In Times Like These

by Nellie L. McClung

One cause for this is that our whole attitude toward labor is wrong. We look upon labor as an uncomfortable experience, which, if we endure with patience, we may hope to outgrow and be able to get away from. We practically say: "Let us work now, so that by and by we may be able to live without working!" Many a farmer and his wife have denied themselves everything for years, comforting themselves with the thought that when they have enough money they will "retire." They will not take the time or the money to go to a concert, or a lecture, or a picnic, but tell themselves that when they retire they will just go to everything. So just when they have everything in fine shape on the farm, when the lilacs are beginning to bloom and the raspberry bushes are bearing, they "retire." Father's rheumatism is bad, and mother can't get help, so they rent the farm and retire.

The people to whom the farm is rented do not care anything about the lilac or raspberry bushes—there is no money in them. All they care about is wheat—they have to pay the rent and they want to make money. They have the wheat lust, so the lilacs bloom or not as they feel disposed, and the cattle trample down the raspberry bushes and the gate falls off the top hinge. Meanwhile the farmer and his wife move into town and buy a house. They get just a small house, for the wife says she's tired of working. Every morning at 4.30 o'clock they waken. They often thought about how nice it would be not to have to get up; but now, someway it isn't nice. They can't sleep, everything is so quiet. Not a rooster crowing. Nor a hen cackling! They get up and look out. All down the street the blinds are drawn. Everybody is asleep—and it all looks so blamed lazy.

They get up. But there is nothing to do. The woman is not so badly off—a woman can always tease out linen and sew it up again, and she can always crochet. Give her a crochet needle, and a spool of "sil-cotton," and she will keep out of mischief. But the man is not so easy to account for. He tries hard to get busy. He spades the garden as if he were looking for diamonds. He cleans the horse until the poor brute hates the sight of him. He piles his wood so carefully that the neighbors passing call out and ask him if he "intends to varnish it." He mends everything that needs it, and is glad when he finds a picket off the fence. He tries to read the Farmers' Advocate. They brought in a year's number of them that they had never got time to read on the farm. Someway, they have lost their charm. It seems so lazy in broad daylight for a grown man to sit down and read. He takes a walk downtown, and meets up with some idle men like himself. They sit on the sidewalk and settle the government and the church and various things.

"Well, I must be gittin'!" at last he declares; then suddenly he remembers that he has nothing to do at home—everything is done to a finish—and a queer, detached feeling comes over him. He is no longer needed anywhere.

Somebody is asking him to come in for a drink, and he goes! Why shouldn't he have a drink or anything else that he wants, he asks himself. He has worked hard. He'll take two. He'll go even further, he'll treat the crowd. When he finally goes home and sleeps it off, he finds he has spent $1.05, and he is repentant.

That night a young lady calls, selling tickets for a concert, and his wife would have bought them, but he says: "Go slow, Minnie, you can't buy everything. It's awful the way money goes in town. We'll see about this concert—maybe we'll go, but we won't buy tickets—it might rain!"

They do not buy the tickets—neither do they go. Minnie does not care much about going out. She has stayed in too long. But he continues to sit on the sidewalk, and he hears many things.

Sometimes people have attributed to women the habit of gossiping, but the idle men, who sit on the sidewalks of the small towns or tilt back in the yellow round-back chairs on the hotel verandas, can blacken more characters to the hour than any other class of human beings. He hears all the putrid stories of the little town; they are turned over and discussed in all their obnoxious details. At first, he is repelled by them, for he is a decent fellow, this man who put in the lilacs and the raspberry bushes back there on the farm. He objects to the remarks that are passed about the women who go by, and he says so, and he and one of the other men have "words."

The bartender hears it and comes out and settles it by inviting everyone in to have "one on the house."

That brings back good-fellowship, and everyone treats. He sees then that nobody meant any harm—it was all just in fun. A few glasses of "White Horse" will keep a man from being too sensitive about things. So he laughs with the others at the indecent joke. This is life—town life. Now he is out in the world!