“Huxley:–On earth I wrote that I saw one angel–‘the strong, calm angel playing for love.’ Now I see the forces of good leading the world forward, compelling progress; all 336are personal–just as the Great All Encompassing Force is personal, just as human consciousness is personal. The positive forces of life are angels–not exact–but the best figure. So it is true that was written, ‘there is more joy in Heaven’–and ‘the angels sang for joy.’ This also is only a figure–but the best I can get through to you. Angels guide us, angels strengthen us, angels pray for us.”
337CHAPTER XXXI
IN WHICH JUDGE VAN DORN MAKES HIS BRAGS AND DR. NESBIT SEES A VISION
It was the last day of the last year of the Nineteenth Century–and a fair, beautiful day it was. The sun shone over Harvey in spite of the clouds from the smelter in South Harvey, and in spite of the clouds that were blown by the soft, south wind up the Wahoo Valley from other smelters and other coal mines, and a score of great smoke stacks in Foley and Magnus and Plain Valley, where the discovery of coal and oil and gas, within the decade that was passing, had turned the Valley into a straggling town almost twenty miles long. So high and busy were the chimneys that when the south wind blew toward the capital of this industrial community, often the sun was dimmed in Harvey by a haze. But on this fair winter’s day the air was dry and cold and even in Harvey shadows were black and clear, and the sun’s warmth had set the redbirds to singing in the brush and put so much joy into the world that Judge Thomas Van Dorn had ventured out with his new automobile–a chugging, clattering wonder that set all the horses of Greeley County on their hind feet, making him a person of distinction in the town far beyond his renown as a judge and an orator and a person of more than state-wide reputation. But the Judge’s automobile was frail and prone to err–being not altogether unlike its owner in that regard. Thus many a time when it chugged out of his barn so proudly, it came limping back behind a span of mules. And so it happened on that bright, beautiful, December day that the Judge was sitting upon a box in Captain Morton’s shop, while the Captain at his little forge was welding some bits of metal together and discoursing upon the virtues of his Household 338Horse, which he was assembling in small quantities–having arranged with a firm in South Chicago to cast the two iron pieces that were needed.
“Now, for instance, on a clothes wringer,” the Captain was saying: “It’s a perfect wonder on a clothes wringer: I have the agency of a clothes wringer that is making agents rich all over the country. But women don’t like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All right–hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced three-fifths and a day’s wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl could play The Maiden’s Prayer on a piano–eh? Or, say, put it on a churn–same Horse–one’s all that’s needed to a house. Or make it an ice cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that runs by a crank–and ’y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold Laura one–traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at the Doctor’s is like Sunday now–what say? Lila’s so crazy about it they can’t keep her out of the basement while the woman works,–likes to dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll clothes, what say?”
But the Judge said nothing. The Captain tinkered with the metal, and dipped it slowly in and out of a tub of dirty water to temper it, and as he tried it in the groove where it belonged upon the automobile backed up to the shop, he found that it was not exactly true, and went to work to spring it back into line. The Judge looked around the shop–a barny, little place filled with all sorts of wheels and pulleys and levers and half-finished inventions that wouldn’t work, and that, even if they would work, would be of little consequence. There was an attempt to make a self-oiler for buggy wheels, a half-finished contrivance that was supposed to keep cordwood stacked in neat rows; an automatic contraption to prevent coffeepots from burning; a cornsheller that would all but work; a molasses faucet with an alcohol burner which was supposed to make the sirup flow faster–but which instead sometimes blew up and burned down grocery stores, and there were steamers and churns and household contrivances which the Captain had introduced into the homes of Harvey in past years, not of his invention, 339to be sure, but contrivances that had inspired his eloquence, and were mute witnesses to his prowess–trophies of the chase. Above the forge were rows of his patent sprockets, all neatly wrapped in brown paper, and under this row of merchandise was a clipping from the Times describing the Captain’s invention, and predicting–at five cents a line–that it would revolutionize the theory of mechanics and soon become a household need all over the world.
As the Judge looked idly at the Captain’s treasures while the Captain tinkered with the steel, he took off his hat, and the Captain, peering through his glasses, remarked:
“Getting kind of thin on top, Tom–eh? Doc, he’s leaning a little hard on his cane. Joe Calvin, he’s getting rheumatic, and you’re getting thin-haired. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
“So you believe the Lord runs things here in Harvey, do you, Cap?” asked the Judge, who was playing with a bit of wire.
“Well–I suppose if you come right down to it,” answered the Captain, “a man’s got to have the consolation of religion in some shape or other or he’s going to get mighty discouraged–what say?”