—Professor G. W. Fiske.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ILLS OF ISOLATION

"Isolation" is a word that the Country Girl does not very much use, but still she feels the meaning of the word. This note sounds in the unusually frank answer of one who did not speak for herself but said that she really thought some of the other girls went away to the city because there was no one in the village for them to marry, and in the naïve words of the girl who stated that she always said a club was a very good thing. Where the community does not afford the social life they crave as a part of their development, as the natural normal state for their self-expression, and as a part of their plans for life, it is no wonder they seek it elsewhere. This is one of the chief causes of the cityward tendency. For this reason the girls are willing to exchange the pure air of the country for the close atmosphere of the town; the safe and kindly surroundings of the rural home for the dangerous conditions of the city, its unregulated contacts, its promiscuity and its perils, and its loneliness in the midst of the indifference of strangers. There is a forbidding solitariness in the city that is to that of the country as a desert to a garden. This misery attacks one even more virulently on the noisy boulevard than along the whispering country lane. But this the Country Girl does not know, and she seeks relief from a woe that she does understand.

Perhaps the young woman on a lonely farm in some remote region does not realize this. She may be too dulled and discouraged by the effects of isolation to know either what is the trouble with her or even that there is any definite thing the matter.

The lack of companionship is indeed a very real hardship; for companionship is necessary to our growth as well as to our happiness. The solitary girl on the remote farm or in the obsolescent village has small share in this form of education and remains with her resources undeveloped. For her natural and normal education she needs a great deal of association with other young growing human beings; something therefore must be devised to supply this need or the Country Girl will not have the happy and well-rounded life on the farm that is her right.

One woman in giving reasons why she preferred the city said she would "rather have folks than stumps!" Truly. Very few farms, however, consist solely of what is represented by the expressive word "stumps"; and as for "folks," it is possible to have in city life a plethora of social contact so that leisure for thought, reading and study, or for any form of self-development, is unknown. Besides there are "folks" and "folks"; and a neighborhood full of cousins and friends is an unsurpassed shelter for the favorable growth of the young human being.

But ah! there is the very point. A neighborhood! If every Country Girl had a neighborhood to grow up in, a group of homes about her to afford her companionship, she could ask nothing better. But there are many girls living on remote and lonely farms far away from any neighborly environment; to such as these the isolation is a very real sorrow. It falls as heavily upon the farmer's daughter as it does upon the farmer's wife—even more heavily if possible, for she is generally led to realize her need at a time when her social instincts are most insistent. To make for the young woman in the farm home a life so interesting, so fascinating, so full of purpose and of the possibilities of self-expression, that the loss of "folks" will to some extent be made up to her, and to give to her as much companionship as possible and the effects of companionship through all known means that can be devised, should be the object of an earnest and widespread effort.

A visit made to a country girl who lived at a farm that was on a steep hillside in a lonely part of the world far from any town or village, left a very deep impression. I was riding through that region with a cousin on my way to the railroad twenty miles off.

"In that house," she said, pointing to a dilapidated farmhouse nearly smothered in greenery and totally unkempt in appearance, "lives a relative of ours, a second cousin. We must stop and see her."

"Oh, no," I cried out, for I was then young and selfish; "don't let me have to see any more relatives to-day."

"Yes, we must stop," said my firm cousin. "She is a good girl and will remember it always if you stop, and will be bitterly disappointed if you do not."

We drew up; a figure promptly appeared on the rickety porch and came down between the tall grasses that almost obliterated the path to the torn gate.

"How old is she?" I whispered.

"About twenty-eight; yes, twenty-nine next December."

"She looks forty," I said.

"You must remember she has had a hard time on this farm—it's no good, the farm, and she and her father live here alone now."

Cousin Artemisia—for that was her ironical apportionment as to name—came down to the buggy and stood between the wheels and reached over a long slim hand in greeting to my companion. I thought she would never let go. Then I was introduced. Cousin Artemisia stood back and looked at me as if she would read every thought in my whole soul. The most devouring curiosity, the most rapt wonder, the still, thunderstruck, hypnotized look of absorbed contemplation, were in her eyes. All my features went, I am sure, into her memory's irremediable printing, to stay there forever. All this—more shame to me!—was only a bother to me, for I did not at all understand what it could mean to a poor lonely soul to have a vision of a young relative from the great big outside world. I will not accuse myself of cruelty—only of ignorance and carelessness; but that, of course, is bad enough. To pay me for this, and as a perpetual punishment, I have the memory of her last look. After some suave and polite nothings from my lips I nudged my driver cousin and we went on over the hill, leaving Artemisia alone with her solitariness, stunned, it may be, for the moment by our swift passing, as a prisoner might be into whose dark cell a ray of light had penetrated and then been quickly withdrawn, making the darkness blacker than before. That last long look! I cannot describe it, but I shall remember it always. At that moment there was in Cousin Artemisia's face the suppressed longing of the imprisoned soul, the appeal for help to one that was believed to have had opportunity, the cry of the hopelessly restricted longings, the desire for companionship, suppressed for years and accumulated unbearably.

The memory of that quarter of an hour with Cousin Artemisia has driven it home to me that the young woman in the solitary farm house wants and needs the means of self-expression as much as little Helen Keller needed the means to reveal herself that would take the place of the hearing and speaking and seeing that had been denied her. What would have happened to her if she had not had gateways opened to her mind and soul so that she could give out and receive, is what happens to all of us unless we have our powers developed by contact with others and by giving and taking intellectual and spiritual goods. Dumbness is a hindrance to growth. Excessive shyness and secrecy, bashfulness, a spirit of seclusion, sensitiveness, and other faults that attack young people in the growing years, are a result of the lack of the liberalizing and purifying ministry of companionship and they are an inhibition of development.

An account by a rural school-teacher presents a picture that is gruesome, and any one that wishes may omit it from the reading; but it suggests a possibility and drives home a lesson. Circumstances required her for a time, she said, to take care of an old lady, who lived with her husband and daughter on a lonely farm. All that they had in the house were the old things the mother had kept house with forty years ago. The chairs had been scrubbed till not a particle of paint was left; and their meals were alike three times a day—pork, potatoes and bread. Not a book was there to read except a few old school books and the Bible. The young woman who tells the story stayed a week, and it was the longest week she ever spent. The farmer's daughter was about eighteen years old. She seemed a bright young girl; but two years after that, while the father was gone to the factory, she hung herself in the barn. The school-teacher did not wonder; she said that if she had had to live in such a house, life would have been a burden.

Of course that is an extreme case. The suicide rate is higher for the city than it is for the country; it is higher for men than it is for women; the proportion of suicides over sixty-five years of age is greater for rural districts in our country than it is for cities. This may not especially interest the young woman on the farm; but it concerns us to see that all the younger people should have the natural normal life that will satisfy their physical, mental and moral needs; and that they should realize early that they are to be supplied with the career that their natures demand, in order that they may not despair before they have really begun to live.

A conviction dwells in the minds of many Country Girls that the quietness and freedom from interruptions on the farm form one of the chief reasons for desiring the rural life. There certainly is truth in this. The jaded city worker flees to the calm of the country for relief from people and things. But it is also true that isolation is not a good in itself and too much of it is directly harmful. We develop not by it but in spite of it. No man can be a true man, no woman a true woman, who has not been molded by human companionship. We should "live in the House by the Side of the Road" and unite our interests with those of humanity at large. We do not know ourselves except as we know others. Whether we are above the level of average human capacity, or below it, or simply different from others, or, what is more usually the case, different in some things and like in others, we do not know except by comparison with others. Companionship with others brings us knowledge of our defects, our omissions, our weaknesses, sometimes of our strength and power to give and to help.

Therefore, the normal development of the daughter on the farm depends largely upon having the heavy weight of rural solitariness lifted. She may not know this herself; but the quickness with which her spirit responds to the touch of companionship between herself and a friend of her own age, when fortunate occasion brings her this pleasure, shows what her need is. It is now said that the young men and the young women in college give to each other almost as much education as is given to them by the teachers themselves. In other words the social contact possible where many young people are brought together has such power to quicken energy and to incite noble rivalries that it alone becomes one of the most effective means of education.

This education and opportunity should be within reach of every Country Girl, and she may herself do a great deal to bring this about. In endeavoring to do her share in thus developing the social resources of the country, the Country Girl must, however, work for a time against a disadvantage. At present the young girl from the country makes the impression of being less developed than the young boy. As a general thing he has had a great deal more outlook, more responsibility, more contact with outside influences. He goes with his father to town; the father and the brother look upon this excursion as a task, and they think this is work that can be done by them and save the women-folk all that trouble. But the fact is that this going to town is a means of getting at least some outlook into the great world beyond that the farm circle did not give, an enlargement that would be just as good for the sister as for the brother. The sons come back joyous and electrified and able to work better afterward. Meantime the daughters have stayed at home in the treadmill, unexcited and dull; and because they have lacked the stimulus of the excursion into the outer world they get the discredit of being gloomy and stupid. If they had driven to the village also, or to call upon a girl friend, they would have returned joyous and eager, full of talk and energy, and with new ideas to add to the family discussion.

The efficient Country Girl of to-day is often as equal to the management of the intractable horse as a man: she rides the disc-plough and she runs the automobile. It would only be in some backward section of the country or in some tradition-bound family, where the daughter could not drive the horses and have the use of a conveyance to go to town whenever it seemed to her to be necessary. It has been suggested by an eminent authority that the farm woman should go to town once a week and should also go to a neighbor's every week for an afternoon's visit. What then should be the excursions of the daughter during the years when she is growing up and becoming a young lady, entering upon her duties as hostess and social leader? There should not a day pass when she does not have some contact with the social world of the rural community. She should have a large letter-writing correspondence and make it yield her all the culture possible. She should take part in every commendable social organization that is accessible and with her mother's cooperation make her home a center of gracious social welcome to friends and neighbors. With the new machinery there will be much greater simplification possible in the household, and in the wake of this may enter our old-time friend, Hospitality, so long and sadly missed from our ferny lanes.

Perhaps it is not necessary to suggest that the greatest care should be taken to place under the safest conditions the social life in which the daughter bears a part. In order that this may be so there is no better safeguard than that the mother should be in closest confidence with the daughter, should be present at all the parties, should be in all the fun. This is the scheme now most approved under the best social auspices and is adopted in the country wherever they live up to the most refined models. It means that the mother must never lose the thread of her daughter's confidence; and if she has done so by the mistake of some past day, she must leave no stone unturned, by tact and love and prayer, to regain the lost ground. It means joining in all the games; it means taking an interest in all the youthful plans. It means adapting her mind to the youthful mind. It means—but why should I tell mothers what that means? They know. And the daughters must do their part too in keeping the confidence-thread between themselves and their mother always perfect and golden.

When a community is really dead, we may know the fact by the absence of sociability. The whole country problem hinges chiefly upon this social matter; and as the woman is the essential upholder of the community the world over in social affairs, it behooves the young woman in rural life to prepare for these responsibilities if she will ward off from the farm and village community a deadly and intolerable inaction.

After all Cousin Artemisia was not in such a parlous state. If those eager eyes had had no expression in them at all, if the curiosity in them had long since faded into indifference and a dull unresponsive look had taken its place, then a just observer might well have had cause for compassion for that young woman into whose soul the iron of isolation had gone so deeply that it had hardened and deadened the best part of her. If a life has been lived through with all its experiences and has been one long record of unsatisfied longing for the impossible, and if the end came without ever one break in the cloud that hid away an imagined world of fulfilment and success, and if during it all there had been never an instant's let-up from the momently waiting for the sun to break through, such a life as that has been a success. Not to attain is not failure. The only failure is to cease trying, to stop aspiring, and to let the dream and the vision fade away from the face of the unresponding clouds.

Some one may say, Why then touch her in this obliviousness of her unfilled possibilities? The same fallacy lies beneath all missionary work, all philanthropy, all striving upward. We wish every Country Girl in the remotest stronghold of conservatism to be touched with that divine discontent that will stir her to an upward struggle.

Among the six million Country Girls for whom this book is written, there are many who are tremendously and honorably efficient; there are also many who are by no means awake to their duty and opportunity; but the vision will soon touch the eyes of all, and will reveal to them the part they may play in the new Country Life era.

Not for her own sake alone does any girl strive. All she does lifts everywhere as well as in her own valley. And these beneficent influences will reach out and include other and still other circles of girls who repose under the protection of the republic. Among these one may see the puzzled eyes of Porto Ricans, and of Aleutian and of Philippine girls. And there are found two larger companies: the dark-skinned girls with the tragic remembrance of slavery in their eyes, and the aquiline faces of the Appalachian mountain girls, dignified and quietly expectant and our close racial kin. Among these adoptive and neglected fields there will be hollows of stagnation and delays of progress. For the reclamation of these we are not by any means doing what we might as a people; they some way escape the great abundantly filled currents of philanthropy; and if they soon become discontented and ominous, we shall have ourselves to blame. It would be better to be beforehand with nature's demands and arouse noble aspirations that may forestall wrong tendencies.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EVENING HOUR

The day is done; the clock is striking eight;
The children now are snug and safe abed;
Still on the pillow lies each little head,
Tired out, altho' they begged to sit up late.
I cover the fire within the kitchen grate,
Mix up a light sponge for the morrow's bread,
Wind up the faithful clock; with quiet tread
Depart, and leave my kitchen to its fate.
The study calls me to my favorite nook
Beside the table, underneath the light.
Here shall I joy me with a gracious book
Until at last I bid my world good-night.
O peaceful dreams beneath the homestead roof!
Ye straighten out life's tangled warp and woof!

—Helen Coale Crew.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SOLACE OF READING

The countryside does not sufficiently appreciate the value of its asset in the changing seasons. The alternation of winter and summer gives the admirable opportunity for the harvest for support, and for the fireside evenings for culture; the two combined make the possibility of an ideal life. Even in the busy time of summer, the farmer who scientifically organizes his scheme of farm work, will be able to give one day a week at least for reading and the study of the literature of farming. Perhaps the number who compose this orderly scheme of work may at present be small, nor has any such boon of system including leisure for reading reached the farm woman. How that older woman on the farm has felt about this, is one of the great complaints lying back of the Country Life Movement. Will the Country Girl be obliged to inherit this deprivation?

From the Country Girl of to-day, the report is far more cheering than from the older women. She has many books at hand. She feels no poverty in this regard. Sometimes they say: "We have a very large library in our house—as many as a hundred books," or they say, "My father left us a large law library," and they seem to love to gaze at the brown backs of these volumes. Certainly this pride in the inheritance is noble.

If you ask Country Girls what books they have for their very own, they will in many cases give long representative lists. Encyclopedias will be included and sometimes books of reference. Their library lists give an insight into the taste in reading of the American Country Girl that is most gratifying. The first impression is that her taste is well founded in classics; the second, that she keeps up with the times. She shows on the whole great catholicity.

We cannot give room to the long lists: but we may mention some of the books that, in response to our request, some Country Girls mentioned as favorites.

In a long list of books that are her own an Iowa girl stars the following as her favorites:

The stories she enjoys reading when she is tired; the others she takes to study.

Another mentions these:

She adds Dickens, Poe, Alcott, Whittier as starred favorites.

In a list of twenty books, a Colorado girl stars a large number. The list is headed by "The Library of the World's Greatest Books." Then she mentions:

Her list includes also the Life of John Bunyan, the Life of Christ, the works of George Eliot and of Burns, and many more standard and popular books. She has had a course at college and reads the U. S. Bureau of Agriculture Bulletins.

Books starred by an Idaho girl are:

She includes also Riley, E. B. Browning, Wordsworth, Burns.

One writer who lives sixty miles from any kind of library is so fortunate as to have all of Dickens, Scott, Shakespeare, and a copy of Longfellow, Tennyson and Browning. "I have," she says, "a great many miscellaneous books, The Promised Land, Laddie, A Girl of the Limberlost, The Friendly Road, and books of that kind. The first three authors are my favorites; but the Bible and Longfellow are the most comfort and enjoyment."

On the whole there are comparatively few to complain, as one did, that the Bible and a paper now and then compose their entire means of outlook into the world of literature; or as this one said: "When I was at home my only book that was my own property was the Bible." Fortunately this young girl had thus a compendium of all literature, and she is coming out all right.

It also should be a surprise that there should be so few to include a list like this: "Prue and I, some books on the economic status of woman, and a few books on domestic science." But perhaps Country Girls would not think to classify their interest in such studies as these under the heading "reading."

The mothers and daughters, if requested together, would no doubt mention some of the same interferences with the pleasure of reading; but the daughters give some that the mothers would never have thought to state. Work is the great interference for both. The daughters are deterred by housework, sewing, picking blue-berries, darning stockings. Weariness, the tired-out feeling, come in. There is so much work to be done in doors and out, and the barn work lasts so late; the evenings are short and when the work is finished, it is time to retire.

It is rather pathetic to see how many Country Girls will mention the moment of getting to bed and to sleep as the happiest point in the day. But then—no one has yet said that she was too tired to sleep—and that, we are sure, has happened many and many times to the mothers of yore! And when the daughter speaks of having been kept from reading by her demonstration work duties, we certainly hear a note of the new era being struck. But what farm woman of the old days ever gave "so many other pleasures," or "too many places to go," as reasons for not reading? Piano practise, too, and "friends running in" prevent the reading. There cannot be much isolation in such a farmstead as that!

Many Country Girls insist emphatically that in spite of difficulties they do read a good deal. Such a girl says that when she has a book the hour of night draws nigh too soon. Another always reserves a few hours each week for reading, though sometimes she can not make it every day. A determined girl declares that she lets nothing interfere with a certain amount of reading. This sort of testimony reaches a height in one who says that she reads or studies five hours every day. Yet the girl who wrote that does most of the housework for a small family and takes care of a large garden.

A few lament the scarcity of books. They have no opportunity to get books aside from the few belonging to one's friends; but these are soon read and re-read. Lack of material is the chief interference with reading with an uncomplaining but very important minority.

If there does really remain any girl in the country who does not know that she can get books from the traveling libraries that are maintained now by almost every State, the glad message should be taken to her at once. And any girl with a fair share of energy could start a small library in her village or her community, even as the peripatetic librarian did in Mr. Bouck White's book, The Mixing, who carried the books about to every house and pressed them upon the family at its very threshold. In that case the house was the castle of the woman as well as the man, but the little librarian battered an entrance with her winning ways. After a while everybody blessed her, and her old mare and wagon were welcomed along the roads.

Or the Country Girl might begin with a book exchange club in which each member buys a book a year and these are handed from member to member by the month or as shall be agreed upon. Meetings may be called to talk the books over and fine discussions of ethical points involved in the stories read may be held. At the end of the year the books may be lodged in some convenient place to be used by others not members of the club. In this way a nucleus is made for a regular library. The same can be done with magazines. At the end of the year a "banquet" may be held; each member may be dressed up to represent some book, speeches may be made while good things are eaten, and literary conversation may to some extent drive out less worthy and less interesting themes. Almost anything can be done if there are young people enough to get together and talk over plans. The whole tone of the community may be lifted and many a young person may be saved from the evil things that creep in where the mental spaces have not been forestalled by better ideals.

Many a Country Girl has laid the foundations for a regular public library by using the country store and the schoolhouse for book stations. In one very successful attempt of this kind, one hundred books of fiction and travel, children's books, religious books, history, and biography were chosen. Voluntary assistance was given by friends, and records were carefully kept. The following were the appliances necessary. Besides the one hundred books, there were five hundred book labels, one hundred borrowers' cards, four record books for the librarian, three small memorandum books for the stations, three typewritten book lists or catalogs, and one hundred hand bills. On the borrowers' cards were printed the directions, which were these: "Any responsible person wishing books may borrow them one at a time; no book may be kept out longer than two weeks; no charge is made for the use of books; please take care of them and return them promptly." The librarian visited the stations at regular intervals and took up the books that were returned.

There can hardly be a more definite way in which a girl may serve her community than by starting some such scheme as this. If her own home were conveniently situated, she could use it as book station.

It is to be feared that the Country Girl does not make the most of one great privilege: namely, to lead the family to indulge the luxury and joy of reading aloud together on winter evenings from some interesting author. Even in a family that is fond of reading, each member of the circle will be seen when lamps are lighted to settle down to read from the book or paper that interests himself or herself alone, and all the good of unified thought, that might be theirs if they had read aloud, of vital interruption and comment, of living together in mind and growing together as the story develops, of enjoying the humor and romance together, are entirely lost. To read great pieces of literature together in the family is to put a personal consecration about the genius-crowned work of the master spirit. Never can a great epic or drama mean so much to any one of us by closet perusal as it would if we had shared it with our next of kin. This is another place where losing our life is gaining our life. Our treasure is doubled by giving it to others. Winter evenings and Sunday afternoons all the year round, may be made memorable by association with the greatest minds through their preserved works.

The complaint has been made that there is no literature of farm life—that our literature is now completely urbanized and industrialized. There certainly is a tendency in this direction, especially in the realm of fiction. But it is possible to find some that are giving the country its due, and the writings of Mrs. Porter, so dear to Country Girls, are a proof of the fact.[1]

But if the Genius of Fiction has become absorbed with the problem of the city, that of Poetry has remained true to its first love among the fields and streams. It is a joy to know that the poets will always be found among the books chosen for the happy winter evening in the country home. There, if not in fiction and tale, countryside people find a reflection of their thoughts. Perhaps this is because poetry is the one art that can conveniently penetrate to the distant homes in remote rural places. Since time immemorial country life seems to have been not only an inspiration to poets, but also to the development of our powers of expression in that highest of the arts. What is there about life in the open that gives to genius its incentive? The beauty of the surroundings ought to be a sufficient answer. But perhaps that very individuality that we blame country life for overdeveloping may be the favorable ground for the upspringing of this noble human blossom. At any rate it seems that if a soul is born with the endowment of genius, the psychical offices of country life will carry those native qualities to their highest power. Many a city child has been born with the light of genius in its eyes and has had this fire smothered out in the close air and wild rush of the metropolis. But the woods still face the window where Bryant looked out into their mysterious depths, and the brook still sings its way down from the mountains and past the farm where he spent his early years. To him the Berkshire groves were God's chosen temples, first and last.

It is because of this that the poetic writers of the present day and hour should find a sympathetic hearing in the country realm even when the turmoil and drive of the metropolis are deaf to their music. If our living poets may have the people of the countryside for their great and widespread audience they need ask no greater joy.

Mr. Vachel Lindsay, a wandering poet who has traveled almost all over this country preaching his Gospel of Beauty and Democracy, says that in almost every ranch-house "is born one flower-girl or boy, a stranger among the brothers and sisters," a "fairy changeling." The land, he says, is being "jeweled with talented children," from Maine to California. These children of to-day, though they may not be adapted to the strain of heavy labor, yet they will be infinitely patient with the violin, or chisel, or brush, or pen. Country people should be on the watch for those rare wonder children who will be the poets of the future. One of these may seem at the beginning like a simply unusual child. Afterward it may be seen that what was thought queer or different, may have been higher or supreme. We may not have been ourselves sufficiently attuned to the supreme in human accomplishment to recognize the elements in their beginning. Great genius is not "to madness near allied," but is the sanest and most normal thing in the whole realm of creation. The extension of human powers in the field of what we call "genius" is what makes the benefactor of the race in any field most successful and the reformer most influential.

Moreover, every child has the right to find forces in his world that will make his powers, however great or however small, grow to the full measure of which he is capable. If one has a little ability in the field of any one among the arts, he has a right to experience the joy and the benefit that as much training as he is capable of taking shall give to him. Therefore artistic training should be given to every child. And since poetry is the art that is most widely disseminated, the one most practical in its service and cheapest to get hold of in places far distant from picture galleries and concert halls, therefore there should be in all the homes in the open, a great deal of poetry, in order to satisfy the demand that is deeply imbedded in every human being for the satisfaction of the love of beauty.

Here is indeed a great service for the daughter in the family to supply. She is the poetic individual in the home circle. It will be readily acknowledged as fitting that she should know poetry by heart. That she should sing poetry feelingly and speak it effectively will be forgiven by a business-hardened parent and a rough, deriding brother, more readily than if any other member of the family circle should make the attempt. And the persevering and enthusiastic girl will be repaid by finding that the tight outer case of the father will after a time be loosened and that he will be surprised to find himself enjoying what he did not know he liked. She will be gratified again when the heroic ballad, told to appeal to the brother who is in the chivalrous and fighting era of boyhood, fulfils its mission not only by amusing him, but by leading him up to the chivalric motives and to the conquest of selfishness by the higher ideal of honor and devoir. If, too, she will select for her evening reading volumes of the poets who are writing to-day in her own country, writing out of today's life and mood and hope and pain, she will be far more likely to find a sympathetic response in her living audience, than if she chooses from the pages of any souls of poets dead and gone, however classic.

CHAPTER XXIV

HARMONIES

The scrubbing's done; my kitchen stands arrayed
In shining tins, and order reigns supreme.
And on the table, like a fairy dream,
A row of pies and cakes, all freshly made
And full of spicy odors, stands displayed;
While from the oven, like a rising stream
Of incense, comes a fragrance, warm, supreme ...
The bread, its final browning still delayed.
Now while I sit beside the oven door
I take up my guitar upon my knee,
And singing the old songs I knew of yore,
My happy youth comes back again to me—
Music and incense rising on the air!
Courage is mine, and all the world is fair!

—Helen Coale Crew.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SERVICE OF MUSIC TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter in her book, At the Foot of the Rainbow, makes a certain Scotch character say that he does not care for better talking than the "tongues in the trees"; for sounder preaching than the "sermons in the stones"; finer reading than the "books in the river"; no, nor better music than the "choirs of the birds." This music he calls the music of God; he would rather have this, every time, than "notes fra book."

This philosophy of Dannie Macnoun's is excellent; but we must not forget that God made the "notes fra book" also, and gave us our power to design and to enjoy them. It is true also that there is little man has done in copying after the ideas of God that comes so near to the divine as do his attempts in the realm of music. This field nearly all, if they have ears to hear and a voice to sing, can approach in some, at least, of its aspects.

The service of music to the human soul is so excellent that it seems as if it must be one of the necessities. Why does the shepherd invariably possess a flute? The answer is this: some kind of music he must have in his solitary life, and the flute is the instrument that can be carried in the pocket. The ills of isolation may be measurably alleviated by this harmonious companionship and this fact seems to meet a fairly widespread appreciation along our countryside. The emphasis is however placed almost entirely upon instrumental music. The piano of course predominates; but the organ frequently takes its place, the violin, 'cello, cornet, flageolet, guitar and trombone are also found. Then there comes in the phonograph, the graphophone, the Victrola, and the Angelus music-box; the instrument that stands for "all that ever went with evening dress" appears among country customers also, and there seems to be room for mouth-organ and jew's-harp when nothing else offers.

Now a jew's-harp is better than no harp, a mouth-organ is better than no organ; and an accordeon can happify a lowering twilight. The banjo is an all-round-the-world delight and a guitar may be almost heaven to a music-hungry boy or girl. A twenty-dollar organ worked by foot-pedals may be a household blessing, and a flageolet has kept many a sheep herder from insanity on a lonely mountain. But any report on music makes on the whole a sad impression when the human voice is not mentioned; and a hundred will tell of having a musical instrument and some song book or other, where one will speak of singing in the family. Almost every conceivable collection of songs will be mentioned but the general impression gained will be that the American countryside is not filled with singing; that the people do not sing at their work, and that not one hundredth part is there of the joy due them in community music.

In the art and joy of singing together our people seem to have retrograded. Perhaps the dominant influences at the beginning were not favorable to this art. Whatever love we had for music was cherished, however, in the church of New England, but the advent of the soloist in the choir loft has put a quietus upon the musical expression in the pew. Harriet Beecher Stowe tells us how those old billowy fuguing tunes used to be sung, with what gusto the men and women, bass, counter, soprano, and tenor, trained in that national institution, the singing school, would chase the melody around, racing after one another, each singing a different set of words, until at length by some inexplicable magic they would all come together again and sail smoothly out into a rolling sea of song. To her those tunes, as she remembered them from her childhood, were like the ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep calleth to deep in tempestuous confusion, out of which at last is evolved union and harmony.

It is a pity that such musical impulse as this should be allowed to go to waste. And it is not as if the primitive musical quality were extinguished in us, but the impulse remains submerged unless something brings it out. Professor Peter Lutkin of Northwestern University, head of a school of music that constantly draws students from the Western States, says that you cannot give musical culture to an acre of the Western land without having music talent spring there.

We should follow the example of little Wales, that sturdy sister in the confederation of the British Isles. How wonderful is the singing of the Welsh when they come together in their great national Eisteddfod! There they have a national contest in which many singing societies join, and a prize is given to the victorious one. How do we account for this great interest in singing? Why, there is a Choral Society in every village of Wales. Between village and village, between city and city, there are competitive tests, and this annual event is the outcome of all the smaller ones, the crowning engagement for the highest honors. How much must this mean to the people of the villages! What a comfort to the isolated ones! For twelve miles about any village or town center the people come walking in every Sunday evening, to attend rehearsals for practise in sacred music, hymns and chorals being their mainstay. In northern England we find the same musical feeling, and in Italy. Why these special parts of the world should move in this direction, who can tell? It is enough to know that those rougher, more hilly, and more secluded regions do this service for the people. They make them feel the impulse and the necessity for song.

That the case with us is not by any means hopeless is shown by the story of Norfolk, Connecticut. Here a great musical movement has been led by the Litchfield County Choral Union, a musical society that was founded and led by an inspired man, the keynote of whose life may be found in his own words when he said: "Had I my life to live over again, with such slight knowledge as I may have gained, I would become an humble laborer in a primitive and ignorant farming community where by word and example I might perhaps help to raise its members to a higher standard of life in material and spiritual matters; and could I but implant one better thought into a single soul, life would not have been lived in vain." Such was the quiet but radiant ideal of Robbins Battell, the man that tuned all the life of the lower Berkshires to lofty music. The Choral Union as it now stands is a federation of the musical societies of the larger towns of the county, and includes seven hundred members. Each of these societies has many concerts and festivals for the expression of its own skill and joy in the compositions of the masters; and besides this there is an annual three-day meeting and concert at the great "Music Shed" in Norfolk.

In the festival of 1912 they gave the Elijah with a chorus of four hundred and fifteen voices, all chosen from the members of these county Unions. The year before, the same chorus gave excerpts from Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice and the Hora Novissima of Horatio Parker; the year before that they gave Verdi's Requiem and The Song of Hiawatha by S. Coleridge-Taylor. Other concerts accompanied these in which noted soloists took part and great composers were present and conducted their own compositions as given by trained orchestras. So, in 1906 about thirty-six thousand people of the region were able to hear pieces from Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn, Vieuxtemps, Liszt, Rossini, Schumann, Strauss, and Mendelssohn—these were the names represented in the program of 1906, while selections from Goldwork, Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saens, Grieg, Mozart, and Wagner, in 1912 were heard by eight thousand persons.

It is quite impossible to estimate the effect of such musical opportunity or the meaning of these rehearsals from January to June to those villages. The people become consecrated to their art, like the Oberammergauers. Personal ambition is swept away in the success of the song or the oratorio. As there is no entrance to the concerts except by invitation, all mercenary and selfish desire is removed. There is one aim—to express the music perfectly and in the most lofty spirit; therefore the festival is both a vital element in the community and a welder of the people into a social unity. The chorus is also an influence for democracy. There is a weekly rehearsal. Women sometimes walk several miles to attend this and members rarely miss a meeting. One couple came twelve miles every week for eight years. There is no expense except for music and sometimes the sum does not go over sixty cents a year. The possession of a voice is the one condition for entrance, and the land does not assign tuneful voices according to man-made aristocracies; maid and mistress, bank president and store clerk, sing side by side. Into many lives, otherwise inert, the music brings a motive and an inspiration. They sing with wonderful enunciation and with a fervor that can come only from spontaneous rapture. When in Elijah the prophets of Baal cried out their prayer for "Fire!" outsiders ran, it is said, and notified the fire department!

To have a large part of the community thus trained, to have all the community thus interested and inspired, to have every least member of the community honored by citizenship in a village where these nobly cultural influences are found, is certainly a great thing. And when we remember that this could happen or rather, could be developed, in any town or village in the land, we can but mourn our silent roadsides, our unsinging lips, our wicked waste of the good gifts of God.

Another rare expression of musical enthusiasm comes from the Central West. The little town of Lindsborg, on the broad high prairies of Kansas, holds each spring during Holy Week a musical celebration called, naturally, the "Messiah Festival." In this case a college is the leader—Bethany College, where there are a thousand students with regular standard courses of study besides varied and excellent choruses, orchestras, societies, and classes for musical development. In the spring of 1914 there was a chorus of six hundred voices; another of children alone contained four hundred and fifty; distinguished singers gave the solos; a week was filled with concerts of classic and modern renderings; Brahms, Dvorak, MacDowell, Sibelius, were found together with Beethoven and Handel, and the whole reached a wonderfully high level of attainment.

What interests us most, however, is to see what this work does for the people of the region. Men and women come from fifteen miles away to attend the rehearsal, and this in winter; three generations of one family sang in the chorus at the last Festival; they play and sing for the pure love and enjoyment of the music. It is altogether impossible to state in words what all this must mean to the moral and spiritual development of the region, to the binding of the hearts of the people in the community, and to the forging of those ties that will hold the young people true in their loyalty to their homes.

It is not claimed that every country community can have such a concourse as this for concert work during the winters; but something like the old singing school might be installed, and home music might be made far more of a joy and comfort than it now is.

That this can be the mission of music in community service is being discerned by many. In the always forward-looking University of Wisconsin, a plan has been made for the development of musical feeling among the people. The desire is to make the people realize the immense social power of music and to give a chance for this welding and delighting influence to have its way in the home, the schools, the churches, in musical organizations of all kinds, in all places of amusement, and in entertainments of all kinds. No doubt other universities in other States will follow this admirable example.

But we do not need colleges and universities to tell us that we should do more with singing than we at present do. Here are six million girls of the countryside—what can they do to redeem the country from this dull silence and unmelodious tedium? What, in fact, might they not do? Let every one of them resolve that she will wake up every morning singing; that she will sing at her work all day long; that she will call for songs in the evenings, with the whole family around—not one, of any age, allowed to be absent from the circle; that she will require that music of some sort shall be part of the ceremony of every society and club she belongs to; that she will get the young people together to sing once at least every week; that she will suggest that the older people should sing together—it is unnecessary and absurd to let the singing days disappear along with youth into the background; and that she will persevere in this till the whole countryside shall ring with song from east to west, and until the stigma that we are a people that do not care for music shall be forever removed. We have some magnificent old folk songs; we have glorious national songs; we have some religious songs with a marching rhythm and a fervor that make them good for every day in the week, for threshing times and for all times; we have a song for every mood and every experience; why not use our songs and enjoy them?

The larger breadths of musical repertory are not so far away from the remote country places as formerly, now that the victrola and other instruments of like kind bring a knowledge of the great orchestral and operatic passages to our very sitting-room. Every village should have this help in order to understand the great music that without it might be shut off from us. There should be one in every social center for general use in the community. A good way is for some member of the music-study committee to give a description of the opera or the oratorio, with comments on the particular passage that the instrument can render; then the listeners are better able to understand what is being played and by the imagination to place the solos in their right background as they are being heard; an impression of the work as a whole will be thus gained that will to some extent approach the composite scene as it is shown on the stage. "Ah! can you imagine what the victrola means to us out here on this prairie!" wrote a friend from western Nebraska. This may be the experience of every rural circle the country over if it will only have community spirit enough to work together and acquire the music-reproducing apparatus.

Another thing that can be done is to get together all the people in the community that can play on any kind of instrument, and make them play together. Do not despise the day of small things. There must be a beginning. It will not be long before we can do more in any village, and at last we can have music of a higher order to drive the ills of isolation out of our atmosphere and introduce a healthful harmony in their place. If a boy belonged to an orchestra that met on Monday and Friday evenings for practise, to a class in voice on Tuesday evening, and had engagements with groups of young men and young women to train for concerts all the other evenings of the week and was to sing in the church choir on Sunday, is it possible that he would feel that he could be spared to go away to the city to live? The case of the Country Girl will be exactly parallel. Her voice is the leading voice in the quartette; she is necessary to the musical atmosphere of the village; she is the hostess everywhere; she cannot be spared from any village and country life that is full of musical and other social engagements. And among the influences that beneficently endow human beings, the one that is at once most welding, most unifying, and most delighting is music.

CHAPTER XXV

O little bulb, uncouth
Rugged, and rusty brown,
Have you some dew of youth?
Have you a crimson crown?
Plant me and see
What I shall be—
God's fine surprise
Before your eyes!

—M. D. Babcock.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PLAY IN THE HOME

The development of musical taste and the power to enjoy the works of the great composers is closely akin to the ability to appreciate the sister art of the drama. The art that has grown out of that imitative impulse, which is so deeply implanted in human nature and has reached such heights in the hands of genius, has modest stages of growth that may be seen in the daily programs of the home, the school, the playground, in all the walks of children and of grown people. To be able to tell a story, and show it up with a little dramatic imitation, is to add to the success of the social queen, the drummer, the one who influences and manages men or women in any field. There are people who think it well worth while to spend much time in the study of the art of expression, just to add to their powers of entertainment when they wish to use this form of culture in the home circle only. It is not at all a bad thing to do. Thus to train the voice for sweet and fine or for powerful and striking modulations, to give the face new power of showing emotion, to win also the help of gesture, is to add to one's resources and to make them a greater source of enjoyment in the daily walks of life.

It is hardly possible to think of society in any age of the world since we became human beings when the intercourse of people was not lighted up with electric bits of humor, joking and ridicule, based on the dramatic principle of imitation. But when the day came for our solemn ancestors in New England to appear on the scene, they concocted a theory of duty that was not favorable to these pleasurable forms of activity.

Yet, as we have seen, these subdued people loved music and they loved beauty in all forms. And when beauty could be had along with what they considered a pure and dignified aspect of expression, they winked at the keen pleasure that they felt and said nothing against it.

An interesting story of Catherine Beecher, daughter of the great New England theologian, Dr. Lyman Beecher, illustrates this. It is related in the autobiography of her father that she once devised a play and prepared, unknown to her parents, to give it in the kitchen of their home in Litchfield, Connecticut. The unsuspicious parents, it seems, did not notice that the neighbors were dropping in with a very unusual simultaneousness and that after supper an unwonted fire was being built in the parlor. Soon the door into the kitchen was opened with a flourish, a curtain was seen to have been strung across the room, Roman senators began to stalk across the stage—the kitchen floor—and a good rousing dip was taken by all into the fountain of antique romance. After it was over the stern father, who had been too greatly overwhelmed by the events of the evening to make any objection, whispered to that favorite daughter of his that it had all been very interesting but—better not do that again! Catherine got off easily, considering the repute in which dramatic representations were held by our forefathers. Temptations to evil, at least, they were considered to be, if not the very path itself.

Yet Catherine Beecher made many plays, devised in large part from the plots of approved and semi-pious story-books, and these were enacted at school and at the picnics of her large circle of brothers and sisters. Moreover her sister Harriet (afterward Harriet Beecher Stowe) being at about this period of her youth filled with the aspiration to become a great tragic poet, wrote reams and reams of blank verse on a classic theme developed in dramatic form. By this time, however, the elder dominant sister Catherine must have seen the error of her ways, for finding Harriet one day in the act of composition, she took her precious play away from her, bidding her to cease this waste of time and go to work on her Butler's Analogy of Nature and Religion. And Harriet obeyed.

This story is told to afford one illustration of the fact that the divine endowments of human genius cannot be so easily crushed out. A theory will not accomplish it.

Catherine and Harriet Beecher were not the only possessors of glowing dramatic inspirations in the early days. We had not been fully settled here very many lustrums before the submerged river of artistic feeling came to the surface in the form of vivid oratory and elaborate dialogue; and when there began to be Sunday Schools there were Sunday School concerts with tableaux of an unworldly sort, with dialogues and with companies of young people who, in a small and innocuous way, engaged in exercises that might be called acting. This was found more or less all over New England and went with the New England migration into New York, and Ohio, and then farther west. Many thousands of angels with tinsel crowns and tissue-paper wings have filled the spaces between pulpit and organ in the little white churches that have sprung up beside every hill along what we may call the New England belt—the course of the travels westward across the continent as the generations of descendants have passed on and built and subdued the soil and planted schools and churches along the northern latitudinal lines.

The story of Catherine Beecher illustrates too the fact that the prejudice in the dwellers in country districts against the use of dramatic forms of entertainment is based after all not so much upon the dramatic representation itself as upon certain conditions and associations often found connected with theatrical displays as carried on in larger towns and cities and believed to be necessary to the existence of theatrical life.

There is a village in Illinois with a population of nine hundred where the majority of the church-going people—and most of the inhabitants of the town belong to that class—have been of the opinion that it is a wicked thing to go to see a play if it is enacted by some company of play-actors such as might come along on their theatrical route; yet in that town for years the townspeople have been giving plays of their own, in which nearly the whole population of the place would join, old and young, rich and poor, wise and unwise. The whole family from grandmother to grandchild will sometimes appear in one play, and all the cousins and relatives of the whole "team-haul community" will come to see. They give many standard melodramas, and they have also tried their hand at Shakespearean drama, to the great enjoyment and uplift of themselves, both those that thoroughly capture the meaning of the play by training for the parts, and those that closely if charitably attend and listen. Why should not this be done in every small town? Why should not the unused building, an old barn, a store-loft, be transformed into a country theater, where the whole village may assemble twice a week or oftener, and run through a play together, getting joy and culture at once?

If once the ingrained, inherited prejudice, handed down from those misinterpreting honorable ancestors of ours, could be overcome, the plunge might be taken and the drama could become the education and inspiring agent that it has the capacity to be in our homes, our schools, and our towns and villages.

Especially to the remote village and to the lonely farm would this form of entertainment be a benefit. Do we not need this also to help lift the ban of loneliness and to supply that elasticity of spirit that means life to us? Companionship is our lack, the impact of various lives upon ours, the stirring of resentment against wrong or of enthusiastic approval of the good and noble that comes from the clash of motives, right and wrong, wise and unwise. If we are denied the opportunity to see and feel all this in the scenes from actual life in which we ourselves in our own persons participate, we may receive some portion at least of the education to be derived from such impact by living for a time in the imagined world of the dramatist's creation and by watching the constant intricate play of emotion in the dialogue. And this we can in no other way do so well as by taking a part in the drama and appropriating it for our own; by living in that part, adopting the imagined circumstances for our own and following out the problem in the character represented and pursuing his fate to the bitter end. To do that is to gain to some extent the effect of companionship and its enlightening, enlarging and satisfying influence. To the extent that we are able to do this shall we combat and overcome the stagnation and the pain of loneliness.

As a by-product of the same exercise, we shall gain a new knowledge of our own capacity. We shall take a long step in the direction of obeying the old dictum to "know thyself." If, for instance, we are reading the part of Hamlet, and are trying to adopt his life and problem for the time being for our own, we learn how much we could suffer, how strongly we could determine, how fiercely we could doubt and yet struggle on, how tenderly we could love and yet resign, how all these things we could feel if we were really the Hamlet of the great play of Shakespeare.

In this way we gain an enlargement of our own nature and receive inspirations to heroism on our own part. This is not wasted time, for there is no life that does not afford opportunity for heroism or that does not need inspirations to courage and fortitude.

There are people who do not enjoy reading a play. They miss the constant running description of movement and gesture, of scenery and color and background, of meaning and prophecy and scope that are found in a story or in narrative of any kind. They are not accustomed to supplying the pictures of the story from the resources of their own imagination. However valuable a discipline it may be for them to learn how to make up imaginary backgrounds instead of depending upon the writer's aid, to that form of discipline they will not give the trouble. But if such readers will take the play into the family circle, and using several copies of the text, assign parts to each of the family, and thus read the text aloud, letting the words spoken by each of the characters give the suggestion for action, and encouraging each one to give the proper expression and gesture as he reads his part, the meaning will come clear as the scene goes on, and the proper enjoyment of the play as a play will enter into each one that shares the cast. If this does not happen with the first reading, it will come with the second or third. It is a pretty poor play that will not bear several readings; while as for the greatest of dramatists, Shakespeare, his plays will stand many and many a reading. It would be a good winter's enjoyment on a far away farm, for the family to set apart one or two evenings a week to be given to reading of the plays by the greatest poet and dramatist. Several plays would do for one winter and the whole thirty-six of them would last for several years, and then one could begin again at the beginning and read them over with renewed interest and understanding. Thus the farm home could have a theater of its own in the warm sitting-room while the soft snow covered the acres all about, hushing every disturbing sound.

Perhaps that lofty master of the dramatic art should not be the first one mentioned. It is quite easy to understand that some Country Girl will think this poet to be hard reading for one who has not had the chance to go through high school. For those who are timid about taking a bold leap into the field of more advanced literature there are many plays made from our present-day lives that are easy to read and to enact, plays adapted to any number of people, plays that may include father, mother, and the children down to the smallest; and there are many kinds of tableaux and smaller plays that can be represented on the lawn of the farmhouse or in the kitchen after the work is done.

Of course the greatest thing of all would be to make one's own plays out of one's own circumstances or out of the things that one is thinking about every day. In making a play one must first choose a hero or a heroine; then imagine something that this hero wishes to do. After that some great difficulty is to be planned that he must meet, some opposition he must overcome. In constructing a drama you tell the story of a struggle or endeavor of this kind, putting it all into the words the people speak and nothing at all into any account of the action, the gesture, or the dress. All those things must be seen to by the people who take the parts. And the background may be selected that will come nearest to being the right and fit one for the people and action suggested by the words of the play.

There is an infinite possibility before those who will make the attempt to let the playing of plays have part in the amusements in the farm home. All ages can be suited with plays, the simple ones for the smallest children, the more complex and finished for the older ones, the great ones for the oldest and most educated among the members of the family. As drama is one expression of the play spirit (using the word here in its meaning of "recreation"), and the satisfaction that comes with the feeding of this hunger in people of all ages, has but to be once known for us to seek earnestly for its food another and yet another time.

To show how this instinct has been made effective in one home I quote, with kind permission, a play made by one little girl of eleven years old. In reading it over the reader will see what the child has been reading and where she got the material of the thoughts she has embodied in the action and atmosphere of this naïve and delightful little play.

TRUE LOVERS

A PLAY IN SEVEN SCENES

By Julia Carolyn Horne

THE CAST