had been any children, and both 
John and Helen were beginning to think 
vaguely of the years ahead of them. They 
had this great empty house, this beautiful 
farm and this money ahead. It was 
coming to the point when the minister’s 
text. “Whose shall these things be?” 
stared at them when after some quarrel 
they sat silently before the fire at night, 
each thinking how much happier their 
lives might have been had they only made 
a different selection in youth. It is piti¬ 
fully tragic sometimes to see such lonely 
and disappointed people sit together in 
some silent house, thinking of what might 
have been, and watching the throng of 
well-remembered faces which somehow 
seem to crowd in around them. Jimmy 
and Harry, Tom and Dick, Rose and 
Mary, Alice and Ella—they all come— 
radiant with youth and bloom, back from 
the glorious old days of childhood—and 
such people as John and Helen sit there 
in the shadow trying to imagine how 
much happier life would have been if 
they had only chosen one of this glorious 
throng as a life companion. You and I 
know, of course, that all this is a form 
of wicked nonsense, when two people side 
by side have gone through the heat and 
burden of long hard years and won their 
home together, but do we not all know 
how prone the human heart is to forget 
the true real and go chasing out after the 
impossible unreal—off on a voyage which 
will finally bring us upon the rocks. Y r ou 
see that John and Helen all through their 
early struggles had felt a common im¬ 
pulse to work and save and make a home. 
That common desire brought them to¬ 
gether. Now they had acquired all that 
lies within the early ambition of plain, 
working farmers; that is, home, compe¬ 
tence and financial security. With that 
assurance the desire to work and save 
and scrimp for the mere sake of accu¬ 
mulating property had passed out of 
Helen’s heart. She wanted to live —a 
broader and finer life—and she felt that 
to go on as they had done, simply scrap¬ 
ing more and more money together, was 
like the man in the parable who hid his 
talents in the earth. John could not see it 
that way. He wanted to work on as they 
had done, saving every penny. Once his 
ambition was to own a good farm. Far 
back in the hired man days he had told 
himself that as soon as he had paid for 
a farm he would be satisfied. But you 
see.there was no catalyzer in his family 
to start the best reaction that was in him, 
and now that he had his early wish he 
had a new ambition, which was to be the 
richest farmer in town or county. 
$ j}: :Jc jjc 
That is really what had separated these 
good people. Helen said John was as 
stingy as a woodchuck, and he came back 
by calling her a disorderly spendthrift. 
Billy Harris told me that some of the 
things they said to each other represented 
criminal libel. 
“I thought I was marrying a man , but 
the scales have fallen from my eyes and I 
find myself tied to a rusty penny.” 
“I did the poorest job of my life when 
I proposed to you. I tried to get out of 
it, but who could ever get away from a 
bear trap?” 
“You are no gentleman to say such a 
thing.” 
“You never were a lady, and the same 
applies to all your relatives.” 
“You are a mean, contemptible miser.” 
“And you throw away my substance 
with a spoon faster than I can earn it 
with a shovel!” 
When people get to talking that way 
the bloom has been pretty well rubbed 
away from married life and it is hard to 
put it back by any ordinary means. Billy 
Harris tried to act as a catalyzer, but 
without great success. They used him as 
a sort of shock absorber. John would 
talk to Billy while they worked at husk¬ 
ing or digging potatoes. 
“My wife’s name is Helen. I used to 
call her Nellie in the old days. I used to 
think it would be heaven to live with her, 
and it was, for a spell, but now—well, 
cut out the last syllable of her name and 
you’ve got it. And I don’t rightly know 
how it has all changed. She has a lot of 
good points but the worst point is on her 
tongue.” 
“But perhaps if you gave in a little 
she might be easier,” Billy would say 
diplomatically. 
“Who? Me? Give in when she’s all 
wrong? Didn’t I pay her back all the 
money she brought me, and hasn’t she 
spent it all for fool notions, like wall¬ 
paper, furniture, pictures and that con- 
sarned * talking machine? What’s she 
want of that, anyway?” 
There was no use for Billy to try to 
tell John that these things simply repre¬ 
sented the love of beauty and color and 
music that had been put in Helen’s soul 
by a power too strong for John to pull 
them out by any economy talk. Who 
could make John understand that when 
he tried to destroy the craving for beauty 
and music in his wife’s soul he was com¬ 
mitting a worse crime than if he had 
struck her? 
And after supper, while John read his 
paper in the front room, Billy would help 
Helen with the supper dishes. She de¬ 
spised dishwashing and always started 
her talking machine while this hateful job 
was on. The dishwater seemed like 
some perfumed bath for her hands while 
the needle was spinning through some 
record of grand opera or some plaintive 
old song. And she would talk to Billy: 
“Some men are so close they will sell 
their soul for a cent. We have worked 
hard. We can’t take property with us 
when we go. Why shouldn’t we spend 
part of it as we go on?” 
Billy would try to tell her how hard 
John had worked and planned in order to 
make her comfortable, but she would 
have little of it. 
“I’m comfortable enough in material 
(Continued on Page 1363) 
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