The Child's Book of American Biography Part 12

Jane's home was pretty and all the stores where she bought candy and toys were fascinating places. She fancied the whole world was pleasant and gay. She supposed that everybody in Cedarville had as good a home as she, until one day she went down in the part of the town where the mill hands lived. There the houses were shabby and untidy, the children ragged and dirty. They looked hungry, too. Jane ran home, and when her father came to dinner she asked him why any one had to live in such a pitiful way. He could not explain it so that she felt any better about it. "When I grow up," she declared, "I will build a lovely house right in the middle of those poor huts, so that the children may have something beautiful to look at; and I will see that they have clean clothes and good food."

Only a few Sundays later Jane dashed into her father's room ready for church. "See my new cloak," she called, "isn't it handsome?"

Her father admired it and then answered: "Yes, it is so much nicer than any other girl has that it may make some of the poorer ones unhappy.

Perhaps you had better wear your old one."

Jane was a child that could not bear to hurt another's feelings, so she hung the new coat away and wore the other. But as she walked to church, she asked her father why every child could not have the same kind of things. He told her probably there would always be a difference in the clothing families wore, but in religion and education there was no reason why all should not have equal chances. "And, Jane dear," he added, "I think it is a mistake ever to make other people unhappy by dressing too much."

Jane never dropped her plan to have a fine house in the midst of poor ones. The back gave her a good deal of trouble as she grew older, and sometimes she had to lie still in bed for a year at a time. But she managed to fit for college and to graduate. Then she traveled abroad.

But never for a day had she given up that house she had planned when she was a child of seven.

Jane started to study medicine but was not strong enough to become a doctor. So she traveled some more, but she could never find a city where poor people were not suffering. It saddened her, and she said: "I can't wait any longer. I must have a few people made happy." So with a girl friend she went to the big city of Chicago and hired a fine old house that had been built by a millionaire, a Mr. Hull. This house had a wide hall, open fireplaces, a lot of windows for the sun to stream through, and was on Halstead Street. This street is thirty-two miles long, and in it live people from about every country in the world.

Jane Addams made the house so cheerful and pretty that it was a joy to peep into it. Miss Addams and her friend asked the people about there to come in and have coffee and cocoa, read books aloud to them, taught the poor children to sew and cook, visited the sick, and made them understand--all these poor, tired, discouraged people--that at Hull House there were friends who wanted to help them in every way.

By and by there were clubs for boys at Hull House, kindergartens for children, parties for old folks, and Halstead Street began to look cleaner, for Miss Addams went up and down those thirty-two miles of street and made it understood that she was there to help people grow healthy and clean. All the time, she was helping to nurse the sick and urging the rich people at their end of the city to come down to Halstead Street to see how the poor lived. At Hull House an idiot child or a drunken woman was helped as quickly and willingly as if they had been a clean member of the royal family.

The more Miss Addams found out about what goes on in big cities, the harder she worked. She remembered what her father said about every one in this world deserving an equal chance, and she tried to help factory workers, mill hands, girls and boys who had done wrong, ignorant mothers who did not know how to keep house and take care of their children, men who were out of work, and the blind and crippled.

Miss Addams's work set other people to thinking, and to-day there is hardly a large city but has built a handsome house down in the slums which offers help and comfort to the poor. But Hull House is the leading settlement house in the United States.

Jane Addams still dresses simply. She does not care to have the best clothes in the neighborhood, or jewels, or luxuries for herself. She does not believe in talking a great deal about what she intends to do later on. She has found that the world needs busy workers more than ready talkers. She is a busy, good woman who has done n.o.ble work in America. She is still getting up very early in the morning, and I fancy that when she is asked why she rests so little, she gives the same polite answer that her father heard: "Because I have so much to do!"

LUTHER BURBANK

A few years ago every one who went to California tried to see Luther Burbank, for the newspapers and magazines were filled with stories of the wonderful things he was doing. Plenty of men make houses, automobiles, s.h.i.+ps to go on the water, and s.h.i.+ps that sail through the air, clothing, and toys, but this man makes new fruits and flowers. It is not an easy thing to do, and Mr. Burbank has found that he needs all his strength and time for his work. So now, at his small farm at Santa Rosa and at his big farm at Sebastopol, strangers find a sign like this:

+-----------------------------+ | ALL VISITORS ARE LIMITED | | TO FIVE MINUTES EACH UNLESS | | BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT | +-----------------------------+

And during the six busiest months of the year, from April to October, other signs tell that it will cost ten dollars to stay one hour. These signs are not put up because Mr. Burbank is cross or rude, but because these strange new plants have to be watched as carefully as tiny babies.

He can't leave them for visitors.

Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Ma.s.sachusetts. When he was a baby in his cradle, his mother and sisters found that nothing made him dimple and crow with delight like a flower. They noticed, too, that he never crushed a flower, and once, when a petal fell off a flower he was holding, he tried for hours with his tiny fingers to put it back in place. And when he was big enough to run about the house and yard, instead of carrying a toy or a dog or cat in his arms, he was usually hugging a potted plant of some kind, for as people saw his great love for such things, they were on the lookout for cunning plants for the dear little Burbank boy.

One day Luther was trudging across the yard, clasping a small lobster-cactus in an earthen pot, when he stumbled and fell, breaking the pot and plant. He cried for days over the accident.

At school, Luther was a delight to his teachers. There were few black marks against his name. He liked all his lessons, but the books that told him about birds, trees, and flowers pleased him most.

When Luther was old enough to go to Leicester Academy, he had for his dearest chum a boy cousin who knew Aga.s.siz, and who through him became interested in science. This boy wanted to study about rocks and caves, rivers and fish, while Luther watched the birds that perched on the rocks and the trees that grew near the rivers. But the two spent many weeks tramping over the country together.

Luther worked several summers in a factory near his home. He was quick to understand machinery and invented a machine that saved the manager of the factory a great deal of money, for it would do the work of six men.

Luther's family and friends were sure he would be an inventor. But he himself wanted to raise flowers.

Luther saved a little money and started a vegetable garden. He tried experiments with the potato plants until he raised an entirely different kind than had ever grown before. Of course this made him want to experiment with other plants, and he stayed in the hot sun so much looking after them that he had a bad sunstroke. This led to his going to a climate where he might live outdoors during more months of the year, and where he would not be apt to have such attacks.

When Luther reached California, he had only a few dollars, rather poor health, and was among strangers. He tried to get work on farms or orchards, because he wanted to experiment with vines and vegetables. But if he got work, it was usually for only a few days at a time. Finally he was obliged to work on a chicken ranch, where the only place for him to sleep was in one of the chicken coops. The pay was small, and he did not have as much or as good food as some pet dogs get. But all the time he was saying to himself: "If I can have patience, I shall yet get a farm of my own."

By and by he was hired to look after a small nursery (this is what a big plantation of trees is called). He would have been perfectly happy there if sleeping in a damp room had not given him a fever. He was poor, sick, and almost alone, but not quite, for a very poor woman, who had only the milk of one cow to sell, found him one day lying on a bed of straw, and ever after that insisted on his drinking a pint of her milk each day. He declared that this milk saved his life.

For some years Luther took one odd job after another until he saved enough to buy a small piece of ground. Then he was soon raising plants and making new varieties. He read and studied and tried experiments.

Sometimes he failed, and even when he succeeded there was a good deal of fun made of him. Some people thought Luther Burbank was crazy. It seemed such an odd thing for a man to think of doing--making a fruit or a flower that had not been heard of or dreamed of before! But he did not pay any heed to all this sneering. He worked harder than ever. And before long, the first new plants were in great demand, so that by selling them he got money to buy more land. To-day some of the largest orchards in California are growing from one of Luther Burbank's experiments. And our country is millions of dollars richer from his new kinds of plums, potatoes, and prunes.

Mr. Burbank bought acres of land, hired armies of workmen, denied himself pleasures and visitors, and did not mind how tired he was, so long as old plants were being made better, or new plants were being created. Pretty soon letters began to come from Russia, France, j.a.pan, England, South America, and Africa, asking for some Burbank plants and some Burbank advice as to their care.

Mr. Burbank has made more new forms of plant life than any other man. He has worked on two thousand, five hundred species of plants. Besides making flowers more beautiful and of sweeter fragrance, he has done wonders with the cactus plants that grow on prairies. Once all these plants were covered with thorns and p.r.i.c.kles, so that the cattle who bit into them rushed away with bleeding mouths, feeling much the same as we should if we put our teeth into a stalk of celery and bit on to fish-hooks and needles. Well, Mr. Burbank has changed all that. The fruit of some of his cactus plants is almost as sweet as oranges; the thorns are all gone so that the stalks are fine food for cattle; some of the leaves make good pickles or greens; and the small plants are used for hedges. So the plants that were in old times a pest and nuisance are to-day, thanks to Mr. Burbank, a comfort to the world.

Luther Burbank is a handsome, courteous gentleman, fond of fun, of young people and children, but you can see how busy he has been in the odd science of making new plants and trees, and as he has plans for a great many more, you will also understand why he really has to have those signs put up around his farm at Santa Rosa.

EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL

On a lovely Sunday morning, some years ago, when all the sweet June smells came in through the open church window, an old man with silvery white hair played such a soft, entrancing little air on the organ, as the ushers took the weekly offering, that the listeners held their breath. "What is it?" they whispered. "What is the dainty thing called?"

They asked the organist at the close of the service, and he answered: "That was MacDowell's 'To a Wild Rose'--and MacDowell is a composer of whom America may well be proud."

Edward MacDowell was born in New York. He had his first piano lessons when he was eight years old. But as soon as he had learned the notes, his mother noticed that it was not exercises that he played, but merry, rollicking airs. When she asked him where he found them, he replied: "In my head and heart." He was even then composing music of his own. His mother did not run to the neighbors at once, crying "My son is a genius." Instead of that she thought: "Dear me, I am afraid Edward will be a Jack-of-all-trades and good at none, for he writes beautiful stories and poems and draws exact likenesses of people. What in the world shall we do with him?"

All his music teachers said it would be wicked not to keep him at the piano. But that was easier said than done. When, at the age of fifteen, he went with his mother to Paris, he pa.s.sed fine examinations for entrance to the French Conservatory and learned the French language in no time, so as to understand the teachers and lecturers. But he was still apt to forget that he went to his cla.s.ses to listen and spent much time sketching the faces of teacher or pupils on the margin of his note-book. MacDowell was busy one day, over a picture of a teacher who had a large, queerly shaped nose, when the teacher, seeing that the boy was paying no attention to the lesson, darted to his seat and seized the sketch. MacDowell was frightened and imagined he would be punished. But the teacher was not a bit angry when he saw how true the lines were. He asked to keep the paper and a few days later called on Mrs. MacDowell.

"Madam," he said, "I have shown the picture your son drew of me to an artist of the School of Fine Arts, and this gentleman is so sure Edward is meant for a portrait painter that he offers to pay all his expenses for three years and to give him lessons free of charge." This was a grand chance for a poor boy. Mrs. MacDowell did not want to make any mistake. She looked at the teacher a minute and asked: "What would _you_ do?"

"Why, I am sure he will make a famous piano player."

There was the same old tiresome question: if Edward could do three or four things well, how was any one to know which he might do best?

Finally the matter was left to Edward. After a good many days of thinking, he decided his life should be given to music. Art was given up, and Edward promised to waste no more time on his drawing. But he was a great reader and liked good books to the end of his days.

After study of the piano in Paris, MacDowell went to Frankfort for two years. He had many pupils there, and to one of them he was married.

The young married couple crossed the ocean and stayed in Boston long enough for MacDowell to give some concerts. His fingers were like velvet on the keys of the piano, and every one declared he must take part in a grand American concert that was to be given during the Paris Exposition.

He did as he was asked, and the French people waved their handkerchiefs and cried in their language: "Good for the little American!" The French people invited him everywhere and begged him to remain in Paris, but from first to last Edward MacDowell was a loyal American, and he returned to Boston, where for eight years he played in concerts, took pupils, and best of all wrote much of the music which makes Americans so proud of him. He became a professor of music in Columbia College, and his piano pieces were played the world over.

Many men who write music try to give it a style like some old Italian or German composer, but MacDowell's music does not remind one of any German, Italian, or French writers; it is just itself--it is MacDowell.

Some of his music is heavy and grand, but more of it is delicate. It was wonderful to hear MacDowell himself play "To a Wild Rose." A friend who knew how much the composer liked that said once: "Mac, something dreadful happened a few weeks ago. I heard your 'Wild Rose' played at a high school graduation, on a high school piano, by a high school girl--awful!"

MacDowell laughed and answered: "I suppose she pulled it up by the roots, didn't she?"

MacDowell loved outdoor life, and after he bought a farm at Peterboro, New Hamps.h.i.+re, he built a log cabin way off in the woods, had a grand piano carried there, and in the quiet of that forest wrote some of his sweetest musical sketches.

The names of MacDowell's compositions show he loved life under the sky.

There are "The Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", "From a Log Cabin", and single t.i.tles like "The Eagle", "A Water Lily", and "The Bars at Sunset."

MacDowell worked too steadily and died when he was quite young, but he had written enough music to be remembered as a great American composer.

He said any man who wanted to write music that described his country must love that country so well that he would put into his notes what the nation had put into its life. He felt that America was a happy, brave, hopeful nation, and he tried to make his music show that.