New lives for old

This was my first introduction to the old-stock farmer of whom I was to learn much more later on. Of course in a real sense these men were not farmers, and yet they were farmers or nothing. They had been born on a farm, had spent their lives there, and still depended upon the land for whatever means of livelihood they had. They were willing to work out as a matter of accommodation or to pick up an extra dollar or so, but they certainly did not class themselves as laborers. I could agree with them in that, but neither to my mind were they real farmers; not as I conceived farmers to be from what my father had told me and from what I read in the magazines.

I don’t suppose my ideal differed much from that of the average city bred man who has never had the good fortune to spend even his vacation in the country. Perhaps I was a little more visionary about them than some, because my life in the foreign quarter had roused my patriotism and driven me back into history for comfort. From that source I had created in my mind as representative a tall, gaunt individual of the Lincoln type with all Lincoln’s ruggedness of body and brain. I pictured him as honest to his very soul, as industrious to an extreme, as shrewd and thrifty, as brave and long suffering. So I still believe the old New Englander to have been; so I believe many of them are to-day. Perhaps I was unfortunate in finding at the very start three who did not live up to my standard, but I want to put down my experiences just as they came to me. If there were no more like these in the length and breadth of the whole land, here at least were three. And they were of the genuine old stock, uncontaminated by a single drop of new blood.

I received from people who read “One Way Out” much criticism to the effect that the experiences which befell me were not typical; that the conditions which I encountered would not hold in other places. Perhaps that is true. I don’t know. As I tried to make clear before, I’m not an investigator, nor a sociologist, nor a writer of tracts. I don’t claim to know any more than I have seen with my own eyes—than I have actually lived through. But I still believe that conditions, whatever they are, don’t matter if a man tackles them in the right spirit. I believe that, because I see every day men starting even and one failing and one succeeding.

What I said in “One Way Out” I want to repeat here: I’m authority on nothing but myself. Just as Ruth and I, driven on by circumstances, went adventuring in the slums, so driven on by other if not such urgent circumstances we went adventuring in the country. And I approached my new and later life in a state of just as much absolute ignorance as I did the first. It was chance that led me to locate where I did, it was chance which furnished me with my neighbors; it was chance which furnished me with my opportunity. If this led me into an unexplored country and along paths never before trod by man, I thank my lucky stars. I don’t believe it, but I’m willing to let it go at that. I’m not much on argument.

This then is a plain statement of what I saw with my new eyes—the eyes of an immigrant into the country. It is a plain statement of what I did and what I learned and the people I met. I don’t claim that it’s either typical or important. The life of one man isn’t apt to be. Here it is, however, without any further explanation or apology, for what it’s worth, and if anyone gets as much fun out of reading it as I have had in living it, I won’t consider I’ve wasted my time in writing it.

I proceeded to act at once on Seth’s idea. I remembered having seen, back on the road, a little place which at the time I had thought looked like the home of some foreign-born pioneer. It bore all the earmarks; it was an unkempt but busy looking place. There were evidences of many children and a consequent clutter of tin cans, broken bottles and old shoes, but I saw no farming tools and broken down wagons in the yard. These things were all under cover in the shed. I noticed too that the yard was full of chickens and that every square foot of land around the house was being tilled. When I knocked at the door a woman appeared with a child in her arms and with half a dozen more clinging to her skirts. She was a red-cheeked, black-eyed woman, as plump and happy looking as you would ask to see. Somehow I felt instantly at home here. I surprised her by asking in Italian where her man was, and she answered that he was out back of the barn and bade one of the boys to run and fetch him for the signor. I said no, that I would go and find him myself. She protested that the signor would get wet and that he had better come in and wait. I felt half ashamed that she should class me with that sort of coddled signor and hurried off to find Tony.

I found him in an old hat and gray sweater, up to his knees in the black soil. He was a swarthy, well-muscled chap, with a face tanned to the color of sole leather. He looked like a villain of melodrama, but as I approached he smiled a greeting which revealed teeth as naturally white as a hound’s. A couple of mongrel pups were nosing at his heels and ran at me ferociously, but stopped half way and wagged their tails. With an oath in Italian he ordered them back and belly to the ground they obeyed him.

I introduced myself and he recognized my name at once for the fame of Carleton’s gang had by now spread far.

“I have two cousins working for you,” he said in a manner that made me feel it a compliment.

He told me their names and I remembered them well. They were good workmen.

“I’ve bought a house near you,” I said. “I need a man or two to help me. Do you want a job?”

“Ah, signor,” he replied with a shake of his head in apology, “if I did not have so much to do here.”

He waved his hand over the scant two acres of land back of him as though it were a principality.

“This is all yours?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered proudly. “This—the house—everything.”

“You are doing well then.”

“Well enough,” he answered with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile.

“Then I can’t hire you?”

“It would be impossible, signor,” he answered, as though some apology were due me. “The planting is not yet done. And—by the good Christ—there are a thousand things to do on an estate.”

It was good to hear the way he pronounced that word estate. There was enough dignity in it to make it seem in sober earnest like an estate.

“Do you know of anyone I can get?” I asked.

“There is Signor Chase,” he began.

But I shut him off. “Any of your countrymen, I mean.”

“There is Dardoni; he might have a man. But no—not in the spring. There are my wife’s cousins. They have just come over. I could send—”

“No,” I interrupted, “I can get men enough in the city.”

“I believe you, signor,” he answered with a bow.

I started to leave when rather hesitatingly he asked if I wouldn’t be good enough to step into the house and have a glass of wine with him. He had so interested me and what he said had so whetted my curiosity that I gladly accepted. He preceded me to the house and at the door called loudly for Maria. She came with her cheeks redder than ever and with the children clinging about her skirts, ushered us into the living room. There was no such neatness here as I had seen in the Sprague house. All was confusion; a mixture of sewing and play things and garlic-flavored cooking. What can one do with six children to feed and clothe? Maria made no apologies. This was home and home to her was a plant for the rearing of children. We seated ourselves at a bare wooden table and she brought out a bottle of red wine as light as new cider. I drank good health to Maria and success to Tony.

I asked him many questions out of honest interest and he answered me frankly and with eagerness as your true pioneer ever does because of pride in his accomplishments. He told me that he had come here three years ago to work for Dardoni who had a grand estate—ten times as large as his—on the other side of the town. He had saved a little money before he came and with that, and what he earned later, he had bought these few acres of his own. Since then he had earned his living and something over. The thing that impressed me at the time, but the full significance of which I did not realize until later, was that he found a market for his eggs and produce right here in the village. Some of it he exchanged at the store for groceries but much of it he sold from door to door. It sounded like carrying coals to Newcastle.

I passed a pleasant hour with Tony and then went back to my house where I puttered around the rest of the day doing odd jobs. When I came home that night and told my experiences to Ruth she only laughed to herself and made no comment. I told her I was going to take four or five of my own men out there next day and she said she guessed I would save time that way.

From that point on, the work went along swimmingly. After getting all the buildings straightened up I brought down a couple of carpenters to do the shingling. At different times Seth and Jim and Josh came along to watch proceedings. They bore no ill will and offered me plenty of advice. At first I resented this, but after a while I learned not to mind. I couldn’t help liking the men after a fashion and I enjoyed their stories. They took as paternal an interest in my affairs as though I were a tenant and they were landlords. They were like children in the intimate questions they asked, but I found that they were not at all disturbed if they received no replies.

After the shingling I began on the plastering. I knocked down the old plastering in every room and found that the lathing was all of the old split-board kind. This really made a stronger and firmer background than the modern lathing. I made another find; two fireplaces which had been bricked up to accommodate air-tight stoves. I was mighty well pleased with this because I’m fond of fireplaces and had wondered how I was going to build one without tearing the house half to pieces.

The next thing we did was to putty up the holes and cracks and paint every speck of wood inside and out a dead white. Ruth insisted on white.

“Somehow I wouldn’t feel I was living in the country if my house wasn’t white,” she said.

I agreed with her, for to my mind there’s no color so fresh and bright looking. And the very first coat brought the old house to life. It’s wonderful what paint will do. It didn’t make the house look new in the sense of making it appear like a house of to-day, but rather carried it back to its youth. It was like making an old man young again. We could hardly wait for the paint to dry before starting the second coat, and that carried us back another twenty-five years. Even Seth, who at the start had allowed that the old shack wasn’t worth repairing, admitted now that it began to look real nifty.

And the inside looked as fine as the outside. When we began, the woodwork was discolored both by age and dirt. This made the whole interior look worse than a cheap tenement. Twenty dollars’ worth of white lead and oil changed this as though by magic into a clean white, as fresh as when the house was first built. There is nothing which shows age more than paint and there’s nothing so easily remedied. If the owners had done what I had already done they would have made almost three hundred per cent. interest on their investment. In three weeks, at a cost of four hundred dollars, I had added fifteen hundred in value to the place. And it was a legitimate value. My paint hadn’t covered up defects; it had simply brought out the honest worth of the structure.

With the floors painted and the windows drawn, we were now ready for the personal details which should make this house into a home. It was then that we had a great stroke of luck in hearing of an auction in another village some eight miles away and off the main road. Seth told us about it and said if I was looking for old trash he reckoned I could find enough of it there. He said he wouldn’t give a quarter for the whole lot, which didn’t sound very encouraging. But Ruth said she had heard them talk like that before, and anyway it would be good fun to go.

One clear summer morning then we rose early and Ruth put up a lunch and we boarded the train. The nearest station was five miles away and there we hired an old white horse and a buggy. We jogged along over the country roads at a three-mile-an-hour clip and reached the place just before the auction started at ten o’clock. We found some thirty or forty natives there. Most of them had come just to look on. They always had time for that. Even in the busiest season it was as easy to gather a crowd in these out-of-the-way places as it is during the noon hour on Broadway. And they wouldn’t come for an hour, but for all day.

We found rather a romantic story in connection with this auction. The story ran, and I guess it was true, that the man who had been living here as a bachelor for forty years had originally built and furnished this house for his bride. Just before they were to be married she had died and he had moved into the house and lived here by himself until his own death.

When Ruth heard that, she said to me, “Billy, do you know I think he’d be glad for us to have his things.”

“I don’t know how he’d feel about me, but I’m dead sure he’d be glad for you to have them,” I said.

“He wouldn’t if it wasn’t for you,” she answered, with a smile.

I’m not saying she was right in this deduction but I made up my mind she’d have whatever she liked at that auction if it broke me.

There’s a lot in luck at auctions—for the buyer. And we were certainly in luck that day. There were no stray automobile parties in the group to boost things up for the fun of it, and no professional furniture buyers. It was a real country auction with a country auctioneer and a country crowd. Seth and Jim and Josh were there and the rest of the group was all of their kind. Both the men and the women looked bloodless and withered. It showed in their faded eyes, in their sallow cheeks, in their spare bodies. They seemed old and tired—even the young women. And the strange thing about it was that to me they looked like foreigners. I felt as though I had come into some distant country among a new people. I couldn’t seem to connect them with America; even with the America of history. It took an effort on my part to remember that the names they bore were the names borne by many of those who settled in Plymouth.

I asked Ruth if she felt that way and after thinking a moment she answered, “Not as much as you do.”

Still I saw she knew there was something wrong with them because she kept looking at the women with almost a sad expression. Once, she said, “There’s something to do here, Billy.”

“Missionary work?” I asked.

She nodded.

“But this isn’t Africa,” I laughed. “This is the United States of America. It’s a fact and we mustn’t forget it.”

“No,” she said, “that is just what we must remember.”

“And most of these people are descendants of the Mayflower. They are relatives of ours.”

“Yes,” she said soberly, “we must remember that, too.”

But the auctioneer was begging our kind attention to examine a collection of extremely useful articles which he announced he was going to include in a single parcel. Into an old tin pan he counted one by one a rusty egg beater, two iron spoons, a kitchen knife, three glass preserve jars, a doughnut cutter, a crockery door knob and finally a dozen ordinary tin coffee cans. Then with his hands on his hips he stood back and beamed with pride upon the collection.

“How much for the lot!” he demanded.

He himself looked like one of the odds and ends he was selling. Though not over thirty-five he was round shouldered and dyspeptic. He wore glasses and though smooth shaven his beard still showed. His clothes hung loosely about his spare frame and he seemed to be always in pain.

The bids started at two cents and quickly went to five, while the crowd laughed good naturedly.

I gained a better impression of the auctioneer right off by the earnest, sober way he went at his business. He had a trick of leaning over the crowd with his long bony finger outstretched and calling earnestly, “Once, twice—” with a little pause there which made you feel as though you were missing a great opportunity.

“Twice,” he repeated, and in the excitement of the moment I was on the point of bidding six when he brought both hands together with the decisiveness of a decree of Fate and I escaped.

Ruth had detected my temptation and pulled at my sleeve.

“Look here, Billy,” she warned, “you mustn’t bid on anything except what we really want.”

“Think of all those things going for five cents,” I answered.

“And when the man gets home with them he’ll wonder why he ever bid two,” she said.

The auctioneer disposed of the culch first and always found a bidder if only for a worthless basket filled with broken bottles. And there wasn’t a man who bought those things who didn’t have his wood shed cluttered up with similar waste.

Finally he came to six wooden kitchen chairs. They were painted yellow and had seats three inches thick. They were hand made and fastened together with wooden pegs instead of nails and were as stout as when first built. Ruth had picked these out at once.

“I’d better start them at a quarter,” I said.

“No,” she whispered, “you keep quiet. Let me do the bidding.”

“How much a piece for the lot?” inquired the auctioneer.

The man who had the adjoining farm started them at two cents.

“Why you’d pay more than that for kindling wood,” exclaimed the auctioneer. “But two I’m offered. Will anyone make it three?”

I nudged Ruth but she didn’t open her mouth.

“Three,” called someone.

“Three I’m offered, who’ll make it four?”

No one answered.

“Three I’m offered, once,—”

I nudged Ruth again but she remained as though dumb. I was standing on tiptoe.

“Three I’m offered; twice. Going, going—”

I was all out of breath when Ruth spoke up as cool as you please, “Four.”

“Four I’m offered.”

He extended his finger towards the first bidder.

“Now make it five,” the auctioneer coaxed.

The man shook his head.

“Make it a half.”

Again the man shook his head.

“I’m offered four cents a piece for these fine hardwood chairs. Make it a half. Make it a quarter. Going—going—”

He paused again with an eager tantalizing smile. Then he brought his hands together.

“And sold to Mr.—”

“Carleton,” I answered quickly.

“Oh,” gasped Ruth. “They are ours!”

We bought another lot of eight at twelve cents a piece. We bought a third lot, cane seated and painted a handsome black, for nine cents. Besides this we bought a mahogany veneered bureau with old brass handles, in perfect condition, for four dollars and a quarter. I learned later that it was worth at least twenty-five dollars. We bought a grandfather’s clock with pine case and wooden works, made in Winchester, England, for thirteen dollars and a half. We bought a solid mahogany four-poster bed for twenty-two dollars. We bought a hardwood kitchen table for two dollars. We bought three feather beds at a dollar and a half a piece—the goose feathers alone in each being worth five or six dollars. We bought a set of black and white ware consisting of a tea pot, sugar bowl, milk pitcher, and nine cups and saucers, in perfect condition, for five dollars—less than you’d pay for ordinary crockery. We bought a mahogany veneered kitchen clock for two dollars. We bought a bird’s eye maple, rope bed for four dollars. In addition to this we bought beautiful old bed spreads and rag rugs and mirrors—all for a song. In fact, we took about everything in the house that was of any value and paid less than ten cents on a dollar for what it was worth merely as furniture, and less than two cents for what most of it should have brought as antiques.

I accomplished two things that day; I furnished my house for a song and I introduced myself to my future neighbors, for my reckless buying became the gossip of the neighborhood.