“Why, from the way you talk, anybody’d think you had fallen heir to a big thing!”
I had. That little flower in my pocket carried a Christmas spirit and a Christmas lesson that the whole world could not buy. The thing paying the largest dividend, the finest companion that ever walked with one along the roadway of life—unselfish love, and sacrifice.
“COLUMBUS DAY”
I would like to know where you are tonight, and what you have been doing all through this “Liberty Day.” With us the day has been cloudy and wet, and just as the sun went down Nature took the liberty of sending a cold, penetrating rain. So here I am before my big fire with a copy of Washington Irving’s “Life of Christopher Columbus.” That seems the proper way to end Columbus Day, for in trying to tell the children about him I found that I did not really know much more than they do about the great discoverer. So here I am back some 400 years in history wondering if any of these pompous and bigoted ways of seeking for new worlds or new methods can be applied to modern life in New Jersey.
My back aches, for I have been digging potatoes all day—and I thought I had graduated from that job some years ago. Perhaps you will say that we should have been out selling Liberty bonds or parading. Personally, I am a poor salesman, and we all subscribed for our bonds some days ago. There are eight bondholders in this family. The influenza has left us without labor except for the children while the school is closed. There are still over 100 barrels of apples to pick, potatoes to dig, plowing and seeding to be done, and a dozen other jobs all pressing. So I decided to celebrate Liberty Day by digging those Bible School potatoes. We planted a patch of potatoes between rows of young peach trees and promised the crop to the Bible Teachers’ Training School. Last year we tried this, and I put in a few of the latest scientific touches which the experts told us about. The plant lice came in a swarm and ruined the patch. We had a few potatoes about the size of marbles. This year we avoided scientific advice, and just planted potatoes in the old-fashioned way. They were not cultivated in the best possible manner, but they made a good crop. So when Liberty Day dawned with a thick, gray mist over the land I decided to get those potatoes out instead of going on the march or singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” From what I read of Columbus I imagine he would have chosen the parade and left the digging to others. The world has taken on new ideas about labor since then.
So, after breakfast, Cherry-top and I took our forks and started digging. The soil was damp and the air full of mist and meanness which made me sneeze and cough as we worked on. Happily, out on our hills we are not fined $20 for sneezing outside of a handkerchief, as is the case in New York. If anyone has discovered any poetry or philosophy in the job of digging potatoes he may have the floor. I call it about the most menial job on the farm, and therefore fine discipline for “Liberty Day.” While we were working Philip and the larger boy went by with the team to seed rye. They have thrashed out enough grain by hand, and this is not only ideal weather, but about the last limit for seeding. The land was plowed some two weeks ago, a big crop of ragweed and grass being turned under. If we only had the labor this ground would have been disked twice and then harrowed. As it is, we can only work it once with the spring-tooth. Then Philip goes ahead seeding in the rye by hand, while the boy follows with the Acme harrow to cover the grain. It is rough seeding and would not answer for wheat, but rye is tough and enduring, and it will imitate Columbus and discover a new world in that decaying mass of ragweed. So I watch the seed sowers travel slowly along the hillside as I dig, and wonder what was doing on this farm 427 years ago, and what will be doing here 100 years hence! Such reflections were the most cheerful mental accompaniment I could find for digging potatoes. They are impractical, while digging is the most practical thing on earth!
As we dug on a man and woman came up the lane. They came after apples, having engaged them before. The boy went down to attend to them, while I kept on digging. Then the boy came back with two more apple customers. The trouble with us is that we have more customers than apples this year, but these were old patrons, and they were served. The boy finally came back with $41.80 as a result of his trading, and we went at our job with new vigor. As we dug along we noticed a curious thing about those potatoes. Here and there was a vine large and strong, and still perfectly green. The great majority of the hills were dead, but those green ones were as vigorous as they were in June. The variety was Green Mountain, and we soon found that on the average these big green vines were producing twice as much as the dead hills. Some of these living vines carried three or four big potatoes. Others had a dozen, with seven or eight of market size, while others had about 16 tubers, mostly small. Just why these vines should act in this way I do not know. There are so many possible reasons that I should have to guess at it, as Columbus did when, as his ship sailed on and on into the west, the compass began to vary. The boy and I decided that here was where we might discover a good strain of Green Mountain on Columbus Day. So we have selected 15 of the best hills. They will be planted, hill by hill, next year and still further selection made. We discarded the hills with only a few big potatoes and also those with many small ones, and selected those with a good number of medium-sized tubers. It may come to nothing, but we will try it. Experience and careful figures show that an ordinary crop of potatoes in this country does not pay. The same is true of a flock of ordinary poultry, or a drove of scrub pigs. There is no profit except in well-bred, selected stock. That’s what we think we have in pigs and poultry—perhaps we may get something of the same thing in potatoes.
But there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you work up a great appetite. At noon there came a most welcome parade up the lane. It was not a woman suffrage procession, but Mother, Aunt Eleanor, Rose and the little girls bringing the picnic dinner in baskets and pails. The boy had built a fire up above the Spring and piled stones up around it. By the time I had washed my hands and face in the brook Mother had a frying pan over this fire with slices of bacon sizzling and giving up their fat. When this bacon was brown the slices were taken out and the fat kept on bubbling and dancing. Then Aunt Eleanor cut up slices of Baldwin apples and dropped them into this fat. They tell me Ben Davis is best for this fried-apple performance, but I found no fault with Baldwin as it jumped out of that fat. The chemist will no doubt explain how the bacon fat combined with the acid of the apple, etc., etc., etc. Let him talk; it does him good—but have another fried apple! Men may come and men may go, but they will seldom find more appetizing food or a more perfect balanced ration than the Hope Farmers discovered around that fire. There were bread and butter, fried bacon, fried apple, pot cheese and several of our choice Red hen’s eggs boiled hard and chopped fine with a little onion. Of course, eggs are worth good and great money just now, but nothing is too good for an occasion like this. And so, on that cheerless day, sitting around our fire, we all concluded that Columbus did a great thing when he discovered America.