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GoprightN° COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: ie is s re aN Er al 4 eae eed y . ae THE LIFE WORTH LIVING OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS DIXON, Jr:: THE CLANSMAN THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS THE ONE WOMAN “ONE GREAT PASSION OF MY LIFE WAS THE DREAM OF A BEAUTIFUL HOME” The LIFE WORTH LIVING A Personal Experience By THOMAS DIXON, JR. Author of ‘‘ The Leopard’s Spots,’’ ‘‘ The Clansman,”’ Etc. Illustrated with photographs by the Author NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1905 anoaae LIBRARY of CONGAESS Two Copies decerved MAY 24 1905 . Gopyrigznt cauy VRaAy sF- 19 OF GLASSTA kXe Nor 44+7 O 49 COPY B. 9 C9 4 Copyright, 1905, by a be | Thomas Dixon, Jr. Published, May, 1905 , All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian, . @2tesne oo TO Gordan and Chomas MY SONS AND COMRADES IN THE LIFE WORTH LIVING " Wan eh I. \i 4, CONTENTS CHAPTER ; PAGE I. Dreams and Disillusion . . : I II. In Old Tidewater Virginia : ; 8 III. Beside Beautiful Waters . : : 16 IV. The Music of the Seasons : 4 23 V. The Fellowship of Dogs . ; : 29 VI. Some Sins of Nature : ; ; 4I VII. The Shouts of Children . : : 52 VIII. First Lessons in Life : 4 ‘ 64 IX. Along Shining Shores ‘ A . 72 X. The Breath of the Southern Seas. 89 XI. In the Haunts of Wild Fowl . . 107 XII. The Frozen Fountain é : ; 130 XIII. The City’s Lambent Flame . : 135 XIV. What is Life? . EMME ops PRAY Dok 137 Pa ar: pet Pitti? by De Oe va tn LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS **One great passion of my life was the dream of a beautiful home . - = = Frontispiece FACING PAGE ‘Just a nineteen-foot slit in a block of scorched mud with a brownstone veneer” . . ** A stately Colonial home two hundred years old” ““The Old Dominion steamer has an artistic little pier on the upperend of the lawn” . . “In the high hills rise cool streams of fresh water to turn our mill-wheels” . . eG net Ghd SAV VR eS lag ea “‘The grass of the lawn rolls sheer into the Gead tine on tae salt. tide 75) 050 ol aie a Ae wend! tom «the arn) 2) 6) 20) eS BSR ‘The caks and elms I love best” ©. - 2... “Through the shadows of the trees the waters UES Mec bi iat owy| eich Bb eahc e ES A ?he/author’at work in his cabin»... 5... “The drives in summer along the country roads arerot, Surprising beauty? Big | ine laws never quite. bare” )iyi 2 >. “The dog is the most faithful, the most lovable, the most companionable of all the animals Mintiassociate With Man’ 6s ee 1x Io a LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS—Continued FACING PAGE Bob on a close point .< . The log-cabin study on the ease of the nee Sailor and the boys in private theatricals— ‘The Mystery of Sleep 77) eo) 04) Genes The inevitable at eM A a y ‘We have a beautifully curved sand beach on the lawn” I i NE I ame et daa ‘‘All have saddles and ride like veteran cavalry- men” ere) aie sie” a Cae a gi ee ‘‘Another pleasure of my boys is the work of the Irae at. Bi eat *T believe in the gun for a mort Tony 28 hee ae i‘ The/first man was ‘a hunter’ 3 eee “‘He learns that winds and tides have souls” ‘ Aeway ‘over the’ endless) marsh “pio Agee ‘Place our decoys on the edge of the receding surf” Sh sea d Ogre hat \ SS ee ‘Sometimes the sky is black with them” . The Dixie NENy eRe URE Sit SL” Bah) ‘“‘T never knew how much beautiful wrenties there was in winter” Ms fs 4 ° . ‘George and I crouched among them” . . ‘““We are homeward bound now, with her big yacht ensign set aft and her colours at her — masthead ’”’ " i i a ‘ ‘The ermine robe of the North” .- 5 ‘ 32/ 340 38° 48 « 54° 56° 58 60 62/ 66 « (O° Io2/ a a THE LIFE WORTH LIVING ae ah iahig if ta J Lvl i ‘ ie AA us Ri “ph et a sath ig Kae ne hy yo ne The Life Worth Living CHAPTER I DREAMS AND DISILLUSION Whether life is really worth living depends largely on where you try to live it. The one great passion of my life was the dream of a beautiful home. This home- dream crept slowly into the soul long before the face of a woman came to smile at all other hopes and fears. It required no pleading to make her feel its beauty. She, too, had seen it in a vision long ago. Then tiny baby feet came trooping into a cottage before the money was in the bank to build this dream. Another passion of my boyhood was the 2 The Life Worth Living hope of life in a great city. From the dis- tance of the farm this vision was radiant with the splendours of wealth and power. I dreamed of its boulevards, its parks, its palatial homes, and its gleaming lights. The lambent flame of its distant life filled the horizon with the glory of an endless sunrise. So in the natural course of events New York swept us into its seething tide. We struggled bravely to save both these dreams. First we rented a modest little slit- | in-a-wall fourteen feet wide, far uptown, for which we paid one thousand dollars to the landlord annually, and five hundred, more or less, to the elevated road for the right to be jabbed in the ribs while we held to a strap to get there. Then we tried a nice “airy apartment” downtown. It had six “rooms.” One opened on the street, four looked down into a dark well, and the kitchen opened on an iron grillwork that gave it the appearance x” «AuVd ALING UAAAN SI NMVT AHL Dreams and Disillusion 4 of a jail. The children were omnipotent and omnipresent. By the record in the family Bible we had only three. But they managed to get into every room in that flat at the same minute, and their name was legion. We tried boarding with a nice old lady who had an eye that could chill the most turbulent child into silence. Our little girl took pneumonia, and we had two doctors and two trained nurses in that boarding house for six weeks. Then the suburban home. We bought a vacant lot, with a waterfront of sixty feet, at Bensonhurst, and built on it. When fin- ished it cost sixteen thousand dollars, and it took most of the time of one man to keep the tin cans, driftwood, dead cats and dogs off that sixty feet of waterfront. The first time I tried to go home on Sun- day, I got jammed in a cheerful crowd that started to Coney Island by way of Benson- 4 The Life Worth Living hurst, gave it up after two hours, and didn’t go home till morning. The first big snow- storm that came in the winter buried the trolley lines, and I didn’t see my wife and children for two days. As the telephone wires were down I could only hope for the best. I sold the place to a bigger fool, after a patient search of four weeks for him. The ease with which I got out of that house, with only the loss of the carpets and window shades, I shall always regard as a mark of the special favour of God. I bought a five-acre place on Staten Island on the top of the highest hill. It had a grand view of the sea, Sandy Hook and the shipping. ‘The mosquitoes were so thick, so enormous, and so venomous, that they could attack and kill a horse if left to their mercy. Their fang was so poisonous that when they bit one of our boys his little legs and arms would swell as though a snake had struck him; and at the end of the summer he Dreams and Disillusion 5 drooped into a deadly malarial fever from which we barely saved him alive, but with both legs paralyzed for life. With the shadow of this sorrow darkening the world, we sold the place to the first bidder, and tear- fully returned to the city. By this time we were convinced that the only way to really live in New York was to buy a decent home near Central Park, what- ever the cost, and settle for life. We found it after a search of two months. It was located on West Ninety-fourth Street, within the block facing the park. We had a delightful time spending a thou- sand dollars decorating it to our own taste. It was a neat brownstone front, nineteen feet wide, in a solid block of similar houses. It had a high stoop, iron bars on the basement windows through which we looked from the dining table, and a kitchen behind this dining-room opening into the paved cat-yard 19x20. The floor above contained a narrow 6 The Life Worth Living hall, parlour and library. The next story had two bedrooms and a bathroom, and the top floor had two “large’’ rooms and two small ones inside. The wood was hard, the man- tels and chandeliers pretty, the fireplaces poetic looking, with iron logs to imitate wood, and it cost us twenty-five thousand dollars. | The taxes, insurance and repairs still held a fixed charge on the place of about $350 annually. A house in New York is the easiest thing a tax-gatherer has to manage. Only one man in ten ever dares to own one. The others keep moving. Within six months this dream had faded. Our home was just a nineteen-foot slit in a block of scorched mud with a brownstone veneer in front. Our children were penned in its narrow prison walls through the long winters, and forbidden to walk on the grass in the cold, dreary spring. The doctor came to see us every week. a ‘JUST A NINETEEN-FOOT SLIT IN A BLOCK OF SCORCHED MUD WITH A BROWNSTONE VENEER” inte a eae Wa) ig * Pa Ree tet 1 iy bb ON bath : hi Sean! | pent y ' eh Teel lie i A Wats” eat a Dreams and Disillusion ” The disillusioning was complete. We had stayed in New York eleven years, moved twelve times, worn out three sets of house- hold goods, and aided in the revival of the carpet trade, before we found out what ailed us. At last we knew that the stamping-ground of the great herd might be a good place for trade, but that God never meant for man to build a home and rear children in it. And then the longing for the country life in which we had both been reared came over us with resistless power. The smell of green fields and wild flowers, the breath of the open sea, the music of beautiful waters, the quiet of woodland roads, the kindly eyes of ani- mals we had known, the memory of sun and moon and star long lost in the glare of elec- tric lights, began to call. We sat down in our little narrow parlour, with its cast-iron firelogs and porcelain taper chandeliers, and cried over it all. CHAPTER II In OLp TIDEWATER VIRGINIA We moved to Tidewater Virginia, the home of Captain John Smith, the oldest settlement in America and yet the most primitive, the most beautiful and least known spot in our continent—a bit of wild nature slumbering beside the pathway of the rushing life of the Atlantic seaboard. Here we realized the first dream of life, a stately Colonial home two hundred years old, called Elmington Manor, situated on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Its ivory pillars flash their welcome from both sides of the house through the shadows of huge trees ° that shade its wide lawn. The farm has five hundred acres, three hundred and fifty under cultivation and one ,, j * fr 1 13 : ® . f 1 5 é ) 7 ea Z r i WW $ . - —_. es Rad Z . a 4 \ i ‘ : £ 1 p* Y af - a } ive ere Ae ise i ~ 7 wie. | v cae ih re aarp The Fellowship of Dogs 33 marry him, I knew I was doing a wicked thing to disobey you, but—we eloped.” “Why, Becky, I’m astonished at you!” She hung her head and stammered inco- herently, but looking up with a smile said: “Yes, sir, but you haven’t seen ’em— come, look at ’em. They’re every one of them raving beauties. You see, I was so in love with Bob, they all took after him. Not one of them seems to have a drop of setter blood in him. They all have the short silky hair of their father and the most beautiful spots!” It was true. Every one of them was a pointer and the cutest little fellows I ever saw. When Becky saw I was pleased she began to sob. “There, there, Becky, it’s all right now; we will make fine hunters out of them, and no- body will ever suspect they are droppers.” “You see, sir, I’ve been so lonely since 3 34 The Life Worth Living Sailor’s death I had to marry again, and I must say Bob is the handsomest dog I ever knew, and he can’t help that he’s a pointer.” “Very well, I'll provide for your children, and see that they are properly educated. If any one tries to insult you “ your set, let me know and J’ll protect you.” “Tt was not that I had forgotten Sailor, sir, but he was dead and I was lonely.”’ “Yes, I know; it’s an old, old story. You have good precedents.” Becky knew that I had loved her former mate, Sailor, above all the dogs I had ever known. They were both born in North Carolina, the home of fine field dogs. Sailor was a beautiful white and black Llewellyn setter, whose white tail flying above the grass looked like a sail skimming the sea, and from this he got his name. He could find more birds than any four dogs that ever went into the field with him, and do it quicker. He was a fine watchdog. When . , | } RES LOG-CABIN STUDY ON THE EDGE OF THE LAWN ey COMA K vs Pury “ The Fellowship of Dogs 35 I was away from home he slept in his mis- tress’ room and I believe he would have torn an intruder to pieces at a single word from her. Sailor had strange powers of observation for a dog, and many special likes and dislikes. He could spot a crank or a fool among a gang of workmen and would watch his opportu- nity tosnaphim. We had at one time thirty- five workingmen here every day. Some of them stayed months. Among them was a poor white man who was a quack doctor, a quack preacher, and a quack workman. Sailor spotted him by some subtle power of reasoning the first day he landed and tried to bite him. That man stayed around our place tinkering at various jobs for two months, and the dog managed to tear his pantaloons three times and got one good crack at his leg, and he was never known to disturb any other workman. When he first arrived from North Caro- 36 The Life Worth Living lina, he was two years old and not very good looking. I got him in the spring and had to keep him all summer before I could try him. I didn’t like his movements and in general thought him a failure. He was passionately fond of a horse—a rather unusual trait for a bird-dog. So I sent him to the stable and never allowed him to see the inside of the house. When the first of November came, I took him out in the field for a trial with little faith in his ability. | The way he swept that field fairly took my breath! The other dogs simply were not in his class. He was the whole show. He would circle a hedgerow like a white streak of light, sud- denly dart out into the open, his beautiful head flung high in the air, and have the birds before the other dogs had started. I hugged him. When we returned home that night he knew the change in his status a The Fellowship of Dogs EY; in that household. He walked proudly into the library and lay down on the rug at my feet without waiting for an invitation. He knew the place belonged to him. Sailor and Becky had only been married six months, and their first brood of puppies were three months old when he developed an ugly growth on one of his legs. I took him to a hospital in New York near Herald Square and a distinguished English dog surgeon per- formed an operation and removed the growth. He did well with the wound and in ten days was ready to go home. How he wept for joy when I came to take him, told me of his suffering under the knife, and how he longed for the sight of my face and the sound of my voice! I explained to him that I didn’t come because I couldn’t bear to see him suffer. “And, Master,” he sobbed, “the awful loneliness these ten days I was getting well, and you only stayed a minute or two! I had 38 The Life Worth Living to endure the vile talk of these ignorant and degenerate city dogs. All they know is the latest brand of vile dog biscuits that I wouldn’t give a cur to eat, or about some collar they wore or a new coat for a party, or the last fight they had in Central Park on Sunday. It made me sicker than ever. Not one of them ever saw a rabbit or a quail or a woodcock. I asked one of them—a real setter too—if the dogs up here were good on a back stand or did they crowd much. The fool didn’t know what I was talking about and yelled back at me: “Listen at the hay- seed! He don’t know a street car from a milk wagon! Wow, Wow!” And the whole mob of the ill-mannered brutes yelled at me, until I crawled back in a corner, lay down and cried for shame that I was a dog. I’m glad we’re going home. I’m sick for the open fields and the cool water of the springs and the branches, and I’ve dreamed day and night of the birds.” SAILOR AND THE BOYS IN PRIVATE THEATRICALS— ““THE MYSTERY OF SLEEP” oy " oo eT ’ BY an. “al eke i j i i Vie rl The Fellowship of Dogs 39 When the cabman was assisting Sailor down stairs and into the cab, the doctor gravely whispered: “T’m sorry to tell you, sir, but your dog can’t live long. He has a tumor developing in the groin which will kill him within a year or two. Hecan hunt all right up to the day it strikes a vital organ and then he will go.” He seemed so happy, with his head out the cab window sniffing contemptuously at the poor little chained and collared dogs he saw on the streets! Now and then he would lick my hand with a grateful dog kiss for what I had done for him and for the joy of home that was in his soul. How could I tell him the fatal secret that Death had already laid his hand on his silken hair and claimed him as his own? A little while longer we would smell the fields together and our hearts thrill with the joy of the chase, and he would go. I won- dered where! And my heart was heavy. 40 The Life Worth Living We had two more glorious seasons together, and as the end drew nearer he seemed brighter, swifter and more human in his intelligence. The second summer after the doctor’s ver- dict, he suddenly dropped, one day, under the shadow of a great elm on the lawn. Death had called him, and he crouched and shivered at my feet afraid of his new Master. I tenderly smoothed his beautiful hair. He looked up into my face at last, his great soft eyes full of a strange terror. Unable to bear it, I started to leave him. He staggered to his feet and tried to follow me, took three steps forward, stumbled and fell. CHAPTER VI SomME SINS oF NATURE Where else on earth is the general cussed- ness of things so vividly displayed as on a farm? The farm is the great School of Life, and no man’s early education is fairly begun until he has taken a course on it. I tried to keep out of farming when I bought my country home. An early train- ing behind the plough was my inheritance as a boy. I knew it was not all poetry. The estate was in the hands of executors for saleasa whole. In vain I pleaded for the lawn and. garden and fifty acres to tinker with. The price fixed for the house and lawn and fifty acres was just as large as for the whole place of five hundred acres. I didn’t 42 The Life Worth Living understand the sarcasm of this till long after. The temptation could not be resisted. There was a lordly suggestion about “broad acres,”’ and there was a challenge in the soil and sky that roused my fighting blood. I longed to conquer, subdue and make it fruitful. Besides, I had a sneaking idea that I knew more about farming than any farmer of my acquaintance. All that was necessary was a large opportunity to demonstrate the breadth of my genius. I got it. First, I determined to get rich on fancy truck farming. The people of Gloucester, who had no rail- roads, were slow and ultra-conservative. I determined to hustle after the manner of the Yankee and the Westerner, and show them how to do things. I put in fifty acres of Rockyford canta- loupes and ten acres in cabbage. I had no idea how many cabbage plants could be set in ten acres of ground before. Some Sins of Nature 43 I knew after I paid for the labour. I had a gang of men at work a week on itt, after patient and careful preparation of the soil with the most expensive commercial fertilizer. In the winter I studied the weather with nervous fear for those thousands of precious cabbage plants. They pulled through well, with the loss of about twenty per cent. In the early spring the worms and bugs and lice in succession attacked them and we lost twenty percent. more. But by rapid working and high fertilizing we pushed them ahead of these pests. Then they began to go crazy and run up to seed and blossom in- stead of making cabbage heads. Five per cent. more were lost in these seed stalks. At last the day came for marketing. It was a day of excitement. They were selling in the New York market for $2.25 a crate, by the papers, and that meant a neat profit on the field. I began to pity my neighbours who were still struggling with common farming. A4 The Life Worth Living My triumph was brief. I got 75 cents a crate for my first shipment. They cost a dollar at the most conservative estimate. The next shipment brought 25 cents a crate, and the next one was held for the freight charges and dumped by the transportation company. I sent the ploughs into the field and tenderly turned under for fertilizer my crop of cabbage over which I had toiled and yearned and dreamed. I quietly determined to let somebody else raise cabbage. My cantaloupes grew beautifully. I’m especially fond of a fine cantaloupe and I determined, for the sheer love of the thing, to grow the finest melon New York ever tasted. I did it. The first shipment, how- ever, gave me achill. Instead of $3 a crate I had expected, I got an average of 85 cents a crate. They cost me $1.25. The next shipment brought 50 cents, and the ‘next 2 5 cents. I had nervous prostration and went to Some Sins of Nature 4S New York to study the distribution problem in connection with production. I found my commission man was also a retail dealer, and that he sold my melons to himself and then sold them to his trade, and that this was the rule, not the exception. I found my melons in the refrigerator of a great hotel, and the steward informed me they were the finest ever seen on the New York market. He didn’t know why I was inter- ested and I let him talk. He told me he paid the commission merchant to whom I had shipped them $3.50 a crate. He was paying me 25 cents. I had a pleasant interview with this com- mission-retailer who was kindly assisting me to bankruptcy. His explanation was so beautiful, so plausible, so incontrovertible I had to thank him and ask his pardon for dis- turbing him while he was figuring out his profits. He said the melons were so roughly handled by the steamship company (our Old 46 The Life Worth Living Dominion Line is one of the most careful freighters in America) and arrived in such bad order, he had to knock open four or five crates to make one fit for a first-class hotel. I apologized for putting him to so much trouble, sent my agent direct to the hotels and took orders for all I could supply at $3 a crate. Once more I smiled at the mental reflec- tion of my eagle eye and massive brain and fell to pitying my neighbours. The new arrangement went forward well. I had shipped a thousand dollars’ worth of melons and was figuring out the gross earn- ings and the net profits and planning great outlays for the following year. A drought struck us, killed all the old vines in a few days and ripened prematurely every melon in the three fields I had planted for succession. They were not fit to eat: I cancelled the hotel orders, bought some hogs and fed them on thirty acres of cantaloupes, that cost me $2,000 in cold cash. Some Sins of Nature 47 I retired from the trucking business, and decided that hay was good enough for me. I built a big hay barrack and put in a trolley fork and seeded the farm in peas, clover and grasses. In six weeks after the barn was built, a storm blew it down. I cheerfully rebuilt it. We jammed it full of pea hay in one end and timothy and clover inthe other. Besides, we had every other barn full and some stacked in the field. At last, I saw daylight. The hay under cover was selling at the barn door for enough to pay all expenses and give me $1,000 in a dividend. Again I shook hands with myself and wondered why the farmersof Gloucester county didn’t have sense enough to raise hay. When I opened the big new barn to sell the first load out of the pile of ton on ton where my profits lay, I found it had rotted beneath the surface. It cost. me fifty dollars to clear that barn of hay. Then an epidemic of a strange horse 48 The Lije Worth Living disease that no veterinary surgeon ever saw or heard of struck us, and carried off $500 worth of farm horses in two weeks. I had never believed the wild stories about the modern negro farm labourer in the South till I tried it. In three years I’ve hired over one hundred negro farm hands and dis- charged all save three of them, who are first- class men. I tried patiently to teach one I kept six months to do a few simple neces- sary things with modern farm machinery. At the end of six months he broke three mowers in one day on a beautiful level piece of clover. I discharged him, and that night lost twenty dollars’ worth of harness out of my barn. | 3 Large groups of my African neighbours keep horses, dogs and children and yet are opposed to a strenuous life of systematic and constant labour. I’m now spending cheerfully $500 on as ee Ae @ ses in se THE INEVITABLE Some Sins of Nature 49 fences. I’ve determined to raise cattle. Will the fever strike them, I wonder? Who knows? The experience of these three years, in which my total farm losses have reached about $7,000, has given me a feeling of ten- derness and sympathy for the farmer I never had before. Who can measure the sum of his anguish through the years as he watches the fleeting clouds in the brazen heat of summer and sees no sign of rain, knowing that every moment of that heat is burning to ashes the hopes he has cherished for his loved ones? With me farming is a dissipation. I am willing to spend my hard-earned money in this game with Fate. It is gambling. The cruelty and sheer brutality of Nature fasci- nate me—she who has no ear to hear, no heart to pity, no arm to save the weak, knows no conventions of morals or qualms of conscience, breeds and kills by the million while her eternal life rolls on forever. 4 50 The Life Worth Living But when I look on a little check sent in for a year’s struggle, not large enough to pay for the labour expended, when I look on a dead field parching in the August sun, gaze on the ruins of a storm-wrecked barn, see men dumping ton on ton of spoiled hay, or gaze on the carcass of a horse as they drag him away for burial, and think of what this means to a man whose bread depends on it, the pity and the pathos of it all over- whelms me. Back of the serene beauty of Nature I see her tragic cruelty. Man must obey her laws or die. Alas, how few of us know her laws! Yet there is something supremely fasci- nating in this fight with sun and storm, earth and air, their mysterious moods and myriads of swarming lives. Man has not been bap- tized into the life of our planet until he has felt the challenge and tested the sinews of his soul in this combat. There is something still more stirring, too, 1 ii { ‘ WK i i Some Sins of Nature 51 in the great human struggle pending between the American farmer, the most intelligent, aggressive and powerful Producer in the world, and the forces of Distribution. At present the distributer gets it all in the long run. It requires more brain and moral fibre, muscle and soul patience, to successfully run a large farm to-day than to conduct any other enterprise of modern civilization. And town-bred dudes have been known to sneer at “hayseeds.”’ CHAPTER VII THE SHOUTS OF CHILDREN I believe it is a crime to rear a child in New York city, or any great city. The man who is imprisoned in this living tomb by business, may plead a fair excuse, yet it is none the less a crime. It is a physical and spiritual impossibility to rear a normal human being under the conditions which surround child-life in the modern city. His earth is merely a huge cobblestone with asphalt patches. There is no sun or moon or star. Day and night are one... The seasons disappear. Artificiality is the rule, and Nature becomes a synonyme for sin. I shall never forget the sight of five hun- dred city waifs I ran into one hot July night EE The Shouts of Children 53 as I was hurrying through the car shed of the Pennsylvania Railroad to catch the train for my home. A philanthropist had given a mission society the money to send these five hun- dred poor children, who never saw a green field or sat beside beautiful waters, out into the country for two weeks. Poor little old wizen-faced men and women, they didn’t know how to laugh or play! If they had been going to a funeral, they could not have been more serious. The word country had no meaning for them. Who can measure the tragedy of these millions of tramping child feet crowding one another into the grave without one glimpse of this wonderful world through which they have passed? I do not know of a single man of any force in modern civilization whose character was developed in a great city. President Roose- velt is the only man I can recall of any 54 The Life Worth Living world prominence to-day who was born in a” great city, and he became a man because he got out of it, and put himself in touch with Nature. Pear | My children were prisoners in New York. In Old Virginia they find life and freedom. There the doctor came every week, here once a year is enough. We have no signs to ‘‘keep off the grass.’ The lawn is theirs, and on its open greensward or beneath its spreading elms and oaks every game that can tempt a child’s heart they can play from year’s end to year’s end. Here they learn to watch for the first signs of life in spring. We have a boy whose eye discovers the first ripening strawberry, cherry, raspberry, melon and vegetable. Long before we think of looking, his keen little eyes have found them, and his swift bare feet come bounding to his mother as he holds the treasure aloft in triumph, | esse. eS eee ee a eo i <= a © ““WE HAVE A BEAUTIFULLY CURVED SAND BEACH ON THE LAWN” Pes “if ae urs) ia at ay The Shouts of Children S5 ~The whole round of country life is a thrill- ing daily drama for a child. When tired of play he explores the barn in search of hen’s nests, and finds them in the most unheard of places, sometimes under the floor, some- times in the hay rack far up near the ceiling. He has a duck house of his own at the barn, shuts his ducks up every night and keeps them there till eight or nine o’clock in the morning to be sure of their eggs. After Mrs. Duck has laid, he hustles them off to the creek to feed on bugs and worms and fid- dlers and fish-eggs. It is astonishing how many bird’s nests that boy can find on the lawn and in the thick hedgerows around the garden and orchard. At first he would rob them all. But it was easy to teach him how much more fun he could get listening to the songs of mockingbirds, watching them sit and hatch, feed their babies and teach them to fly, than by breaking up their nests. Now 56 The Life Worth Living he guards these nests with jealous care. The mockingbird, the wren, and song spar- row, the redbird and bluebird, catbird and thrush, hear his soft footfall without dis- tress. His life has become larger and his heart bigger. He watched a tiny sparrow build her nest in the grass this spring close beside the path- way to the Steamer’s Pier. He saw the first egg and the last, and then the brooding mother, and then the little birds, with grow- ing interest. He kept the dogs and the pup- pies away and guarded her with zealous care. Just as the bird babies were feathering and nearly ready to fly they made such a big houseful, some beast, a bird of prey, a rat or a crow perhaps, found them. As we went to the Pier at boat time they were all right, and the mother was chirping with pride in the tree above. When we returned, in half an hour, the nest was torn from its perch in the grass and every bird gone. The mother { y fi ¥ ‘ x f i es ee ee SO ““ALL HAVE SADDLES AND RIDE LIKE VETERAN CAVALRYMEN” The Shouts of Children 57 was crying as though her heart were broken. And then a boy’s eyes grew dim. Who can weigh the value of such incidents in the shap- ing of a human soul?. How many brass bands, monkeys and hand organs would it take to compensate for their loss? When the children are tired of the land, the sea calls. We have a beautifully curved sand beach on the lawn that invites for a bath, and row- boat and sailboat are always nodding their friendly challenge tethered to their pier. Somebody is always fishing in sight, and the crabs in. the water’s edge are a standing chal- lenge. The horses and mules, colts and puppies, cows and calves are far more inter- esting to our children in their daily life than the wild animals of a circus. Daily life is a continuous performance in which the child is both audience and ringmaster. My riding mare’s last year’s colt I gave to my little girl When she went to boarding 58 The Life Worth Living school, in every letter home were anxious inquiries about her pet. It is her special joy morning and evening to feed and curry and brush that colt. The first thing she did when she got home was to spring from the carriage and throw her arms around his neck. She is now profoundly considering the prob- lem of whether she will make a riding horse of him, or break him to shafts, or both. All three of the children have saddles and ride horseback like veteran cavalrymen. We think nothing of sending our ten-year-old on the fleetest saddle mare eight or ten miles on an errand. They love the handsome thoroughbred cows, too, watch their calves grow from fluffy wobble-legs into big capering year- lings, and soon learned that one breed of cows do not give sweet milk and another breed buttermilk. The puppies, perhaps, interest children more than any other animals. I suppose — ““ANOTHER PLEASURE OF MY BOYS IS THE WORK OF THE TRAPPER” wir ir { "4 J = law * - ? we Sa) 4 L iy 4 > + iF onl : » » i ? é 4 i 1 UJ hj ; ' ee j 4 ’ j r } . - 4 as, ae tr5 yer ; epi Meni The Shouts of Children 59 this is because puppies are so closely kin to children in their thoughts and ways. With them life is all play and fun and mischief. Two pups can think up more mischief in a day than two children. One of them will be quietly sleeping in the sun, and the other one, browsing around the yard, will suddenly discover something of immense interest. He runs straight to his sleeping brother, wakes him, tells him about it, and off they go. A pup needs more whipping than any animal I know, if given the open lawn and field in which to grow. He will chew everything in reach, including chickens, ducks, turkeys, and especially sheep. I’ve lost two sets of puppies in the past year on account of sheep. A sheep is the most tantalizing thing that ever looms on the horizon of a dog’s life. When a sheep sees a dog, he exhibits first a most intense | curiosity, lifting his head high in the air and standing stock still. When the dog makes a 60 The Life Worth Living movement forward, or sidewise, with or without any idea of further acquaintance with the sheep, the whole flock break and run as though the devil with an army of fiends were after them. The temptation to chase is simply beyond the power of any mere pup to resist, if he has passed the age of chewing gum shoes. I don’t blame them. If I were a pup, I’d chase sheep. When a pup once gets a taste of this royal sport there is but one remedy, and that is to cut his tail off just behind his ears, or send him to the city. The first remedy is less cruel than the second, and is soon over with. A puppy fairly grown, with the sheep habit well fixed, has been known to kill fifty sheep in a night. He never eats them, but just kills for the fun of the thing. I paid my neighbour for four lambs one of my pups killed, and on the fifth occasion the farmer happened on the ground with a shot gun and persuaded him not to do so any BE be fe) a 4 < = aa eo) Z < o4 je) a Z =) ) ee) ee e a ca) > = _ ca ioe) — 6é ip a ’ ane! 2 wobritg | fw Neate ie The Shouts of Children 61 more. I mourned, but couldn’t complain. I don’t like sheep. They trouble dogs. I bought a small flock for my lawn just to train the pups. Becky and Bob’s family have grown up from the cradle with these sheep and never molest them. — ; Another pleasure of my boys is the work of the trapper. The moles infest the lawn and would plough up whole acres of grass but for the boys and their mole traps. They catch one nearly every day when they get troublesome and soon thin them out. Rats kill young chickens and birds, just as a puppy kills sheep, for the fun of it.