442 
Vht  RURAL.  NEW-YORKER 
HOPE  FARM  NOTES 
“My  First  Woman” 
Part  I. 
For  many  weeks  now  the  daily  papers 
have  been  giving  great  .space  to  the  Hon. 
Tut-ankh-amen,  or  what  is  left  of  him  after 
slumbering  some  3,000  years  in  his  tomb. 
You  may  use  your  own  judgment  about 
trying  to  spell  or  pronounce  his  name. 
Personally,  1  take  very  little  interest  in 
him  or  his  surroundings,  splendid  as  they 
may  be.  I  should  prefer  to  see  this  vast 
amount  of  newspaper  space  devoted  to 
some  living  and  burning  question  of  today. 
I  will  say  in  no  boasting  spirit  that  I 
could  move  the  world  a  little  if  I  could 
have  that  newspaper  space  to  say  what  I 
pleased.  While  some  <>0  per  cent  of  the 
children  in  our  city  schools  never  saw  a 
cow  or  a  sheep,  and  while  thousands  of 
people  back  among  the  hills  are  forced 
through  hard  and  stern  economy  to  live 
poor  and  narrow  lives,  I  should  prefer 
to  direct  public  attention  to  their  living 
needs  and  let  this  old  king  slumber  on. 
<  >f  course  I  know  that  this  stamps  me  as 
an  old  fogy — why  not  be  up  to  date— or 
3,000  years  behind  it?  Well,  I’d  rather 
“act  in  the  the  living  present”  rather  than 
go  digging  in  3,000-year-old  tombs.  I 
know  some  men  who  actually  seem  to 
know  more  about  this  Tut-ankh-amen  and 
his  burial  surroundings  than  they  do 
about  their  own  families.  These  men 
rush  off  to  their  work  before  daylight 
and  come  home  after  dark.  Then  after 
supper  they  need  some  form  of  “recrea¬ 
tion,”  and  so  off  they  go  for  several  hours. 
The  result  is  that  they  rarely  see  their 
children  by  daylight — in  some  cases 
would  hardly  know  them  on  the  street. 
Yet  many  of  these  men  can  tell  you  all 
about  this  old  king  and  what  was  put  in 
his  grave  for  safe-keeping.  As  for  the 
real  problems  which  confront  society,  out¬ 
side  of  their  own  narrow  circle  they  know 
little  about  them.  All  this  matter  about 
“Tut”  is  easier  reading,  and  does  not  re¬ 
quire  serious  thought. 
*  *  *  #  * 
If  you  want  to  dig  into  graves  in  order 
to  find  the  truth  of  history,  I  might  take 
you  out  to  many  a  hillside  graveyard — 
long  since  abandoned  to  brush  and  briar— — 
long  neglected,  if  not  forgotten.  S.ome  of 
them  are  private  or  family  graveyards 
off  in  some  poor  corner  of  the  farm — a 
spot  which  would  not  interfere  with  plow¬ 
ing.  Here  lie  the  men  and  women  of  u 
past  age,  long  forgotten.  Their  toil-worn, 
weary  bodies  were  laid  here  after  a  long 
life  of  exacting  labor,  during  which  the 
beauty  and  comforts  of  life  were  pinched 
out  of  their  existence.  The  farms  they 
cleared,  the  money  they  made,  all  have 
gone  on  working  for  society  that  other 
.•lasses  of  people  may  enjoy  the  beauty 
and  light  of  life  which  was  denied  them. 
If  these  deicers  into  the  old  graves  want 
to  learn  how  to  apply  the  great  solemn 
truths  of  past  history  to  the  future,  let 
them  permit  old  Tut  to  rest  amid!  _  his 
splendors  and  his  slaves,  and  dig  ijfto 
some  of  these  old  graveyards.  For  they 
would  find,  if  they  went  at  the  work  with 
imagination  and  a  reverent  spirit,  that 
in  these  neglected  graves  lies  part  of  the 
reason  for  some  of  the  worst  of  our  agri¬ 
cultural  troubles.  If  we  are  to  learn 
how  to  "do  it  ourselves,”  we  should  learn 
exactly  how  these  older  people  failed  to 
do  it.'  It  seems  to  me  as  I  see  some  of 
these  old  graveyards  emerge  from  their. 
Winter  covering  of  snow  that  the  spirit  ot 
these  weary  people  who  lie  buried  there 
longs  to  tell  their  story  as  it  has  never 
been  spoken  before.  The  world  has  been 
told  of  their  pioneer  work— their  victories 
over  material  things — but  I  think  they 
want  to  tell  us  something  of  their  defeats 
in  the  desire  and  longing  for  beauty  and 
the  finer  things  of  life.  Their  boys  and 
girls  have  had  much  to  do  with  the  fierce 
industrial  life  of  the  nation.  It  seems 
somehow  to  me  that  as  Spring  smiles 
away  the  snow  and  ice  and  draws  out  the 
leaves  and  flowers  these  old-timers  must 
stir  in  their  graves  with  something  of 
regret  that  their  children  could  not  have 
bad  a  different  childhood.  For  they  know 
as  the  years  go  by  that  while  their  chil¬ 
dren  are  strong  and  dominant  and  “ef¬ 
ficient,”  the  world  is  beginning  to  show 
the  lack  of  something  which  these  great 
)i  aders  missed  when  they  were  girls  and 
bovSL 
#  *  *  $  * 
There  is  one  such  little  graveyard  on 
a  windy  hill  in  the  West.  I  have  not 
seen  it  for  years,  yet  I  am  sure  that  it 
has  long  been  neglected.  I  imagine  that 
the  cedars  and  brush  have  well  covered  it. 
It  must  be  a  tangle  of  briar  and  weeds 
and  coarse  grass  in  June.  Just  now  it 
must  be  heaped  up  with  snow — a  cold, 
lonely  place,  rarely  visited  except  in  Sum¬ 
mer  by  a  herd  of  prospecting  cows.  They 
climb  over  the  broken  wall  and  wander 
about  over  the  graves,  only  to  see  that 
they  can  barely  find  a  meal  of  sweet  grass 
that  does  not  cai'ry  a  sharp  tongue-biting 
briar  like  a  concealed  weapon.  So  that 
even  the  cows  come  to  regard  the  keeper 
appointed  by  nature  to  care  for  this  small 
portion  of  “God’s  acre”  as  malignant — 
and  they  climb  back  into  their  own  pas¬ 
ture.  While  I  have  not  been  near  the 
spot  for  years,  I  think  I  could  take  you 
t..  one  corner  and  point  out  the  grave  of 
a  woman  who  died  of  a  broken  heart — a 
farmer’s  wife  who,  could  she  have  satis¬ 
fied  her  longing  for  beauty  and  the  finer 
things  of  life,  would  have  painted  her 
name  on  the  skies.  I  have  it  in  mind  to 
tell  something  of  her-story,  We-have  all 
March  17,  1923 
passed  through  a  hard  and  trying  Win¬ 
ter.  It  has  been  bad  enough  for  those  of 
us  who  can  get  out  and  work  and'  throw 
off  depression  in  the  joy  of  labor  and  ac¬ 
complishment.  The  real  struggle  has 
come  to  the  women — many  of  them  deli¬ 
cate  and  nervous,  who  have  been  shut  in 
by  storm  and  cold,  often  with  poor  con¬ 
veniences,  and,  what  is  worse,  little  or  no 
appreciation.  I  know  how  they  have 
lived  and  how  to  many  of  them  life  has 
been  much  like  that  of  a  prisoned  bird — 
not  a  tame  canary,  but  some  bird  with 
wild  blood  which  fights  at  times  against 
the  habits  of  domestication  and  longs  to 
lie  free. 
*  *  *  *  * 
The  first  time  I  ever  saw  Sarah  Mar¬ 
shall  was  when  her  husband,  John,  drove 
us  into  the  barnyard  and  she  ran  out  to 
unhitch  the  horse.  I  had  come  down  to 
give  an  “entertainment”  at  the  Baptist 
Church.  Those  were  the  old  self-reliant 
days  before  moving  picture  shows  or 
radio,  and  when  a  “play-acting  show”  was 
considered  wicked.  The  “elocutionist” 
was  in  great  demand  at  that  period,  and 
far  back  in  nuid-bound  places  the  fel¬ 
low  who  could  “speak  pieces  and  make 
faces”  was  in  demand.  I  had  been  guar¬ 
anteed  “$3  and  feed”  to  come  and  recite 
for  two  hours,  with  the  bright  prospect 
that  there  might  be  over  $3  in  the  collec¬ 
tion,  and  those  were  the  happy  days  when 
I  would  not  have  exchanged  my  $3  con¬ 
tract  for  all  the  splendors  in  that  Egyp¬ 
tian  tomb.  We  had  just  been  through 
about  such  a  Winter  as  this  one  has  been, 
and  John  Marshall  and  I  had  traveled 
five  miles  over  a  road  parts  of  which  were 
hub  deep  in  mud.  As  we  drove  into  the 
barnyard  a  small,  bent  woman  ran  out 
of  the  kitchen  door  and  began  to  unhar¬ 
ness  the  horse.  John  paid  little  attention 
to  her,  and  started  for  the  house.  1 
stepped  up  to  help  the  woman  with  the 
harness,  but  John  called  back  from  the 
kitchen  door : 
“Come  on  !  That’s  my  woman — she 
always  handles  the  horse.  Hey,  Sarah  ! 
Them  legs  are  pretty'  muddy — better  wash 
’em  off  with  warm  water !” 
I  suppose  I  should  have  defied  the  mas¬ 
ter  of  the  house  and  remained  to  help 
the  lady ;  but  she  shook  her  head,  and 
somehow  these  great  opportunities  to  em¬ 
brace  knighthood  while  it  was  in  full 
flower  have  found  me  unprepared.  So  I 
followed  John  Marshall  into  the  house. 
It  was  very  poorly  furnished,  though 
John  had  the  reputation  of  being  one  of 
the  best  farmers  in  that  town. 
“My  woman  is  useful,”  he  said.  “None 
of  these  wallflowers  for  me.  You  need 
a  woman  to  make  your  home  happy — and 
how  are  you  going  to  be  happy  unless 
you  make  money?  Now,  my  woman  un¬ 
derstands  her  place.  You  might  not  think 
it,  but  there  was  a  time  when  she  had 
lots  of  fool  notions.  She  wanted  flowers 
— wanted  to  spend  good  money  for  pic¬ 
tures  and  furniture  and  such  jimcracks.” 
Sarah  had  come  back  from  the  barn 
and  was  preparing  our  supper,  bustling 
about  the  poorly  furnished  kitchen.  She 
brought  in  an  armful  of  wood.  She  was 
a  small  woman,  neatly  dressed.  She  must 
have  been  beautiful  as  a  girl — with  a  deli¬ 
cate,  flower-like  beauty.  Her  hands  were 
large  and  rough,  enlarged  and  wrinkled 
by  work.  It  seemed  as  if  she  had  tried 
her  best  to  subdue  her  great  mass  of  hair 
into  some  working  order,  but  it  curled 
and  twisted  over  her  neck  and  forehead 
in  spite  of  her  efforts  to  handle  it.  It 
made  me  think  of  the  old  thoroughbred 
mare  I  once  saw.  She  was  thin  and 
lame,  old  and  abused,  hitched  up  with  a 
disreputable  mule,  to  menial  work,  and 
yet  there  was  the  old  arch  to  her  neck 
and  the  spread  of  the  thin  nostril. 
“As  I  said,”  continued  John  Marshall, 
“the  woman  wanted  all  them  foolish 
things.  What  they  good  for,  says  I? 
They  just  eat  up  money  and  earn 
nothing.  We’re  here  to  work.  We  got 
this  farm  to  pay  for,  and  then  we’ll  buy 
more  land.  The  woman  said  she  wanted 
pretty  things  about  her — beauty,  she 
called  it.  Don’t  it  beat  all?  Wlhy,  I  says, 
look  at  me.  Says  I,  I  ain’t  no  great 
bea nty,  perhaps,  but  handsome  is  what 
handsome  does.w 
I  was  young,  with  the  world  mostly 
ahead  of  me,  and  I  cannot  say  that  there 
had  been  any  great  beauty  in  my  life ;  but 
it  struck  me  that  any  woman  who  was 
shut  in  with  John  Marshall  all  through 
a  stormy  Winter  ought  to  have  a  few 
“pretty  things”  to  look  at. 
(Continued  on  Page  455) 
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