“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has all gone to other things. Farmers think the common schools are plenty good enough for farmers, while the colleges are all for lawyers and such like. You mark what I say—some day or ’nuther there will be farm colleges as big as any, where farming will be taught just like lawing or doctoring. Then people will see that farming is agriculture, and the difference between the two will change the world. This Ugeeny doesn’t amount to much as a woman, and I don’t believe this Prince Imperial will ever rule France, but Ugeeny has put women like Mary in her class. These clothes look foolish to me, but every woman who follows Ugeeny in dress gets into her class, and it’s like a schoolgirl passing from one grade to another, for some day they’ll pass out of that hoopskirt and that bob net for their hair and rise up to better things, and it will be Ugeeny that started them. She may be only a painted doll, but she has given the women ideas of beauty and something better than common. Sometime or ’nuther you will see the result of her idle life. That’s why I say Mary’s in Ugeeny’s class. She’s got the vision of beauty and something far ahead of you, John. You are smart and strong, but Mary’s getting class. That hoopskirt and that net are not prisons—they help to set her free.”
“Well, Grandpa,” said John, good-naturedly, “I suppose, according to you, I ought to put on a swallow-tailed coat every time I milk.”
“No; not when you milk, John, but if you shaved every day and put on your best clothes once a day for supper, you would get in the upper class, and carry your boys with you. But I ask this boy here, ain’t I in their class?”
I was sure of it, but just then we heard the horn sounding far down the road. I knew that Uncle Daniel had grown tired of waiting for the milk, so he blew the horn to remind me that I was still in the class of errand boys.
In August of that year I went up on Black Mount after huckleberries, and ran upon Grandpa once more. He sat on a rock resting, while Mary and three children were picking near by. The hill was thick with a tangle of berry vines and briars, with snakes and woodchucks as sole inhabitants. Old Grandpa sat on the rock and waved his stick about.
“In my younger days this hill was a cornfield. I have seen it all in wheat. Farmers let education and money get away, and, of course, the best boys chased out after them. But it won’t always be so. Some day or ’nuther this field will come back. It won’t pay in these coming days to raise huckleberries in this way. They will be raised in gardens like strawberries and raspberries. This hill will have to produce something that is worth more—peaches or apples.”
“But how can they make peaches grow on this sour hill, Grandpa?” asked one of the boys. “There’s a seedling now—10 years old and not four feet high!”
“They will bring in lime for the soil as they will coal in place of wood. I don’t know how it will be done, but some day or ’nuther they will use yeast in the soil as they do in bread to make it come up, and they’ll harness the lightning to ’lectrify it. You wait till these farm colleges give us knowledge. And farmers, too. They won’t always stand back and fight each other and backbite and try to get each other’s hide. Some day or ’nuther grown-up men and women are going to see what life ought to be. They will come together to live, instead of standing apart to die. I may not see it, and people laugh at me for saying what I know must come true. But didn’t they laugh at Columbus? Didn’t they try to kill Galileo? Wasn’t Morse voted a fool? Hasn’t it always been so with the men and women who looked far over the valley and saw the light ahead? And, tell me this: Ain’t I in their class?”
That was 50 years and more ago. I had forgotten it, and yet when I read the headlines announcing the death of Empress Eugénie I had to put the paper down, for there rose before me a picture of that sunny Summer day on the New England hills. On the rock in that lonely pasture sat old Grandpa pointing with his stick far across the rolling valley, far to the shadow on the distant hills, where he knew the immortals were awaiting him—as one who had kept his soul clean and his faith undimmed. I wish I could look across the valley to the distant hills with the sublime hope with which he asked his old question:
“Ain’t I in their class?”