A year or two ago I went back to the old town. Ah, but if Grandpa could see it now! The old house with its “beau” windows and new roof seemed to be dressed with as much taste as Eugénie would be if she were still Empress of France. There were power and light and heat all through it. Two boys and a girl were home from an agricultural college—one of the boys being manager of the local selling organization. Black Mount was a forest of McIntosh and Baldwin apple trees, the old swamp was drained and lay a thick mat of clover. Grandpa’s vision had come true—all but one thing. Education and power had brought material things, which would have seemed to be miracles to John and Mary. Yet farmers were not “kings,” after all, as Grandpa said they would be, for there was still discontent and talk of injustice. But, after all, that is what Grandpa said—“That’s what they’ve got to be, if the world is going ahead.”
Perhaps, after all, a “divine discontent” is the noblest legacy of the ages.
But in the churchyard back in one corner I came upon Grandpa’s grave. It was not very well cared for. It had not been trimmed. A bird had made her nest and reared her brood right by the side of the headstone. It was a lonely place. As I stood there a cow in the adjoining pasture put her head over the stone wall and tried to gnaw the grass on that neglected grave. And this was what they had carved on the stone:
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!”
If I could have my way I would put up another stone with this inscription:
Grandpa.
“He has entered their class.”