God's Country; The Trail to Happiness

That was the sixth day, and, from that day, the swelling and the pain began to leave my limb. On the tenth, I could move about a little on my feet. On the fifteenth, I was prepared to undertake my journey again. I felt a real grief in leaving that solitary flower. It had become a part of me, had encouraged me in my blackest hours, had cheered and comforted me even in the darkness of nights, because I knew it was there – my little comrade – waiting for the sun. For me, it had individualized itself from among all the other flowers in the forest. And now, when I was about to go, I saw that the flower itself had about lived the span of its life; in a very short time it would fade and die. On the morning I left, the petals were drooping, and its tiny face did not look up at the sun and at me as brightly as before, and I fancied that I could hear its little voice saying, “Please take me with you.” And I did. Call it foolish and trivial sentiment if you will, but the flower and I went together, and afterward I wrote a novel and called it “Flower of the North.”

I have often heard strong men say, “Oh, that is merely a matter of sentiment. Life is too hard and real for a thing like that.”

I agree with them to an extent. Sentiment does not play a large part in the world to-day. For sentiment, as that word is understood by the millions, is the heart and soul of all that is good and great. Without sentiment in the hearts of a man and a woman, there cannot be the fullness of real love between them, even though the law has made them man and wife. Without sentiment, no good act is ever done from the heart out. Without sentiment – a sentiment that warms the soul as a fire warms a cold room – there will never be a deep and comforting faith. I have seen this “co-operation of rational power and moral feeling” make plain faces beautiful, and I have seen the lack of it make others hard as rock. Selfishness, egoism, the desire to get everything possible out of life, no matter at what expense to others, is its antithesis.

As I write these last pages, I have at hand facts which seem to show that sentiment, and therefore faith, is as nearly dead as it has ever been. For science in all the great nations of the earth is planning and plotting frantically for the extermination of their fellow men, and this, in the hour when all the world is crying out for a faith, is what is being achieved:

Deadly gases that will make gunpowder and the rifles anachronisms, that in the next war will depopulate whole regions, men, women, and little children alike.

Perfection of the lethal ray, which will shrivel up and paralyze human beings over vast areas, irrespective of whether they are combatants or not.

Development of plans for “germ-warfare,” whereby whole nations will be infected by plagues.

And then consider the words of one great military scientist of the English-speaking race: “Germ-warfare was tried on a small scale in the late war, and its results have been promising. The method of its use was in the poisoning of water supplies with cholera and typhus germs, and the loosing of dogs inoculated with rabies and of women inoculated with syphilis into the enemy country. Here apparently is a promising beginning from which vast developments are to be hoped for.”

A promising beginning – vast developments expected for the future – typhus – rabies – the commercial breeding of diseased women.

Yes; the world is crying aloud for a great faith, even as it smashes itself into moral fragments on the rocks of its own egoism and its own selfishness. But there has come a rent in its armor, and as it commits crimes and plans for still greater crimes, it also begins to realize its colossal wickedness. And in its terror it shrieks aloud for a manifestation of the Divine Power. It demands proof.

And again I say that the proof is so near that the world looks over its head – and does not see it. Not until man’s egoism crumbles will he understand. For ghosts will not come back from the dead to quiet his frenzies, nor will angels descend from out of the heavens. The Divine Power is too great and all-encompassing for that. God, speaking of that Power as God, is not a trickster. He is not a mountebank. He is not a lawyer arguing his case. He is Life. And this Life That Never Dies has no favorites. Such is my humble faith.

A long time has passed since I wrote these pages. All day the countryside has lain in that sleepy, golden shimmer that is the pulse of Indian summer. The nights are touched with frost. There is glory in the warmth of the sun.

I am in a little valley that I love – Sleepy Hollow, I call it. The farmhouse is old and unpainted, and it has stood on its stone foundation for almost a century. The barn is sagging in the middle, and between the barn and the house is an old well that a long-dead grandfather rigged when the timber in the hollow knew the howl of wolves and the screech of bobcats. Crowding close up to the back of the old house is an orchard of apple and cherry trees, so old they could tell many an interesting story if they could talk.

And all about the sides and the front of the house are great trees – a huge cottonwood, and ancient oaks from which the Indians may have shot squirrels with their bows and arrows two hundred years ago. The “woman of the house” has been in an invalid’s chair for years, and the husband does little but care for her. Therefore Life has crept up and almost inundated the place. The grass grows high and uncut. Wild flowers bloom in the yard. Quail come to feed with the chickens. And beyond this, all about, is the whisper of corn fields in growing-time, the ripples of fields of wheat and oats and rye, the music of the mowing-machine and the lowing of cattle. In this little old house of Sleepy Hollow, there is a woman who has not walked for years, and who will never walk again; and there is a little man with a great fierce mustache who watches her tenderly, and who knows that he must go on watching her until the end of her time – and yet in this house there is happiness, and also a great faith. And nature seems to rejoice in that faith. Birds build their nests under the porches. There is melody in the trees. At night, crickets sing in the long grass under the open windows, and the whippoorwills come and perch on the roof under the old sycamore.

Here are suffering – and peace; few of the riches of man, but an unlimited wealth of contentment and faith. These two, prisoned to the end of their days, have found what all the world is seeking. The little old house of the hollow, even with its tragedy, is glad. And life has made it so, the understanding of life, the voice and living presence of life as it whispers about me now in the golden sheen of Indian summer.

And its whisper seems to be, “Men are seeking me, reaching out for me, crying for me – yet they do not find me. They are looking far, and I am very near – so far that they look over and beyond me when I am waiting at their feet. When at last they see me, and understand, then will they have discovered the greatest of all treasures – Faith!”