"You are very kind," she said, "and I believe that you will never regret this day's work, liberal though it has been."
CHAPTER XVII
EVERY WHIT WHOLE
Poverty, poverty, the curse of the Flat--the curse of all on whom its blighting influence falls! We have been told that the love of money is the root of all evil. The misuse of money is the most atrocious thing in our civilization; but poverty is a devastating monster that crushes out the better nature of men as relentlessly as any monster of the jungle crushes its victim between its giant jaws.
Nature is prolific, lavish, luxurious; there is neither limit nor measure to her bounty and generosity. The ever-faithful Friend of man withered the fig tree because it failed to bring forth fruit. Everywhere over the wide earth we see provision made for the needs of men. Food, shelter and clothing the world does not lack. Nature's storehouses circle the globe, and they are never empty. Vast, measureless seedbeds, watered and warmed from Heaven, impelled by an unseen Power, are growing and producing the seasons through. Forests of fruit trees yielding their succulent, sweet-flavored fruit; oceans of grain fields, whose length and breadth the eye cannot measure--to feed the human race. Cotton, wool and hemp and the patient spinning of the silk-worm--to clothe the children of men; quarries of stone and forests of wood to provide shelter from sun and storm. Let us never, even in our weakest, most irreverent moments, voice a protest against the great and generous Giver of this boundless, countless wealth because of the disposition men have made of it.
Some day, that bright, blessed day that even now is dawning, men will not keep and hoard that for which they have no need, and for the lack of which a fellow man perishes and dies. When this day dawns no man will desire more of this world's goods than he can use and enjoy. Men will not seat themselves at a feast and stuff and feed until their bodies distend and their eyes start from their sockets while the wail of hungry children echoes in the land.
The monster, cruel, relentless, immovable, that Mrs. Thorpe found everywhere on the Flat was Poverty. This monster may spring from a gentle mother, more sinned against than sinning, but it is sired by Ignorance and the stamp upon its forehead is Vice.
Mrs. Thorpe visited in these poor, barren homes; she became acquainted with the people and was a friend to all, and with tact and patience she presented to them the desirability of the school that she was about to open.
The boys, profane, reared in immorality, knew her and in their boyish hearts admired her. When she called upon them and solicited their aid they responded readily, and devastating war was waged upon the briers and brambles that cumbered the soil around the old Resort. And while the ground that she planned for flower beds and vegetable gardens yielded up its unprofitable growth and was made ready for the plowman's steel the boys were receiving Nature's best discipline, the tug and sweat of honest work.
A workman skilled with tools, but who had abandoned his trade for the gambler's fortunes, was called upon and pressed into service to mend the broken roof and place again the crumbling columns. And when this work was finished the man, feeling again the spirit of manhood revived by honest work, went over into Edgerly and obtained steady employment; and his wife and children awoke to a new appreciation of life. The wife took a lot of the ground that lay back of the old Resort and vied with her neighbors in raising her beds of vegetables--tender lettuce, green peas and cucumbers.