A Son of the Middle Border

Although I had never had more than thirty dollars at any one time, I had never been without money. Distinctions had not counted largely in the pioneer world to which I belonged. I was proud of my family. I came of good stock, and knew it and felt it, but now here I was, wet as a sponge and without shelter simply because I had not in my pocket a small piece of silver with which to buy a bed.

I walked on until this dark surge of rebellious rage had spent its force and reason weakly resumed her throne. I said, "What nonsense! Here I am only a few miles from relatives. All the farmers on this road must know the Harris family. If I tell them who I am, they will certainly feel that I have the claim of a neighbor upon them." – But these deductions, admirable as they were, did not lighten my sky or make begging easier.

After walking two miles further I found it almost impossible to proceed. It was black night and I did not know where I stood. The wind had risen and the rain was falling in slant cataracts. As I looked about me and caught the gleam from the windows of a small farmhouse, my stubborn pride gave way. Stumbling up the path I rapped on the door. It was opened by a middle-aged farmer in his stocking feet, smoking a pipe. Having finished his supper he was taking his ease beside the fire, and fortunately for me, was in genial mood.

"Come in," he said heartily. "'Tis a wet night."

I began, "I am a cousin of William Harris of Byron – "

"You don't say! Well, what are you doing on the road a night like this? Come in!"

I stepped inside and finished my explanation there.

This good man and his wife will forever remain the most hospitable figures in my memory. They set me close beside the stove insisting that I put my feet in the oven to dry, talking meanwhile of my cousins and the crops, and complaining of the incessant rainstorms which were succeeding one another almost without intermission, making this one of the wettest and most dismal autumns the country had ever seen. Never in all my life has a roof seemed more heavenly, or hosts more sweet and gracious.

After breakfast next morning I shook hands with the farmer saying: "I shall send you the money for my entertainment the first time my cousin comes to town," and under the clamor of his hospitable protestations against payment, set off up the road.

The sun came out warm and beautiful and all about me on every farm the teamsters were getting into the fields. The mud began to dry up and with the growing cheer of the morning my heart expanded and the experience of the night before became as unreal as a dream and yet it had happened, and it had taught me a needed lesson. Hereafter I take no narrow chances, I vowed to myself.

Upon arrival at my cousin's home I called him aside and said, "Will, you have work to do and I have need of wages, – I am going to strip off this 'boiled shirt' and white collar, and I am going to work for you just the same as any other hand, and I shall expect the full pay of the best man on your place."

He protested, "I don't like to see you do this. Don't give up your plans. I'll hitch up and we'll start out and keep going till we find you a school."

"No," I said, "not till I earn a few dollars to put in my pocket. I've played the grasshopper for a few weeks – from this time on I'm the busy ant."

So it was settled, and the grasshopper went forth into the fields and toiled as hard as any slave. I plowed, threshed, and husked corn, and when at last December came, I had acquired money enough to carry me on my way. I decided to visit Onalaska and the old coulee where my father's sister and two of the McClintocks were still living. With swift return of confidence, I said good-bye to my friends in Zumbrota and took the train. It seemed very wonderful that after a space of thirteen years I should be returning to the scenes of my childhood, a full-grown man and paying my own way. I expanded with joy of the prospect.

Onalaska, the reader may remember, was the town in which I had gone to school when a child, and in my return to it I felt somewhat like the man in the song, Twenty Years Ago– indeed I sang, "I've wandered through the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree" for my uncle that first night. There was the river, filled as of old with logs, and the clamor of the saws still rose from the sawdust islands. Bleakly white the little church, in which we used to sit in our Sunday best, remained unchanged but the old school-house was not merely altered, it was gone! In its place stood a commonplace building of brick. The boys with whom I used to play "Mumblety Peg" were men, and some of them had developed into worthless loafers, lounging about the doors of the saloons, and although we looked at one another with eyes of sly recognition, we did not speak.

Eagerly I visited the old coulee, but the magic was gone from the hills, the glamour from the meadows. The Widow Green no longer lived at the turn of the road, and only the Randals remained. The marsh was drained, the big trees cleared away. The valley was smaller, less mysterious, less poetic than my remembrances of it, but it had charm nevertheless, and I responded to the beauty of its guarding bluffs and the deep-blue shadows which streamed across its sunset fields.

Uncle William drove down and took me home with him, over the long hill, back to the little farm where he was living much the same as I remembered him. One of his sons was dead, the other had shared in the rush for land, and was at this time owner of a homestead in western Minnesota. Grandfather McClintock, still able to walk about, was spending the autumn with William and we had a great deal of talk concerning the changes which had come to the country and especially to our family group. "Ye scatter like the leaves of autumn," he said sadly – then added, "Perhaps in the Final Day the trumpet of the Lord will bring us all together again."

We sang some of his old Adventist hymns together and then he asked me what I was planning to do. "I haven't any definite plans," I answered, "except to travel. I want to travel. I want to see the world."

"To see the world!" he exclaimed. "As for me I wait for it to pass away. I watch daily for the coming of the Chariot."

This gray old crag of a man interested me as deeply as ever and yet, in a sense, he was an alien. He was not of my time – scarcely of my country. He was a survival of the days when the only book was the Bible, when the newspaper was a luxury. Migration had been his lifelong adventure and now he was waiting for the last great remove. His thought now was of "the region of the Amaranth," his new land "the other side of Jordan."

He engaged my respect but I was never quite at ease with him. His valuations were too intensely religious; he could not understand my ambitions. His mind filled with singular prejudices, – notions which came down from the Colonial age, was impervious to new ideas. His character had lost something of its mellow charm – but it had gained in dramatic significance. Like my uncles he had ceased to be a part of my childish world.

I went away with a sense of sadness, of loss as though a fine picture on the walls of memory had been dimmed or displaced. I perceived that I had idealized him as I had idealized all the figures and scenes of my boyhood – "but no matter, they were beautiful to me then and beautiful they shall remain," was the vague resolution with which I dismissed criticism.

The whole region had become by contrast with Dakota, a "settled" community. The line of the middle border had moved on some three hundred miles to the west. The Dunlaps, McIldowneys, Dudleys and Elwells were the stay-at-homes. Having had their thrust at the job of pioneering before the war they were now content on their fat soil. To me they all seemed remote. Their very names had poetic value, for they brought up in my mind shadowy pictures of the Coulee country as it existed to my boyish memories.

I spent nearly two months in Onalaska, living with my Aunt Susan, a woman of the loveliest character. Richard Bailey, her husband, one of the kindliest of men, soon found employment for me, and so, for a time, I was happy and secure.

However, this was but a pause by the roadside. I was not satisfied. It was a show of weakness to settle down on one's relations. I wanted to make my way among strangers. I scorned to lean upon my aunt and uncle, though they were abundantly able to keep me. It was mid-winter, nothing offered and so I turned (as so many young men similarly placed have done), toward a very common yet difficult job. I attempted to take subscriptions for a book.

After a few days' experience in a neighboring town I decided that whatever else I might be fitted for in this world, I was not intended for a book agent. Surrendering my prospectus to the firm, I took my way down to Madison, the capital of the state, a city which seemed at this time very remote, and very important in my world. Only when travelling did I have the feeling of living up to the expectations of Alice and Burton who put into their letters to me, an envy which was very sweet. To them I was a bold adventurer!

Alas for me! In the shining capital of my state I felt again the world's rough hand. First of all I tried The State House. This was before the general use of typewriters and I had been told that copyists were in demand. I soon discovered that four men and two girls were clamoring for every job. Nobody needed me. I met with blunt refusals and at last turned to other fields.

Every morning I went among the merchants seeking an opportunity to clerk or keep books, and at last obtained a place at six dollars per week in the office of an agricultural implement firm. I was put to work in the accounting department, as general slavey, under the immediate supervision of a youth who had just graduated from my position and who considered me his legitimate victim. He was only seventeen and not handsome, and I despised him with instant bitterness. Under his direction I swept out the office, made copies of letters, got the mail, stamped envelopes and performed other duties of a manual routine kind, to which I would have made no objection, had it not been for the gloating joy with which that chinless cockerel ordered me about. I had never been under that kind of discipline, and to have a pin-headed gamin order me to clean spittoons was more than I could stomach.

At the end of the week I went to the proprietor, and said, "If you have nothing better for me to do than sweep the floor and run errands, I think I'll quit."

With some surprise my boss studied me. At last he said: "Very well, sir, you can go, and from all accounts I don't think we'll miss you much," which was perfectly true. I was an absolute failure so far as any routine work of that kind was concerned.

So here again I was thrown upon a cruel world with only six dollars between myself and the wolf. Again I fell back upon my physical powers. I made the round of all the factories seeking manual labor. I went out on the Catfish, where, through great sheds erected for the manufacture of farm machinery, I passed from superintendent to foreman, from foreman to boss, – eager to wheel sand, paint woodwork, shovel coal – anything at all to keep from sending home for money – for, mind you, my father or my uncle would have helped me out had I written to them, but I could not do that. So long as I was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent. I was in the world and I intended to keep going without asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent plans for travel and success which I had so confidently outlined to Burton must be carried out.

I should have been perfectly secure had it been summertime, for I knew the farmer's life and all that pertained to it, but it was winter. How to get a living in a strange town was my problem. It was a bright, clear, intensely cold February, and I was not very warmly dressed – hence I kept moving.

Meanwhile I had become acquainted with a young clergyman in one of the churches, and had showed to him certain letters and papers to prove that I was not a tramp, and no doubt his word kept my boarding mistress from turning me into the street.

Mr. Eaton was a man of books. His library contained many volumes of standard value and we met as equals over the pages of Scott and Dickens. I actually forced him to listen to a lecture which I had been writing during the winter and so wrought upon him that he agreed to arrange a date for me in a neighboring country church. – Thereafter while I glowed with absurd dreams of winning money and renown by delivering that lecture in the churches and school-houses of the state, I continued to seek for work, any work that would bring me food and shelter.

One bitter day in my desperate need I went down upon the lake to watch the men cutting ice. The wind was keen, the sky gray and filled with glittering minute flecks of frost, and my clothing (mainly cotton) seemed hardly thicker than gossamer, and yet I looked upon those working men with a distinct feeling of envy. Had I secured "a job" I should have been pulling a saw up and down through the ice, at the same time that I dreamed of touring the west as a lecturer – of such absurd contradictions are the visions of youth.

I don't know exactly what I would have done had not my brother happened along on his way to a school near Chicago. To him I confessed my perplexity. He paid my board bill (which was not very large) and in return I talked him into a scheme which promised great things for us both – I contracted to lecture under his management! He was delighted at the opportunity of advancing me, and we were both happy.

Our first engagement was at Cyene, a church which really belonged to Eaton's circuit, and according to my remembrance the lecture was a moderate success. After paying all expenses we had a little money for carfare, and Franklin was profoundly impressed. It really seemed to us both that I had at last entered upon my career. It was the kind of service I had been preparing for during all my years at school – but alas! our next date was a disaster. We attempted to do that which an older and fully established lecturer would not have ventured. We tried to secure an audience with only two days' advance work, and of course we failed.

I called a halt. I could not experiment on the small fund which my father had given Frank for his business education.

However, I borrowed a few dollars of him and bought a ticket to Rock River, a town near Chicago. I longed to enter the great western metropolis, but dared not do so – yet. I felt safe only when in sight of a plowed field.

At a junction seventy miles out of the city, we separated, he to attend a school, and I to continue my education in the grim realities of life.

From office to office in Rock River I sullenly plodded, willing to work for fifty cents a day, until at last I secured a clerkship in a small stationery jobbing house which a couple of school teachers had strangely started, but on Saturday of the second week the proprietor called me to him and said kindly, but firmly, "Garland, I'm afraid you are too literary and too musical for this job. You have a fine baritone voice and your ability to vary the text set before you to copy, is remarkable, and yet I think we must part."

The reasons for this ironical statement were (to my mind) ignoble; first of all he resented my musical ability, secondly, my literary skill shamed him, for as he had put before me a badly composed circular letter, telling me to copy it one hundred times, I quite naturally improved the English. – However, I admitted the charge of insubordination, and we parted quite amicably.

It was still winter, and I was utterly without promise of employment. In this extremity, I went to the Y. M. C. A. (which had for one of its aims the assistance of young men out of work) and confided my homelessness to the secretary, a capital young fellow who knew enough about men to recognize that I was not a "bum." He offered me the position of night-watch and gave me a room and cot at the back of his office. These were dark hours!

During the day I continued to pace the streets. Occasionally some little job like raking up a yard would present itself, and so I was able to buy a few rolls, and sometimes I indulged in milk and meat. I lived along from noon to noon in presentable condition, but I was always hungry. For four days I subsisted on five cents worth of buns.

Having left my home for the purpose of securing experience in the world, I had this satisfaction – I was getting it! Very sweet and far away seemed all that beautiful life with Alice and Burton and Hattie at the Seminary, something to dream over, to regret, to versify, something which the future (at this moment) seemed utterly incapable of reproducing. I still corresponded with several of my classmates, but was careful to conceal the struggle that I was undergoing. I told them only of my travels and my reading.

As the ironical jobber remarked, I had a good voice, and upon being invited to accompany the Band of Hope which went to sing and pray in the County Jail, I consented, at least I took part in the singing. In this way I partly paid the debt I owed the Association, and secured some vivid impressions of prison life which came into use at a later time. My three associates in this work were a tinner, a clothing salesman and a cabinet maker. More and more I longed for the spring, for with it I knew would come seeding, building and a chance for me.

At last in the midst of a grateful job of raking up yards and planting shrubs, I heard the rat-tat-tat of a hammer, and resolved upon a bold plan. I decided to become a carpenter, justifying myself by reference to my apprenticeship to my grandfather. One fine April morning I started out towards the suburbs, and at every house in process of construction approached the boss and asked for a job. Almost at once I found encouragement. "Yes, but where are your tools?"

In order to buy the tools I must work, work at anything. Therefore, at the next place I asked if there was any rough labor required around the house. The foreman replied: "Yes, there is some grading to be done." Accordingly I set to work with a wheelbarrow, grading the bank around the almost completed building. This was hard work, the crudest form of manual labor, but I grappled with it desperately, knowing that the pay (a dollar and a half a day) would soon buy a kit of tools.

Oh, that terrible first day! The heavy shovel blistered my hands and lamed my wrists. The lifting of the heavily laden wheelbarrow strained my back and shoulders. Half-starved and weak, quite unfitted for sustained effort of this kind, I struggled on, and at the end of an interminable afternoon staggered home to my cot. The next morning came soon, – too soon. I was not merely lame, I was lacerated. My muscles seemed to have been torn asunder, but I toiled (or made a show of toiling) all the second day. On the warrant of my wages I borrowed twenty-five cents of a friend and with this bought a meat dinner which helped me through another afternoon.

The third day was less painful and by the end of the week, I was able to do anything required of me. Upon receiving my pay I went immediately to the hardware store and bought a set of tools and a carpenter's apron, and early on Monday morning sallied forth in the opposite direction as a carpenter seeking a job. I soon came to a big frame house in course of construction. "Do you need another hand?" I asked. "Yes," replied the boss. "Take hold, right here, with this man."

"This man" turned out to be a Swede, a good-natured fellow, who made no comment on my deficiencies. We sawed and hammered together in very friendly fashion for a week, and I made rapid gains in strength and skill and took keen pleasure in my work. The days seemed short and life promising and as I was now getting two dollars per day, I moved out of my charity bed and took a room in a decayed mansion in the midst of a big lawn. My bearing became confident and easy. Money had straightened my back.

The spring advanced rapidly while I was engaged on this work and as my crew occasionally took contracts in the country I have vivid pictures of the green and pleasant farm lands, of social farmers at barn-raisings, and of tables filled with fatness. I am walking again in my stocking feet, high on the "purline plate," beetle in hand, driving home the oaken "pins." I am shingling on the broad roof of a suburban house from which I can see the sunny slopes of a meadow and sheep feeding therein. I am mending a screen door for a farmer's wife while she confides to me the tragedy of her life – and always I have the foolish boyish notion that I am out in the world and seeing life.

Into the midst of this busy peaceful season of manual labor came my first deeply romantic admiration. Edwin Booth was announced as "the opening attraction of the New Opera House" and I fairly trembled with anticipatory delight, for to me the word Booth meant all that was splendid and tragic and glorious in the drama. I was afraid that something might prevent me from hearing him.

At last the night came and so great was the throng, so strong the pressure on the doors that the lock gave way and I, with my dollar clutched tightly in my hand, was borne into the hall and half-way up the stairs without touching foot to the floor, and when at last, safe in my balcony seat I waited for the curtain to rise, I had a distinct realization that a shining milestone was about to be established in my youthful trail.

My father had told me of the elder Booth, and of Edwin's beautiful Prince of Denmark I had heard many stories, therefore I waited with awe as well as eagerness, and when the curtain, rising upon the court scene, discovered the pale, handsome face and graceful form of the noble Dane, and the sound of his voice, – that magic velvet voice – floated to my ear with the words, "Seems, madame, I know not seems," neither time nor space nor matter existed for me – I was in an ecstasy of attention.

I had read much of Shakespeare. I could recite many pages of the tragedies and historical plays, and I had been assured by my teachers that Hamlet was the greatest of all dramas, but Edwin Booth in one hour taught me more of its wonders, more of the beauty of the English language than all my instructors and all my books. He did more, he aroused in me a secret ambition to read as he read, to make the dead lines of print glow with color and throb with music. There was something magical in his interpretation of the drama's printed page. With voice and face and hand he restored for duller minds the visions of the poet, making Hamlet's sorrows as vital as our own.

From this performance, which filled me with vague ambitions and a glorious melancholy, I returned to my association with a tinker, a tailor, and a tinner, whose careless and stupid comments on the play both pained and angered me. I went to my work next day in such absorbed silence as only love is supposed to give.

I re-read my Hamlet now with the light of Booth's face in my eyes and the music of his glorious voice in my ear. As I nailed and sawed at pine lumber, I murmured inaudibly the lofty lines of the play, in the hope of fixing forever in my mind the cadences of the great tragedian's matchless voice.

Great days! Growing days! Lonely days! Days of dream and development, needing only the girl to be perfect – but I had no one but Alice to whom I could voice my new enthusiasm and she was not only out of the reach of my voice, but serenely indifferent to my rhapsodic letters concerning Hamlet and the genius of Edwin Booth.

CHAPTER XXII

We Discover New England

Edwin Booth's performance of Hamlet had another effect. It brought to my mind the many stories of Boston which my father had so often related to his children. I recalled his enthusiastic accounts of the elder Booth and Edwin Forrest, and especially his descriptions of the wonderful scenic effects in Old Put and The Gold Seekers, wherein actors rode down mimic stone steps or debarked from theatrical ships which sailed into pictured wharves, and one day in the midst of my lathing and sawing, I evolved a daring plan – I decided to visit Boston and explore New England.

With all his feeling for the East my father had never revisited it. This was a matter of pride with him. "I never take the back trail," he said, and yet at times, as he dwelt on the old home in the state of Maine a wistful note had crept into his voice, and so now in writing to him, I told him that I intended to seek out his boyhood haunts in order that I might tell him all about the friends and relations who still lived there.