The older people of our native town had gone out of themselves, warmly, toward us. How many times had I been stopped on the street by some solid citizen of our town, a carpenter, Vet Howard, a wheelwright, Val Voght, a white bearded old merchant, Thad Hurd. In the eyes of these older people, as they talked to me, there was something, a light shining as the lights now shone from the farmhouse among the trees. They knew father—loved him, too, in a way—but well they knew he was not one to plan for his sons, help his sons in making their own plans. Was there something wistful in their eyes as they stood talking to the boy on the village street? I remember the old merchant spoke of God, but the carpenter and the wheelwright spoke of something else—of the new times coming. “Things are on the march,” they said, “and the new generation will do great things. We older fellows belong to something that is passing. We had our trades and worked at them, but you young fellows have to think of something else. It is going to be a time when money will count big, so save your money, boy. You have energy. I’ve watched you. Now you are a little wild after the girls and going to dances. I saw you going down toward the cemetery with that little Truscan girl last Wednesday evening. Better cut that all out. Work. Save money. Get into the manufacturing business if you can. The thing now is to get rich, be in the swim. That’s the ticket.”
The older fellows had said these words to me, somewhat wistfully, as the old house, hidden now in the darkness, seemed to look at me. Was it because the men who said the words were themselves not quite convinced? Did the old American farmhouse among the trees know the end of its life was at hand and was it also calling wistfully to me?
One remains doubtful and, as I now sit writing, I am most doubtful of all the veracity of this impression I am trying to give of myself as a boy standing in the darkness in the shelter of the barn’s eaves.
Did I really want to be the son of some prosperous farmer with the prospect ahead of some day owning land of my own and having a big new house and an automobile? Or did my eyes but turn hungrily toward the older house because it represented to my lonely heart the presence of a mother—who would even go to the length of lying for a fellow?
I was sure I wanted something I did not have, could never (having my father’s blood in me) achieve.
Old houses in which long lives have been lived, in which men and women have lived, suffered and endured together—a people, my own people, come to a day when entire lives are lived in one place, a people who have come to love the streets of old towns, the mellow color of the stone walls of old houses.
Did I want these things, even then? Being an American in a new land and facing a new time, did I want even what Europe must have meant in the hearts of many of the older men who had talked to the boy on the streets of an Ohio town? Was there something in me that, at the moment, went wandering back through the blood of my ancestors, through the blood of the ancestors of the men about me—to England, to Italy, Sweden, Russia, France, Germany—older places, older towns, older impulses?
The new house, the farmer was having built, stood clear of the forest and directly faced the dirt road that led into town. It had instinctively run out to meet the coming automobile and the interurban car—and how blatantly it announced itself! “You see I am new, I cost money. I am big. I am bold,” it seemed to be saying.
And looking at it I crouched for a moment against the wall of the barn, instinctively afraid.
Was it because the new house was, for all its size, cheaply constructed and at bottom ugly? Could I have known that even as a boy? To make such a declaration would, I am sure, be giving myself an early critical instinct too much developed. It would be making something of a little monster of the boy crouching there in the darkness by the barn.