In the Light of Patriotism

N THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. A WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY STORY. BY JOSEPHINE SPENCER. Paul Fletcher paused and looked back for a moment half-regretfully at the yellow light gleaming from the wide windows. A fine, stinging snow had begun to fall, and the cheerlessness of its touch and sight made the lonely house to which he was bent doubly uninviting. He had been urged to stay the evening through, at Archibald's, but something in the cheer and comfort and clean content of the little household jarred an uneasy strain of consciousness within him, and made him restless to depart. There had been a half embarrassment struck from the dissonant string, too. He smiled contemptuously, now, walking home through the darkness, as he recalled the cheap consciousness he had experienced of his uncouth hands at table. He remembered, now, that it had been a cherished fad, both of his own and Archibald's, in the days of their chumming at college, this insistence on a certain nicety of appearance and habit. But to think of Archibald's having found time to keep up with them all in his after struggle with poverty — and marriage! Paul had been as punctilious as the other in the old days, but since — well, let any one go straight from the comparative leisure and incentive of college life to grubbing on a farm, and see how the finer instincts and resolutions hold out! To be sure, Archibald had done it — seemingly — but that was Archibald! Determination had been his strong suit at school; and now — Paul was a little chagrined that he had not explained his soiled collar and — the finger nails. Arch Clay was observant, you could depend; and how was he to know that the half hour to dinner time had struck while Paul was still dozing, and that there was hardly time to get thoroughly wakened and the hastiest of toilets made before the dinner hour? Paul wondered if Arch had been up all night, as he had been, if

IN THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. 303 he would have appeared so immaculately clean and dudish— but no— he would do his old chum justice. Archibald was never foppish in any sense. He had always believed that an absolute moral influence existed in physical cleanliness and the minutest details of habit, and had lived outwardly, and inwardly, as far as Paul knew, to his belief. His own lapse, he told himself, lay in deep mental causes. He had sacrificed all the fine ideals of his youog manhood to duty. If blame rested anywhere it was with the luck that had nailed him to the last line of work that his nature and desire cried out for. He had had his own high dreams, and they had been blotted out with hum-drum things that had crossed and re-crossed his life. It had been a rebellious task from the first, that try at the scant acres left from th<* big estate at his father's death. Any one could see that it meant but a bare living at best; and he had given up his own ambition to his mother's desire to stay with the old place. An old glow of self-righteousness dulled for a moment the new, uneasy sense stir. red in him by his visit with his old friend. Yes, he would always have that to his credit— the sacrifice of ambition to duty. If he had not done well with his life, and his old ideals, he had at least laid them on the altar of his mother's wish. He had "stayed with the old place." The smug conceit and smothered sullenness of his self-martyrdom had really been a poison corroding his life. All his healthy young ambition and pride and courage had atrophied under its blight. The story told itself, sentence, by sentence, in the unpatched roof, the broken windows and.knobless doors ©f the farm house — and the farm harvests, scantier each year, till the yeild had come to be le-s than a livelihood. He knew quite well what it meant when Jessie had sent for his mother to come to her. "You shall have at least a whole roof to shelter you, and a gown to wear that neighbors will not covet for carpet-rag -5.'' The words had met his eyes in the letter that lay open on the table; and he had resented them with a sullenness that had sent his mother away wretched, after her vain attempt to defer her visit. It was strange how he felt about his attitude tonight; the memory of her wan, troubled face, and loath departure came to him now hauntingly. He had felt justified then, in his anger, and sense of lone selfmartyrdom. He told himself, then, that Jessie had never appreciated his sacrifice. She had seemed so proud of him in the college days before her marriage, and now that he was broken on that wheel of his mother's set whim, his sister had turned from him. Every one, in fact, whose opinion he had cared for, had gone back on him — but Archibald, — and

304 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Alice. Archibald had never quite let go of him, though Paul had responded only half graciously to his ever ready friendship. He had even refused at first the invitation to take his holiday dinner with his old chum. But Arch had held out so insistently against his loneliness at the farm that he had finally won. Alice, too, had kept her faith in him — but how long would her loyalty last he asked himself — now that she was so far away? Two years! Her family had planned the long stay in the east, he knew, to break up their match. "Shiftless." His blood tingled again at her father's talk. That word to him, who had stood first in his classes, sitting up nights and foregoing all pleasure to win out with honor in the school race. If he had had a fair chance, in fields of his own choice, no one should ever have flung the bitter words at him. And she had heard — the girl whom to lose would be the limit of desperation. It was Malcolm Steele's fault he told himself resentfully — that last night's fling at the old shack. He had gone there blind with the rage and humiliation of his dismissal, and Malcolm had himself to blame if the farm should have to go under mortgage to pay the debt. Paul, indeed, had hardly sensed the seriousness of his act last night. How he was to meet the sum he had staked, only Fate could tell. He reached the house, and its desolateness struck him tangibly for the first time in months. There had been no fire in the front room since his mother left, and the broken pane had let in little drifts of snow on the floor. Paul went to the shed outside and brought in an armful of kindlings, which he remembered, with strange embarrassment, his mother must have cut and stored for his use; then laid a fire. A fleeting impulse had come to him to go out, but the impression of last night's losses was heavy upon him, and he sat down moodily by the crackling fire. The silence seemed suddenly to grow thick, and he went to the clock on the mantel and set it going, timing it by the cheap, open face watch in his vest. Ten o'clock! Why had he not stayed at Archibalds? The holiday-night spent alone for the first time in his life, seemed almost intolerable. Presently, with an unaccustomed impulse he went to the old Bible lying on the table. It opened at a faded piece of paper, an heirloom of his mother's which he had forgotten since the time he had been allowed to commit its contents to memory before his school days. The "Declaration of Independence." How long since he had handled that heirloom, long tenderly cherished! Penned on a mammoth page of paper with many flourishes, and finished in elegant scroll work, — the task of a great

IN THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. 305 grandfather renowned in his day for "art penmanship," it bore the old patriot classic dear to every American heart, done in the penman's best style. Paul skimmed over its well known passages. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!'' Thousands of lives had been given to win men that privilege. Today, more than a century since its achievement millions of hearts were celebrating with one acclaim the memory of the man who had braved the hardships, and rigors and perils of war, to say nothing of the contumely of enemies and criticism of friends, to bring to his fellow-countrymen the boon voiced in that paper before him. The thought peirced Paul's heart like an arrow. Yes, he had had that privilege himself; and today he was shackled worse than any whom that patriot war had made free. A slave to Jed Thacker's "shack" with its bond of beer bottles, pipes, gambling and boon companions: — that had been his use of the gift of freedom. But think, the old voice whispered, — think of your peculiar trial and temptation. Would not most people sink under the discouragement of this special sacrifice? Let any one try those five years of common toil, with the discouragement of lost ideals: it would take a hero to bear up under them — and he had had the spirit of heroism effectually snuffed out. The "shack" and its allurements had been his only pastime — a man working as he had done, surely needed some recreation. As for taking up the struggle of retrieval now — well it was too late. The farm was all but ruined — spite of his toil; and as for himself, well, he had drifted too long n:>w, to pick up oars for the kind of pull it would take to head up stream. He knew, of course, all the old arguments for reform; his mother and others had preached them to him to his nauseation. Archibald Clay was in fact the only one of his old associates, who had not "felt to say a word" to him about his conduct; and Arch, of all people, had been the one to put him most to shame. Arch with his dogged persistence in living up to the least of his ideals, had brought the deep pangs that were rending him tonight. If only last night's fling at the "shack'' had been his winning, he might have had a chance to retrieve— but now, there would be but one way out of the debt— and to mortgage the farm meant to lose it. If he had not made it pay more than a living before, how was it to pay off a mortgage in future? His eye ran down the scroll in his hand. The penman had been more than skilled in his lost art; he had worked under the inspiration of the patriotic time of that struggle for independence. Paul had seen the

306 IMPR 0 VEMENT ERA . picture often, in his childhood, the tall, straight figure of the immortal commander in the boat on his perilous way across the river to surprise the enemy— but never before had it meant a message to himself. Think of the odds against that great soul in this struggle for human freedom! And the struggle had been for him— Paul Fletcher— as much as for the little band of colonists in that far time. The clock ticked on towards midnight; it lacked indeed but two minutes of the hour when Paul roused to note its voice. The dreaded holiday was spent. He watched the hands creep whilst the pendulum ticked out the last seconds of the day, a strange expression deepening in his face. Then suddenly, he threw up his hands. "The hero of this day earned me my freedom," he said aloud in a choked voice. "Please God, I will have it — and keep it." Early the next day Paul went down to the local newspaper with an advertisement. It stated that the Fletcher farm would be held for lease to the right tenant at reasonable terms and for a period included within three years. It was the time Paul had figured as being necessary to wipe out his gambling debt, with the salary he might be able to earn apart from the farm rental. This last, he was determined, should be put away for his mother. On his way home from the newspaper office he stopped at the town store and from its nondescript departments selected a strange medley of articles. All that day from the farm house resounded the tap of hammer and the swish of brush; and when nightfall came, some of the cheerless rooms had taken new aspect. A two days' thaw gave him his chance at the roof, and in that time a half dozen windows were redeemed from yawning gaps, a new gate swung from taut hinges, and a new doorstep displaced the rickety approach to the veranda. The advertisement in the Morning Record had set the town agog with curiosity, and the many people who passed and repassed the house, as if for visual corroboration, received it in the sight of the changes wrought by Paul's hands. The tenant for the farm appeared even before Paul was prepared; but a few days after the signing of the lease, Paul was in the capital city ready for the work he had mapped out. It had needed only his old school professor's guarantee of the fine ability he had evinced in the business coUege to win him a place; and once installed, his proficiency in bookkeeping wun him the firm's confidence. He heard occasionally from home in letters from Amos Stone, an old friend of his father's,

IN THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. 307 whose word of faith had done much to put him on his feet. But no word came from Alice; and often his heart hungered for a word to lighten the dreary routine of seemingly hopeless toil. He had given his word not to address her and he would keep it with the rest of the things he had set himself to do. There was scant pleasure in the path he had mapped out, save in his own satisfaction of fighting for the things worth while. His salary, outside of an economical living, dropped into the big gambling debt; and sometimes, when the voice of old temptations came to him in sights of the city's familiar vices, it was a hard battle,with loneliness on their side against him. Then one day came a letter which seemed to promise the overthrow of his whole scheme of redemption. It was from the farm tenant, stating that he had been sent by his company to Mexico, a change that had upset his own cherished plans. The lease, in fact, had been made a monthly one, in view of this possible emergency; and with only a month's notice to prepare for it all. This month passed without sign of a tenant; and on the first of July Paul left a substitute in his position, and went home to look after the farm. This vigilance he had promised himself, for his mother's sake. The home place seemed to Paul to be made over new, though no more than the mere needful care of the gardens and field was in evidence. The home fever surged strangely in Paul at sight of the young grass, and lettuce hedges, and all the sweet, succulent things of earth. As he came out into their freshness in the early mornings, the thought of his stuffy office and stuffier room at the cheap boarding house in the city seemed an actual nightmare. The first real yearning he had ever felt for the farm life with its outdoor activities and freedom, came to him — a vain dream now, in the light of hi.j sore needs. A homesick longing took possession of him to reap from the old place — his birthright— the redemption he had promised himself from all his past bondage. He lay through sleepless nights trying to plan a way, but always with the old hopelessness coming back to haunt — money. If he only had money. The thought and fever for it was on him often when he met some of the old familiar figures of Jed Thacker's "shack." An old temptation beckoned in the thought of some sudden spell of luck redeeming all things. Jed had made ineffectual attempts to bring Paul back to the old haunts. Jeers, and the allurement of exciting pastimes and possible fortune, were among the baits — but Paul's steady resolution held finally against them all. The attitude of his townspeople was itself an incentive. At first skeptical and distrustful, his old friends had kept note of his steadfast

308 IMPROVEMEN1 ERA. attempt to retrieve himself, and thanks to Archibald and a few other staunch standbys, had come to take him seriously and helped him by their trust. The way seemed long and dreary, stretching out as it did under the shadow of deht, and his scant salary, but one word whispering in his conscience kept him from going back. Freedom! It had been won for him — and it should be his to keep. Suddenly it all came to him in a flash, through a chance word dropped by Amos Stone, one day in his office. "We need a private school here where some of our farm boys who have kept at the grindstone can get a little learning without going up to the city and posing in classes for the amusement of the smarter ones,'' Amos had said. The very thing: why had he not thought of it before? The farm house with its many rooms would accommodate just such a proposition. He snatched at it eagerly, and in an hour's time with Amos' help had the whole scheme mapped. There was only one drawback — the money. It would take plenty of that to get the house into working shape, what with repairs and furniture. The drawback was met with Amos Stone's blunt kindness. "You'll have to raise the money with a mortgage, my boy, and raise it quick enough to get your place ship-shape before September. I'll give you more than any one else on it — and I'll advance five hundred dollars on it while you're writing down to get your mother's signature to the papers. It will all take time,and you can't afford to let grass grow on the enterprise. Your scheme looks practical to me and I'll back it with my confidence and help. You'll get all the boys in the county that have any grit to 'em, and you'd better get your advertisements out today, and then go up town and dicker for furniture. If the school don't pay fur it, you can let your rooms to'summer boarders next year, to help along." The newspaper office visited, and the legal papers on their way south, Paul went next to lay an important problem. His mother was to spend another year in Arizona, and this left the question of housekeeping to outside help. Martha Timsbury! If he could persuade her — It was easier than he had dared hope. The woman had been cook for the household in the farm's palmy days, and had retired on a competence acquired through her long faithfulness. She had yearned over Paul like one of her own blood — a devotion nurtured through his childhood, and his reform had been the joy of her maturer years. She

IN THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. 309 was, in fact, rejoiced to meet half way any effort of Paul's to redeem himself. "I've always said the true grit was there, if it was once struck," she beamed, "and I'd work the nails off my hands if I thought 'twould help to put you on your feet." The week's end brought a letter from his mother that gave Paul a night of black depression. It was his mother's patient acceptance of the act that meant perhaps the final overthrow of her dearest hope; and Paul, reading between the lines, saw the hard sacrifice of her ideal to his welfare. It brought up memories of his thoughtless acceptance of her many devotions, her suffering and sacrifice. He blushed to think of the menial toil he had permitted her to do, excusing himself for all on his plea of self -martyrdom. How blind and weak he had been! He made his trip to the city the next day, resigning his position with the town firm, and purchasing furniture. By the middle of August the place was trim from cellar to garret, and with Martha to keep things straight, seemed like a paradise. Several applications, too, had come, and by the first of October, when the school had been scheduled to open, a dozen young fellows met in the farm front-room and signed for "bed and board and schooling" for the winter term. By the first of November Paul had the attic fitted up with cots for his added pupils. The project was "paying:" and Paul, for the first time, worked with the will of love and loyalty to his profession. His pupils, young fellows ranging from nineteen to thirty, were mostly good material; and to see these fine-grained boys, deprived by circumsDance of the privilege or opportunity of school training, develop under the system he had planned, and which he carried out with all his old persistency of night and day devotion, was something which stirred his own ambition and manhood to higher effort. He had one struggle during the first term. Bert Allred, a young fellow of twenty-four years, up from one of the further counties, demurred at the house regulations which Paul had hung in the hall, and which covered manners as well as morals. It commenced one morning at breakfast,when Paul and the others at table had noted the resonance of Bert's mastication, the equal impartiality with which he used knife and fork in its process, and the haste in absorbing his victuals which betokened almost a wild fear that some unseen presence hovered near at hand ready to snatch them from his plate. Nothing was said at table, but after the meal Paul handed Bert one of the house cards, with the list of required regulations. In it

310 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Paul had emphasized emphatically the table manners of his boarders; the aim of the establishment to keep a high standard even in minute deportment, and the request that each lend his effort to keep up this aim. Bert read the rules in Paul's presence with a vicious light coming into his eye. He made no comment, but at the noon meal his exaggeration of his previous performance in mastication, his unkempt hair and collar, and a general disregard of the house rules, was the entertainment of the entire table. This was repeated at supper, and the others, who had fallen willingly intj line with Paul's effort, watched the young principal curiously to see the outcome. Paul made no visible sign; but an hour later he sent a request to Allred to come for a chat in his room. In reality he feared the worst. Stubborn and unyielding in disposition, and with all the native contempt for anything that savored of "finicky, hightoned folks," Bert would be a hard case. The look of doggedSstubbornness was in his face as he entered the room, and he stretched himself out on the sofa with an exaggeration of indifference and waited for Paul to speak. The first words took the sneer from his lips. "You expect to go on a mission some time, don't you, Bert?" Paul said. "That's the chief reason I am here," said Bert. "Want to fit yourself to make a creditable showing out there in the world where you will be sent?" "That's the straight ticket," said Bert, decisively; and then as Paul was silent, went on: "I came here to get enough learning to hold my own in the world, and do credit to my religion. 1 didn't set out to go to any girl's seminary, or learn seminary manners." "You looked over the rules of the establishment, did you?" "First thing; and made up my mind right then I wouldn't be locoed into no dandified manners. I didn't come way over from Grenville county to waste time on fancy etiquette." "Bert, you said just now, you wanted to fit yourself to be a cedit to the Church. There's no thing on earth that will stand for it like personal example, conduct, appearance, — manners. The boys who go abroad as missionaries meet all sorts and conditions of people, — the worst and the best. We want to convert the best as well as the others." "I don't just see what bearing missionary work has on the matter in hand," interrupted Bert. "It has this to do with it that means — everything. There isn't a thing in manners or morals, or anything else, that the gospel doesn't include. We should be careful of its demands in every jot and tittle.

IN THE LIGHT OF PATRIOTISM. 311 You remember the chief of our tenets, 'If there is anything lovely or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.' " "You're stretching your argument to a thread,'' said Bert stubbornly. "It's too thin for me." "It's this, Bert," said Paul, "there's a certain standard set by the best minds in all things- living, education — culture. It's imperative on all of us to line ours by the highest in any direction. Manners are more important things in the world's intercourse than we think." "I don t see any use in 'em — and never could," spurted Bert. "Whenever I see anybody finicky in them ways, I always take it they ain't good for much else." Paul laughed good humoredly. "When you get to reading history, Bert, you'll be surprised to know that some big things in the world's destiny have turned on the 'finicky' things. Many a courtier in a king's court has failed in a life's quest because of the depth of his obeisance to his monarch. To come nearer home, I heard that one of our missionaries abroad, who had been successful in interesting a family of good birth and breeding, in the gospel, failed with them finally, because when they took him into their home as a guest his manners were so offensive that the family became convinced that if the people he represented were such as he, they wished never to be associated with them. The poor fellow had had no one to tell him that the uses of a handkerchief are essentially private, and in a dining room the next thing to barbarism." Bert stared in silence. "A girl told me at college," went on Paul, "a story that I've always remembered. Her sister had been taken with one of the professors there — a man of fine education and character. Everybody expected a match, but suddenly the affair broke up. " 'What's up with Mellinger and Bessie?' I asked her sister." " 'Oh, she had him down to dinner Sunday for the first time.'" "'Well?' I asked, as si estopped conclusively. " 'She thought she couldn't stand a piece of live pork opposite her at table for life.' " Bert sat still, silently staring. "You see, it all counts, Bert. The minutest trifles spell big things sometimes — and there's nothing like being on the right side. Besides, I've always some idea like this — that we as a people should show the best standards in everything. We're a light on a hill, you know, that cannot be hid. There isn't a thing about us that doesn't count— and we want to be mighty careful it all counts on the right side."

312 IMPR 0 VEMEN T ERA. Both were silent a moment, then Bert rose to go. The next morning at breakfast the change was so notable that all knew the best side had won. That the inmates were satisfied with the regime at the Fletcher Institute was signified by the expressions of all at their departure in the early spring; and not one but declared his intention to return the following autumn. The nearness of the town to the mountains made the Fletcher place, as Amos Stone had predicted, a favorite summer retreat for people from the capital. Martha proved her devotion by staying on, and the "Fletcher Farm table" became a name to conjure by. A bigger piece of luck, too, than this, came in an offer for lots on the homestead, the three or four acres furnishing plenty of room for segregation. Paul staked them into lots, keeping a plentiful piece of garden and lawn for the homestead, and wrote the plan to his mother. She was, as usual, quick to meet Paul's desires; and as he knew this plan a better one than further attempt to make a living from the farm, he went on with the work. Only one piece was reserved from sale besides the home spot. That was a little lot bordering the clear canyon stream with clumps of big cottonwood making plentiful shade and verdure. As things looked now, he might never need it; but if Alice came home unchanged, and Malcolm Steel's confidence returned, a cosy home might some time nestle under the big trees — which should not know alien feet. Paul's improvement had made the farmland "desirable," especially for the "summer homes" now blossoming into a fad with the wealthier city people, and it was not long before the available space was taken up. Another winter's work with the school finished the mortgage and gambling debts, and with this cleared, and the Fletcher prospects humming, Paul sent for his mother. There were only two of them to know what that greeting and the summing up of all Paul's effort meant. Redemption showed in every line of Paul's face, and every detail of his charge, and the tried mother came back to the most absolute content she had known in years. There was another homecoming later; and when Paul left Malcolm Steele after their long talk, it was to guide Alice's footsteps to the spot under the big cottonwoods where they would build their nest. Salt Lake City, Utah.