---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Spencer, Josephine
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 12
number: 4
published: 1909-02
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Spencer, Josephine, "In the Light of Patriotism," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 4 (February 1909): 302–312.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1204unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1204unse
start_page: 302
end_page: 312
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-02)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1204unse
  publication_year: 1909
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# In the Light of Patriotism

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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."

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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.