"There's a chain of causes
Linked to effects,"
that seemed trifles, that, on a review of life, have a new significance. It can be seen at a glance that all subsequent events are a lengthened chain from this early landmark, at which, hat in hand, I stood. The connection is direct, the links are distinctly interlocked. As in the growth of a stalk of corn, each section makes a close jointure with the next below it as well as with the next above it, so is it in any individual career. The same school, the second winter, was needed to give publicity to a situation, which resulted in an invitation to take the school at the community center, an elevation which had not even in dreams and reveries entered my mind. Out of this came an appointment to teach in a college town and so to this hour every stage has brought about the next step which the last one made inevitable. In that first school was struck the medial key-note. It is the C, and the whole melody of life rests upon it. Some people remark upon fruit and flower, as if detached and independent of their seed. Not by God's mercy! Personal history has its teachings, a golden thread runs through it, on which are strung, a series of events in a logical succession, represented in pictures unrivalled for their distinctness, delineated by time's own hand and lifted out into powerful relief. The more widely I looked for connected events the more I saw. It pleased the Father to command the light to shine out of darkness. Dull and unimaginative as I am, even I felt the divinity stir within me, and I found it difficult to suppose otherwise than that, while the public takes no cognizance of such things, yet a look into one's personal biography exhibits a moving picture of Providence. To feel that we are tethered to a place of beginning, though we live on the other side of the world, is not to say that we would like to go back there to reside. We are viewing it only as a factor in our past life. It was like the experience once of reading Whittier's Hampton Beach when there. It made past history realistic. It was like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for your conception of its vivid character. No words can possibly describe the impression, of thus revisiting the earth and doing our own thinking instead of sending some neighbor to do it for us.
Critical Periods
Instead of seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, how much more self-respecting for each of us to himself stand in the actual presence of these silent talkers and perceive the guide marks to all the paths which led us through the tangle of life. Above all else one lesson blazes out in letters of living light. How careful Providence is about beginnings. It is only in looking down upon the battle field that we can clearly discern the maneuvers that lead to victory. We must place ourselves at a given point, not too remote from the causes, that make our history, to justly estimate them, if we could begin again, that tragic wish having been conceded to us, all our activity would be best used at these clearly discerned centers. To gain greater effectiveness opportunity here makes his call upon us and comes unawares and his approach is invariably disguised in humble garb.
"Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait;
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
Those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
I answer not, and I return no more."
CHAPTER XIV
WHERE A VISITANT SEES MORE THAN A RESIDENT
When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he does and recollection faithful to its office supplies me with an image of the past which he does not perceive. He gets no glimpse of the panorama that is passing in review before me. In looking over an illustrated volume of the place there are two pictures on each page. There is the one I now see, and to my inner sight there is just above it the one I remember. It is a case of what philosophers call Compound Perception. The absence of the object is contrasted with its presence. You imagine it gone, and perceive the blank it would leave. You observe the object, you also consider it as a negative quantity, for a moment thinking it away. There is the depot. I do not need to have it pointed out. Beside this building I instantly see the picture of another station unobserved by the present generation, which was connected with a different route. Before the Rock Island and before the Central of Iowa, we had the underground R. R. In Grinnell that came first. It did a good business. It had a through line. Its chief station still exists. The glamor of the past is upon it. I knew the station master. I am on intimate terms with one of its conductors. When its train was made up any one could compute its horse-power. The place had public spirit enough for a half dozen average towns. There is the church where the college diplomas were awarded. How plainly I also saw the church where I was, at its completion, an habitual hearer of the Word, that stood on the same noble corner. I never could understand how any mortal could be hired to tear down the earlier sacred edifice. It must have been done by aliens. No one could have bribed me to do it. There isn't money enough. I would as soon have lifted my hand against her who gave me being. The fate of Uzza, whom the Lord smote for a smaller impiety, would have given me alarm.