The Brimming Cup

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

At this point Marise came out of the office, her face between laughter and exasperation. She clasped her hands together and said, "Can't you do anything?"

"In a minute," he told her. "I'll just finish these two letters and then I'll go and break him off short."

Marise went on to the accountant's desk, to ask about his wife, who sang in her winter chorus.

He dictated rapidly: "No more contracts will go out to you if this stripping of the mountain-land continues. Our original contract has in it the clause which I always insist on, that trees smaller than six inches through the butt shall not be cut. You will please give your choppers definite orders on this point, and understand that logs under the specified size will not be accepted at the mill." He held out to the stenographer the letter he was answering. "Here, Arthur, copy the name and address off this. It's one of those French-Canadian names, hard to spell if you don't see it."

He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had progressed, and heard him saying, "In the decade from 1850 on, there was a terrible and scandalous devastation of the mountain-land . . ." and said to himself, "Halfway through the century. I'll have time to go on a while. All ready, Arthur." He dictated: "On birch brush-backs of the model specified, we can furnish you any number up to . . ." He wound his way swiftly and surely through a maze of figures and specifications without consulting a paper or record, and drawing breath at the end, heard Mr. Bayweather pronouncing his own name. ". . . Mr. Crittenden has taught us all a great deal about the economic aspects of a situation with which we had had years of more familiarity than he. His idea is that this mountainous part of New England is really not fit for agriculture. Farming in the usual sense has been a losing venture ever since the Civil War high prices for wool ceased. Only the bottoms of the valleys are fit for crops. Most of our county is essentially forest-land. And his idea of the proper use to make of it, is to have a smallish industrial population engaged in wood-working, who would use the bits of arable land in the valleys as gardens to raise their own food. He has almost entirely reorganized the life of our valley, along these lines, and I daresay he cannot at all realize himself the prodigious change from hopelessness and slow death to energy and forward-looking activity which his intelligent grasp of the situation has brought to this corner of the earth."

The young stenographer had heard this too, and had caught the frown of annoyance which the personal reference brought to Neale's forehead. He leaned forward and said earnestly, "It's so, Captain . . . Mr. Crittenden. It's so!"

Mr. Bayweather went on, "There is enough wood in the forests within reach of the mill to keep a moderate-sized wood-working factory going indefinitely, cutting by rotation and taking care to leave enough trees for natural reforestration. But of course that has not been the American way of going at things. Instead of that steady, continuous use of the woods, which Mr. Crittenden has shown to be possible, furnishing good, well-paid work at home for the men who would be otherwise forced off into cities, our poor mountains have been lumbered every generation or so, on an immense, murderous, slashing scale, to make a big sum of money for somebody in one operation. When old Mr. Burton Crittenden's nephew came to town it was a different story. Mr. Neale Crittenden's ideal of the lumber business is, as I conceive it, as much a service to mankind as a doctor's is."

Neale winced, and shook his head impatiently. How ministers did put the Sunday-school rubber-stamp on everything they talked about—even legitimate business.

"And as Mrs. Crittenden's free-handed generosity with her musical talent has transformed the life of the region as much as Mr. Crittenden's high and disinterested . . ."

"Oh Gosh, Arthur, never mind about the rest!" murmured Neale, moving back quickly into the inner office to create a diversion. "All ready?" he asked in a loud, hearty voice, as he came up to them. "Up to 1920 by this time, Mr. Bayweather?" He turned to Marsh, "I'm afraid there is very little to interest you, with your experience of production on a giant scale, in a business so small that the owner and manager knows every man by name and everything about him."