The House Part 10

It is the most bewildering spectacle you can conceive of. I watched it for twenty minutes one day--it was when they were lathing the big front room downstairs, the library, and my brain began to reel as if I were intoxicated. I actually believe that if Uncle Si had not led me away and set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard I should have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had been confined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum. I can't understand how they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease.

The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, next to proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be an expert at nailing lath. In every line of mechanics my education has been grievously neglected.

Alice says that I am not practical enough to make a successful carpenter; she gets this unfair opinion of me from an incident in our early wedded life which she delights in recalling in the presence of people upon whom I am particularly desirous of making a favorable impression. It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots I undertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard. This was at a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies; Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned by the Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart of the bottle-neck seas. It would have been surprising indeed had I not been preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to cope successfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse in the back yard. Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I should have neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, and that, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securely in that affair.

On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner while attempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber. Alice reproached me bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floor should always be painted toward, and not away from the door. Alice seems never to consider that few other people are gifted with such intuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through life learning by experience.

I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fate because I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boon the fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further fact that I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor has doubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hard labor. When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windows and garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and window screens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alice has the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobs about our house.

Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will be that of nailing lath, an employment requiring an exercise of patience, of intelligence, and of skill to the highest degree.

Until we bought the new place I had no idea that the expense of conducting an establishment of one's own was so large. It seems, however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no end to the things one must have and cannot get along without. It is impossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements find out about you, but no sooner do you buy a place of your own than you are run to death by people who actually prove to you that you _must_ have what they have to sell.

Alice and I are very happy in the confidence that we have secured a simple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fifty per cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to our new steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like what the agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over!

And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus for which we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to the meter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times more light at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.

I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during that month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an economical character. We have three different kinds of smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning polish for plate-gla.s.s, a dish-was.h.i.+ng machine, a knife-scourer, a potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required a considerable outlay of money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as a very wise investment. It is wholly consistent with our policy of economy to provide ourselves with the means of making a marked reduction in our expenses. We flatter ourselves that before we have been in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are not upon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and other soulless corporations.

But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policy which we have taken out on Alice's life. The incident came about so curiously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail. I was one evening sitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching the stars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and I was marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when I became aware that somebody was approaching. I saw that this somebody was my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith. He was whistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but which my daughter f.a.n.n.y (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My Pearl Is a Bowery Girl." Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborly call, I arose to meet him. Fancy my amazement when upon beholding me Mr. Smith burst into tears. I do not remember ever to have been more astounded than by this sudden transition from gayety to grief. I could hardly find words to ask my friend what trouble had befallen him.

"I was hoping to meet no one," he sobbed, "for I am in no condition of mind to a.s.sociate with my fellow-beings."

"It is evident," I interposed, "that some great sorrow has come upon you; surely you would not hesitate to come to me for sympathy."

"You are right," said Mr. Smith, making a heroic effort to gather himself together. "It would be selfish of me not to give so dear a neighbor as you a chance to share my misery. Read this."

He handed me a bit of printed stuff which he had evidently cut from a newspaper. I stood under the street lamp and read it in this wise:

KANSAS CITY, May 23.--During the thunder-storm to-day Mrs. Bolivar Bowers, wife of the well-known scientist, was struck and destroyed by lightning. Deceased leaves a husband and five children; no insurance.

"Ah, I see," said I in my gentlest tone; "she was a dear friend--perhaps a relative of yours."

"No, not that," said Mr. Smith, still sobbing; "you misinterpret my grief. This party was in no way akin to me except under that common descent from the old Adam which makes all humanity brothers and sisters. I did not know deceased, nor did I ever see her."

"Then why," I asked, in some astonishment, "why are you so moved by the news of her death?"

"To one of my nature," exclaimed Mr. Smith, "the circ.u.mstances detailed in this item are most painful to contemplate. We find here recorded the sudden demise of the sole support of a husband and five children--a wife and mother s.n.a.t.c.hed away by death, leaving a helpless family without any visible means of support."

"But why without any means of support?" I asked.

"It says so," answered Mr. Smith. "The husband is a scientist and is therefore by nature and by occupation disqualified for earning a livelihood."

"Surely enough," said I, "that is quite true."

"Can you picture a more distressing scene," continued Mr. Smith, still in tears, "than that of this helpless father and his five little ones standing above that lifeless lady and wondering where their food and raiment will come from now? It is sad, it is agonizing, it is awful!

And yet it all might have been averted--all this solicitude about the future. Had Mrs. Bolivar Bowers taken out a policy in my company, the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw, Indiana, the aspect to-day would have been different, and Bolivar Bowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason to bless the rod that smote them. Ah, friend Baker, the International Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the grave its victory."

From this small, casual beginning followed that train of explanation and argument upon Mr. Smith's part which led to Alice's taking out a life policy in the Indiana company. Mr. Smith is a man of broad and deep human sympathies. Had he not happened upon that newspaper item, had his heart not gone out in pa.s.sionate sympathy toward the bereaved Bolivar Bowers and his little ones, had he not wandered in an irresponsible paroxysm of grief in the direction of my house that evening, and had he not confided his sorrow to me--why, then we should not have known of the greatest of human benefactors, and Alice would not now be safe (so to speak) in the bosom of the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw.

I do not regard these things as accidental; they are special providences.

XVIII

I STATE MY VIEWS ON TAXATION

Of the many friends who hastened to congratulate us when they heard that we had acquired a home, none was more delighted than Gamlin Harland. I take it for granted that you have read Mr. Harland's numerous books, and that you know all about Mr. Harland himself. Not to know of him is to argue one's self unknown.

My first meeting with Mr. Harland was at a single-tax convention six years ago; he was a delegate to that convention from Wisconsin, and I was a delegate from Illinois. I was a delegate because the manager of the party, who lives in New York, could n't find anybody else to serve as the delegate from the congressional district in which I lived. I thought that rather than have that district unrepresented I ought to serve, and so I did. The acquaintance I then made with Gamlin Harland soon ripened into friends.h.i.+p, and this intimacy has lasted ever since.

Mr. Harland insists that I am a single-tax man, and it may be that I am in theory, although I certainly am not in practice; for I never have paid any tax of any kind, be it single or double.

As soon as he heard of our purchase Mr. Harland came out to inspect the premises, and of course he was delighted.

"This will make a new man of you," said he to me. "It will take your mind off your impracticable star-gazing and moons.h.i.+ning, and divert your attention into the channels of realism. These premises are so s.p.a.cious as to admit of your engaging to a considerable extent in agriculture; you can now lay aside the telescope and the spectrum for the spade and the hoe; the field of speculation can be abandoned for this n.o.ble acre which I hope soon to see smiling into an abundant harvest."

"Yes," said I, "it is my purpose to engage largely in the cultivation of flowers."

"Pshaw!" cried Mr. Harland, "there you go again! Don't you know that flowers are wholly worthless except in so far as they pander to the gratification of a sensuous appet.i.te? It would be a crime to surrender these opportunities to ign.o.ble uses. You must raise vegetables here, or perhaps some of the small fruits would thrive better in this rich sandy soil."

Investigation satisfied Mr. Harland that blackberries were _the_ particular kind of small fruit to which the soil seemed adapted. I was not surprised at this, for I knew that the blackberry was a favorite with Mr. Harland--in fact, Mr. Harland is the only author I know of who has written a novel whose plot hinges (so to speak) upon a blackberry.

So pa.s.sionately fond of this fruit is he that he devotes a part of the year to cultivating blackberries on his Wisconsin farm. There are invidious persons who intimate that his only reason for cultivating the blackberry is to be found in the fact that nothing else will grow on his farm, and presumably you have heard the epigram which the romanticists have perpetrated at Mr. Harland's expense, and which represents that ambitious and aggressive gentleman as raising blackberries in summer and ---- in winter.

After getting me thoroughly inoculated with the blackberry idea, and having duly impressed me with his theory that true manhood consisted of making one's self unspeakably miserable and sweaty with a shovel and a hoe, Mr. Harland broached his favorite topic, and ventured the a.s.sertion that now that I was the possessor of taxable property I would become as rabid a single-tax advocate as Henry George himself. I answered that I already advocated a single-tax system, for the reason that if we could only once get a single-tax system in vogue we should then be but one remove from no taxation at all, and would have less difficulty in securing that desirable end ultimately.

The truth of the matter is, I object to taxation only in so far as it affects me. I have no objection to other folk being taxed, but I do not fancy being taxed myself. I agree with Brother Harland that there is palpable injustice in making an industrious and public-spirited man pay for the so-called privilege of building himself a home; he pays the carpenters and masons and painters for making that home, and he is then expected to pay the city and the State for having invested his hard earnings in a permanent enterprise which gives employment to the laborer, which beautifies the neighborhood, and which enhances the value of the adjacent property. The object of taxation (as Mr. Harland a.s.serts and as I believe) is to enrich the office-holding cla.s.s, a cla.s.s of loose morality, utterly heartless and utterly conscienceless, and I agree with Mr. Harland in the opinion that the time is not far distant when the honest people of this country will arise as one man and subvert the corrupt hand of politics which is now grinding us under the iron heel of oppression.

It is seldom that I give expression to my views upon this subject, for the reason that I fear they may be misinterpreted. I have always had an apprehension that I would be mistaken for an anarchist, which I am not; I am an advocate of peace and of the laws; I do not believe in violence of any kind.

And now that I am speaking of violence, I am reminded of an incident which ill.u.s.trates the thoughtless cruelty of too many of our youth. It was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted l.u.s.tily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him severely for the cruelty he contemplated and until I had exacted from him a promise that he would forever thereafter abstain from the practice of robbing birds' nests. The tears which trickled down his face a.s.sured me no less than his solemn protests did that the lad was indeed penitent, but the fellow had no sooner descended from the tree and reached a point of safety the other side of the fence than he gave utterance to sentiments which wholly disabused my mind of all faith in his previous professions of reform.

I have never been able to understand what pleasure can accrue from the spoliation of the homes of birds, the beautiful musical creatures that contribute so largely toward making the world cheerful. One of the pleasantest recollections of my boyhood is that in all that active period I never once killed or wounded a bird or robbed its nest. And I think that the kindest act I ever did--at least the one which I recall with the most satisfaction--was my release of a caged bird. A careless, heedless neighbor had caught and caged a redbird, and the mournful twittering of the poor creature as he fluttered incessantly behind the bars of his prison pained and haunted me. The redbird can never be reconciled to confinement; he is of the forest; the wildness of his peculiar note indicates the restlessness of his nature. So for nearly a year the melancholy twittering and the fluttering of that caged bird haunted me.

One morning--it was in the gracious May time--I awoke early. The sun was just coming up and was kissing the tears from lovely Nature's face.

The air was full of coolness and of sweet smells. Then, hearing the querulous note of the imprisoned bird upon the porch yonder, I determined to set the poor thing free. So I dressed myself and stole out into the graciousness of the early morning. To my last day I shall not forget the delight, the rapture, with which that released bird mounted from the doorway of his cage and sped away!

One of the most treasured relics I have is a poem which my father wrote when I was a little boy. My father was a native of Maine, but for all that he was a man of sentiment and he had much literary taste, and ability, too. The poem which he gave me, and which I have always treasured, will (if I am not grievously in error) touch a responsive chord in many a human heart, for all humanity looks back with tenderness to the time of youth.

THE MORNING BIRD

A bird sat in the maple tree And this was the song he sang to me: "O little boy, awake, arise!

The sun is high in the morning skies; The brook's a-play in the pasture lot And wondereth that the little boy It loveth dearly cometh not To share its turbulence and joy; The gra.s.s hath kisses cool and sweet For truant little brown bare feet-- So come, O child, awake, arise!

The sun is high in the morning skies!"

So from the yonder maple tree The bird kept singing unto me; But that was very long ago-- I did not think--I did not know-- Else would I not have longer slept And dreamt the precious hours away; Else would I from my bed have leapt To greet another happy day-- A day, untouched of care and ruth, With sweet companions.h.i.+p of youth-- The dear old friends which you and I Knew in the happy years gone by!