Most of these notes were originally printed in the Rural New-Yorker from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection, and I wish to acknowledge here the great help which I have received from my daughter, Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological order. “A Hope Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother” were originally printed in 1902. The others follow in the order of their original publication. The reader must understand that the children alluded to represent two distinct broods,—the second brood appearing just after the sketch entitled “Transplanting the Young Idea.” From the very first the object of these notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful side of Farm Life.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| The Sunny Side of the Barn | [1] |
| A Hope Farm Sermon | [21] |
| Grandmother | [26] |
| Laughter and Religion | [33] |
| A Day in Florida | [38] |
| The Baseball Game | [45] |
| Transplanting the Young Idea | [51] |
| The Sleepless Man | [58] |
| Lincoln’s Birthday | [63] |
| Uncle Ed’s Philosophy | [69] |
| A God-forsaken Place | [75] |
| Louise | [82] |
| Christmas Every Day | [88] |
| “The Finest Lesson” | [94] |
| “Columbus Day” | [107] |
| The Commencement | [114] |
| “Organization” | [122] |
| The Face of Liberty | [130] |
| Captain Randall’s Hour | [138] |
| “Snow Bound” | [147] |
| “Class” | [155] |
| “I’ll Tell God” | [163] |
| A Day’s Work | [171] |
| Professor Gander’s Academy | [181] |
| Colonel O’Brien and Sergeant Hill | [189] |
| How the Other Half Lives | [198] |
| The Indians Won | [206] |
| Ike Sawyer’s Hotel | [214] |
| Old-time Politics | [224] |
HOPE FARM NOTES
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BARN
As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set out for me every day. During the Winter it was sawing and splitting wood. Our barn stood so that somehow on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road, and it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other was turned so it was always cold and frosty, with little if any sun. The hens, the cow and the sheep always made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented the comfortable and the bright side of life. The old gentleman who brought me up always put the woodpile on the frosty side of the barn. He argued that if the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would stop to look at the passers-by, feel something of the joy of living, and stop his work to absorb a little of it. We were brought up to believe that labor was a curse, put upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side, he must move fast in order to keep warm. He would not stop to loaf in the sun, he could not throw stones or practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was that the boy would accomplish more on the frosty side, and realize that labor represented the primal curse which somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed much of my life on the frosty side of the barn, silent and thoughtful, while the hens cackled and sang on the sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could not see that the thing which made the hens lay would surely make the boy work.
There will always be a dispute as to whether a boy or a man does his best work under the spur of necessity, or out of a full bag of the oats of life. And they do it with greater or less cruelty as more or less of their life has been spent on the frosty side. I never yet saw a self-made man who did anything like a perfect job on himself. They usually spoil their own sons by giving them too easy a time, while work is a necessity in building character. Work without play of some sort is labor without soul, and that is one of the most cruel and dangerous things in the world. I have noticed that most men who pass their childhood on the frosty side of the barn have what I call a squint-eyed view of youth. They spend a large part of their time telling how they had to work as a boy, and how much inferior their own sons are since they do not have chores to do. That man’s boys will pay no attention except when his eye is upon them, and rightly so, I think. The man looks across the table at mother, with a shake of his head, for is not the Smith family responsible for the fact that these boys do not equal their wonderful sire? I have learned better than to expect much sympathy from my boys for what happened 50 years ago.