But where was there ever a woman who could be satisfied with such evident truth, and who did not reach out after the impossible? She turned to old Grandpa, who sat back in the corner, away from the light.
“Now, Grandpa, you seen a lot of the world. What do you say? Don’t I look like Ugeeny?”
Old Grandpa nodded his white head and looked at her critically.
“You’re in her class, Mary—that’s what I’ll say—you’re in her class!”
“You’re in her class,” repeated Grandpa. “The people in this world are divided into two classes—strung together like beads on different strings. Some strings are like character, others like looks or shape or thinking or maybe meanness. You can’t get out of your class—for the Lord organized it and teaches it. You look at me; I’m in the class with some of the finest men that ever lived on earth!”
“Now, Mary, see what you’ve done,” said John Drake. “You’ve got Grandpa started on that class business. He’s worse than Ugeeny.”
But Grandpa went right ahead. “Ain’t I in the class with the old and new prophets? Here I have for years been telling what is coming to the world. Folks won’t always be down as they are now. My wife killed herself carrying water and fuel to get up vittles and keep the house clean. Some day or ’nuther every farmhouse will have water and heat and light right inside. There’ll be power to do all this heavy work. In those days farmers will be kings.”
The old man’s face lighted up as he talked.
“You don’t believe me now, but it will all come. I’m out ahead of the crowd. So was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner on the slavery question. Folks hooted at them, laughed them down and did all they could to stop their ideas. But you can’t stop one of these ideas when there’s a man back of it. Those men lived to see what the world called fool notions made into wisdom. They just had visions which don’t come to common men. That’s what I’ve got now, and what I ask is, Ain’t I in their class?”
“If I was in your place I wouldn’t mind, Grandpa,” said Mary, as she shook out that great hoopskirt. “That’s not good talk for boys; it makes them discontented!”