New lives for old

I meant every word I said and I set to work right off. One of the first things I did was to have the Reverend Percy Cunningham up to supper. His church was probably the biggest social influence in the village and so if it was possible I wanted to enlist him at the beginning. Personally I didn’t think much of his ability. He was a serious man who acted as though he thought his chief function here was the conducting of funerals. The very sight of him was a grim reminder of death. He dressed in black, seldom smiled, and he walked on tiptoe. His appearance was all the more marked because it happened that Seavey, the local undertaker, was a roly-poly, good-natured man and the biggest sport in town. He owned an automobile, drank more than was good for him, and acted as starter at all the horse races within a radius of fifty miles. Perhaps it was to offset this blithe influence of his colleague that Cunningham felt it necessary to go to the other extreme. At any rate Ruth said that whenever he called in the afternoon she felt as though she ought to darken the room and send the children off to a neighbor.

We had him up and Ruth laid herself out to make the meal as cheerful as possible, but when we were through I felt like saying Amen. Ruth spoke of it later as the Last Supper and was ashamed of herself afterwards.

I took him into the front room and began on him at once.

“Mr. Cunningham,” I said, “it seems to me the time has come for this town to take out a new lease on life.”

“To be sure,” he agreed.

“Well,” I said, “you’ve been here longer than I have; what’s your suggestion for bringing this about?”

He thought a moment and then he said, “I’ve been seriously considering your suggestion for a very long while—in fact ever since I took up my pastoral work here.”

“That was about fifteen years ago?” I inquired.

“Sixteen years this coming spring,” he answered.

“You ought to have reached some conclusion in that time,” I said.

“To be sure,” he nodded. “What I thought I should do when I saw my opportunity was to invite here two or three good evangelists and hold a rousing week of revival services.”

Now I have no objection to revival services. In their way they do good. But after all, their function is largely religious and I had in mind just at present something more material. Besides, the revival end seemed to me to be his own duty. He himself ought to have been holding meetings all these last sixteen years.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I guess we need something of the sort. But to get down to brass tacks, have you any idea how many people in this town are in debt?”

“No,” he said, “I have never looked into that.”

“About half of them,” I said. “Have you any idea how many of the men and women in this town are drunkards?”

“Women—drunkards?” he exclaimed.

“About a third of them,” I said.

“Mr. Carleton, you must be mistaken!”

“Ask your druggist; ask Moulton!” I said. “They’ll tell you. Most of the children are either doped or stimulated with patent medicines. Besides this, there are a dozen or two downright morphine fiends. Dr. Wentworth is responsible for that.”

“Dr. Wentworth!” he exclaimed. “That is a very serious charge, Mr. Carleton. Dr. Wentworth has been practicing here for almost forty years.”

“More’s the pity,” I said. “He belongs back in the dark ages. I went to him myself with a touch of neuralgia and he prescribed morphine before I’d been in his office fifteen minutes. It’s become a habit with him just because it’s the simplest way of relieving pain. However, those are details. They don’t account for the general lethargy, for the decaying orchards, for the waste land and wasted opportunities which are lying all around your parish. Now, to take another tack for a moment—did it ever strike you as significant that every foreign-born settler who has come here during the last ten years is waxing fat and prosperous?”

“I’ve seen very little of the foreign element,” he said.

“Why?”

He smiled weakly.

“They are hardly of us,” he said, “either in faith or standards. It has always seemed to me a pity that they should have found their way here.”

I became heated at that.

“Pity!” I exclaimed. “It’s the one ray of hope in this whole blessed village. They came here and are coming here with the old-time spirit of the men who founded this town. They are adventurers—pioneers. They come here fresh, eager, earnest, with simple tastes and simple standards. They are making good and they are going to continue to make good until—mark my words—they own not only this town but all New England.”

He sat up at this.

“It’s a fact,” I said. “Look around you. It’s clear as daylight. On the one hand we have the old stock, either abandoning their farms or dying upon them; on the other we have the newcomers pressing in with the eagerness of explorers, taking up these farms and bringing them to life. Why, this is Eden to them. Where they came from they’ve been making a living off bits of soil that we wouldn’t build a pigsty on, and here they have acres for the asking. Look at Dardoni; look at Tony; look at the dozen others. They are settling this country anew in exactly the same spirit that our ancestors did. And they are going to win in the same fashion. They are going to drive these shiftless remnants before them exactly as our forefathers drove off the Indians. We think Columbus discovered this country in 1492 once for all, when it’s really being discovered now before our face and eyes. We think this country was settled by the Pilgrims, when as a matter of fact the real settling is going on to-day.”

I didn’t intend to orate but as I sat facing Cunningham I felt as though I were facing the whole village. With his black clothes, his drooping shoulders, and his fifteen years of deliberation, he represented just the element I wanted to get at. But I didn’t rouse him very much. He murmured something about being surprised and I ran on still further.

“Now,” I said, “what are we going to do about it? Most of the younger generation are moving away as fast as they are old enough. They are either going into the cities or out West. I don’t blame them for that. It’s encouraging to think they have life enough left in ’em to crawl out of this frog pond. Those who don’t emigrate are as old and feeble at seventeen as their grandfathers were at seventy. What are we going to do about it?”

“Really, Mr. Carleton, I—I don’t know.”

“Then let me give you my idea: let’s all emigrate.”

He evidently thought I was crazy.

“I mean it,” I said. “And I know what I’m talking about because I’ve already done it once. Let’s emigrate out of the past into the present. Let’s emigrate to new New England. Let’s start a pioneer movement and tackle these old acres as though they were virgin soil. Let’s join Dardoni and his fellows.”

“You don’t mean literally, Mr. Carleton?”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t that be—to speak frankly—a little bit like going backwards?”

“If you like,” I said. “But it wouldn’t hurt this town any to go back a hundred years or so. The curse comes in standing still.”

“Well,” he said, preparing to leave, “your suggestion is interesting—very. I most certainly will think it over.”

Remembering how long it took him to think over things before, that didn’t sound very encouraging.

“All right,” I said, “and in the meanwhile I’m going to start something.”