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Title: Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1905

Author: Various

Release Date: June 23, 2020 [EBook #62454]

Language: English

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WALTER DIRECT, 2:05 3/4.

By Percy Brown, of Ewell Farm.

Note.—Mr. Brown is a practical forester, having been chief forester for the Houston Oil Co. and a graduate of Biltmore Forest School.—Ed.

With abundant supplies of timber for farm consumption, farmers of the South have been inclined to regard the question of forest preservation merely as a matter of sentiment, and have come to look upon the forester as an impracticable sort of sentimentalist, whose main object in life is to keep some lumberman from cutting his timber.

This indifference has resulted in the loss of the support of the farming element to the cause of forestry, whereas the lumberman who at one time considered the forester his natural enemy and the forestry cause a clog in the wheels of progress, immediately began to investigate the question with a view of combatting forest legislation and the creation of a forestry sentiment throughout the country.

The result was that a thorough understanding of the objects of forestry and the aims of the forester has caused the lumbermen and lumber associations to give their unqualified support to all practical forestry legislation. And in the Southern States we find that the only journal of any importance that is persistently advocating forestry as a business is one of the foremost lumber journals south of the Ohio River.

The silence that the farm journals of the country have maintained on the question can be explained only by their ignorance of the question and its important bearing on the agricultural interests of the entire country. And as it is the purpose of this magazine to discuss all questions of vital importance as well as those that will be of passing interest to the farmers of the whole country it is well to begin with an understanding of what forestry is, and to advance a few reasons why the farmer should be the most ardent advocate of forestry.

Dr. W. H. Schlich, the noted English forester, says the task with which “forestry has to deal is to ascertain the principles according to which forests shall be managed and to apply these principles to the treatment of the forests.”

Dr. B. E. Fernow, formerly chief of the Division of Forestry, defines it as “The rational treatment of forests for forest purposes.”

Dr. C. A. Schenck, of the Biltmore Forest School, gives the following very broad and terse definition: “Forestry is the proper handling of forest investments.”

We see from these definitions that the forestry is purely a matter of business differing only from other investments in the time element. A forestry venture cannot be undertaken with a view of getting immediate returns, but contemplates the continuity of the investment which makes it the first duty of the forester to determine what is the best use the forest can be put to in order to obtain the greatest annual return upon the investment without drawing upon his capital invested. This does not necessarily mean that his forest must be devoted entirely to the production of timber, it may be maintained as a game preserve, or as a watershed, in which case the returns to be obtained from the sale of timber will be a secondary consideration.

Consequently we see that the forester is not merely a botanist or a tree planter, but in the fullest sense of the term is a technically educated man, with the knowledge of the forest trees and their history and of all that pertains to their production, combines further knowledge which enables him to manage forest property so as to produce certain conditions resulting in the highest attainable revenue from the soil by wood-crops.

The effect of forest cover and water-flow[5] has been so persistently and constantly proclaimed as the one great need for forest preservation that the more important one of supply has been neglected.

In a series of articles by Dr. Fernow, on “The Outlook of the Timber Supply in the United States” (Quarterly, 1903), after carefully considering the data compiled by the Chief Geographer, together with his personal investigations, he summarizes the situation, which justifies the urgent need of the forester’s art in the United States, from the point of view of supplies, as follows:

1. The consumption of forest supplies, larger than in any other country in the world, promises not only to increase with the natural increase of the population, but in excess of this increase per capita, similar to that of other civilized, industrial nations, annually by a rate of not less than three to five per cent.

2. The most sanguine estimate of timber standing predicates an exhaustion of supplies in less than thirty years if this rate of consumption continues, and of the most important timber supplies in a much shorter time.

3. The conditions for continued imports from our neighbor, Canada, practically the only country having accessible supplies such as we need, are not reassuring and may not be expected to lengthen natural supplies appreciably.

4. The reproduction of new supplies on the existing forest area could, under proper management, be made to supply the legitimate requirements for a long time; but fires destroy the young growth over large areas, and where production is allowed to develop in the mixed forest, at least, owing to the culling processes, which remove the valuable kinds and leave the weeds, these latter reproduce in preference.

5. The attempts at systematic silviculture, that is, the growing of new crops, are, so far, infinitesimal compared with the needs.

That this is a question of serious importance to the South, as well as to the whole country, is shown by the great increase in the South’s production of lumber, which, owing to the depletion in other sections of the country, has risen from eleven and nine-tenths per cent in 1880 to twenty-five and two-tenths per cent of the total output of the United States in 1900, and it is not hard to predict an even greater production for 1910, when one concern alone has increased the number of its mills in the long leaf pine belt from seven to fifteen, and its daily output from 500,000 to 1,000,000 feet during the period from 1900 to 1904.

Basing their estimates upon the present standards of grading, the hardwood lumber journals are predicting the total exhaustion of the available supplies of this timber in fifteen years, and the hardwood lumbermen are already looking to forestry as a means of relief.

In an address delivered before the third annual meeting of the Hardwood Manufacturers’ Association of the United States, as an introduction to the subject of “The Hardwood Producing Centers of the United States,” Mr. John W. Love, of Nashville, said:

This in an address from a lumberman to an association of lumber manufacturers is indeed an encouraging sign of the times, but I fear he has waked up “to the realization that our efforts to secure a more rational treatment of our forest resources and apply forestry in their management are not too early, but rather too late: that they are by no means sufficient; that serious trouble and inconvenience are in store for us in the not[6] too distant future; that the blind indifference and the dallying or amateurish playing with the problem of legislatures and officials is fatal.”

The railroads and the farmers of the Western plains were among the first to appreciate the importance of making provision for a future supply of construction timber and material for use on the farms.

With the far-sighted policy of manipulators of great corporations, the officials of the Santa Fe Railroad were among the pioneers in forest planting in America on railroads, as about twenty years ago they planted 1,280 acres in hardy catalpa at a total expense of $128,000, and they estimated that at the end of twenty-five years from date of planting this tract will have produced $2,500,000 of poles, ties and posts.

A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville & Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.

It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed a net value of $197, or a yearly net income of $19.75 per acre.

And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F. C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of $200.54 per acre, or a yearly net income of about $8—not a bad showing for forestry, when we bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually, while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an accumulative value.

All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust (robinia pseudoacacia), hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.

Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.

However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.

To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside for permanent forest investments.

The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J. W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct investigations of the “Relation of Forests to Stream Flow,” and in the “Year-Book” of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these conclusions:

“In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates[7] that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.

“In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one, as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.

“Although the forest may have, on the whole, but little appreciable effect in increasing the rainfall and the annual run-off, its economic importance in regulating streams is beyond computation. The great indirect value of the forest is the effect which it has in preventing wind and water erosion, thus allowing the soil on hills and mountains to remain where it is formed, and in other ways providing an adequate absorbing medium at the sources of the water courses of the country. It is the amount of water that passes into the soil, not the amount of rainfall, that makes a garden or a desert.”

With such evidence as this before them, what farmer in the South will dare question the importance of forestry to the agricultural interests of every section of the South, and especially those sections lying adjacent to streams having their sources in the territory of the proposed Appalachian Forest Reserve?

By protecting the forest growth on the watersheds of these streams the flow of the water is rendered more continuous, and the dangers from violent floods, which destroy fences and carry away the most fertile soil, are lessened.

The South to-day is pre-eminent in agriculture and timber production, but the wasteful destruction of our forest resources bids fair to transfer the laurels to the great undeveloped West, where we find over 60,000,000 acres of forest reserves, which will for all time to come offer a continuous supply of lumber for the manufacturer and an abundance of water for the farmers who have made a garden of the deserts.

It is the duty of the Southern farmer to join with the hardwood lumberman in his efforts to introduce forestry in the South, and by so doing give to succeeding generations the heritage that except for the destructive forces of man would have come to them in nature’s great scheme of things.

TO THE CAHABA RIVER

Little Sister was Col. Rutherford’s only grandchild. She was also Capt. John Rutherford’s only niece. I mention the last-named gentleman because he had a great deal to do with the making of this story. He was quite original himself, and a braver, bigger-hearted friend no man ever had.

The Rutherford home was in the Middle Basin of Tennessee. The house was built in 1812 by John Rutherford the first, who had eaten, slept, fought, and finally died, with his old friend, Andrew Jackson. No truer, better, braver people than the Rutherfords lived. No black sheep ever came out of the flock. I have always maintained that a family’s ability to refrain from throwing scrubs is the truest test of its purity. The prepotency that produced dead-game, honest and true men and women every time, is a long way ahead of “Norman blood.” “That’s the genuine stuff,” as little three-year-old Sister once naively remarked after looking over Uncle John’s pacing filly. However, that’s a story I will tell later.

When I first knew Little Sister she was only two years old, for just two years before a terrible gloom had settled over the Rutherford home when Little Sister’s mother, the Colonel’s daughter, had died. Death is a terrible, bitter, hollow mockery to those who live. Some day, in another world, we shall see things differently. In this, “cabined, cribbed, confined” in our puny environments, we see only “through a glass darkly,” and so God help us.

As I said, she was the old Colonel’s only daughter—the fairest, frailest, most lovely and most intellectual—a bride one year, and we buried her the next. That’s all, except Little Sister, a fair, frail, hot-tempered, sensitive—all brain and nerve—little tot who came to take her mother’s place. Her bright blue eyes, pale-pink face and red-flaxen hair kept one thinking of perpetual sunsets and twilights. She was a fac simile of her mother—intellect, impulsiveness, loveliness, all except one thing—temper. She was fire and powder there. A flash, an explosion—then she was sobbing for forgiveness in your arms. That was Little Sister.

“I can’t see where in the world she gets her temper from,” Grandmother Rutherford said when two-year-old Little Sister slapped her squarely in the face one day and then hung sobbing around the old lady’s neck as if the blow had broken her own heart.

“Col. Rutherford,” she would add impressively, “this child ought to be spanked till she is conquered.”

“Don’t do it, mother,” said Uncle John, while Little Sister gave him a grateful look through her tears; “don’t do it; that is not the way to train race colts. A conquering, your way, would spoil her. She will need all of that temper, if it is brought under control, to get through life with, and land[9] anywhere near the wire first. Besides, with her sensitiveness, don’t you see she is suffering now more than if we had punished her? If she were a plug, now, she would slap you and never be sorry till you made her sorry with a switch. But conscience beats hickory, and gentleness is away ahead of blows.”

And Uncle John would catch the two-year-old up and take her out to see the colts. At sight of these she would forget all other trouble. Her love for horses was as deep in her as the Rutherford blood. When she saw the colts it was comical to see the great burst of sunshiny laughter that spread all over her conscience-stricken face, while two big tears—such big ones as only little heart-broken two-year-olds can originate—were rolling slowly down her nose.

“Oh, Uncle John,” she would say gleefully, “now, ain’t they just too sweet for anything? Do let me get down and hug them, every one.” And Uncle John would let her if he had to catch every one himself.

The clear-cut way she talked English reminds me that there were two things about Little Sister that always astonished me—her intellect and her great sense of motherhood. I could readily see how she inherited the first, but could never understand how so tiny a thing had such a great big mother-heart. She loved everything little—everything born on the farm. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived was an occasion of jollification to her.

“Oh, do let me see the dear little thing,” would be the first thing from Little Sister that greeted the announcement. And she generally saw it; at least, if Uncle John was around. It is scarcely necessary to add that during the spring of the year, on a farm as large as the Rutherford place, she was kept in one continual state of happy excitement.

One day they missed her from the house, and Uncle John quickly “tracked” her to the cow barn, for it occurred to him he had only the day before shown her the Short-horn’s latest edition—a big, double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in the bedded stall like a young Hercules, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle his huge nose around and mentally make the remark the Governor of North Carolina is said to have made to the Governor of South Carolina. But Little Sister had declared he was “perfectly lovely.” That is where Uncle John found her. She had climbed over the high stall gate, unaided, and, after becoming acquainted, she had given young Hercules, as a propitiary offering, her own beautiful string of beads and placed them around his tawny neck.

“Come out of there, you little rascal,” laughed Uncle John. “What do you see pretty about that big, ugly calf?”

“Oh, Uncle John,” sighed Little Sister, “I’m so sorry for him—he isn’t pretty, to be sure—and so I have given him my beads. But he has a lovely curly head,” she added encouragingly, “and he seems to be such a healthy child.”

On another occasion they missed[10] Little Sister about night. Everybody started out in alarm. Grandma found her first, coming from the brood-sow’s lot.

“Where in the world have you been, darling?” asked Grandma, as she picked her up.

“Playing with the little yesterday pigs,” she said. “And, Grandma, I ought to have come home sooner, but I kissed one of the cunningest of the little pigs good-night, and all the others looked so hurt, and squealed so because I didn’t kiss them, too, I just had to catch every one of them and kiss them before they would go to sleep. Indeed, I did.”

Inheritance had played a Hamlet’s part in Little Sister’s make-up. Most children crow, and babble, and lisp, and talk in divers and different languages before they learn to talk English, while some never learn at all. But not so with Little Sister. The first word she ever attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first sentence she put together was grammatically correct. The correctness of her language, for one so small, made it sound so quaint that I often had to laugh at its quaintness, while her deep earnestness and intensity but added to its originality.

And she picked up so many things from Uncle John. Else where did she get this: Pete was a little darkey on the farm whose chief business was to entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. Pete’s repertoire consisted of all the funny things a monkey ever did, but his two star performances were “racking” like Deacon Jones’ old claybank pacer, and “playin’ possum.” Little Sister never tired of having Pete do these two. And it was comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones, with his angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the unearthly, double-shuffling, twisting, cork-screw gait of his old pacer. The ludicrous gait of the old pacer struck Pete early in life, and he soon learned to get down on his all-fours and make Deacon Jones’ old horse ashamed of himself any day. The imitation was so perfect that Uncle John used to call in his friends to see the show, which consisted of Pete doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back, with one hand in his shirt collar and the other wielding a hickory switch, played the Deacon. One evening, as the company was taking in the performance, and Pete, now thoroughly leg-weary, had paced around for the twentieth time, Little Sister was seen to whack him in the flanks very vigorously and exclaim: “Come, pace along there, you son-of-a-gun, or I’ll put a head on you!”

Uncle John nearly fell out of his chair. Only a week before he had made that same remark to Pete for being a little slow about bringing in his shaving water. But he didn’t know that Little Sister had heard him.

The spring Little Sister was three years old the Colonel came in to breakfast one morning with a cloud on his brow. It was a great disappointment to him—old Betty, his saddle mare, the mare he had ridden for fifteen years, “the best bred mare in Tennessee,”[11] had brought into the world a most unpromising offspring. “It is weak, puny and no ’count, John,” he said to his son; “deformed, or something, in its front legs, knuckles over and can’t stand up, the most infernally curby-legged thing I ever saw.”

“That’s too bad,” remarked Uncle John, as he helped himself to another battercake. “I’ll go out after breakfast and look at the poor little thing.”

“No use,” remarked the Colonel gravely, “it’s deformed—can’t stand up; and out of compassion for it I’ve ordered Jim to knock it in the head. It’ll be better dead than alive.”

Little Sister, with her big, inquisitive eyes, had been taking it all in, as she gravely ate her oatmeal and cream. But the last remark of Grandpa stopped the spoon half way to her mouth. The next instant, unobserved, she had slipped out of her high-chair and flown to the barn.

“I tell you, John,” remarked the old Colonel, “I sometimes think this breeding horses is pure lottery. To think of old Betty, the gamest, speediest mare I ever rode, having such a colt as that; and by Brown Hal, too—the best young pacing horse I ever saw. It makes me feel bad to think of it. Now, take old Betty’s pedigree——”

But the old Colonel never got any further, for piercing screams from Little Sister came from the barn. Uncle John glanced at her empty chair, turned pale with fright, kicked over the two chairs which stood in his way, then his favorite setter dog that blockaded the door, and rushed hatless to the barn. There a pathetic sight met his eyes. A negro stood in old Betty’s stall door with an axe in his hand. In a far corner, on some straw, lay a sorry-looking, helpless colt. But it was not alone, for a three-year-old tot knelt beside it, and held the colt’s head in her lap while she shook her tiny fist at the black executioner, and screamed with grief and anger:

“You shan’t kill this baby colt—you shan’t—you shan’t! Don’t you come in here—don’t you come! How dare you?” And, child though she was, the flash of her keen, blue Rutherford eyes, like the bright sights of the muzzle of two derringers, had awed the negro in the doorway and stopped him in hesitancy and confusion.

“Go away, Jim,” said Uncle John, as he took in the situation. “Come, Little Sister,” he said, “let’s go back to Grandma.”

But for once in her life Uncle John had no influence over the little girl. She was indignant, shocked, grieved. She fairly blazed through her tears and sobs. She would never speak to Grandpa again as long as she lived. She intended her very self to kill Jim just as soon as she “got big enough,” and as for Uncle John, she would never even love him again if he did not promise her the baby colt should not be killed.

“Poor little thing,” she said, as she put her arm around its neck and her tears fell over its big, soft eyes; “God just sent you last night, and they want to kill you to-day.”

Uncle John brushed a tear away himself, and stooped over and critically[12] examined the little filly—for such it was. Little Sister watched him intently for, in her opinion Uncle John knew everything and could do anything. The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, as Uncle John looked up quickly and said in his boyish, jolly way: “Hello, Little Sister, this little filly is all right! Deformed be hanged! She’s as sound as a hound’s tooth—just weak in her front tendons. I’ll soon fix that. No sir, they don’t kill her, Mousey”—Uncle John called her Mousey when he wanted her to laugh.

The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh. “Well, ain’t that just too sweet for anything; and Oh, Uncle John, ain’t she just sweet enough to eat?” And Little Sister danced about, the happiest child in the world.

And what fun it was to help Uncle John “fix her up,” as he called it. She brought him the cotton-batting herself and watched him gravely as he made stays for the weak forelegs, and straightened out the crooked little ankles. Finally, when he called Jim, and made him take the little filly up in his arms and carry her into another stall where old Betty stood and held her up to get her first breakfast, the little girl could hardly contain herself. In a burst of generosity she begged Jim’s pardon, and told her Uncle John confidentially that she didn’t intend to kill Jim at all, now; but was going to give him a pair of her Grandpa’s old boots instead.

In return for this, Jim promptly named the filly “Little Sister,” a compliment which tickled the original Little Sister very much.

But having said the little filly was no-’count, the old Colonel stuck to it—refused to notice it or take any stock in it.

“Po’ little thing,” he would say a month after it was able to pace around without help from its stays—“po’ little thing; what a pity they didn’t kill it!”

But Uncle John and Little Sister nursed it, petted it, and helped old Betty raise it; and the next spring they were rewarded by seeing it develop into a delicate-looking, but exceedingly blood-like, nervous, highstrung little miss. Grandpa would surely relent now, but not so. Prejudice, next to ignorance, is our greatest enemy, and the old Colonel looked at the yearling and remarked:

“Po’ little thing—that old Betty should have played off on me like that!” And he turned indifferently on his heel and walked away, whereupon both the filly and the little girl turned up their noses behind the old man’s back.

In the fall that the little filly was three years old the county pacing stakes came off. A thousand dollars were hung up at the end of that race, but greater still, the county’s reputation was at the feet of the conqueror. The old Colonel had entered a big pacing fellow in the race, named Princewood, and it looked like nothing could beat him. The big fellow had been carefully trained for two seasons by a local driver, and had already cost his owner more than he was worth. “But it’s the reputation I am after, sir,” the Colonel would say to the driver—“the honor of the thing. My farm has already[13] taken it twice; I want to take it again.”

Now, Uncle John was quite a whip himself, and the old Colonel had failed to notice how all the fall he had been giving Betty’s filly extra attention, with a hot brush on the road now and then. The old man, wrapped up as he was in Princewood’s wonderful speed, had even failed to notice that Uncle John had frequently called for his light road wagon, and he and Little Sister, now six years old, had taken delightful spins down the shady places in the by-ways, where nobody could see them, behind the high-strung little filly, and that often, at supper, when Grandpa would begin to brag about Princewood’s wonderful speed, Uncle John would wink at Little Sister, and that little miss would have to cram her mouth full of peach preserves to keep from laughing out at the table and being sent supperless to bed.

There was a big crowd on the day of the race—it looked like all the county was there. The field was a large one, for the purse was rich and the honor richer—“and Princewood is a prime favorite,” chuckled the old Colonel, as he stood holding a little girl’s hand near the grandstand.

But the little girl was very quiet. For once in her life “the cat had her tongue.” Now, anybody half educated in child ways would have seen this tot clearly expected something to happen. If the old Colonel hadn’t been so busy talking about Princewood he might have seen it, too.

The bell had already rung twice, and all the drivers and horses were thought to be in, and were preparing to score down, when a newcomer arrived, who attracted a good deal of attention. Instead of a sulky, he sat in a spider-framed, four-wheeled gentleman’s road cart, at least four seconds slow for a race like that. Instead of a cap he wore a soft felt hat, and in lieu of a jacket, a cutaway business suit. He nodded familiarly to the starting judge and paced his nervous-looking little filly up the stretch.

“Who is that coming into this race in that kind of a thing?” asked the old Colonel of a farmer near by—for the old man’s eyesight was failing him.

“Why, Colonel, don’t you know your own son? That’s Cap’n John Rutherford,” said the farmer.

“The devil you say!” shouted the excitable old gentleman. “Why, damn it, has John gone crazy?” and he jumped over a bench and rushed excitedly up the stretch to head off the driver of the little filly.

“In the name of heaven, John,” he shouted, “are you really going to drive in this race?”

Captain John nodded and smiled.

“And what’s that po’ little thing you’ve got there?”

“It’s Little Sister, father,” said Captain John good naturedly. “I’m just driving her to please the little girl. I want to see how she’ll act in company, anyway.”

The old Colonel was thunderstruck. “Why, you’re a fool,” he blurted out. “They’ll lose you both in this race. For heaven’s sake, John, get off the track and don’t disgrace old Betty and the farm[14] this way. Po’ little no-’count thing,” he added, sympathetically, “it’ll kill ’er to go round there once!”

The Captain laughed. “It’s just for a little fun, father—all to please the baby. It’s her pet, you know. I’ll just trail them the first heat, and if she’s too soft I’ll pull out. But she’s better than you think,” he added indifferently. “I’ve been driving her a good bit of late.”

The old Colonel expostulated—he even threatened—but Captain John only laughed and drove off. Then the old Colonel repented, and it was comically pathetic to hear him call out in his earnest way: “John! Oh, John! Don’t tell anybody it’s old Betty’s colt, will you?”

Captain John laughed. “I’ll bet ten to one,” he chuckled to himself, “he’ll be telling it before I do.”

And the little filly—when she got into company she seemed to be positively gay. She forgot all about herself, threw off all her nervous ways, and went away with a rush that almost took Captain John’s breath. He pulled her quickly back. “Ho, ho! little miss,” he said, “if you do that again you’ll give us dead away,” and he looked slyly around to see if anybody had seen it. But they were all too busy chasing Princewood. That horse clearly had the speed of the crowd. And so Uncle John trailed behind, the very last of the long procession, with the little filly fighting for her head all the way. Nobody seemed to notice them at all—nobody but a little girl, who clung to her grandpa’s middle finger and wondered, in her childish faith, if the mighty Uncle John—the Uncle John who knew everything and could do everything, and who never missed his mark in all his life, was going, really going, to tumble now from his lofty throne in her childish mind? And with him Little Sister, too.

She got behind Grandpa. Princewood paced in way ahead. She stuck her fingers in her ears so she couldn’t hear the shouts, but took them out in time to hear Grandpa say, “Well, I thought John had more sense,” as that gentleman, after satisfying himself that he was not distanced, paced slowly in.

This made Little Sister think it was all up with Uncle John. She went after a glass of lemonade, but really to cry in the dark hall behind the grandstand and wipe her eyes on the frills of the pretty little petticoat Grandma had made her just to wear to the fair. It was too bad.

When she got back Grandpa was gone. He was over in the cooling stable, talking to Uncle John.

“John,” he said solemnly, “don’t disgrace old Betty any more. I’m downright sorry for the po’ little thing. I’m afraid she’ll fall dead in her tracks,” he added.

Captain John flushed, “Well, let her drop,” he said, “but if I’m not mistaken you’ll hear something drop yourself.”

The old Colonel turned on his heels in disgust.

But Uncle John meant business this time. He changed his cart for a sulky, and again they got the word. Gradually, carefully, he gave the little filly her head. Steadily,[15] gracefully, she went by them one by one, until at the half she was just behind Princewood, who seemed to be claiming all the grandstand’s attention. The field left behind! If Princewood wins this heat the race is over!

“Princewood’s got ’em, Colonel!” exclaimed a countryman to the old man. “They’s nothin’ that kin head ’im!” and “Princewood wins! Princewood wins!” as they headed into the stretch.

And then something dropped. Little Sister felt the reins relax, and a kindly chirrup came from Uncle John. In a twinkling she was up with the big fellow, half frightened at her own speed, half doubting, like a prima donna when her sweet voice first fills a great hall, that it was really she who had done it.

“Princewood! Princewood!” shouted the crowd around their idol, the Colonel. “Princewood will break the record!” from partisans who knew more about plow horses than race horses.

The old Colonel arose in happy anticipation—and then, as his trained eye really took in the situation, his jaw dropped. What was that little bay streak that had collared so gamely his big horse? Who was the quiet-looking gentleman in the soft felt hat, handling the reins like a veteran driver? His son John was in a cart—this driver was in a sulky. “Who the devil—” he started to say, when somebody clinging to his finger cried out: “Look! Look! Grandpa! It’s Little Sister. Ain’t she just too sweet for anything?”

And the next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer’s face, as much as to say, “You big duffer, have you quit already?” And then, like a homing pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away from the field.

“Princewood! Princewood will break the record!” shouted a man who hadn’t caught on and was yelling for Princewood while looking at the champion pumpkin in the window of the agricultural hall.

And then the old Colonel lost his head and, I am sorry to say, the most of his religion, for he jumped up on a bench and shouted so loud the town crier heard him in the court-house window, a mile away: “Damn Princewood! Damn the record! It’s Little Sister! Little Sister! Old Betty’s filly—my old mare’s colt!”

And then Uncle John laughed till he nearly fell out of the sulky. “I said he’d be telling all about her first,” he said, while a little innocent-looking tot plucked the old man by the coat-tail long enough to get him to stop telling the crowd all about the marvelous breeding of the wonderful filly, as she naively remarked: “And the little thing did play off on you sure enough, didn’t she, Grandpa?”

The crowd laughed, and Grandma picked her up, kissed her, and shouted: “And here’s the girl that saved her, gentlemen—the smartest girl in Tennessee—and she’s got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!”

There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and those behind cannot swear to this day which way Little Sister went.

John Trotwood Moore.

By John Trotwood Moore.

CAPT. THOMAS GIBSON.
Owner of Gibson’s Tom Hal and John Dilliard.

CHAPTER I.
THE PACING RACE HORSE.

The race horse has come, by common consent to represent all that is graceful and grand in the animal kingdom. The culmination of perfected strength and speed, courage and intelligence, he stands, nevertheless, the model of patience, gentleness and forbearance. How wonderful it seems that in this dumb creature, whose mental gifts, compared to man’s, are as a clay bed to a bank of violets, yet has he reached, through the misty channels of mere instinct, a physical perfection and often a moral excellence which his maker and molder may never attain! He is amiable in spite of force and desperate races, and often blows and cruelty; he is gentle, notwithstanding a training tending to make him a whirlwind of wrath and a tornado of tempests; he is honest in spite of the dishonesty of those around him and docile and contented despite the fact that there slumbers within him like sleeping bolts in a flying cloud the spirit of madness gathered from the nerve granaries of a long line of unnumbered ancestors.

A regiment with his courage would ride over the guns of a Balaklava; a state with his honesty would need no criminal laws; give scholars his patience, and the stars would be their playthings; imbued with his power of endurance, the weakest nation would tunnel mountains as a child a sand hill, build cities as a dreamer builds castles, and shoulder the world with a laugh. To one who sees him as he is, and loves him[17] for his intrinsic greatness, he is all this and more. Man’s honest servant, dumb exemplar, truest helper, best friend.

In his master’s hour of recreation, he is the joyful spirit that whirls him, at the swish of a whip, along the dizzy course where the whistling winds sing their warning. In his hours of stern reality, when fortunes hang on his hoof beats and fame stands balanced on the wire that ends the home-stretch, he is the embodiment of power and dignity, the champion of might and the god of victory. And finally, in his gentler moods, he is the faithful servant of the stubble and the plow, the gentle guardian of the family turn-out, who hauls the laughing children along the by-ways amid the sweet grasses, where the sunshine and the zephyrs play. Out from the past, the dim, bloody, shifting past, came this noble animal, the horse, side by side with man, fighting with him the battles of progress, bearing with him the burdens of the centuries. Down the long, hard road, through flint or mire, through swamp or sand, wherever there has been a footprint, there also will be seen a hoof-print. They have been one and inseparable, the aim and the object, the means and the end. And if the time shall ever come, as some boastingly declare, when the one shall breed away from the other, the puny relic of a once perfect manhood will not live long enough to trace the record of it on the tablet of time.

The greatest distinct family of horses that has ever lived is the Hal family of pacers, a distinctively Tennessee product, originating in that peculiar geological formation known as the Middle Basin—the bluegrass region of Tennessee. To understand the greatness of this family of horses—now known throughout the world, wherever speed and endurance has a name—it is only necessary to publish the following table of world-records held by them. These records have all been won in the last quarter of a century, the remarkable fact being that before that time these horses lived only for the plow, the saddle or the wheel, and that nearly all of them are sons and daughters or descendants of one horse—a roan, known locally as Gibson’s Tom Hal, from the fact that Capt. Thomas Gibson, a gentleman of the old school, then living on his estate in Maury County, Tenn., and now the efficient secretary of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway Library, first reclaimed him from obscurity and brought him to the county where his greatness was recognized.

These world records, the choicest in the harness world, are held to-day, August, 1905, by the descendants of the old roan pacer:

It will be observed that all of these records except a few were made in races and not against time.

Whence came this wonderful family of horses? What is this pacing gait? What mingling of blood lines have brought these horses of the plow, the saddle and the wheel to the grandstand and the pinacle of fame?

This is the story I shall tell as a serial during the first twelve issues of Trotwood’s Monthly.

The light-harness horse has come to be a type of its own. It is distinctly an American type, as distinguished from the English running, or thoroughbred horse, the German and French coach, the Russian Orloff and horses of other nationalities. There is a wide gap, however, between a race horse, whether runner or harness horse, and other breeds, however pure, their blood lines. It is the difference of intelligence, speed, endurance, of lung development, of steel bone. It is the difference between genius and mediocracy—for speed is to the horse what genius is to man.

Whence began this speed—in the English runner, in the American trotter and pacer? Traced back, the sheiks of the desert might tell; they who worshipped the midnight stars, or chased on steeds of fire the wild antelope of the plains, before Abraham came from “Ur of the Chaldees.” Knowing the past now from the present, seeing it so clearly through the glasses of twentieth century science, knowing the laws of the “survival of the fittest,” that land and air and sand and sun make both the physical man as well as the physical horse, we can easily guess what centuries of wild gallops across the desert will do for the horse, supplemented by that natural love of him in his master—that love which brings care and kindness and the exercise of common sense in mating and maternity.

As to the American horse, there are two distinct classes, based on their respective gaits—the trotter and the pacer. In another chapter these respective gaits are fully discussed, their difference shown, their origin and the speed attained by each. This brief history will deal only with the pacing gait, but so closely are these two great gaits related, and so often do the blood lines of trotter and pacer run in parallel columns that it is necessary for a clear explanation of the subject to say a foreword about the trotter, that grand type of beauty,[19] speed and utility, so purely American and so superbly great that the very mention of his name should excite a patriotic glow in the bosom of every American who loves his country and her just fame.

The history of the trotting horse began with Messenger, a gray thoroughbred foaled in 1780, and imported from England to America in May, 1788. He was royally bred for his time, being by Mambrino, son of Engineer, and through both sire and dam he traced to the famous Godolphin Arabian. An old description of him says he was 15 3/4 hands high, with “a large, long head, rather short, straight neck, with wind-pipe and nostrils nearly twice as large as ordinary; low withers, shoulders somewhat upright, but deep and strong; powerful loins and quarters; hocks and knees unusually large, and below them limbs of medium size, but flat and clean and, whether at rest or in motion, always in perfect position.” With this beginning, in 1822, a Norfolk trotter called Bellfounder, who had trotted two miles in six minutes, and had challenged all England to a trot, was imported. It was his daughter in which the strains of Messenger met that produced Hambletonian 10, the head of the trotting type in America, the first great trotting sire of the world, and through him perpetuated by his great sons, such as Geo. Wilkes, Electioneer, Dictator, and their descendants. Through all these years the trotting record has gradually been reduced, first by one great trotter and then another, beginning with the first queen of the trotting turf, Lady Suffolk, and ending with that superb little thing of fire and speed and sweetness, Lou Dillon. Literally, in that century of progress millions of dollars have been spent, not only by thousands of small breeders, but by such financial magnates and great breeders as Vanderbilt, Sanford, Bonner, Backman, Alexander, Forbes, Lawson and others, chiefly in New York, New England, Kentucky and California.

The effect of all this was to create that splendid race of trotters now known all over the world, and to produce a horse capable of trotting a mile in two minutes or better.

But even before the advent of Messenger there had developed in the eastern coast of the Colonies, chiefly in Delaware and Rhode Island, a family of extremely fast pacers known as the Narragansetts, an account of which will be seen a few chapters further on. These horses were small, but game, docile, excellent under the saddle, and used almost exclusively for travel in those early days of pioneer roads. Their speed was marvelous, if the testimony of Rev. Dr. McSparrow, 1721, an English minister who was stationed in the Colonies, may be accepted as proof. This reverend gentleman, writing to a friend in England says that he has seen them pace in races under saddle, going a mile in “a little less than two and a good deal better than three minutes.”

However, for nearly two centuries the pacer never was thought of as a factor in horse development, especially as a race horse until[20] the advent of the Hal family of Tennessee, in the early 70’s, with Little Brown Jug and Mattie Hunter, although the great bloodlines and speed of Pocahontas, James K. Polk and other noted pacers in the early ’40’s ought to have foretold what great possibilities lay in the despised pacing gait. As usual, the rejected stone found itself in the key of the arch, and out of Tennessee, by what some might term chance, but in fact the legitimate product of scientific breeding, of soil, of climate and grass, out of an obscure family of saddle horses, bred with no idea of racing and with never a thought of fame, but taken, like Coriolanus, literally from the plow, this horse is found—the first to go a mile in two minutes or better, and to do almost without price and without effort what the millionaires of horsedom had spent fortunes to do in vain.

This was first accomplished by Star Pointer, at Readville, Mass., September 2, 1897.

Such a family deserves to be perpetuated in history, however brief it may be and unpretentiously written. And I beg the future as well as the present historian not to criticise too closely its style, for in it, as I go along, a hundred fancies will twine themselves with my facts. There is so much about man and horse that is akin. There is so much of human nature in both—there is such a chance for moralizing on their life, their death, their fame, their fortune, their brief days’ strut on the stage of time, their passing out—“and the rest is silence.” And, speaking of fame in both man and horse, is it not all a lottery?

With men she is a sly and uncertain goddess, coming seldom to those who court her, and often to others who care nothing for her, so, in the rearing of race-horses the same uncertainty exists, and matron after matron bred in purple lines may go on throwing quitters and lunkheads year after year, while some obscure dam, whose breeding is barely tolerable, but stamped by nature with a spirit of fire and a soul of steel, sends out from some hithertofore obscure breeders’ farm a race horse that sets a new mark for speed and a new fashion for blood lines.

In a decision, Judge Gaynor, of the Supreme Court of King’s County, New York, in a case against the president of the Gravesend track, where runners are raced, held that horse racing was not a lottery. This may be true within the technical meaning of the term, lottery, but if the honorable court had held that breeding race horses was not a lottery, we have our doubt whether the decision would have met with the unanimous consent of the breeders themselves. And, as we remarked above, fame itself is not more uncertain.

There is so much similarity between man and horse that a student of either will constantly find himself comparing the two. Almost every quality possessed by man has its counterpart, though often in a less degree, in man’s favorite animal, while now and then the master fails to come up to the many excellencies of his beast.[21] A good judge of human nature is invariably a good judge of horses and horse nature. In fact, so well understood is this rule that “horse sense” in man has come to have a definite meaning of its own, and classes the human thus favored with a common sense stronger than usual.

It is almost certain failure for erring man to struggle only to be famous. She never yet came in all her splendor to the impetuous wooer. Like Cleopatra, who secretly tired of the infatuated Anthony, who could not fight at Actium for thoughts of her, and secretly died for love of the young Caesar who heartily despised the character of the ancient Langtry, so also with fame. “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” and perhaps knows if he allowed the fools who burn up their lives and their midnight oil seeking to become famous, to become so, their heads would burst with conceit or their own vanity would wreck them. But on the other hand, He often showers on those who honestly fight for right, regardless of consequences, who care more for principle than for worldly honor, and more for truth than for glory, and who do their whole duty regardless of consequences, the greatest fame and honor. The strutting peacock has all he can carry in his gaudy plumage and resplendent feathers. It would have been as much a sacrilege to have added these decorations to either Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee, as it would have been cruel to deprive John Pope and Robert Tombs of them. And the gap between the pairs is the true distance between fame and feathers.

The wild, reckless and dissipated young rake, who left Rome more to be rid of his creditors than to fight the Gauls, never dreamed of the glory in store for him as he threw the fire of his soul in his work and blazed his way to fame both with a pen and sword—each so resplendently bright that the student of to-day is lost in wonder and admiration as he endeavors to decide on which Caesar’s greatest claim to renown rests. “Here lies one whose name is written on water,” is the epitaph which the poor, gentle, timid Keats begged to have carved on his tomb, begged it as he lay dying from shafts of cruelty and malice. And yet, his fame is as enduring as his art, and that is “a thing of beauty” and “a joy forever.” “What have I done to be worthy of this great honor?” asked Washington, when he heard he was elected the first president of the Republic. Shakespeare was silent, morose, dissatisfied, as all true artists are, with his own work, and judging from the epitaph, which it is said he himself wrote, it appears he was fearful he might not have even a place to rest his bones. And so, the world over. Simplicity is greatness. Truth is fame. Honesty is glory. If you doubt it compare Agricola and Cataline; Washington and Arnold; Paul and Iscariot; Shakespeare and Sheridan.

In the same line of reasoning it is an hundred to one when a breeder, pinning everything on a pedigree, an individuality, or some supposed[22] excellency, ever hits the mark. It is said that the same man once owned Kittrell’s Tom Hal and Copperbottom. The latter he thought was the better horse; the former was ignored. Time has shown, perhaps to his loss, the owner’s error. An exchange recently published a story of how a prospective buyer went to purchase one or two colts. The first was Hambletonian 10, then, I think, a yearling; the second was a horse called Abdallah. He regarded Abdallah the handsomest, the speediest, the best. He spent a good deal of time in his examination, and as they were priced the same, showing that even the owners had not discovered any difference, he finally purchased the Abdallah colt, and, the writer adds, “The first went to fame, the second to a double-tree.”

But some people think horse-breeding is not a lottery. Why, even man-breeding is.

And so the Hal family, thinking not of fame, find it thrust upon them.

(To be Continued.)

THE LAST HYMN OF THE BILOXI

(The Biloxi, a noble tribe of Indians who lived on the Gulf Coast many centuries ago, were defeated in battle and besieged in their last remaining fortress by an unrelenting enemy. Choosing rather to die in the sea than to be captured and enslaved, they marched out of their gate on a moonlit night, singing a death chant, a stately procession of men, women and children, and continued seaward until the waves swallowed them up. Their enemies stood on the shore and watched them, struck with surprise and admiration. The remains of their last fortress is said to be still standing at Biloxi, Miss., and to this day there is heard a weird music which comes in from the Gulf, oftenest on still, moonlit nights, which the natives call “The Last Hymn of the Biloxi.”)

By H. Alison Webster.

With the population of the world ever increasing, and the acreage of fertile lands ever decreasing, with the consequent increasing demand for, and decreasing supply of all products of the soil, is not the duty of redeeming worn-out lands, enriching naturally poor lands and preserving the fertility of fertile lands a duty that every land owner owes to posterity? If the results of robbing the soil of its plant foods has already been felt by the farmer, and if such a practice be continued, what will be the condition of the same soil by the time it descends to his great-grandchildren? If the vast majority of the inhabitants of the globe are poor, and scarcely able to provide food and raiment at the present prices, what will be the fate of such a people when prices rise higher and higher, as will be the inevitable result of an inadequate supply? Is confidence the cause of such shameful neglect, or does the farmer lack confidence in the practicability of the results of scientific research? It is true that the great variety of objects in nature are extremely bewildering, and if every farmer were forced to comprehend God’s creations in order to equip himself to cultivate his land intelligently, the soil would continue to get poorer and poorer, as the useful years of a long life would pass in study; but men of science, in the past and present generations, by faithful and noble work, have reduced all to simple facts to be made practicable by the farmer, and there is no longer any excuse for ignorance and neglect. Study the results of the work of these men of science. Put them into practice. Experiment and work with the soil. Study it and find out what it needs, and having found out, supply the right thing in the right way at the right time. It is work, hard work; but the reward is generous. In the words of Mr. Charles Barnard, “Try things and learn, and having learned, do what is right by your soil, and it will return all your labor in full measure, running over, and your children will inherit the land as a well-kept trust and blessing.”

As stated, things have been greatly simplified. Chemists, by thousands of experiments, have found in all sixty-five single separate things they call elements. Seventeen of these elements are in the soil. Out of these seventeen the farmer is obliged to provide only four, as the remaining thirteen, with favorable weather and proper tillage of the soil, will take care of themselves. The four to be provided are nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and calcium. The first three elements are the most important, as they are plant foods or fertilizers. The last, calcium, or lime, is a stimulant, and serves in the capacity of neutralizing the acids of the soil. Lime is abundant in many soils and in such soils is not needed; but where it is needed it is needed badly and should be supplied. Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the plant foods that are yearly consumed in various quantities by various crops, which are taken away and sold or otherwise disposed of. They are foods absolutely necessary to plant life, and if taken away and never returned, the soil is as certain to become poor and exhausted as the sun is to set in the west. This is the sum and substance of the whole matter. What you take from the soil, you have to replace or suffer loss. Your soil may need one, two, three or all four of the elements. What it requires can be found out by experiment, as will be shown further on. These elements as everyone must know, can be easily obtained at costs varying with, and depending upon, the form in which they are bought, or methods by which they are secured. The all-important thing is to study the soil and prepare it to accept and properly appropriate whatever foods are applied. No fertilizer is insurance against laziness and ignorance. It takes work and intelligence to accomplish any task. Study your soil, and you will appreciate the fact that it has a constitution like yourself, and will get worn out,[24] and sick, and need physic just as you do. After knowing its constitution, you can prescribe and administer the physic it requires. No doctor can prescribe medicine intelligently without knowing the constitution of his patient.

Naturally, though unfortunately, men of science, so far as the farmer is concerned, are quite as intricate in their explanations of the objects of nature, as are the objects themselves. Mr. Charles Bernard in his “Talks About Soils,” published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York, is the first to reduce matters to a practical plane. His explanations and experiments I therefore adopt to simplify and make clear many things which are of unquestionable importance.

The soil having been formed, in the main, by the weathering away of the rocks, its foundation is either sand or clay or both combined. On account of different quantities of sand and clay being found in different soils, and to distinguish one from another, soils have been divided into six classes. These are as follows:

A Light Sand.—This is a soil containing ninety per cent of sand. If it had more sand and less of clay and other matter it would hardly produce any useful plants, and could not fairly be called a soil.

2. A Pure Clay.—This would be a soil in which no sand could be found. A pure clay soil would be wet and cold, and would not be good for our common plants. Such soils are rare: and what is commonly called a pure clay soil is one containing a great excess of clay, and only a little sand or other matter.

3. A Loam.—This is one of the best of all soils. Such a soil contains both sand and clay as well as other matter.

4. A Sandy Loam.—This is a mixture of sand and clay, with more sand than clay.

5. A Clay Loam.—This is a mixture in which there is more clay than sand.

6. A Strong Clay.—This is a clay containing from five to twenty per cent of sand and other matter.

Experiments with Sand and Clay.—Procure a quart of pure sand and spread it out in the sun to dry, and when dry place a small quantity on a spoon, and hold over a hot fire. The heat has no effect upon it. Remove the spoonful of sand from the fire, and it will be found that the sand keeps its heat for a long time. Place a small quantity of sand in a small sieve and pour water over it. The water at first flows away more or less discolored, and presently runs quickly through the sand pure and clean. While wet the sand sticks together slightly. Place it in the air, and it soon dries, and the grains are as loose as before. Place a little of the washed sand in a bottle filled with water. Cork the bottle and shake it up. The sand will move about as long as the water is in motion, but the instant the bottle is at rest, it falls to the bottom, and forms a layer under the clear water. Place some of the sand in an oven or in the sun till perfectly dry. Place three tablespoonfuls of water in a saucer, and then pour carefully into the saucer a cupful of dry sand. It becomes wet around the little heap while still dry at the top; soon the water will begin to creep up the sand and in a short time it is all wet, and remains wet as long as there is water in the saucer.

These experiments show us that sand is not affected by heat, and that it keeps its heat for some time; that water passes through it readily and, if clean, the water passes through pure and clean. When wet it is very slightly sticky, when dry this stickiness disappears completely. In water it sinks the moment the water is at rest. Water rises through it easily by capillary attraction.

Another experiment, taking more time, is to place some clean sand in a flower pot, wet it, and sprinkle fine grass-seeds over it. Place in a warm room and the seeds will soon sprout and send small roots down into the sand.

These experiments show some of the characteristics of all soils composed largely of sand. We observed that sand when heated retains its heat for some time. Any soil having a large proportion of sand, when warmed by the sun will keep the heat after the sun has set or is hid by the clouds. We proved that water would flow quickly through it. A sandy soil is therefore a dry soil, and for this reason favorable to nearly all our[25] useful plants. We saw that water would rise through sand by capillary attraction, which makes sand useful in soil in dry weather to bring water up from a damp subsoil to feed the roots of plants growing in the soil.

However, there are objections to sand. As we saw, it is loose and easily moved about by water. A sandy soil is therefore easily washed away by rains, and, if too sandy, may suffer great injury by washing in heavy storms. Water flows through sand quickly, and if there is no damp subsoil immediately beneath, the soil may get so dry that plants will burn up. The water may also wash down all the light organic matter out of reach of the plants.

We observed that sand is easily moved about. This is important in that all soils where plants are growing must be frequently stirred, to let air come into the soil, and to kill the weeds. A sandy soil is easy to hoe or plow, because the sand is loose. This saves time and money, or work in caring for plants, and is a business advantage.

If you carry out the experiment with seeds planted on sand you will observe that the roots of the young plants easily find their way through the sand in search of food and water. This shows that a soil containing sand is favorable to the growth of plants, because in it their roots spread in every direction.

Procure a small quantity of clay from some clay bank. Place in a warm place to dry, and in a day or two you can crush it into a soft, impalpable powder. Pinch a little between the fingers and it appears to stick together slightly. Place some in a bottle of water, cork it tight and shake the bottle. The powder floats in the water in clouds, till the water appears completely filled with it. Let the bottle stand and it will be many hours before the clay settles and the water becomes clear. Wet some of the dry clay, and it forms a sticky, pasty mass, that has a soft, greasy feeling between the fingers. Spread some of the soft, pasty mass over a sieve, and pour water on it and the water will hardly pass through the sieve at all. Spread some wet clay over a rough board, and pour water over it, and the clay will cling to the board a long time before it is swept away. Place a lump of wet clay in the sun and it will be many hours before it is entirely dry. Spread some of the wet clay over a dish and place it in the sun, and when it slowly dries it will be found full of cracks. Place a lump of wet clay in an oven and it will dry hard like stone.

Place some of the wet clay in a pot and scatter fine seeds over it. The seeds may sprout and try to grow, but they will probably perish as tender roots are unable to push their way through the sticky clay.

After all these experiments have been performed with the clay and sand, another experiment can be made by drying both the clay and sand and then mixing them together in equal parts. When well mixed place in a pot and scatter fine seeds upon the mixture. Water well, and place in a sunny window; and the plants will sprout and grow longer and better than in either the pure sand or pure clay.

These experiments with the lump of clay show that if soil consists wholly of clay, it must be a poor place for plants. In every hard rain the water, instead of sinking into the soil to supply the plants, would run away over the surface and be wasted. After slow soaking rains the soil would remain wet and cold for a long time. When the sun dries the soil it splits and cracks and tears the roots of plants growing in it. This sticky, pasty soil sticks to spade and plows and we find it hard, slow work to cultivate it. A pure clay from these would appear to be a poor soil for plants. We must not, however, be led astray by our experiments, as it is not easy to find a soil composed wholly of clay. It is usually mixed with other things and then forms a valuable part of the best soils. Sand alone would be a poor soil. Clay alone would be a poorer soil. Mixed together and mixed with other things, they make a part of all good soils.

Organic and Inorganic Matter.—Organic matter is something that has life, or has had life at some time. The organic matter in the soil has been supplied by animals and plants, in one way or another. All else is inorganic. Both organic and inorganic matters are necessary[26] to the existence of plants. Peaty soils wholly organic will not grow plants, neither will sandy soils wholly sand. Inorganic matter forms the foundation of soils and generally forms from eighty to ninety per cent of the whole soil.

Testing Soils for Clay, Sand and Organic Matter.—Take from the ground you wish to test, a peck of soil and place on a board in a round heap, and with a trowel stir it until completely mixed. Then pile into a heap and divide into four equal parts. Next weigh out eight ounces, and spread it out to dry. When dry weigh it and note the loss by air-drying. Next put the soil in a pan and place it in an oven for three hours. Then take the soil out of the pan and weigh it, noting the loss by fire-drying. It is now dry soil and to estimate the organic and inorganic matter, place an iron shovel over the fire, and when red hot put the dry soil on it, let it burn, stirring it occasionally as it burns. It will smoke and smoulder away to ashes and dust. When it ceases to smoke, carefully weigh the ashes. This ash represents the inorganic sand and clay parts of the soil. All the organic matter disappeared in the smoke.

Now take this ash and pour it in a bottle of water. Shake the bottle well and then set on a table, and just so soon as the water becomes still the sand will immediately settle at the bottom, while the clay will remain for some time making the water muddy. As soon as the sand has settled, pour the muddy or clay water off, being careful not to pour any of the sand with it. Then pour some clear water in the bottle on the sand, shake it and pour sand water and all on a cloth fine enough to catch the sand. Dry the sand and weigh it. If it weighs two ounces, then out of the four ounces of dry soil you have tested you have two ounces of sand, one ounce of clay and one ounce of organic matter. Or your soil is twenty-five per cent organic matter and twenty-five per cent clay, and fifty per cent sand. You have a loam soil.

Testing Soils with Plant Foods and Lime.—In the field to be tested, select as level a place as possible and mark out ten squares, each measuring one rod on each side. Place these in two rows leaving spaces three feet wide between the squares. These empty spaces are to be kept clear of weeds and used as walks. Each square should be marked by stakes at the corners, and properly numbered as in the accompanying diagram.

The squares are to be planted with the same crop and well cultivated through the season. Two of these squares, Nos. 2 and 9, are to have no fertilizers, that they may serve as a check or guide in testing the other squares. Square No. 1 is to have a fertilizer containing nitrogen only. No. 4 potassium and phosphorous combined; No. 5 potassium alone; No. 6 nitrogen and phosphorus; No. 7 phosphorus alone; No. 8 all three plant foods combined, and No. 10 is to have calcium only.

Apply the fertilizers and work them in the soil about four inches deep before the crop is planted. Plant the same variety[27] of seed on all the squares at the same time, and carefully cultivate through the entire season, treating all exactly alike. Suppose that potatoes have been used. During the growing season, carefully watch the different plats and notice if any one or more seems more or less thrifty than others. Notice which plat appears to mature first, which blooms first and keep a record of all observations. At the end of the season, carefully dig the crop on each square, gathering all the tubers large and small, and weigh each lot. First weigh the crops on squares 2 and 9. This will serve as a standard of comparison, as it will show the natural condition of the soil. Record the weights in each lot and just for illustration we may say that they run something like this: Average of 2 and 9, 80 pounds; No. 1, 380 pounds; No. 3, 250 pounds; No. 4, 360 pounds; No. 5, 350 pounds; No. 6, 300 pounds; No. 7, 220 pounds; No. 8, 400 pounds; No. 10, 120 pounds.

On the particular soil we are supposed to be testing, we can clearly see that the land is benefited in some degree by every element used. Calcium helps, and that means that it should be used on that soil in addition to all of the others. This land plainly needs all four elements and needs potassium especially.

What to Do.—After having gone through with Mr. Barnard’s experiments, you will have a practical idea of what your soil is, and what it needs. The only remaining questions then are those of preparing the soil, and obtaining and applying the plant foods and the lime.

A cold, wet, clay soil needs to be made warmer and lighter, and a light, sandy soil, being too dry, needs some moisture-retaining substance. If conditions are favorable, it would be well at odd time to put sand on the clay soil and clay on the sandy soil; but in most cases this is too expensive, and therefore not practical. To redeem poor lands then, you will have to depend almost entirely upon green manure and lime. Barnyard manures are, of course, at all times, with all soils, the best of all fertilizers, as they return to the soil by the laws of nature, what has been taken from them, or what it should have. Besides the plant foods, it furnishes additional organic matter or humus, which makes the soil lighter and facilitates plant growth by furnishing food to bacteria essential to plant life. The trouble about barn-yard manure is its scarcity. Every farm needs more plant food and humus than can be supplied with common manure.

In the fall, apply 500 pounds of lime per acre to the poor land to be redeemed, break it and prepare it thoroughly, and seed it to rye. In the spring when the rye heads out, turn it under and sow cow peas. When the peas mature, scatter lime, 500 pounds to the acre, over them and turn them under. The lime will prevent the green stuff from souring the soil, will decompose it and fit it for plant food, and will prepare the soil to accept any other foods that may be applied. Follow the peas with wheat, or wheat and clover.

The land once redeemed, do not wear it out again, but preserve its fertility by the use of high-grade commercial fertilizers and barn-yard manure, always rotating the crops so as to get back to some leguminous crop and lime at least once every four years.

Do not retard agricultural education by making warfare on commercial fertilizers, for they are indispensable to every farmer in preserving the fertility of the soil. The world employs the use of just about one-tenth of the artificial fertilizers it should use, and about one-half of what is used is used intelligently. Make war on low grade fertilizers that have the attractive but deceiving feature of cheapness, and buy grade fertilizers by the unit under the guidance of the requirements of your soil.

Phosphatic Limestone.

The use of lime has been and is being sadly neglected, especially in the Southern States and, when it is absolutely necessary to all soils in which it does not exist or exists only in small or insufficient quantities, it does look like the move to provide it is one of imperative moment. Look at the Bluegrass Region of Tennessee and Kentucky, the fairest and most fertile of God’s country. What made it? The dissolution and weathering away of the original phosphatic limestone rock. It is strictly a limestone[28] country and teaches one of nature’s great lessons that the agricultural world should accept and be profited thereby.

All the limestone of this region contains more or less bone phosphate of lime, and in this fact lies the whole secret. In the past ages the foliage from the thick mass of trees and other vegetable growth fell to the ground, soured, and formed an acid which immediately attacked the bone phosphate of lime and converted it into phosphoric acid, while the calcium carbonate or lime decomposed all vegetable matter and conditioned it for plant food, neutralizing all acids and stood ready itself to enter into all future and standing vegetable growth. Now the forests have given place to the cleared fields and we no longer have the dropping from the trees to enrich our soils, neither have we in our fields in sections devoid of limestone any vegetation with roots that extend deep enough in the earth to bring up the carbonate of lime sufficient to support our crops. Therefore the vegetable matter the cheapest of all manures, we provide by turning under green leguminous or nitrogen-gathering plants. These plants sour and finally decompose, but without carbonate of lime to perform its important duties of creating plant food out of this decayed matter, all the fertilizer you get from your crop is the nitrogen it has gathered from the air. Then why not use powdered Tennessee phosphatic-limestone containing enough calcium carbonate (not quick lime) to furnish desired results and no more bone phosphate of lime than will be entirely and immediately converted into plant food. If this phosphatic-limestone product is used with leguminous crops, potash is the only plant food that you will have to provide during the two crop seasons following; however, every soil that has a clay subsoil is a safe bank that will retain all you place on deposit, and if you have the money to spare, deposit it in the soil by investing in high-grade fertilizers and draw a high rate of interest on it instead of letting it stand idle. The calcium in the phosphatic limestone will absolutely correct all free acids in the commercial fertilizers, the burning, deleterious effects of which you may have experienced, and it will rectify the sourness of any and all soils.

An object lesson in favor of this phosphatic limestone is taught by riding along any turnpike macadamized with it and observing the rankness of the crops about fifty yards on either side of the pike, especially where the fields are worn and poor. This demonstrates that it is the dust blown from the roads over into the fields that makes the rank growth alongside the roads. It may be argued that the manure dropped on the pike produced the results; but if so small an amount of manure produced such wonderful results when mixed with the dust from the pike, what would be the result if you would mix all of your barn-yard manure with the powdered limestone?

Recently the writer made twelve tests or experiments with litmus paper. The first ten of these experiments were made with blue litmus paper and samples drawn from ten different fields, all of which have been under cultivation for many years and have had liberal yearly applications of acid fertilizers. The soils so tested are Alabama soils, and are decidedly acid, as shown by the bits of blue litmus turning red on coming in contact with them.

Everyone must know that it takes lime to neutralize the acids of acid soils; but comparatively few farmers ever take the trouble to find out whether or not their soils are acid, even after failing to get a catch of clover three or four years in succession. All clovers positively refuse to grow in acid soils. Inoculation will not do any good for bacteria cannot exist and operate in such soils. Sweeten the soil and nature will in most cases supply the bacteria.

Carbonate of lime enters into the frame of every plant and a lack of it will cause soft stems and flabby leaves. It improves the chemical, mechanical and biological condition of the soil. It flocculates very light, sandy soils, making them compact and capable of retaining moisture, while it prevents clayey soils from becoming pasty hard and full of cracks by causing them to crumble when dry.

Lime is the great carrier into plants of[29] other elements which go there to form their organic compounds, during the elaboration of which, organic acids are created, any and all of which would poison and kill the plants were it not for the action of lime; so lime, in addition to its all-importance as a salifiable base, becomes the great carrier of all foods into plants where it is again of paramount importance as a fixer of oxalic fermentation, thus having the natural and distinct power to act where all other elements are useless.

It will correct sourness in any soil regardless of its origin, it will neutralize all acids that come into the soil through cultivation, through commercial fertilizers or green manurial crops. It will facilitate cultivation and produce a greater porosity and granulation of all soils and thereby lessen the bad effects of drought by reducing surface evaporation, will obviate excessive capillary rise of moisture which elevates the water-soluble foods above the zone of roots, provide better circulation of air in the soil and will cause rapid percolation of rain and thus reduce surface washing. It stimulates and increases nitrification and decomposes vegetable matter, extracting from it all plant foods and leaving humus to lighten the soil and retain its moisture. It enters into the composition of all plant life and therefore into all animal life, giving to animals its carbon combined with the carbon of the air to furnish them fat, and its lime to furnish them bone. It is the phosphatic-limestone that has made Tennessee and Kentucky horses the strength to excel in work and racing, and it is this same soil constituent that has given to the Jersey cow sufficient butter fat to lead the world in butter tests. It enables the clovers and grasses to grow, and without such crops what would the brothers of the hoe do toward profitable farming and meeting the responsibilities of life? It perpetuates and permits the use of commercial fertilizers which are becoming so absolutely essential to husbandry, as it obviates the evil effects of the acids these products contain, and makes all plant food available to the plant. Finally, it is a property designed by the Creator to act for and enter into all vegetable and animal life, and evil will be the reward to him who rejects it.

Watermelon time is in full blast in Tennessee now. Ordinarily, the whites in the South cease to eat watermelons after the fifteenth of September, because they know that as soon as the cool nights begin every melon contains a thousand chills. But not so with the darkey. A chill rattles as harmlessly off the armour of his constitution as buckshot from the back of the Olympia. He can absorb miasma like a sponge, and, like it, grow fat as he absorbs. The negro, then, eats his melon until the November frosts kill the vines. Even then he carries the half-ripe melon into his cabin and often, on Christmas morning, an ice-cold watermelon is his first diet.

And a great treat it is. Did you never wander over the fields, way down South, after the cotton was all picked, and the November breezes came cool and ladened with that delicate, indescribably rare flavor the frost gives when it first nips the mellow-ripe muscadine? You have shouldered your gun and gone out after old Mollie Cotton Tail. It was cool and crisp when you went out, but toward noon it has grown hot again. Flushed and tired, you stop to rest by the big spring that flows from under the roots of the big oak near the cotton[30] field. In the shadow of that oak, half hid in the frost-bitten weeds, you find a little striped watermelon—a guinea melon, as the darkies call it—a kind of a volunteer melon that grows in the cotton every year, the first seeds of which were brought by some Guinea negro, from the coast of Africa, when he first came over to servitude, with silver rings in his nose and ears. And though he failed to bring his idols and his household gods along with him, yet did he not forget the melon of his naked ancestors. Planting it as he hoed his first crop of cotton for a new master, it has never deserted him since, and so, year after year, it comes up amid the cotton, to remind him of the days it grew wild in a sunnier clime.

And there you find it this November morning. Boy like, you pounce on it with a shout and soon it is laid open, as red as your first love’s lips and as sweet; and so cold it seems to have been raised in the deep-delved cellars of all the centuries. I am sorry for the boy who has grown to be a man and never, in a November morning’s hunt after Old Mollie, had the exquisite sweetness of this satisfying surprise—the like of which is not equalled by the sweetness of any other surprise on earth. No—not even should he grow to be a man, and awake some morning to find himself famous and the father of twins!

Every darkey of any standing in Tennessee “gives a treat” at least once in his life. He will stint and economize for months to save money enough to invest in watermelons and tartaric acid (the acid makes the lemonade). Then, when the glorious day arrives, Nero, giving free entertainment to the citizens of Eternal Rome, is not in it with that darkey. Henceforth he can get anything in that community he wishes, from constable to presiding elder, while the widows of the church are his’n by a large majority!

I had heard that old Wash was going to run again for justice of the peace and the “deaconship of Zion” over in the coon district of Big Sandy, and that he was going to give his annual treat.

These had always passed off beautifully and ended in the unanimous election of the old man to both offices and anything else he wanted. I thought it was all over and entirely harmonious until he came in the other night, looking like Montejo’s flag-ship after Dewey’s ten-inch shell went through her, “a-rippin’ out her very innards”—as Old Wash himself described it—“from eend to eend.”

But when I saw the old man, creeping into my library, I was certain he was in the last stages of Asiatic cholera, and I rang the telephone hastily to get my family physician. But he feebly raised his hand, and beckoned me to desist.

“No, no, boss; he can’t do me no good—no good,” as he feebly sank into a chair. Then he whispered:

“Jes a drap, a leetle drap, on my tongue, boss—jes’ to let the old man shuffle off dis mortal coil wid a good taste in his mouth. It’s all I wants.”

Under the stimulant of that eternal[31] beverage of moonlight and melody, he revived a little.

“What’s the matter with you? Anybody been giving you a hoodoo,” I asked.

“No, no, boss”—feebly—“I—I—I gin a treat at Big Sandy.”

“Well, you have given many a treat at Big Sandy. Why should this one make you look like a piney-wood coal-kiln after a cyclone had struck it?”

It took another dose from my side-board bottle to put enough life into the old man to make him take any interest in things. Then he brightened up and said:

“Dat’s jes’ hit—a man may go on doin’ de same trick year arter year, ontwel it looks lak he cud do it wid his eyes shet, an’ den at last, if he ain’t mighty keerful, hit’ll buck and fling ’im! De hardes’ luck, I take it, in dis wurl’, am when a man dun shuck de dice ob success ontwell dey seem to bob up at his word, only to play off on him an’ bust ’im es his palsied han’ shakes ’em fur de las’ time.”

His tears were flowing so freely and his remarks seemed so true and heartfelt, I did not have it in me to fail to brace him up with another pull from the side-board bottle. Then I saw he was ripe and reminiscent, and I lit my cigar, struck an easy attitude, and let him do the rest:

“On de Sundy befo’ de fust Mundy ob de full moon in September,” he went on, “cum off de ’lection fur ’ziden elder of Zion, an’ de next day am de day sot by law fur de ’lection of jestus ob de peace. So las’ Sat’d’y I gin a treat. I axed ebry nigger in de deestrict dar, an’ all de members of Zion, an’ Br’er Johnsing wus to preach de watermilion sermon.

“Ain’t nurver heurd ob de watermilion sermon? Hit’s de sermon preached at de feast ob de watermilion jes’ befo’ de new moon in September, an’ it am one ob de doctrines ob Zion to kinder take de place ob de feast ob de Passober ’mong de Jews—only in dis case we don’t pass ober nuffin’, ’specially de watermilions. Now, hit tain’t eb’ry nigger kin preach de watermilion sermon. Hit takes a mighty juicy nigger to do hit, yallar with dark stripes, juicy at de core, full of tears an’ sweet penitence an’ easily laid open by the blade of grace, an’ brudder Johnsing am de slickest one I eber seed at it.

“Now, dat wus my time to git in my fine Italyun han’, an’ so I gin it out that hit wus to be my treat, an’ I axed all de voters ob de deestrick an’ all de members ob Zion ter be on han’ fur de revival ob de speerit an’ de refreshment ob de flesh.

“’Cordin’ to my custom, jes’ befo’ de time fur de sermon I had all de watermilions laid out on de grass, one hundred ob de bigges’ an’ fattes’ ones you eber seed. You see, boss, I am constertushunally upposed to long sermons,” he winked, “an’ I knowed dey wa’n’t a nigger libin’ c’uld preach ober ten minnits wid all dem watermilions a-layin’ dar a-winkin’ at ’im an’ waiting to be led, lak’ lambs, to de sacrifice. Does you see de p’int?”

I saw it.

“Wal, suh, you orter jes’ heurd de prayer Br’er Johnsing put up—it wus short, but mighty sweet. De[32] flavor ob de watermilions seem ter git into hit, an’ de ’roma ob hits juice b’iled outen his mouth. Boss, you’ve seed dese kinder preachers dat talks to de good Lord wid all de easy fermileriaty ob a deestrick skule-teacher axin’ de presedent ob de skule board fur what he wants, an’ wid all de sassy assurance ob de silent partner in a lan’-offis bisness, ain’t you? Wal, dat’s de way Br’er Johnsing prayed, an’ I wus de speshul objec, ob his conversashun wid de Almighty dat day. He tole ’im whut I’d dun fur dat community, informed ’im very posertively ob de fac’ dat I wus a Godly man, refreshed His mem’ry in a gentle way consarnin’ sum’ ob my long-furgotten deeds ob cheerity, an’ gin Him sum’ good, brotherly advice on how to git eben wid me, an’ in a measure pay off de debt of gratitude He owed me by makin’ it His will dat I wus erg’in to administer de law ob de lan’, both spiritual an’ temper’l, an’ fur ernudder twelvemonth ter be de venerbul ram ob de flock ob Zion, to lead His sheep to de fold an’ by de still waters. Wal, suh, when he finish, mighty nigh eb’ry nigger dar said Amen, an’ den dey lick dey chops an’ look sorter dreamy lak ober whar de watermilions lay ’n de col’ spring branch.

“Dis wus my time to spring de s’prise ob de ebenin’ on ’em, dat I’d fixed up. An’ so I riz up wid de most sancterfied look on I c’uld git, one ob dem onworthy, miserbul-sinner sorter looks dat we elders allers carry aroun’ in our coat pockets along with our bandanna handkerchiefs fur enny emergency, an’ I sez: ‘Brudders an’ sistrin, befo’ we listen to de soulful sermon in store fur our spiritual natures, which Br’er Johnsing gwineter gib us in his ellerquent way, I’ve sprung a letle s’prise on you, an’ I wants you all to retire wid me an’ refresh de innard man a leetle. Brudderin’ knowin’ my onworthiness an’ de many obligashuns I am under to dis enlightened community ob Christian saints an’ godly men an’ wimmen, I’ve made two bar’ls ob ice-cold lemmernade, an’ you’ll find ’em asettin’, es a big s’prise,’ sez I, ‘on de houn’s ob my ox-waggin, in de cool shade by de spring, wid plenty ob tin dippers fur all. We’ll now adjourn twenty minnits fur refreshments.’

“Wal, suh, you sh’uld a heurd de shout. Ef de ’lection bed cum’ off den, I’d a got eb’ry vote in de deestrick an’ a fair sprinklin’ ob sum’ in all de yudders. I went wid ’em an’ drunk, too. An’ we all drunk ter one ernudder’s health. I drunk to Sister Ca’line, an’ Br’er Johnsing he drunk to Dinah, an’ de leetle niggers drunk, an’ de ole niggers drunk, de gals an’ de boys. I hilt up my dipper an’ laugh, an’ sed to Br’er Johnsing, ‘Br’er Johnsing, here’s to you,’ sez I, ‘an’ all dat goes up must go down.’ An’ wid dat I swallered down.

“Den Br’er Johnsing—he’s mighty funny—an’ he hilt up his’n and laugh, an’ say: ‘Br’er Washington, here’s to you,’ sez he, ‘an’ all dat goes down nurver comes up ergin.’ An’ den we all laugh.

“But dat wus one time he wus terribly mistaken, es you will see.

“Wal, suh, when we all hed drunk enough we went back to[33] hear de watermilion sermon, an’ den eat de fruit ob whut we heurd. ’Tain’t eb’ry man kin say dat, boss, dat he eats de fruit ob whut he hears; digests de fustly, an’ de secondly, an’ de thudly, assimmerlates in de juicy rime ob de tangerbul thing, de logical konclushun ob de intelectual fac’. An’ darfore I’ve allers sed dat drawin’ yo’ konclushuns frum de heart ob a watermilion makes de bes’ sermon in de wurl’.

“I b’leeve I tole you, boss, dat dat lemmernade wus intended fur a s’prise fur ’em, didn’t I?”

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that it was a little surprise of yours in store for them.”

The old man groaned. “Boss, fur heaben’s sake, annudder drap outen dat bottle! I’ll hafter brace up erg’in to tell de sorrowin’ scene dat follers. Thankee, thankee! I’m better now, an’ maybe I kin finish, fur dat lemmernade turned out to be de bigges’ an’ sorrerfullest surprise dat ever come down a pike.

“Br’er Johnsing tuck fur his tex’ de sermon ob Noah an’ de ark, an’ whilst Noah wus de man menshuned, hit wus plain dat I was de applercashun. He went on to show dat I wus a godly man, jes’ lak’ ole Noah, an’ dat I wus to de community ob Big Sandy whut Noah was to Jeerruselum. He wus makin’ it short, but a-gwine in two-minnit time, a-pacin’ lak’ ole Joe Patchen at a matternee fur a silver cup an’ wreath ob roses, an’ den all at onct he lifted up his voice an’ sed: ‘Yes, brudderin, de waters ob de g-r-e-a-t deep riz up, an’ de bottom drop outen de clouds; de w-i-n-d-e-r-s ob heaben wus flung open, an’ de upheaval ob de u-n-e-v-e-r-s-e begun——’

“Dat wus es fur es he got, befo’ de word upheaval wus outen his mouth, sho’ ’nuff, de upheaval did begun. I seed ’im stop so suddenly he kicked up behind, clap his hands on his stummick an’ try to bolt fur a locus’ thicket, but he c’uldn’t—he jes’ turned a complete summerset, athrowin’ up his immortal soul es he turned. Den I heurd a turrible commoshun in de congregashun, an’ I look erroun’, an’ eb’ry nigger dar wus in de same fix es Br’er Johnsing. Dey wus whoopin’, an’ barkin’, and layin’ out in eb’ry kinder way, an’ all on ’em bent on de same thing. An’ whut dey wus doin’ to dat groun’ wus a-plenty! Dey thought dey was pizened an’ wus gwineter die, an’ den sech s’archin’ prayers es went up to de throne ob grace, mixed in wid moans, an’ groans, an’ ice-cold lemmernade dat seem to think hit wus time ter rise erg’in and fetch eb’rything else frum de grabe along wid it. By dis time I wus so ’stounded I didn’t kno’ whut ter do. I look erroun’ an’ I seed dat me an’ ole Aunt Fat Ferreby wus de onlies’ ones dat wa’n’t tryin’ to turn inside out. She wus lookin’ mighty ashy erroun’ de gills, but she brace hers’f up an’ started out ter raise dat good ole hymn:

‘How firm a foundation’—

But she hadn’t more’n got to ‘foundahun’ befo, her foundation was shaken, I seed her gag an’ double up an’ start in on:

“’Bount dat time I felt a ’tickler[34] kinder mizzry in my own innards, an’ de nex’ thing I disremember I had Sister Ferreby ’round’ de neck an’ we wus singin’ dat hymn tergedder. Lor’! hit wus awful. I’ve seed menny a sight, but I nurver expect erg’in ter see three hundred an’ sixty-five niggers throwin’ up at de same time. When sum’ on ’em got dey secon’ wind dey wanted to lynch me, but by de time dey got erroun’ to me wid a rope dey ’cided I wus too nigh dead to need killin’, and by dis time dey all had to ’zamperfly de truth ob de biblical sayin’ about de dog an’ de thing he would go back to. By dis time eb’ry doctor in de country wus dar, fetchin’ all de querrintine offercers, an’ pest-tents, an’ disenfec-tents, an’ preparin’ fer c’olera an’ fever. An’ den we foun’ out what ailed us.”

“In the name of heaven, what was it?” I asked eagerly.

The tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks as he feebly begged for another drop to enable him to finish his tale. Then he said:

“Ain’t I dun tole you hundreds ob times it am de leetle mistakes we make in life dat turns de tide? Ain’t I? Wal, dat’s whut ruined me dat day, an’ terday I am a man widout offis an’ widout honor in my ole age. Dat mornin’, ’stead ob gwine down to de sto’ myse’f to get de poun’ ob tartar acid ter make up dat lemmernade wid, I saunt dat trifflin’ Jim Crow gran’son ob mine, an’ he got de names twisted, an’ ’stead ob fetchin’ me back tartar acid, he fotcht me back a poun’ ob tartar emetic, an’ I didn’t do a thing but make up dat lemmernade wid it!”

“But, surely, they wouldn’t treasure up such a mistake against you, seeing that you suffered with the rest,” I said.

“Boss,” said the old man, rising, “how long you gwine ter lib wid niggers, an’ den hafter be tole ober an’ ober ergin de same thing? In course, dey didn’t beat me fur offis on ercount ob dat fool mistake, but jes’ lemme ax you, whar is de nigger libin’ dat gwinter vote fur enny man dat’d lay out a hundred watermilions in de spring branch, let ’em look at ’em an hour, an’ den turn dat nigger’s stummick into a green-persimmon fur a week? Whar is he, I ax?” And the old man crept feebly out to find him a cheap coffin.

John Trotwood Moore.

The sweet things of life do not lie so much in sight as in the heart that sees them.

TIM’S EASTER.

The first streaks of day were breaking. It looked to the fireman of 496 that the old engine was sticking her nose into the red dawn as she plowed ahead hauling her fast freight South on schedule time. Tim Doogan was at the throttle—an old engineer who stood at the head of the road’s list; for Tim had been in service longer than any of them, had never failed in his duty and for twenty years had never taken a day off except one—to bury his wife.

He had never even asked for a promotion, and when it had been offered—the highest post of the engineer—Tim shook his head and declined.

“I guess I’m used to this old route and I’d feel lost if I didn’t pass through the Little Town every few days.”

They were now approaching the Little Town, and Tim had not spoken since he left the city, a hundred miles back. He was naturally quiet, but the fireman had never known him to make the run before and not say something. Something told the fireman that Tim had struck sadness somewhere, and so at intervals he fired up but said nothing to the big, begrimed man in overalls and cap who stood silently at his post, with one hand always on the throttle of his engine.

“I’m goin’ to stop twenty minutes in the Little Town, Jim,” said Tim as they began to pull into the station.

“Any orders?” asked Jim, surprised.

“No, but it’s my orders—ever’ Easter—been doin’ it for twenty years. Company don’t like it, kin lump it,” Tim added dry.

This was Jim’s first year, and he had never heard.

“No. 3 may be late an’ give me the chance. If she don’t, why, we stops anyway, Jim.”

“Why, I’d rather she’d be on time, so we can go on. Don’t you want to go on?” asked Jim.

“Not for twenty minutes, ef I can he’p it. Fact is, we’re goin’ to stop here a little while anyway.”

The fireman said nothing, and Tim slowed up No. 496 in the yard. Then he jumped down and went in to report.

“No. 3 twenty minutes late,” he said, as he came back. “Take keer o’ things till I git back. I’ll not be gone long.”

“You ain’t that there thirsty for a drink this mornin’ are you, Tim? You don’t drink to speak of, and I never knowed you to leave old 496 befo’.”

Tim said nothing, but climbed up and opened his big box. The fireman smelt something sweet, and very tenderly Tim took out a longer pasteboard box.

“Flowers,” said the fireman. “Say, Tim, old man,” he laughed, “I’ve caught on—it’s a gal.”

“She was a gal,” said Tim, quietly,[36] “and the pretties’ and sweetes’ one that ever hit the soil o’ this wurl. An’ the little boy wa’nt no fluke.” He brushed at his eyes as he spoke, and left another grimy smear there.

“I’m a-goin’ over to the little cemetery a bit, Jim—yes, you stay with 496. They’re buried over there. We lived—her an’ the little ’un—we lived here after we was married. She was allers sweet on Easter, and for flowers and sech, an’ I love to do this for her an’ the boy. Been doin’ it twenty year’. We don’t know nothin’, an’ maybe it’s all so—an’ if anybody’ll rise again it’ll be her—with her faith—for I tell you, Jim it was as a little child. Yes, they was both my children.”

He was taking the flowers out, lilies and roses and carnations and cultivated violets, big and blue and beautiful. In his big, grimy, black hands, and amid the soot and dust of 496 they lay beautified and glorified, and the sweet odor went through the rough fireman until he saw pictures of a far-away home.

Silently Tim trudged across the hill to the little cemetery. The village was asleep, the unkept streets empty, the cold, gray mist hung low over everything, and finally Tim disappeared in it. But twenty minutes later, when the sun had risen and 496 was butting through the gray, her throttles open, the smoke belching from her stack, Tim stood at his post, a smile lighting up his grimy face, his eyes fixed on two graves amid pines, far up on the hill upon which shone lilies and roses and violets.

They thundered past, and the old engineer took off his cap and, turning to the fireman, said, above the roar of wheels and steam:

“She used to say it this-a-way, Jim—I’ve heard her so often, an’ fer five years she taught it to the little boy befo’ he left.” He looked toward the sun rising through the mist, and said slowly:

“In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, toward the first day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

“And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the woman, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified. He is not here for He is risen.”

He shut off steam as he pitched down a steep grade, and then Jim heard him say:

“That’s the way she said it, an’ we don’t know nothin’, Jim, nothin’. But we do know that stranger things is happenin’ ever’ day than jes’ the spirit livin’ agin. What’s light? What’s heat? What’s love? What’s that wireless talkin’ through the air but things to tell us how little we know, how small our minds is an’ how easy it ’ud be to be true, an’ we not know how to explain it with our little standards.”

He threw a kiss at the vanishing hill of pines. “No, I’ll keep on sayin’ it as she sed it, anyway, true[37] or not: ‘I am the resurrection an’ the life.’”

HO! EVERY ONE THAT THIRSTETH!

The corn crop up in the Bigbyville neighborhood is clean, the cotton shows not a spear of grass. The potato field looks as clean and green as a billiard cushion floor and the darkies are still, still hoeing. All this was caused by a sermon old Wash preached there on foot-washing day last month, a literal extract of which I got from the old man himself:

“Brudderin’ an’ Sisterin’—You’ll find my text in de six chapter of Noah’s pistols to de Gentiles. Ho! every one dat thirsteth! Ho!

“De commandments we get from de Bible am beyond de scrutiny of man, an’ we natchurly think dat when a man gets hot an’ thirsty de thing fur him to do is to hunt de spring branch an’ quench his burnin’ lips. But not so. Here it is sot down in black an’ white in de book ob books, dat when you git thirsty, jes’ keep on hoein’. Ho! every one dat thirsteth! Ho! And dat is right; de Bible is allers right. Hoein’ is good fur de limbs, good fur de wind, good fur de crap, an’ good fur de soul. De sun am hot now, but de wind’ll be cold agin. De rays pour down now, but de sleet’ll come bye an’ bye. Dese am de rays of drought an’ thirst, but ef you want to set back when de rains come, smoke yo’ pipe an’ sing dat song—

jes’ take off yo’ coat, shed yo’ shirt, an’ foller de corn an’ tater row, an’ ef you git thirsty don’t stop to drink, but jes’ keep on a-hoein’!

“Ho! everyone dat thirsteth! ho!

“An’ ain’t dat de law an’ de sense? Whut you wanter stop an’ drink fur? Won’t you jes’ get thirty agin? Keep on a-hoein’!

“What did old Noah do when de windows ob de heabens was opened an’ de flood ob de great deep began to kiver de earth, an’ de fools got round him an’ laughed an’ ax him whut he buildin’ dat ole ark for? He was tired, an’ thirsty, an’ hot, but he kep’ on a-hoein’, for he knowed he’d get water enough bye and bye. Ho! every one dat thirsteth! ho!

“What did Abraham do when dey got roun’ him an’ tried to stop him from gwine to de Promis’ Lan’? He kept on a hoein’ for Jordan.

“Don’t let de flesh ob dis wurl’ fool you. Things ain’t whut dey seem. Water looks mighty good, specially to Baptists, but whut we Meferdists want to do is to keep on a hoein’. De wicked of Noah’s day didn’t hoe any. Didn’t dey git water enough? De Egyptians didn’t hoe enny, but follered de Israelites into de Red Sea. Didn’t dey get water enough? Ole Jonah didn’t obey de Lord an’ hoe to de mark, an’ de water swallowed him fust an’ de whale swallered ’im next. Let dat be a warnin’ to you to stick to de tex’ of de Bible an’ de doctrine of de church, an’ when you get thirsty keep on a-hoein’. It’s hard now, but it’ll be sweet bye and bye. It’s hot now, but it’ll be cold bye and bye. You git mighty thirsty an’ you think de taters ain’t never goin’ to come, but[38] when de winter rains come, an’ de winds blow, an’ you sot down round de big fiah wid de sweet brown ’possum an’ dem taters, you work so hard fur to get in de heat, an’ sweat, an’ thirst ob summer, den will de heart ob de faithful be glad, den will you shout an’ sing:

“Ho! every one that thirsteth, ho!”

This last appeal was too much. The congregation arose in a body at the words ’possum and potatoes and went off to hoe, leaving the old man with no one to pass around the hat.

A RACE FOR LIFE.

I saw a race—a race for life, too—that interested me the other day more than any that I have seen this year. It occurred in mid-air, in a kingdom not our own; but the fresh air was sweet where the race for life went on, and the fields were green beneath, and the brooks purled below and the sun shone gloriously over all, and to the poor creature who raced for his life I doubt not but he took it all in and life was as sweet to him as it is to us.

It was a golden-winged butterfly, one of those beautiful creatures that is more of heaven than of earth, more of the blossom than of the brown heath, and it seemed cruel to me that this beautiful thing, thrown off from the film of a rainbow and made with an organism so spiritual that it lives on the nectar of flowers, dwells on the bosom of a nodding lily and floats on the breath of a zephyr, must come under the great selfish law of life and be forced to fight for its brief but beautiful existence. Man must fight, we know—and all history, if it lie not, is but a chronicle of battle, blood and death, in which the survival of the fittest and the achievements of human destiny have been gauged by the brains that were behind gunpowder, and the courage that comes of God. Man, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes—it is a survival merely—and “nature, red in tooth and claw,” has been demonstrated to be more merciful than nature rotting in the decrepitude of age. But, O, that this ethereal thing—half rainbow and rose, half light and lily blossom, half child and cherubim—might have been spared!

And who were its enemies—two glorious mocking birds, that had sung like spirits from an angel choir around my home all spring and summer—that had reared their young in contentment and happiness and should have had nothing against any of God’s creatures, whose life had been a poem, whose breath a summer song—alas, that these should have been its murderers! It almost makes me despair of the ethics of life. I feel like saying to man: “Go, murder your fellow men—it is nature. Go, rob, steal and plunder—it is law.”

And is it not law? In spite of the ethics of religion and dictates of equity, is it not at last a question of one getting and the other giving—of money, love—ay, even life?

Golden Wings was in my garden and he was content until that which sustained his life gave out—food. He had sucked every flower—he must go to pastures[39] new. The distance to my neighbor’s garden was some two hundred yards, and there was nothing but air between us. He thought of it a long time—he hovered from flower to flower and thought—of his mate, of life, of death. Had he been all spirit he had stayed forever among the flowers. He had run no chance of death. But he was half spirit and half life and that life was rebelling and begging for food. He must go. It was life or death. He rose reluctantly—frightened—straight up—every sense awake—every nerve keyed—every eye on the lookout for an enemy—the spirit which had never harmed even a flower, and which should have had no enemy. Up, straight up, he arose—quivering, scared, frightened—then winged his way across the blue ether in a flight, as it proved, for its life.

The mocking-bird is a fly catcher, but not an expert one. Compared with the swallow, the marten, the crested fly-catcher, the expert king bird, the wood pewee, and Phoebe, he is a poor imitation. But the mocking-bird is a poet, and everything is grist that comes to a poet’s mill—from the grasshopper on the ground to the butterfly in the air.

The male bird saw Golden Wings first and gave him the first heat for his life. Up in the air he darted, circled and swooped. Poor Golden Wings fled, turned, ducked, dived—and escaped. The poet dropped to his twig in disgust, and his mate took up the race. Golden Wings saw her coming and his heart bursted with fear. He fairly quivered in the air. He knew not which way to turn. She darted, and all but caught him. For a moment, in mid-air, I saw them whirling and twisting and tumbling—poor Golden Wings panting and fluttering for a chance once more for home and life, and the poetess for a morsel to eat. It ended in the butterfly getting above the bird—which seemed always its tactics—while the latter dropped down in disgust to her mate. Then they both started after poor Golden Wings, and it looked as if his time had come. But all the time he had been heading straight for the thick trees beyond, where rested, perhaps, his distressed mate, waiting for his return.

It was a terrible chase the two poets gave him—the tumbling, darting, circling of the birds in fiendish delight, in maddened earnestness. Their very wings were often so close that they fanned him about until he looked like a speck of gold tissue paper hurled about by contrary winds. Twice they got above him, dropped on him and—missed. Twice I lost him altogether, and, except that I saw the birds fluttering and darting in the air, I had thought he was lost. When I saw him again he had gotten above his enemies and was safely pursuing his zig-zag, frightened, graceless, paper-fluttering flight for the trees and life.

“Success to you, O, Golden Wings,” I said, “for already have you taught me a lesson in life. Let us keep above our enemies, if we would be safe—not beneath them, for there we are a prey to their dirty talons; not on their level, for[40] then we are no better than they; but above them where they cannot reach us and where we may go on to our destiny with only the sunlight around us and the stars above us.”

The birds dropped down, baffled, to rest in the top of a sugar maple. They had evidently lost their tempers, and, between panting and hard breathing, I could hear them quarreling: “It was you,” said the wife—“you conceited thing—all your fault. I had him once if you had let me alone.”

“O, you had him, you did—‘over the left.’ If your talents equaled your tongue we’d be better off.” They screeched and shuffled about and almost spat at each other. They were beaten, chagrined and mad, and they took it out on each other.

And if you want to see the refinement of ill-temper, stir up two poets!

Golden Wings was safe. He was high in the air, his very flight was now the flight of victory, his poise the poise of one who had won. Twenty yards more he would drop down into the green trees where his mate, perhaps, awaited him, and be safe.

I was about to hurrah with delight, when I saw a lightning bolt of red and white drop from the jagged bark of the dead limb of a towering oak in the midst of the forest and high above poor, weary, fluttering yet happy Golden Wings. I paled at the thought, for I knew no butterfly ever escaped him. Even Golden Wings recognized his doom and, paralyzed with fear, stopped his flight in mid-air and, in a few yards of his goal, and lay floating in the air in hopeless fear. And well he might, for the red and white bolt was the red-headed woodpecker, not generally known to be a fly-catcher, but an expert in it, nevertheless. Often had I seen him poise above a luckless moth, drop like a plummet, and no moth would be there. I despised him as a marauder, besides, for only yesterday I’d seen him pounce on a helpless young humming-bird and rend it as if it had been a worm.

Straight at poor Golden Wings he came. The race was up.

He performed his old tactics, darted above the butterfly, some two yards higher in the air, gauged instinctively a plummet line from the point of his own beak to Golden Wings and then drops with folded wings like a ball of lead.

I forgot to say that I was out that morning with the twelve-gauge, smokeless shells and one and a half ounces of No. 7 chilled, thinking I might see a certain thieving crow that I had a grudge against.

Thoughts are lightning—words thunder, and when I caught the first glimpse of the red-headed marauder of the air all this went through my mind: “Nature is nature—tooth and claw. And yet there is a God who says even when a butterfly shall fall. He makes our lives and marks out our destiny. Sometimes amid injustice He calls Himself Retribution, and then He has been known to raise up a man and a gun, invent smokeless powder and deadly chilled shot, give accuracy of aim and, most wonderful of all, the voice of a purpose to[41] say that harm shall not happen even to a butterfly.”

There was no smoke from the report and so I distinctly saw Golden Wings drop joyfully among the green leaves. But a red-headed marauder lies in the field where he fell.

And if some one who knows, will tell me why I happened to be there, why I carried my gun that morning, why I fired, I will tell him who God is.

HIS CHANCE.

The summer day was nearly gone, and only a few clouds caught the gleam of sunset in the west. A woman of thirty, with a sweet, sincere face, came out of a cottage and walked to the little farm gate that opened on the main road winding across the Iowa prairie. The cottage sat in a small grove of trees, and farther off were neat outhouses, a stable and dairy. Flowers bloomed in a little bed near the front gate, and several hives of bees sat under cherry trees in the front yard. Everything around the neat cottage, from the well-kept vines which climbed over the porch to the orchard and fields of corn, clearly showed that Thrift and Industry were the handmaidens that lived there.

The woman was not pretty, neither was she handsome, but her face was of unusual intelligence and strength. Her hands showed work, and a few gray hairs shone over her temple.

At the little gate she stood while the shadows grew darker around her. There were chirpings of summer insects, and presently down the walk stalked a huge St. Bernard, looking like a great bear in the twilight. He seemed to think the woman had been out alone long enough, and his very way of walking showed that he knew he was her protector. He stalked up and thrust his big cold nose into her hand as it hung listlessly by her side. She started, but closed it over his mouth with a caress, saying:

“Rex, you are silly about me.”

A buggy came out of the gloaming down the road, and stopped at her gate. The woman turned pale in the twilight, as she recognized the middle-aged man who came toward her, holding out his hand: “Jennie—I—well—it’s me!”

He would have opened the gate, but the dog growled savagely, and she hooked the latch hastily, as she said:

“Ralph—why—why—I thought—but don’t try to come in—Rex—I could not control him.”

She was so agitated she could not speak further. Her knees shook, and she clung to the gate, half leaning.

“I have been back a week,” he said slowly. “You haven’t changed much,” he added, eyeing her closely while she flushed under his gaze. “I never expected to see you again.”

“No—no—don’t try to come in—Rex—Rex!”

The great dog had rushed at the gate as the man tried to open it again, and she held her hand on the latch.

“He don’t seem to know your[42] friends from your enemies,” said the man with a cynical laugh.

“I think he does,” she said quietly, “better than I have ever known them.”

He looked at her quickly. Then he tried to laugh.

“Why—Jennie—you know I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I never expected to see you again. I was not looking for you now,” she said.

“I never thought I’d ever come back, but the Klondike—well, a man pays two dollars for every dollar’s worth of gold he finds there.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said, still leaning on the gate, one knee resting on the lower plank for support.

“Well, Jennie, after we had our little quarrel and you broke off with me—”

“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a word—without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to send you your ring.”

“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell you—”

She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly. She had seen it all—the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old manhood.

“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell me where you have been and—and what doing.”

He laughed coldly.

“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”

“Was it true—that I heard—the trouble?”

“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble—but the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come back to you—to tell you I still—”

“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left, and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come in—no—no—you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”

She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly:

“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left alone. Our little farm—well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I—well—” she laughed hopefully for the first time—a laugh which brought a pang to his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted[43] and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.

“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I have heard enough—before you came—heard it, seen enough. In all our lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and I—think—I know I am happier than if I were now married to you—to you as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.

“But—but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”

“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance. There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”

He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.

“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with another oath.

But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following her.

“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life—life—how strange it is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that is honest and true than a man who it not.”

BLUE JOHN.

A Mississippi planter, and a gentleman of the old school, sends me this one from a little town in the Delta:

“My dear Trotwood, do you know what it is to get out of whisky Christmas morning in a little one-horse Mississippi town where you have to put a darkey on a mule and wait until he rides five miles through the mud before you can get your Christmas toddy? Well, I hope you never may, for that thing happened to me last Christmas.

“The truth is, there was no need why we should have been out of the red ingredient of Christmas jollity, for when we turned in the night before we had a fine, big jug of it. But the Major was there, and the Colonel and the Doctor, and somehow, before we knew it, it was gone.

“I am a bachelor, you know, on a big Mississippi cotton farm, and these were my guests and we went to bed with our boots on. About daylight Christmas morning we all woke up with one impulse and an awful thirst.

“The Doctor got to the jug first, and we heard him growl:

“‘What infernal hog drank all this whisky last night?’

“This stirred up the Colonel, and he sat up in bed and remarked, with his usual emphasis:

“‘That licker gone a’ready? Christmas mornin’, too?’

“By this time we were all investigating it, and some of the talk indulged in concerning the man who did it ought to have made him feel anything but white.

“By this time we would have given a dollar each for a drink. The[44] nearest whisky was five miles away, where Ikey Rosenstein, a little Mississippi Jew, kept a cross-roads grocery. It was raining, and cold, too, but there was nothing to do but to call Blue John and send him on old Kit, the pacing mule, for a new jug of it.

“‘Blue John,’ I said, when he poked his head in the door, ‘you’ll find my bridle and saddle hanging up in the carriage house. Saddle old Kit and take this jug up to old Ikey’s and bring it back full, p. d. q.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘Blue John,’ yelled the Doctor, ‘don’t let old Kit throw off on us this heat and we’ll give you first drink.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘And, Blue John,’ said the Major, as he started off, ‘remember it’s Christmas, old man, and get about in a hurry. Here’s a quarter to help you along,’ he said, tossing it across the bed.

“‘Yassah, Boss, yassah.’

“We all laid down again to wait for Blue John.

“‘Boys,’ said the Colonel, after ten minutes of thirst, ‘I’ll bet I can trace every step that old darkey takes. Let’s see, now: He’s got to the barn door, hasn’t he? Now he has found the bridle and has caught old Kit. Now the saddle goes on and he is mounting.

“‘No, he ain’t quite up in the saddle yet,’ chimed in the Doctor. ‘He has stopped to take a chew of twist tobacco and spit on his hands.’

“‘That’s a fact, Doc, but he’s up now, isn’t he?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Now he’s pacing down to the big gate. He’s opening it——’

“‘No,’ put in again the Doctor, ‘he got down off of old Kit and opened it. Hang the old fool, but isn’t he a slow one?’

“‘Well, he’s going up the road now, ain’t he?’ said the Colonel.

“‘Yes, and he’s got to the big swamp. He’s creeping through it. Dad gast, but ain’t it muddy there? Gehew, but I am thirsty,’ broke in the Doctor.

“Ten minutes later he added joyfully: ‘Well, he’s out of the swamp, and he has spurred old Kit into a gallop, thinking of that drink. Oh, old Blue John is a good one!’

“‘He’s at the three-mile post now,’ said the Major, twenty minutes later. ‘Lord, but that old mule can hump when he tries!’

“We all smiled in satisfaction.

“‘Where is he now, Doc?’ said the Colonel, after it had seemed an hour of silence.

“‘At old Ikey’s, boys. See, he’s handing old Ikey the jug. Now old Ikey is fillin’ it.’

“‘From what barrel?’ asked the Major, excitedly.

“‘Lincoln County, Tennessee.’

“We all grunted our assent in chorus.

“‘He’s started home now,’ went on the Colonel, ‘and the way that mule can pace! Blue John is settin’ up in that saddle, holdin’ that jug under one arm and a-larrupin’ old Kit every yard. Scott, but ain’t he comin’!’

“‘He’s got to the swamp again, Doc,’ said the Major, after twenty minutes had passed. ‘He’ll get here directly.’

“‘Boys, he’s reached the big[45] gate already. I hear him coming,’ said the Colonel, excitedly.

“Sure enough, we heard him. There was no mistake—Blue John was now coming down the hall.

“‘Open the door and let him in quick!’ said the Major, ‘By gum! but ain’t he and that old mule a pair of buds?’

“By this time we had all jumped out of bed and were hunting for tumblers and sugar. Blue John poked his head in the door.

“‘Boss,’ said Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Major. ‘Fetch it right in. You’re a good old man. Colonel, lend me your spoon a minute.’

“‘Boss, whar—whar——’ stammered Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Doctor, ‘come right in.’”

“‘Boss, whar de debbil you say you put dat bridle in de kerridge house? I been huntin’ fur it fur er hour an’ I can’t find it ter sabe my life.’”

A DRUNKEN WOMAN.

I saw in a neighboring city not long ago a drunken woman. She was in a fashionable hotel and stood beside a post in the little gallery that ran around the court. She was not three feet above our heads, was dressed in the height of fashion, wore a hat that looked like a huge poppy and altogether she was not unlike a beautiful tiger lily that seemed about to fall over into our arms. Instantly that wave of romance and reverence as natural to man, when he sees beauty clothed in purity, as the tides that do follow the midnight moon, swept over me. Her form was faultless, her gown perfect, her face beautiful.

At least I thought so until I looked up and happened to catch her eye. She smiled the sensual smile of a wood-nymph and leered as disgustingly as ever Bacchus through a glass of old Falerian. In a moment it all changed. Her face was no longer beautiful, but hard and cruel. Her form was made—her gown the gaudy thing of a demi-monde.

I blushed when she singled me out and leered, and ducked my head, for fear someone had seen me. But I soon saw that she leered at all alike and knew no difference between a man and men.

For a half hour she stood there, scarce able to cling to the post she stood by, the observed of every man in the court, the disgusting moral that pointed the old story of the fallen angel.

It is bad enough to see a drunken man. Nothing so quickly robs goodness of its sweetness, genius of its charm, greatness of its colossal form, than to behold it drunk. There are some great men I know who, if I ever saw them drunk, never again would I believe they were great. They say Poe was a drunkard. I cannot imagine it. And S. S. Prentiss—I cannot believe it. I cannot think of DeQuincy and Coleridge as opium eaters, Byron and Burns as whisky-heads. If I did I could never again read anything they wrote. For of all things that levels man to the beasts and makes knowledge a strumpet and genius a bawdy, it is the maudlin[46] rottenness of a plain old drunk.

Whisky and not death is the greatest leveler with the dirt.

But to see a drunken woman—Good God! Nature is partial to a man. She has made some laws for him she has not made for woman. She has filled him with passion and strength and capacity for work and great things. She overlooks it, perhaps, when he steps aside, under the burning law she has forced on him for reproduction, and she sighs and smiles when he drowns his strenuousness now and then in the forgetfulness of the cup. He may do all that, and if his wife be pure still may he sire sons who will be brave and honest, and daughters who will be pure and noble.

But let the woman be weak and fall, and see how quickly nature revenges herself for the desecration of her unwritten law by throwing back on humanity sons who are thieves and daughters who are impure. This is an unwritten law, but it proves that the mother is the great moral force of the world. Let her violate it and the punishment comes quickly on the race.

As I looked at this woman I could not help thinking: “I hope, as one who, interested in stock, is more interested in the human race, that you carry in your life that penalty of impureness—barrenness. For it were better for mankind that such as you should never be mothers, to fill prison pens with thieves and forgers and bawdy houses with painted Magdalenes. Indeed, it is up to you to pass off the stage of life and cease to encumber an earth on which not one single womanly law is left you to fill. The honest matron of the noble horse brings forth yearly and within the sacred laws of nature an animal that is the pride of man and the glory of his kind. The gentle mother of the dairy is an inspiration and a blessing to the earth. The very brood sow of the pen suckles her hungry brood begot in honorable wedlock. But you, O, being of a higher world, O breeder of immortal beings, made in the image of God and endowed with the reason of the angels, you from whom nature expects so much, you fall below all of these and brand yourself the harlot of humanity!”

We want a good live agent in every town in the United States for “Trotwood’s Monthly.” Write for terms to agents. Address Trotwood Publishing Company, Nashville, Tenn.

Depravity is not so much a creature of inheritance as of environment.

The most talked-of pacer in the light harness world to-day is Walter Direct. The greatest living reinsman is Ed F. Geers, his breeder, joint owner, trainer and driver. The object of this sketch is to tell the story of these two—the one a horse, the other a man. For when it is all sifted down at last, it will be found that there are many parallel lines between a great race horse and a great driver. Each to succeed must possess certain qualities in common which make for success.

ED GEERS
The silent man from Tennessee.

And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man. Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every man which[48] count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly:

Unfortunately for man—outside of the pygmies which some call kings—he keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one generation, but they are all there—there in his blood and his brain and his brawn.

And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers—a man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days of the honest common people!

From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln—these and every other great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him for.

And so, as I said, from such a source came Geers, the honest man and the master reinsman of his age. And so, as I said, counting the recorded pedigree, Walter Direct has it over Geers, for man, who foolishly lets his own pedigree slip, has been very careful in preserving that of his horse. Strange, isn’t it? And yet we are all doing it. Ah, well, perhaps it is best for many of us that it is so. For, as we say of the horse, in the fifth generation each one of us would have to count for sixty-two fathers and mothers, landing us back two hundred years ago in Scotland and Ireland, and out of that number, in that age and country, fortunate is he who was not sent up for poaching, for cattle-lifting, for breaking heads and, perhaps—locks!

Walter’s pedigree is blue-blooded. His owners, Chaffin & Gears, saw to that. We can make[49] our horse’s pedigree better than we can make our own—for that is made for us, and often, in the making, when two warm youngsters fall in love and decide to marry, nothing but the grace of God, or the breaking of a midnight ladder, has saved us.

In The Horse Review of 1900, when Walter Direct was then a suckling at his mother’s heels, I wrote a description of him and predicted from his blood lines that one day he would be the greatest of pacers. It sounds prophetic now, but I rise hastily to disclaim it. Any horseman posted in the pedigree and achievement of his sire and dam, and of all his bluelines, would naturally have said the same thing. His sire, Direct Hal, was the greatest horse of his day. His name and career are household words in horsedom and will not be extended in this article. But later on, in “The History of the Hals,” now running as a serial in this Monthly, a chapter will be devoted to him in its proper place. It is enough here to say that he was unbeaten and that his sire, Direct, before him, was the greatest pacing stallion of his day, and that beyond that lies the great Director, Dictator and Hambletonian 10—an unbroken line of greatness—and in a horse greatness means gameness, soundness, honesty, speed.

Isn’t that enough to give us a tip on the breeding of boys and girls?

Walter’s dam is a homely little mare called Ella Brown, with a record of 2:11 1/4, made in 1893, to high-wheel sulky. With the sulky of to-day it would have been 2:05. Never have I known a gamer, sweeter little mare than Ella Brown, and well do I remember when she first came out, and though suffering acutely, all through her racing career with nervicular disease of the foot, often so lame that she could scarcely score down for the word, yet, when she was in the fight, and the clatter and hot breath of her competitors sounded the warning in her ears, she would forget her lameness and her soreness and race like the game little thing she was.

And, like all other great mares, the pedigree of Ella Brown was no accident. She was sired by Prince Pulaski, Jr., and he by old Prince Pulaski, the sire of the old queen, Mattie Hunter, 2:12 3/4. The dam of Ella Brown has only lately been correctly established. She was by Evans’ Joe Bowers, son of Joe Bowers 2:32, son of Traveler. Her second dam was by Tom Hal, sire of Brown Hal, and her third dam was said to be by Brooks, sire of Bonesetter 2:19. Every horseman knows what these mean. Mated with Direct Hal, and hence doubled in strength and greatness, and behold Walter Direct, champion green pacer of the year.

This is the pedigree of Edward Geers—this is the pedigree of Walter. Both honest.

Geers’ honesty is proverbial. His surname is “Honest Ed Geers, the Silent Man of Tennessee.” Did you ever notice how naturally greatness and silence go together?[50] Let that greatest of all great men, Shakespeare, tell it:

There are many stories told of the honesty of Ed Geers. It must be remembered that in the life he has led, the terrible, bruising, fighting battles of the turf, when fame and fortune often hang on the wire for which hundreds of others are driving as well as he, that he is often sorely and terribly tempted. Men are human at most, and in a fight for money, for fame, for the joy of victory, all combined in one race, all the great stakes of life, is it a wonder that millionaire horsemen have tried to buy him, that rich breeders have tried to bribe him, greedy owners corner him and tricksters and knaves foul him? Think of twenty-five years of this and then coming out without a stain on his name, a breath of suspicion and the pseudonum of Honest Ed Geers—won, too, in the light of the fiercest conflict.

Walter is game, so is Geers. In the many years in which the latter has been in the sulky he has met with accidents which, if they failed to break his neck, would have broken the heart of an ordinary man.

All horsemen will recall the bad accident he had with Searchlight and the one that sent him to the hospital at Memphis a few years ago, with a broken ankle. But a few weeks ago he was in a bad mix-up at Buffalo, when King Direct’s foot went into the sulky wheel of the contending horse. The Nestor of the turf was unconscious when picked up, but quickly revived and dryly remarked, “Now, don’t make a hurrah of this thing and scare everybody to death for nothing.” That remark is an index of his character. He hates a hurrah. The plumage of the peacock has never become the pit game trimmed for the fight. He is loyal to his friends, modest, quiet, honest, and with reverence for all that is sacred and good. He is one of the large men of his calling.

The training of Walter Direct has been in keeping with Mr. Geers’ theory that colts should be trained early but not hard. From the May night when he was foaled in a terrific thunderstorm, so fierce that Old Wash, who acted as his midwife, was scarcely able to keep him from drowning, until to-day, he has had the best of attention. His dam was fed grain during the nursing period, and Walter soon learned to eat it with her. He was broken to halter as a weanling, and the next spring, Negley, the colored caretaker, broke him to harness, with occasional jogs. The fall after he was a two-year-old he was sent to Memphis to Geers and given his first real lessons, and so trained each winter, with joggings in the summer by Negley at Columbia. Mr. Geers’ rule is to keep them feeling good with a brush now and then for speed. He has a horror of overworking colts. Indeed, his stable is never asked to go the fast heats that many other owners delight in before being shipped to the races. He saves their speed and vital force for the time when it[51] is needed most. In the spring when Walter was a three-year-old he was asked to go a fast mile in 2:14, and was sent to Columbia to be jogged and turned out. The next spring he paced his mile in 2:08 3/4, when he was sent back home again. On September 15, 1904 he was sent again to Mr. Geers and to fame.

LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.

(Revised by Trotwood and brought up to date.)

Humor is a great thing, but it has never yet won a battle, built a city or bred a horse.

By Rev. W. D. Capers, Rector St. Peter’s Church, Columbia, Tenn.

“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word.” (Ps. 119: 67.)

From one point of view there is no mystery so impenetrable as that involved in the suffering and sorrow which exists in every department and sphere of life. The suffering of humanity, the fact that “the world groaneth and travaileth in pain until now” presented to the sensitive mind of Dr. John Hall the supreme difficulty with which he struggled during a great part of his remarkable ministry, until courage, faith and experience taught him to understand and to recognize suffering as having its mission in life and in the development of character, just as happiness has its place, each acting as one of the two great interpreters of moral and spiritual development. It is impossible to have a creed or to form an adequate philosophy of life and overlook the really essential and universal place suffering, in one form or another, occupies therein. Just try and think, if you can, of a world in which there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain; a world in which there are no tears, no bitterness, no woe. The thing is unthinkable, it is simply inconceivable, and as a condition of life, utterly and eternally impossible. Why? Because pleasure and pain are relative. Suffering and joy face each other in a blessed contrast. There has to be a standard of comparison by which we are to make the proper estimate of these things, otherwise we would be unable to distinguish between them; otherwise happiness would have no reality to it, no vitality in it, and neither strength nor power of growth, while life would be without an essential variety of emotions, and therefore necessarily become “stale, flat and unprofitable” indeed. A remarkable description of hell’s severest punishment, though very fanciful, is that, wherein the victims are made to do that which they most loved to do here in this life, incessantly, continuously and strenuously. The suggestion to my mind is very significant and teaches that the most tortuous and horrible suffering is just that which comes through uninterrupted monotony. To dance your life away, to drink your life away, to play and fritter your life away in purposeless amusement and never to suffer a reverse or be conscious of a struggle, never to know a pang of pain or experience a momentary disappointment, may seem to those who have just sipped an occasional drop from the cup of pleasure and mirth an enviable existence, a consummation in life devoutly to be wished. But to dance or play or laugh or sing through endless eons of time and to experience not one inspiring struggle which brings moral and spiritual strengthening, to have to live through eternity would be misery indeed. Suffering then, in the first place, heightens and intensifies our joys, it helps develop the power of enjoyment, and it makes a larger and a more real happiness possible. To illustrate: There was unspeakable joy in the home of the prodigal, as the aged father rushed out to meet and greet his wayward boy, for to the old man his son had been dead, and behold he was alive again, he had been lost and was found. It was the suffering of the separation which alone made possible the intense and glorified happiness of their reunion. And how often it happens that not only are “troubled times praying times,” but that “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” Thus suffering often brings a man to his senses and makes him conscious of his dependence upon God. As we read, it was only when the prodigal “came to himself” that he concluded to arise and go to his father, and we must conclude that it was the suffering, sorrow and bitterness of privation and disappointed hopes that drove him to a realization of his true condition, and in the end brought to him a real and lasting happiness. In this and in similar acts of conduct history never[53] fails to repeat itself in every age, in every epoch, in every generation, as well as yearly, daily and hourly in the life of individuals and of nations. Opulence, ease, prosperity and an unwholesome peace have repeatedly rushed peoples and principalities to a shameful and untimely ruin, wherein men have lost their reason and nations drunk with a sense of power have reeled and staggered to and fro like a drunken man and then lay prostrate in the dust. In support of this I appeal to history. In support of this Mr. Kipling appeals to history when in his recessional poem he said:

Suffering then, often serves to give us a fuller, freer, wiser and wider view of life. It was only when through suffering that the prodigal “came to himself,” and when he received this self-revelation, then he “arose and went to his father,” and in like manner when man “comes to himself” he goes to God. But mark you, self-revelation seldom if ever comes to one while sailing the seas of glory and sounding all the depths and shoals of mere worldly splendor and prosperity. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept my word,” said the Psalmist, and when Job came to himself through the trial of his faith and patience, he ceased to question the ways of Providence, he reverently placed his hand upon his mouth and would “speak no further,” for fear he now no longer knew God “by the hearing of the ear,” but by the “seeing of the eye,” and he went to his knees in supplication, “and the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.”

Again, we are to notice that suffering brings us courage and broadens and deepens and intensifies our sympathies. “Pity makes the whole world akin,” and so quickens our consciousness of brotherliness. “At sea when the ship is in great peril the passengers crowd together, not because they can escape peril by facing it in company, but because they can gain courage by companionship. The sense of human kinship grows fresh and keen when men stand together in the face of a common danger.” It is therefore through suffering that men gain courage through a vivid realization of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the race. It often is as Dr. Mabie has said: “Through sorrowful ways men have climbed to the heights from which they now look into the heavens and over the landscape of life.”

And this brings us to our final thought which is that suffering in some of its manifold forms gives that variety to life which is essential to the proper development of all the faculties of heart, soul, mind and body. By way of illustration, let us suppose that you could take from the public and private libraries of the world every book that contained a poem, a reference or a treatise touching the theme of sorrow, and what a dull, dead, gloomy monotony of uninspired literature would remain, while, in rather figurative language, the world itself could not contain the books thus mutilated and cast away. Apply the same test to art, and the galleries of the world would be destroyed, miles upon miles of bare walls would greet us at every turn as we made our heart-sick pilgrimage from gallery to gallery. Apply the same test to music, and you will never again hear the singing of a song with genius and power in it strong enough to stir the heart’s deepest emotions or to cause the soul to glow with a conscious ecstacy of faith and hope and the brain to burn with the fire of a high and holy resolution. The organ’s rich peal, the ring of stringed instruments, the wailing of the lute would lose the voice of melody, while “The Marseillaise,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie Land” and similar martial airs would never have found voice to speak for patriotic devotion or to chant the glory of a martyrdom for home or for country, had not the spirit of sacrifice and suffering pervaded them and given to them immortality.

No, suffering is a vital part and condition of life, and from the right use of it we gather strength and grow beautiful in moral and spiritual stature, while[54] we gain the only happiness that maintains and has power to bless mankind, happiness which is the child of conscious strength acquired on the battlefield of conflict and in the vale of tears. How then are you going to use the sorrows, the afflictions, the disappointments and the trials that must come inevitably into your life? The late Maltby Babcock has a fine passage in this connection: “Byron eagerly coveted a place among the immortals, yet accepted his club feet with cursings and bitterness; while St. Paul accepted his ‘thorn in the flesh’ with sweetness and was thereby exalted and transfigured. The poet wishes to become a hero for the public while privately tasting of the sweets of profligacy. Sinning against his finer feelings his art steadily declines, until at thirty-five it has passed into the sear and yellow leaf.” Let us strive to emulate the example of St. Paul, and when having no power to expel from our life that which brings pain and suffering, let us endeavor to accept such sorrow as an opportunity to develop character, and thereby be exalted and made strong, remembering always that since “The Man of Sorrows” hung upon the cross, transfigured sorrow is that which has blessed humanity most, and brought men nearest to the heart and mind of the Master. And train yourself to believe that.

OUR STAR

(In memory of Mrs. Annie Horne Fry, who died August 13, 1905.)

There are nearly a fourth of a thousand farm papers in the United States, all bent on teaching the farmers how to attend to their own business. Some of these papers are good, many are bad and the others are awful. The good ones may be had for a dollar and the others for the asking. Looking the literary field over, everybody seems to be entitled to something good but the farmer. From the roasts and broils of the intellectual feasts of to-day he will get the leavings, next week, in the shape of a stale hash, served on cheap paper, flanked with guessing contests and patent medicine advertisements and surrounded by the green, green cresses of the same old thing.

And yet a large and most respectable majority of the people of these United States are farmers or interested in the soil. Their daily needs include all the things the man in the city needs and much more, for the man in the city does not plow, neither does he reap nor sow. These people of the soil are progressive to the extent of their chances, honest, and seekers of the truth and better ways, lovers of the good in fiction and in fact. They constitute about seventy per cent of our population and commit about two per cent of our crime. Why should not they have a literature? Why should not a magazine laid around the soil, come into their homes, as it comes into the homes of the dwellers in the strenuous city, not to teach them their business but to help to amuse, to interest, to uplift?

This is the object of Trotwood’s Monthly. If it does not tell you when to plant your beans and when to eat your potatoes, it hopes to give you a literature that will help you to be satisfied with your diet of potatoes and your burden of beans. For in truth, the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly does not know all about potatoes nor beans nor corn. Indeed, he is willing to admit that any good farmer in all this country who knows his business knows more about it than the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly. For his business in life is literature. He has made it his profession, as the farmer or stockman has made farming and stock-raising his, and he has toiled at it through years in the heat of the noonday sun and often—often—while the world around him slept, by the light of a sleepless lamp. He will not try to tell you, therefore, of the things he knows but little about, neither will he attempt to carry intellectual coals to a new castle of newly mown hay. He will not attempt the impossible and the ridiculous; but if, in looking over his handiwork month after month, you find something to make you forget for awhile the burdens and problems of life; if through his magazine you learn to realize the unseen sweetness and independence of the life of him who claims kindred with the soil; if you are shown nature with truer eye, and learn to love her and all that is hers; if you catch, now and then, a spark of that finer spirit that burns so brightly in true literature, lighting the lamp of ambition in your boy or girl, and carrying you for a moment from the world of soil to the world of soul; if something in it uplifts you, and something amuses you and something in the special features by experts in the classes, who know, instructs and helps[56] you, then you may know that Trotwood’s Monthly has done for you what it started out to do.

Trotwood’s Monthly will, each issue, contain special expert articles on subjects relating to its scope. There are four in this issue, and we have reason to be proud of all of them. This is an age of concentration, of specialization. It is the man who concentrates that accomplishes. Knowledge to-day is so vast and covers so great a scope that Solomon’s wisdom would scarcely attract attention unless the saffron press wrote him with pictures of his wives, and that might make some think he was not wise at all.

LINES TO AN AUTOMOBILE.

This is the page where all of those who wish to, or who have a message to tell, may come in and talk with Trotwood. Do not be backward—you are welcome. But be sure that what you write shall be of general interest to our readers. Remember that they are paying for the Monthly to be interested and instructed. So come in, but come in with something to say, something that will help others.

For, indeed, Trotwood is optimistic. He believes in men and women; he has faith in humanity. He would have men look up, not down; forward, not backward. He is too busy doing to garner doubt and discouragement, those twins which come chiefly from idleness and unclear thinking.

Therefore, think clearly and live purely. For one depends upon the other. Believe in the men and women around you and they will soon begin to believe in themselves. Get into the habit of thinking and speaking kindly, for character as well as life is made up of habits. Believe in humanity. Try to be patient with fools. It is the most difficult of all things to do. Believe in humanity. Sometimes you will get a jolt, but when you come to weigh your own life, you will find that, taking it all in all, the world has been kinder to you than you have deserved.

We may be pardoned for being often personal in this, the first issue of Trotwood’s Monthly, but we beg you to bear in mind that this issue was created hurriedly, and while we are not ashamed of it by any means, we did not have the chance to give it the scope it will soon attain. This is not a sectional monthly. Its aim is to cover the whole country North and South. We are selling farm literature—not farm products—and we will see that all sections, Michigan as well as Alabama, Maine as well as Texas, is represented. If you are not in it it will be your own fault.

A bright literary woman—one who has written novels that have sold—in a personal letter, says: “The publication of a book figures to me as a marriage, in which the author is the woman, the publisher the man, and it is not well to let one’s heart ache too much over mistreated offspring in the way of books. Be glad that it is for a year. Just a year, that the contract is not for life, and that in it divorce is no disgrace, and with the optimistic belief that there is always to be better luck next time.”

Was ever anything better said?

The most encouraging news comes from the bedside of that veteran breeder,[57] Capt. M. C. Campbell, of Cleburne Farm. Capt. Campbell has been very ill for over a month, and once it looked as if the owner of Brown Hal and the breeder of more great Jerseys and pacing horses than any living man, would not recover. But the life he has led has been clean and pure, and his strength was great. Like the great Tennessee pacers he has bred he proved game, and his friends, and they are counted all who know him, are happy to think he is now on the road to recovery. No man in the State has made a higher mark for honesty, manhood and all that makes a man than Capt. M. C. Campbell, and may he live long and prosper.

In a personal letter from his son, Mr. Allen Campbell, who is also manager of Cleburne Farm, he writes that they have some of the greatest colts and Jerseys ever seen at that famous nursery. Several of their colts are showing extreme speed, among them being the young son of Brown Hal, dam by Bay Tom, that Cleburne Farm has reserved to take Brown Hal’s place. He is showing 2:10 speed as a three-year-old. Two colts by Direct 2:05 1/2, one out of the dam of Twinkle 2:06 1/2, are showing up very fast. Trainer John Walker has a dozen head of Mr. Geers’ stable training them at Cleburne’s famous mile track.

Speaking of John R. Gentry’s influence at Ewell Farm Mr. Geo. Campbell Brown writes:

“It is the aim of Ewell Farm to breed beauty and let speed stand as a secondary consideration, and for this reason it continues the use of McEwen, one of the grandest individuals in the country, as shown by his long list of showing prizes and of John R. Gentry, a horse of perfect conformation and unbeaten in the show ring.

“The Hal strain at Ewell Farm is being perpetuated by Hal Brown, certainly one of the most successful young sires of that breed.

“The brood mares at Ewell Farm are in proportion to the numbers owned there, the greatest collection of producers in the United States. No less than four have produced four each to beat 2:30, and ten are producers of 2:10 or better horses, while one has thrown a world’s champion.

“The blood of Sweepstakes, dam of Star Pointer, is better represented at Ewell Farm than at any other farm in the country. Two of her granddaughters, Mabel Best and Windsweep, daughters of Villette, sister to Star Pointer, being owned there, and both have foals by John R. Gentry.

“Of the dozen yearlings at Ewell Farm by John R. Gentry, only one has been trained, and he a trotter can now show a 2:52 gait. He will certainly make a great trotter.

“A three-year-old trotter by this great sire has beaten 2:20, and a three-year-old pacer, Gentry’s Star, can pace a mile in 2:10. The unparalleled beauty and speed of the youngsters by John R. Gentry foreshadows his future fame as a sire, and it is a safe prediction that he will more than equal his sire, Ashland Wilkes, that has for several years been the leading sire of new 2:30 performers. Analysis of records in John R. Gentry’s pedigree show him to be the fastest and best son of Ashland Wilkes. This horse is in turn the best representative of Red Wilkes, the greatest speed sire of all the sons of George Wilkes, whose strain has been preeminent in the trotting world for twenty-five years.”

Trotwood can vouch for every word of the following letter. He visited the great Dakota prairies last fall. Such vastness, such fertility, such lands!

Fargo, N. D., August 15.

Editor Trotwood’s Monthly:

When I was a resident of your country I thought then that there was only one God’s country, and that was the Central Basin of Tennessee. My reason for arriving at such a conclusion was the land in the Central Basin, but more particularly in and around Maury County, had maintained its fertility and wonderful productive power for a hundred years with only the ordinary American style of farming. That is, taking all out of the land and putting nothing back again. But since that time a discovery has been made which accounts for the land in your section of country maintaining[58] its wonderful endurance for raising such an excellent quality of wheat over a period of seventy years, without rotation of crops, and that is the almost inexhaustible deposit of phosphate rock that underlies so much of your lands. But I have found another God’s country. While it cannot boast of being underlaid with phosphate rock like your lands in and around Maury County, but when this country was opened up for settlement in the ’70’s it was as rich in all the constituent elements of fertility as the lands in the Central Basin of Tennessee. This Red River Valley is a wonderful country, and Fargo, N. D., is the center of this granary of the great Northwest. Although Fargo is not a very large city, the population is about twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants, it is a live town, and full of enterprising business men.

This town is the third largest farm implement distributing point in the world. That’s saying a good deal. Moscow, Russia, comes first; Kansas City second, and Fargo third. According to the Bureau of Statistics, United States Department of Agriculture, for 1904, the State of North Dakota produced some fifty-four million bushels of wheat and the set counties in the Red River Valley raised of the above amount nearly twelve million bushels. This is not counting the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley. The farmers in the Red River Valley seem to be pretty well fixed. The great Dalrymple farm is in this county of Cass. These gentlemen farm about 30,000 acres of wheat land. The soil in this valley is a rich, black, glacial drift, and though it is not corn country, not being warm enough, yet all other farm products do fine (there is an immense crop this year), as wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, flaxseed, hay and the most excellent Irish potatoes are raised here, and 200 bushels per acre is a fair crop. But the farmers in the Red River Valley have been raising wheat almost exclusively for the past twenty-five years, and wheat of fine quality. But if they want to maintain the reputation of this land as a wheat-growing country, the farmers will have to put on their considering caps and ask you Maury Countians to send them up some acid phosphate to put and keep their land in balance, so that they can go on and again raise No. 1 hard wheat.

WM. DENNISON.

TO MY FRIENDS:

Pardon this final word as the magazine goes to press, but Trotwood is gratified to see that subscriptions are pouring in from every corner of the United States, from Canada and from Mexico. Far away Halifax, N. S., sends a good list in the same mail with New Braunsfels, Southern Texas.

I am indeed proud of this, for it is the work of my personal friends, whose loyalty and friendship have no measure; who in the past have sent me words of comfort and cheer, in my fight through the columns of that great turf journal, “The Horse Review,” for what I conceived to be clean living, clean thinking, clean racing and clean and hopeful literature.

I have longed for this day when I might talk to my many friends through the columns of my own publication, and in the department “With Trotwood” I want to meet you often, and I want you to meet each other.

To my old tried and true friend, John C. Bauer, of the Chicago Horse Review, whose firm and lasting friendship has helped to make life pleasant, and whose sterling manhood and unfailing courtesy in the twelve years that I was associated with the Horse Review, has endeared him to me and given me greater faith in man, I extend my hearty and sincere thanks for the unselfish way in which he has so cheerfully and willingly helped in starting us down the track of literature toward what promises to be a successful goal.

To my many other friends who have responded so liberally with their dollars and who have been so free with their expressions of loyalty and good will, I thank you one and all, and I wish that I could meet each and every one of you, and with a hearty handshake tell you[59] how much I appreciate your friendship and your encouragement.

With my very best wishes and regards to all, I am sincerely yours,

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

A word from the Business Manager:

If you feel friendly toward Trotwood, no doubt you feel just as friendly toward “Trotwood’s Monthly.” I want every reader of this monthly to write us a letter, sending us the names and address of your friends whom you think would be interested in this monthly. I will mail them a sample copy with your compliments, and ask them to join us in making what we hope to make—The greatest farm and horse magazine in the world. Respectfully,

E. E. SWEETLAND,
Business Manager.

TRAFFIC

A large tree has just been cut from the land of Mr. J. R. Marshall, four miles from Columbia. At its base it was sixteen feet in diameter, and out of it five logs ten feet long were cut, containing 7,650 feet of lumber. The top of the tree made thirteen cords of wood.—Columbia (Tenn.) Herald.

Fortunate is the man who has found his lifework, and—his Jonah.

Build—for if you build at all you will build better than you know.

1:59 1/2 EWELL FARM 2:00 1/2

(Established 1870.)

GEORGE CAMPBELL BROWN and PERCY BROWN
Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee

SHETLAND PONIES JERSEY CATTLE
TROTTING and PACING HORSES
SOUTHDOWN SHEEP

John R. Gentry 2:00 1/2.

IN THE STUD

JOHN R. GENTRY 2:00 1/2, the handsomest of all turf horses. Has held ten world’s records. Twice grand champion for one and three heats. A winner in Madison Square Garden. A sire of pronounced beauty, speed and intelligence. Sires both trotters and pacers of extraordinary speed and destined to be the greatest sire in the world. Fee, $100.00.

The SHETLANDS at Ewell Farm have been selected with great care, especial attention having been paid to beauty, uniformity in size (36 to 42 inches), and docility of temper. Not for many years have these ponies failed to delight their purchasers. Geldings 1 to 3 years old for sale.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1,
October 1905, by Various

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