Keeping up with Lizzie Part 2

"'A farmer!' I says. 'It's a new business--an exact science these days. Think o' the high prices an' the cheap land with its productiveness more than doubled by modern methods. The country is longing for big, brainy men to work its idle land. Soon we shall not produce enough for our own needs.'

"'But I'm too well educated to be a farmer,' says he.

"'Pardon me,' I says. 'The land 'll soak up all the education you've got an' yell for more. Its great need is education. We've been sending the smart boys to the city an' keeping the fools on the farm. We've put everything on the farm but brains. That's what's the matter with the farm.'

"'But farming isn't dignified,' says Dan.

"'Pardon me ag'in,' says I. 'It's more dignified to search for the secrets o' G.o.d in the soil than to grope for the secrets o' Satan in a lawsuit. Any fool can learn Blackstone an' Kent an'

Greenleaf, but the book o' law that's writ in the soil is only for keen eyes.'

"'I want a business that fits a gentleman,' says Dan.

"'An' the future farmer can be as much of a gentleman as G.o.d 'll let him,' says I. 'He'll have as many servants as his talents can employ. His income will exceed the earnings o' forty lawyers taken as they average. His position will be like that o' the rich planter before the war.'

"'Well, how shall I go about it?' he says, half convinced.

"'First stop tryin' to keep up with Lizzie,' says I. 'The way to beat Lizzie is to go toward the other end o' the road. Ye see, you've dragged yer father into the race, an' he's about winded.

Turn around an' let Lizzie try to keep up with you. Second, change yer base. Go to a school of agriculture an' learn the business just as you'd go to a school o' law or medicine. Begin modest.

Live within yer means. If you do right I'll buy you all the land ye want an' start ye goin'.'

"When he left I knew that I'd won my case. In a week or so he sent me a letter saying that he'd decided to take my advice.

"He came to see me often after that. The first we knew he was goin' with Marie Benson. Marie had a reputation for good sense, but right away she began to take after Lizzie, an' struck a tolerably good pace. Went to New York to study music an' perfect herself in French.

"I declare it seemed as if about every girl in the village was tryin' to be a kind of a princess with a full-jewelled brain.

Girls who didn't know an adjective from an adverb an' would have been stuck by a simple sum in algebra could converse in French an'

sing in Italian. Not one in ten was willin', if she knew how, to sweep a floor or cook a square meal. Their souls were above it.

Their feet were in Pointview an' their heads in Dreamland. They talked o' the doin's o' the Four Hundred an' the successes o'

Lizzie. They trilled an' warbled; they pounded the family piano; they golfed an' motored an' whisted; they engaged in the t.i.tivation of toy dogs an' the cultivation o' general debility; they ate caramels an' chocolates enough to fill up a well; they complained; they dreamed o' sunbursts an' tiaras while their papas worried about notes an' bills; they lay on downy beds of ease with the last best seller, an' followed the fortunes of the bold youth until he found his treasure at last in the unhidden chest of the heroine; they created what we are pleased to call the servant problem, which is really the drone problem, caused by the added number who toil not, but have to be toiled for; they grew in fat an' folly. Some were both ox-eyed an' peroxide. Homeliness was to them the only misfortune, fat the only burden, and pimples the great enemy of woman.

"Now the organs of the human body are just as s.h.i.+ftless as the one that owns 'em. The systems o' these fair ladies couldn't do their own work. The physician an' the surgeon were added to the list o'

their servants, an' became as necessary as the cook an' the chambermaid. But they were keeping up with Lizzie. Poor things!

They weren't so much to blame. They thought their fathers were rich, an' their fathers enjoyed an' clung to that reputation. They hid their poverty an' flaunted the flag of opulence.

"It costs money, big money an' more, to produce a generation of invalids. The fathers o' Pointview had paid for it with sweat an'

toil an' broken health an' borrowed money an' the usual tax added to the price o' their goods or their labor. Then one night the cas.h.i.+er o' the First National Bank blew out his brains. We found that he had stolen eighteen thousand dollars in the effort to keep up. That was a lesson to the Lizzie-chasers! Why, sir, we found that each of his older girls had diamond rings an' could sing in three languages, an' a boy was in college. Poor man! he didn't steal for his own pleasure. Everything went at auction--house, grounds, rings, automobile. Another man was caught sellin' under weight with fixed scales, an' went to prison. Henry Brown failed, an' we found that he had borrowed five hundred dollars from John Ba.s.s, an' at the same time John Ba.s.s had borrowed six hundred from Tom Rogers, an' Rogers had borrowed seven hundred an' fifty from Sam Henshaw, an' Henshaw had borrowed the same amount from Percival Smith, an' Smith had got it from me. The chain broke, the note structure fell like a house o' cards, an' I was the only loser--think o' that. There were five capitalists an' only one man with real money.

II

IN WHICH LIZZIE RETURNS TO HER HOME, HAVING MET A QUEEN AND ACQUIRED AN ACCENT AND A FIANCE

"Sam Henshaw's girl had graduated an' gone abroad with her mother.

One Sunday 'bout a year later, Sam flew up to the door o' my house in his automobile. He lit on the sidewalk an' struggled up the steps with two hundred an' forty-seven pounds o' meat on him. He walked like a man carryin' a barrel o' pork. He acted as if he was glad to see me an' the big arm-chair on the piaz'.

"'What's the news?' I asked.

"'Lizzie an' her mother got back this mornin',' he gasped.

'They've been six months in Europe. Lizzie is in love with it.

She's hobn.o.bbed with kings an' queens. She talks art beautiful. I wish you'd come over an' hear her hold a conversation. It's wonderful. She's goin' to be a great addition to this community.

She's got me faded an' on the run. I ran down to the store for a few minutes this mornin', an' when I got back she says to me:

"'"Father, you always smell o' ham an' mustard. Have you been in that disgusting store? Go an' take a bahth at once." That's what she called it--a "bahth." Talks just like the English people--she's been among 'em so long. Get into my car an' I'll take ye over an' fetch ye back.'

"Sam regarded his humiliation with pride an' joy. At last Lizzie had convinced him that her education had paid. My curiosity was excited. I got in an' we flew over to his house. Sam yelled up the stairway kind o' joyful as we come in, an' his wife answered at the top o' the stairs an' says:

"'Mr. Henshaw, I wish you wouldn't shout in this house like a boy calling the cows.'

"I guess she didn't know I was there. Sam ran up-stairs an' back, an' then we turned into that splendid parlor o' his an' set down.

Purty soon Liz an' her mother swung in an' smiled very pleasant an'

shook hands an' asked how was my family, etc., an' went right on talkin'. I saw they didn't ask for the purpose of gettin'

information. Liz was dressed to kill an' purty as a picture--cheeks red as a rooster's comb an' waist like a hornet's.

The cover was off her showcase, an' there was a diamond sunburst in the middle of it, an' the jewels were surrounded by charms to which I am not wholly insensible even now.

"'I wanted ye to tell Mr. Potter about yer travels,' says Sam.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I wanted ye to tell Mr. Potter about yer travels."

says Sam.]

"Lizzie smiled an' looked out o' the window a minute an' fetched a sigh an' struck out, lookin' like Deacon Bristow the day he give ten dollars to the church. She told about the cities an' the folks an' the weather in that queer, English way she had o' talking'>

"'Tell how ye hobn.o.bbed with the Queen o' Italy,' Sam says.

"'Oh, father! Hobn.o.bbed!' says she. 'Anybody would think that she and I had manicured each other's hands. She only spoke a few words of Italian and looked very gracious an' beautiful an' complimented my color.'

"Then she lay back in her chair, kind o' weary, an' Sam asked me how was business--just to fill in the gap, I guess. Liz woke up an' showed how far she'd got ahead in the race.

"'Business!' says she, with animation. 'That's why I haven't any patience with American men. They never sit down for ten minutes without talking business. Their souls are steeped in commercialism. Don't you see how absurd it is, father? There are plenty of lovely things to talk about.'

"Sam looked guilty, an' I felt sorry for him. It had cost heavy to educate his girl up to a p'int where she could give him so much advice an' information. The result was natural. She was irritated by the large cubic capacity--the length, breadth, and thickness of his ignorance and unrefinement; he was dazed by the length, breadth, an' thickness of her learning an' her charm. He didn't say a word. He bowed his head before this pretty, perfumed casket of erudition.

"'You like Europe,' I says.

"'I love it,' says she, 'It's the only place to live. There one finds so much of the beautiful in art and music and so many cultivated people.'

"Lizzie was a handsome girl, an' had more sense than any o' the others that tried to keep up with her. After all, she was Sam's fault, an' Sam was a sin conceived an' committed by his wife, as ye might say. She had made him what he was.

"'Have you seen Dan Pettigrew lately?' Lizzie asked.

"'Yes.' I says. 'Dan is goin' to be a farmer.'

"'A farmer!" says she, an' covered her face with her handkerchief an' shook with merriment.

"'Yes,' I says. 'Dan has come down out o' the air. He's abandoned folly. He wants to do something to help along.'

"'Yes, of course,' says Lizzie, in a lofty manner. 'Dan is really an excellent boy--isn't he?'