Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The West — Chapter 7 - Part II - From Chicago to Denver

* * * * * On the next day I reached Blue Earth City at noon, and spent a dime at a bakery for a mid-day meal, and then went bowling off toward the Iowa border at Elmore, which place I counted upon reaching by nightfall.

One dollar remained to me of my last store, and there is a marvellous fund of the feeling of independence in a dollar for one who is familiar with the sense of cowing, unmanning insecurity which comes of being penniless.

Already I had stopped once in southern Minnesota, and so large a sum as a dollar would certainly see me well into Iowa, I was thinking, before I should be obliged to halt again to replenish my purse.

It was this view of the case which made me not very hospitable to the offer of a farmer who presently called to me with an inquiry as to whether I would work for him.

The incident was an every-day occurrence, and I felt at first only the usual embarrassment in my effort to evade the offer with some show of reason; but Mr. Barton, for it was he, asked me to at least give it a trial before deciding the matter, and, seeing in the suggestion an admirable opportunity for a short term of service, I replied that, if I concluded to stay at all, I could not consent to remain for longer than a week together, and must be held free to go at the end of the first week if I chose.

Mr. Barton agreed to this immediately, and invited me to a seat beside him on a load of wheat which he was taking to the mill.

I said that I preferred to walk on to his farm, the direction of which he had pointed out to me and which was but a couple of miles down a side road.

At first every step which bore me away from the main-travelled road added to my uncertainty of mind.

Was I acting wisely in stopping so soon again when I might easily push on for another fifty miles or more?

Presently I came to a railway crossing, and sitting down to rest on the roadside, I thought the matter over, and decided finally to go on to the farm.

I had no difficulty in recognizing it from Mr. Barton’s description.

A row of poplars stood just within a trim picket-fence which enclosed the farm-house yard from the road.

Opening the gate I walked up the foot-path which cut its way for a hundred yards through a well-kept lawn, shaded with fruit-trees, to the house standing on the crest of the ridge, surrounded by well-grown maples.

It was the usual two-storied, white farm-house with green shutters, having a wing at the side with a porch in front of it overgrown with honeysuckle.

I had come armed with a message for Mrs. Barton from her husband; but for all that, an increasing feeling of embarrassment accompanied me up the walk, and when I knocked at the screen-door which opened upon the porch, I was sorely tempted for a moment to break and run.

The inner door was open, and through the screen I could see Mrs. Barton and one of her daughters, whom I shall call Miss Emily, ironing at opposite ends of a table, while another daughter, Miss Julia let us say, was sewing beside them.

The faultless order and precision which had appeared in every external detail of the farm were in perfect keeping with what I could see of the interior of the home.

It contained only the plainest furniture, but the room was redolent of a clean, cool, inviting comfort, perfectly suited to the needs of men who come in from long, hard work in the heat of the fields.

The windows and outer doors were guarded by close-fitting screens; the inner wood-work was painted a light, delicate color, as fresh and clean as though newly applied;

and the walls were covered with a simple, harmonious paper which matched well with the prevailing shade in the clean rag-carpet on the floor.

A large rocker and a sofa, covered with Brussels carpet, were supplemented by a plentiful supply of plain chairs.

Miss Julia was the first to notice me; putting down her sewing, she stepped to the door and stood facing me from behind the screen.

“Is this Mr. Barton’s house?

” I asked.

“Yes,” said his daughter.

“Well, he has sent me here with a message for Mrs. Barton,” I went on;

“and wishes me to say that he has hired me to work on the farm.

” I was sadly ill at ease by this time, and very sorry that I had not accompanied Mr. Barton to the mill, and then to his home, and left to him all necessary explanations.

But it was too late now for regrets, and Mrs. Barton, a sweet-faced, gentle little lady, had joined her daughter at the door.

“I did not know that father meant to hire any more men just now,” she said, while a nervous alarm played in her timid eyes at sight of so rough an applicant for work.

I do all that I can to keep a respectable appearance, and never a day passes without the opportunity of a bath in a lake or a wayside stream, and sometimes I am so fortunate as to come upon two or three such chances for refreshment in a day’s march.

But a long course of wearing the same outer garments and sleeping in brick-kilns and hay-ricks must inevitably produce an effect in clothing which, accompanied by an unshaven face, gives rise to a somewhat scandalous figure.

I could only say, in reply to Mrs. Barton, that her husband’s instructions to me were simply to deliver the message which I had brought, and then to await his coming at the farm.

She was by no means reassured, but her hospitality overcame her fear, and, unfastening the screen-door, she opened it with an invitation to me to come in.

The dust on my boots and the general condition of my dress became the instant source of poignant feeling as I stepped upon the speckless carpet and took a seat in a straight-backed wooden chair which shone as though the varnish were but newly dry.

The situation was unmistakably awkward, and, under the disturbing spell of it, I sat very straight in the chair with feet close together and my hands on my knees, anathematizing myself for stopping before there was any need for it and getting myself into a mess.

Then I began to cast about for some excuse for going out-of-doors once more, so that I could cut and run for the road.

Out of purest kindness of heart Mrs. Barton was trying to set me at ease.

There was some threat of rain, she remarked; and we had had a great deal of rain this spring, she added; and where had I met Mr. Barton?

and when did he say that he would be home?

she inquired.

My best efforts at responsiveness were dismal failures, and the gloom was growing denser when Miss Julia came to my rescue with a copy of _The Youth’s Companion_, which she suggested that I might care to read while waiting.

Over and over again I read sections of continued “boys’ stories” and a number of interesting anecdotes and tried to study out certain puzzles, but Mr. Barton did not come.

Mrs. Barton and her daughters had immediately resumed their work and their conversation, and, with kind considerateness, had left me to the paper.

The hot summer afternoon slowly dragged its length toward evening.

Through breaks in rolling clouds, heavy with rain, the sun shone at intervals with piercing heat.

A warm, damp, sun-lit air, laden with honeysuckle and the fragrance of strawberry-beds, came floating idly through the open doors and windows, bearing the droning hum of many bees, which was like a low accompaniment to the soft voices of the women.

Moving up the lane with the stately, steady motion of an elephant, came presently a huge rick of hay, the horses almost concealed under the overdrooping load and two hired men seated comfortably on top.

Soon after this Mr. Barton arrived, and I went out to meet him in the yard and helped him unhitch the horses.

Then he set me to ploughing potatoes in the garden with his youngest son, an intelligent, gentlemanlike lad of seventeen, who, as I discovered later, was preparing for college, for scarcely a day passed that his sister Julia, who teaches school in a neighboring town through the winters, did not find time to help him with his Algebra and Latin.

When we were called to supper I found that my case was satisfactorily explained to the family, and that I could now read my title clear to a perfectly comfortable position among them.

Would that I could do justice to the exquisite charm which I began to feel at once in that simple, natural home-life!

The men assembled at the call to supper from different quarters of the farm.

There were five of us, Mr. Barton and his son Richard, and, besides me, two other hired men, Al, an inflexible Yankee transplanted from far down East, and Harry, a stalwart young Englishman of the grown-up “butcher’s boy” variety, whose “h’s” had grown to be a source of discomfort to him.

We washed on the kitchen porch, and, contrary to the usual custom on the farms, we put on our coats before entering the dining-room, which is also the family sitting-room, where I had found Mrs. Barton and her daughters at work.

The table was spread with clean linen, and a napkin was at each place.

Mr. Barton said grace in the midst of a reverent silence, which continued while we began upon a meal abundant enough for a hungry man and dainty enough for a lady.

After supper Harry and I went to fetch the cows, which had to be driven in from a pasture beyond a little river that flows through the farm.

There were thirty-seven of them in all to be milked, but Miss Emily and Miss Julia lent a hand, so that it did not take long, and when the horses had been fed and their stalls made ready for the night, we men were free.

In the dark, star-lit evening, which followed almost instantly upon the setting of the sun, we walked down to the river for the regular evening bath.

It is early yet for sight of the past week in true perspective, but even now its events take form in memory with a certain natural sequence.

With only one exception, clear, radiant summer days have followed one another, days begun for us at five o’clock and spent in the hay-fields when the chores were done and breakfast over.

Long days they were, full of hard work in the heat of the meadows, but there was the refreshing cool of the house at mid-day, and a dinner excellent in itself but to our whetted appetites a keen physical delight.

And better even than dinner was supper at the end of the day’s work in the fields, a delicious supper of cold meats and potatoes and home-made bread and milk and tea, and finally cake with strawberries from the garden.

If anything could have been better than that it was when Richard and we three hired men took towels down to the river in the gloom of the early evening, and under the clear summer stars from the high embankment covered with soft turf, with the glitter of fire-flies all about us and the air full of the deep croaking of frogs and the sharp reiterations of the katydids, dove headlong into the dark, cool, flowing water.

We swam about for a quarter of an hour and came out with scarcely a trace left in our muscles of the ache of the day’s labor and then went to bed to eight hours of deepest sleep.

One was a rainy day when work in the fields was impossible, and we spent it in the barn running some of last year’s wheat through the fanning mill and measuring and sacking it ready for shipment.

Then Sunday came with its long, peaceful rest.

Al and Harry secured each a buggy and were given the use of two of the farm horses, and, in their best Sunday black, they started after the chores were done to take their best girls to church, and for a long drive in the afternoon.

The family attend church in Blue Earth City, but their rector has another parish and can preach here only on alternate Sundays.

This was his Sunday in the other parish and there was a Sunday-school service here.

The restful observance of the day seemed to me in most natural keeping with the deeply religious tone of the family life.

Morning worship followed breakfast as usual; then came the preparation for church, and after the morning service and the mid-day meal, which was almost wholly prepared on Saturday, the afternoon was spent in reading.

After a light supper in the evening Miss Julia played the harmonium in the parlor, and we all joined in singing hymns until bedtime.

If there is one scene more than another which I shall always remember as eminently characteristic of the household, it surely is that of morning prayers.

No pressure of work, even at the very height of the haying season, is allowed to interfere with this act of worship.

Immediately after breakfast the family group themselves about the dining-room, drawing off a little from the table, and Mr. Barton, taking down an old Bible from the mantel-shelf, seats himself in the rocker and begins to read the morning lesson.

The passages have been from the prophecy of Ezekiel, and, stronger than any other association with that book, will hereafter be for me the sturdy figure of Mr. Barton in his working clothes, seated in a rocking-chair with his head bowed over a Bible as he reads, reverently, the oft-recurrent phrase: The Word of the Lord came again unto me saying, Son of Man,---- The prayer that followed has been always a simple, earnest appeal for help and guidance.

It was as though our dependence upon God and His right to supreme devotion in every act of life was instinctively recognized, and that the worship was a natural expression of love to the Father of us all, thus renewing our wills and bringing us into captivity unto the obedience of Christ, and sending us forth to the duties of the day strong in the sense of the sacredness of work as service to the Lord, and of His presence with us as the source of all life and hope and strength.

Monday was the Fourth of July.

Harry and Al were early off again with buggies and best girls, and Mr. Barton invited me to join the family in celebrating the day in town.

We hitched a team to a four-seated market wagon, and Mr. Barton’s son and his wife, who live on an adjoining farm, drove with us to Blue Earth City, where we were to attend the festivities and go for dinner to the home of a married daughter of Mr. Barton, whose husband is a merchant there.

All along the country roads converging toward the county seat we saw lines of farmers’ wagons driving to the common centre.

There was great variety of equipage; some were very rude and plain, but others were exceedingly well appointed, and not a few of the low phaeton-buggy type rose to a degree of elegance.

Many of the nearer dwellers were walking in, and as we approached our destination the foot-paths were crowded, chiefly with young men and boys, and the town itself, when we entered it, we found thronged with holiday-seekers, the women in light dresses and bright ribbons, the men in sober black, and all of them in their movements giving the sense of heavily conscientious merry-making in spite of the glorious sunshine and the air that throbbed with the joy of a ripe summer’s day.

When the horses were put up we fell in with the stream of people moving toward the main street, and there in the thick of the serious throng we stood on the curb watching a procession of local organizations file past, headed by a brass band from Winnebago, all gorgeous in new uniform and led by citizens on horseback as important and uncomfortable as the marshals in a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

There was a common movement then of the crowd, through streets which cracked to the continuous discharge of explosives, toward a wood on the outskirts, where a rough booth had been erected and row on row of benches placed before it in the shade.

We found seats near to the front, and presently there fell a hush upon the assembly which quieted the flutter of fans and the mingled interchange of neighborly conversation.

A procession of little girls in white, with bright blue sashes, each wearing the name of a State or Territory in silver letters across the band of her sailor hat, which had long blue streamers behind, came filing in among the crowd, all intensely trim and self-conscious with their fingers protruding stiffly from white cotton mits.

Following them were a minister and a schoolmaster and a small group of other prominent citizens, from among whom towered the tall, massive figure and the clean-cut, rugged, beardless face of an old ex-senator who was the orator of the day.

The little girls grouped themselves on benches which rose like steps from the ground to the level of the floor of the booth, and the citizens took seats assigned them on the platform.

One of their number, the chairman of the occasion, introduced the minister, who led the company in prayer.

Then the schoolmaster was presented as the reader of the Declaration of Independence.

A few explanatory sentences in unconventional English served to bring vividly to the minds of the people the familiar circumstances of the signing of the Declaration, and then in sonorous, ringing voice he read, amid breathless stillness, the deep natural stillness of the woodland, the well-remembered phrases of that great document.

There was no applause when he ceased, no outward demonstration of any kind, but through the great still company one could feel the strong movement of the sense of national life.

The ex-senator then rose to speak.

He was himself a frontiersman, having known the Northwest from its early settlement and having represented it in Congress a generation ago, and he spoke to people whose history he knew and whose temper he thoroughly understood.

It was inspiriting to catch the dominant note of what he said and to watch its effect upon his hearers.

There was talk of national growth, but without boasting, and there was very serious reckoning of national problems, but without carping, and there was high appeal to national responsibility, but without canting, and when at the end, out of the wealth of his own personal association with the man, he spoke of Lincoln and enforced all that he had said with homely, cogent teachings drawn from the life and the words of the great apostle of the common people, the assembly was moved and stirred as no other appeal could have affected it.

After this the crowd scattered for dinner, most of the people re-entering the town, and the spirit of fun, no longer to be restrained by a conscientious sense of the seriousness of enjoyment, broke loose in a bit of genuine American horseplay, when a company of boys and young men, in most fantastic disguise, passed in grotesque procession through the streets, and for a few minutes the solemn crowds really lost self-consciousness in true _abandon_ to the spontaneous sport.