Hope Farm Notes

by Herbert W. Collingwood

Just think of that, a “celestial benediction”—it was a great thing for a boy to think about. I looked both words up in the dictionary and got, perhaps, half of their meaning. In all our town there seemed to be no one except our old minister to come around on the frosty side of the barn with comfort or promise, but this celestial benediction which the poet told about got right to you. It might even live under that awful pile of wood which I was to saw, and it would be worth the job of sawing it if I could find such a thing under the pile. I heard people speak of a “nigger in the woodpile” in terms of reproach, but a celestial benediction down under the wood was certainly entitled to all respect. I did not fully understand it, or what it meant, but it got into me and stayed there, where the multiplication table or the rule of square root never would remain. My belief is that if I had committed to memory in place of that poem some excellent classroom lecture at college I should have become a little anarchist, and gone through life pushing such people as I could reach toward the frosty side of the barn. As it was, that poem, repeated over and over, made me vow as a child that if I ever could influence or direct the lives of farmers I would do my best to see that they lived and did their work on the sunny side of the barn.

In my day children were brought up on “the Scriptures and a stick,” both well applied, and yet all these “lectures and lickings” never stuck in my life as did the noble poetry we read in school, and the few pictures which hung on the walls of the home. There is a curious thing about some of these pictures. I am told of a case where two boys in the Tennessee mountains volunteered for the navy. Their mountain home was as far removed from the ocean as it well could be. They had never seen even a large pond. For three generations not one of their ancestors had ever seen the salt water. Yet these boys would not listen to any call for the army, but they demanded a place in the navy. The story came to an officer in a nearby camp, and he became interested and visited that home. Both father and mother were puzzled over the action of their boys, and they could not understand why Henry and William had demanded the ocean. As the officer turned away he noticed hanging on the wall in the living-room of that house the crude picture of a ship under full sail and on an impossible blue ocean. It had come into that family years before, wrapped around a package of goods, and mother had hung it on the wall. From their youth those boys had grown up with that picture before them, and it had decided their lives. It was stronger than the influence of father and mother—they could not overcome it. I speak of that in order that you men and women with children of your own may understand how the dreams, the poetry, the visions of youth may prove stronger influences than any of the science, the wisdom, or the fine examples you may put before your little ones.

On the wall of our old living-room at home was a chromo entitled “Joseph and His Brethren.” It was an awful work of art. It showed a group of men putting a boy down into a hole in the ground. It would have made the head of an art department weep in misery, and yet it affected me deeply. I used to stand and study it, with the result that at least one chapter of the Bible gave me great joy, and that was the story of Joseph and his brothers. That story helped to keep me sweet and hopeful on the frosty side of the barn, for I reasoned it all out as I worked. Here, I thought, was a farm boy. He did rather more than his share of living on the frosty side, and see what he came to. I used to picture Joseph in mind as he came walking over the desert carrying his father’s instructions about the sheep and the management of the farm. His brothers saw him coming, and they said among themselves, “Behold, this dreamer cometh.” You see, even in those days, practical men could not understand the value of a dreamer, a poet or a thinker as the first aid to practical agriculture. I have no doubt that Joseph the dreamer often forgot to water the sheep. I have no doubt but that they got away from him when he was herding them, and so his brothers quickly got rid of him, and they sent him off to the place where they thought dreams never came true. And that is where they made their mistake, and the same mistake is often made in these days by other practical farmers, for dreams that are based on faith and pure ambition always come true. If Joseph had not been a dreamer, carrying the ideals of his childhood into Egypt, we can readily understand which side of the barn his brothers would have gone to when they appeared before him later. But Joseph was a man who remembered the dreams and the hopes of his childhood kindly; he gave those brothers the sunniest side of the barn, and by doing so he made himself one of the great men in history.

You may surely take it from me that at some time in your life, if you prove worth the salt you have eaten, your State or your country will call you up before the judgment seat, and will say to you:

“I demand your life. In your youth you had ideals of manhood and of service. I have trained you and given you knowledge. I now demand your life as proof that your old ideals were true.”

That comes to all men not only on the battlefield, but in all the humble walks of life—the farm, the factory, the shop, wherever men are put at labor, and it means a life given to service, the use of power and knowledge, in order that men less fortunate may live on the sunny side of the barn.

We had something of an illustration of this when America entered the great war. Many of us felt honestly that our boys were not quite up to the standard. We thought they were a little lazy, inefficient or spoiled, because they did not think as we did about labor and the necessity for work. We did not realize what the trouble was, and so we generally charged it to the influence of mother’s side of the family. We could not understand that by education, training and example, we had simply taught those boys only the material and selfish side of life. They demanded unconsciously more of its poetry and romance and thus the war swept them away in a blaze of glory. We suddenly woke up to find that under the inspiration of an unselfish desire, our lazy and careless boys had become the finest soldiers this world has ever seen. They were made so through the power of poetry and imagination, for “making the world safe for democracy” is only another name for making the great life offering in order that helpless men and women may know the comfort and glory of living on the “sunny side of the barn.”

I think I have lived long enough and under conditions which fit me to know human nature better than most men know books. Our present improved man came from a savage. Originally man was a confirmed dweller on the frosty side of the barn. As human life has developed, the tendency has been for this man to run for a warm place on the sunny side. In order to get there, his natural tendency has been to crowd some weaker brother back into the frost. We may not like to admit it, but as we have crowded poetry and imagination and love out of agricultural education, we have lost track of the thought that there is one great duty we owe to society for the great educational machine she has given us. That one great life duty is to try to carry some more unfortunate brother out of the frost into the comfort of the sunny side of the barn. We are too much in the habit of trying to leave this practical betterment to the Legislature or to the Federal Government, when it never can be done unless we do it ourselves, as a part of human sacrifice. You must remember that in spite of all our scientific work, the world is still largely fed and clothed by the plain farmers, whose stock in trade is largely human nature and instinct. The shadow which undoubtedly lies over farming today is due to the fact that too many of these men and women feel that they are booked hopelessly to spend their lives on the frosty side of the barn.

It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep resentment, such as in a very much smaller way came to me as a little boy, for you will see how real and true are the ideals of childhood. The great aim of all education should be to find some way of putting poetry and imagination into the hearts of the men and women who are now on the frosty side of the barn. There is more in this than any mere increase of food production, or increase of land values. A great industrial revolution is facing this nation. Such things have come before again and again. They were always threatening, and every time they appeared strong men and women feared for the future of their country. Yet in times past these dark storms have always broken themselves against a solid wall of contented and prosperous freeholders. They always disappear and turn into a gentle, reviving rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken apart and remade, better than ever before, by skilled and happy workmen. It is on the frosty side of the barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down and destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can be no human progress except that which is finally built upon contentment and faith. Men and women must be brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to remain the land of opportunity, and such men and women as we have here must do the work.

If you ask me how this is to be done, I can only go back to childhood once more for an illustration. I know all the characters of the following little drama. We will call the children John, Mary and Bert. John and Mary were relatives of the old gentleman who owned the farm, and they came for a long visit. Bert was the farm boy, put out to work on that farm for his board and clothes, one of the thousands of war orphans who represented a great legacy which the Civil War had left to this country. John and Mary were bright and petted and pampered. You know how such smart city children can usually outshine and outbluff a farm boy. The woman of the house, a thrifty New England soul, decided that this was her chance to get the woodshed filled with dry wood, and so she put the three children at it. Before Bert knew what was going on, those city children had it all “organized.” Bert was to work on the frosty side of the barn where the woodpile was, and he was to saw and split all the wood. John played until Bert had split an armful, then John carried it about two rods to the shed, where Mary took it out of his arms and piled it inside. I have lived some years since that time, and I have seen many enterprises come and go, and if that arrangement is not typical of thousands of cases which show the relation between the farmer and middleman and handler, I have simply lived and observed in vain, and Bert represented the farmer.