CHAPTER XI. KEEPING OPEN HOUSE
Our little four-room company-house in Sharon had its doors open to the wayfarer. There was always some newcomer from Wales, looking for a stake in America, who had left his family in Wales. Usually he was a distant kinsman, but whether a blood relation or not, we regarded all Welshmen as belonging to our clan. Our house was small, but we crowded into the corners and made room for another. His food and bed were free as long as he stayed. We helped him find a job, and then he thanked us for our hospitality and went out of our house with our blessings upon him. This form of community life was the social law in all the cottages of the Welsh.
It was like the law of tobacco among Americans. Tobacco has always been “nationalized” in America, and so have matches. Your pipe is your own, but your tobacco and matches belong to everybody. So it was with food and shelter in the Welsh colony at Sharon. Each newcomer from the Old Country was entitled to free bed and board until he could get a job in the mills. When he found a job his money was his; we never expected him to pay for the food he had eaten any more than you would expect pay for the tobacco and matches you furnish your friends.
These sojourners in our family were heroes to us kids. They brought us news from the Old World, and each one had tricks or tales that were new to us. One man showed us that we could put our hand on the bottom of a boiling teakettle and find the bottom cool. Another told us about milking goats in the Old Country. We asked him how much milk a goat would give. He said, “About a thimbleful,” and we thought him very witty. Another had shipped as an “able seaman” to get his passage to America. When out at sea it was discovered he didn't know one rope from another. During a storm he and the mate had a terrible fight. “The sea was sweeping the deck and we were ordered to reef a shroud. I didn't know how, and the mate called me a name that no Welshman will stand for. I thought we were all going to be drowned anyhow, and I might as well die with my teeth in his neck. So I flew into him and we fought like wildcats. I couldn't kill him and he couldn't kill me. And the sea didn't sweep us overboard. But after that fight the mate let me do as I pleased for the rest of the voyage.”
Knowing how strong are the arms of an iron worker and what a burly man is a ship's mate, we realized that the fight must have been a struggle between giants.
We were fluent readers, much better readers than our parents, but we had no books. We took the Youth's Companion, and it was the biggest thing in our lives. Every week we were at the post-office when the Companion was due. We could hardly wait, we were so eager to see what happened next in the “continued” story. Surely so good a children's paper as the Youth's Companion could never be found in any country but America. America was the land of children, and that's why parents broke their old-home ties and made the hard pilgrimage to America; it was for the benefit of their children.
Our home was a happy one, for we children were fond of one another and all loved the father and mother who worked so hard for us. We were the first to realize that our home was insecure, upheld by a single prop, our father's labor. The breaking of his right arm might have broken up our home. We wanted to acquire property so that mother would be safe. For we knew that God was a just God. He did not ordain that one class should labor and be insecure while another class owned property and was safe. I learned that the banker, the hotel keeper and the station agent had all been poor boys like myself. They started with nothing but their hands to labor with. They had worked hard and saved a part of their wages, and this had given them “a start.” The hotel keeper had been a hack driver. He slept in the haymow of a livery stable. He had to meet the train that came at two o'clock in the morning. No other man was willing to have his sleep broken at such an hour. He hated to lose the sleep, but he wanted the money. At the end of four years he had saved a thousand dollars. He wanted to buy a hotel but needed more money. The banker, knowing he was a stayer, lent him the cash he needed, and so he became a property owner. He no longer slept in the haymow but had a room of his own and other rooms to rent to the “high-toned traveling men.”
From this I learned that laborers became capitalists when they saved their money. Right then I made up my mind that some day mother would own a home. If father couldn't save the money to buy it, I would. Years afterward a wealthy Pittsburgh man who had just built a fine residence in the fashionable section of that town found himself in difficulties and unable to occupy the house. He offered it to me at a bargain. So I took my parents to this place and told them it was to be theirs. Mother declared that she certainly never dreamed of having a “magnificent home like this.” She seemed to be greatly pleased. But now I know that the sparkle in her eyes was for me. Her boy had done all this for his mother. If I had given her a pair of shoes that pinched her feet, she would have worn them smiling for my sake. Father looked out the windows at the neighboring residences. “Who lives there?” he asked. “And who lives yonder?” I told him the great names of his neighbors.
“Son,” he said, “you do not wish to lock your parents up in a prison, do you?”
Then he explained: “We do not know these people. We are too old to make new friends. We would never be at ease here, we would be lonely. We like the little home that we bought with our own savings. It has become a part of ourselves; it fits us like the wrinkles on our faces. If we moved here our old friends would never come to see us. This magnificence would scare them away. No, son. We thank you for offering us this house, but it is not for us. We will stay in the little cottage where our old friends will be free to come and light a pipe and chat and drowse away the evening hours that yet remain.”
How wise he was! He knew the fitness of things. His simple comforts, his old friends, these he valued more than riches, and the valuation that he put upon them was the right one.