From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:
Reds ate his breakfast in a far corner of the dining-room, but Al Wilson, whose brother’s suit had made possible for Fred Allen a before breakfast dip, sat at the same table. They were well into breakfast fore Will Evans came in.
“Well, we shipped her off, Mr. Allen,” said he. “By the way, have you met Al Wilson?”
“We swam together,” Fred Allen replied.
“Good, the most natural sort of an introduction. The circumstances would doubtless have been more convivial if the introduction had been made in certain other liquids, which I will pass unmentioned; still, water is unsurpassed in its way. Al is our college-bred farmer,” he continued. “He farms as Tybalt was accused of fighting—‘by the book of arithmetic.’ It sure does make crops grow, eh, All?’”
“That is splendid. Are you farming to-day?” asked Fred Allen.
“Yes, indeed,” was the reply. “Every day is a new day for us tillers of the soil.”
“May I go over with you after breakfast?’ I have a little farm of my own which I run by proxy, but I am intensely interested in farming.”
“You certainly have struck the right place, then,” put in Will Evans. “Here we have the farmer,” pointing to Al, “who makes his money in the country, and spends it in the city; the agriculturist, who makes his money in the city and spends it in the country; and the hector,” pointing to himself, “who lives in the country and doesn’t make money anywhere.”
“That sounds like a good distinction, a little hard to draw in all cases, perhaps, but I am clearly in your second class. My farm cost me twenty-eight dollars last year—almost as much as some men’s cigars.”
“I’ll do you another good turn,” added Will Evans. “Al,” he turned to the farmer, “when you have finished with this gentleman, take him over to the professor. He’ll give him some pointers, too.”
“Have you a professor?” Fred Allen asked. “You approach the zoological in the extent of your collection.”
“Don’t use words like that yet, my dear fellow, you haven’t even begun to view the curios. The professor comes in that class, though. He’s irresponsible, in the first place; and in the second, he’s always at it. You’ll see him garden this morning, play base ball this afternoon, dance this evening, recite poetry at the Camp Fire to-morrow night, play Romeo Saturday-a-week, and spout economics every Thursday evening at seven.- forty-five sharp in the Field Theatre.”
“Gracious,” exclaimed Fred Allen, “how do you stand him?”
“Oh, he’s harmless with it all. Then, we all bear in mind the immensely significant fact that if he didn’t break out that way, he would another. Speaking of angels, here he is now.”
A tall, boyish-looking man, almost gaunt in appearance, with a brown freckled face and light, hay-colored hair, came trotting down the road toward the Inn. He wore a brown shirt, khaki trousers, a red bandana around his neck for a tie, and a blue one around his waist for a belt. His head and feet were bare. He was pushing a wooden wheelbarrow in which were four children. Fred Allen felt sure that he recognized some of Reds friends among them.
“Ho, Sam,” called Will Evans, “come here a minute.”
Sam obediently ran his wheelbarrow over toward the dining-room; coming close up to the screen.
“I want you to meet Mr. Allen, Dr. Martin,” said Will Evans, “other-wise and very generally known as ‘Sam.” Mr. Allen wants some pointers on agriculture. Will you be around all morning?”
“Just that. But why doesn’t he go to Al for his pointers?”
“Oh, like a true city man, he’s going to both of you. He wants both sides, you see.”
“Good enough. I see, Al has the truth, and he visits me afterward. Come along when you are ready,” and with a nod and a smile, Sam Martin trotted off with his jolting wheelbarrow of boisterous juvenility.
“A load of peaches,” said Will Evans. “What a gorgeous time the children have here: Everyone treats them just like that. They are real members of the community, a fact which they signalize by throwing their banana skins and waste paper into the waste barrels, instead of on the common.”
Fred Allen leaned back from the table.
“Never do I hope to enjoy a breakfast more than I enjoyed this one,” he exclaimed, contentedly. “It was delicious.”
“At it we go, then,” exclaimed Al Wilson, getting to his feet. “I have a good full day’s work before the game.”
They strode rapidly along the road toward Wilson’s house. The sun was already well up in the heavens, but the heat was tempered by a gentle western breeze.
“What’s in the air this morning?” demanded Fred Allen.
“I’m spraying this morning,—muskmelons and tomatoes.”
“Muskmelons and tomatoes, I didn’t know you sprayed such things.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“What do you use?”
“Bordeaux mixture, a solution of copper sulphate and whitewash. Here we are,” he added. They had turned the corner of a cozy house, which snuggled in between two huge cherry trees, and were confronted by a large barrel of yellowish-white liquid.
“You see,” Al Wilson explained, “we got the stuff ready before breakfast. All we have to do now is to turn it into the barrel of the spraying machine and go to work.”
Suiting the action to the word, he dipped several pails full of the liquid from the barrel and poured them into the spraying tank. Then, after fitting the top into the machine, he pushed it down a gravel path into the truck patch.
The tomatoes were stocky and well-shaped. The melons were putting forth their first runners. An air of well-kept prosperity pervaded the neat garden. Fred Allen was delighted.
“Really, now,” he exclaimed, “this is what I call farming—there isn’t a tool lying out loose, and the weeds haven’t got up before the farmer. You know,” he added, after another general survey, “this is something like.”
Meanwhile Al Wilson had pumped the tank of his machine full of air, and was sending a fine light spray over the tomato vines.
“What do you spray for—bugs?”
“No, blight.”
“That’s a vegetable growth, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s a fungus. The spores are carried by the wind, or by birds, or even by insects. If it gets a good start, your whole crop goes. We spray a great deal now—potatoes, tomatoes, beans, melons, egg plants, and so on. A few cents per acre invested that way will often double your crop.”
“Are these your fruit trees?” Fred Allen asked, pointing to four rows of well-shaped trees that skirted the garden.
“Yes, they are three years old now.” He looked at Allen significantly. “That tank is empty,” he remarked.
Fred Allen set to work, pumped the tank full of air, and then assisted Al Wilson to set the machine over into the next row, pushing it along from plant to plant. A sudden puff of wind sent the spray flying toward Fred Allen’s well-kept clothes.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” apologized.Al Wilson. “I never thought of those store clothes. You’ll get covered.”
Fred Allen laughed good-humoredly. “Never mind my clothes. I’m having such a good time that I wouldn’t leave if I had on a dress suit.”
They chatted on for an hour before the melon hill was sprayed. Al Wilson explained the modern science of farming, and Fred Allen, his feet sinking into the loose earth, listened and questioned.
“Well, that job’s done,” said Al Wilson brightly. “Now I fill my orders. You see,” he explained, “I have regular standing orders that I fill, beside the ‘come and go’ trade. I aim to have a full line of green vegetables all summer, so that I keep my customers supplied with a variety.”
Fred Allen consulted his watch. “It’s nearly ten,” he announced, “I guess, if you don’t mind, I’ll walk over to see the professor.”
“Go ahead. You’ll probably find him down there in his bare feet, picking potato bugs and spouting aphorisms. It isn’t really as bad as that, though,” he laughed. “He’s a real good fellow, and the proof of it is that no one on the place calls him ‘professor.’”
“What do they call him?”
“Just plain Sam.”
“And you consider that a tribute?”
“Well, rather. You see, here in Arden people go mostly on their manhood. If the President of the United States were to come here and prove himself a stiff, we’d call him ‘Mr. President;’ but if he was a real human, he would get plain ‘Bill,’ or ‘Woody,’ or ‘Teddy,’ or whatever else it happened to be. The man who is called ‘mister’ in Arden hasn’t thawed out yet.”
Fred Allen whistled. “If little Freddie has any self-respect,” he laughed, “he must drop his Allen.”
“Just so,” said Al Wilson. “So long as you call us ‘Mister,’ and we respond in like terms, you aren’t one of us. There’s Sam’s house right across the common. Come any time. Really, though,” he called, “unless I’m greatly mistaken, you won’t be called ‘Mister’ very long.”
Fred Allen waved his hat and walked across the common. A hundred yards ahead of him the woods stood out sharply against a bank of fleecy clouds, and nestling down in the trees, almost hidden from view, was a tiny white house with a red roof. Along the edge of the woods, and in front of the house, ran a long, narrow garden with brilliant sweet peas on one side, and a bank of nasturtiums on the other. Midway of the low grape arbor that ran along the front of the garden, were two stone posts, flanking a narrow path. Fred Allen paused as he reached these posts, undecided whether to go in or call. While he hesitated, a figure stepped from between two poles covered with a heavy growth of lima bean vines. It was the professor.
“Hello,” said he, cheerily, “Want a job?”
“The very thing,” answered Fred Allen. “I’ve already covered my trousers pretty completely with whitewash, and my curiosity is aroused as to what the next thing will be.”
“There’s a hammer just behind that left-hand post. Throw it to me. If you are quick about it, it will not even soil your fingers.”
Fred Allen did as he was requested, and then walked over to the bean poles.
“If you don’t mind,” said the professor, “Walk on the path. You see,” he continued, when Fred Allen had sought refuge on a path that ran along the front of the garden, “I’d a lot rather have you walk on my feet than on the garden. We’re having a dry summer,” he went on, “and this land is so dead that it will hold no moisture unless I keep that mulch on top of it” He pointed to a layer of fine, dry dust over the top or the garden.
“Does that keep the land moist?”
“Yes, the principle of the dust-mulch has enabled the Westerners to farm with twelve inches of rainfall. You see,” he explained, “the moisture works up out of the ground by capillarity. If the ground is packed hard, it works all the way to the top, and evaporates. If there is a coat of dust on top of the ground, the moisture stays in, because the particles of dust are so far apart that capillarity doesn’t act.”
The professor continued to fasten the bean vines to the poles.
“Your soil looks splendid, much better than any I’ve seen. How did you do it?”
“Well, when I came down here they said the land wouldn’t grow tacks. I knew that, but I decided that it would grow lima beans, which are much more digestible. So I went at it. This piece of land was covered with brush, and I guess I took a million roots out of it the first year I was here. Meanwhile the old professionals in the neighborhood came and laughed. The next year I put on ten tons of manure—that’s sixty tons to an acre. They laughed all the more. You see, when they put manure on here, they use a paint brush so that they won’t get too much in any one place. On my piece it was four inches deep. Well, the next year I had crops. I was really surprised myself.”
The professor shifted to another pole and went on. “That fall I got five tons of manure, and had it stacked in one pile. One of the old farmers came by Sunday morning.”
“Well,” said he, “I’ll be gol-darned. That feller had the best crop of beans last season ever I saw, and now he’s puttin’ on more manure.”
“You see,” the professor laughed, “he had been accustomed to the paint-brush method of applying manure. When he did get a good crop from a piece of land, he expressed his delight by waiting season after season until crops failed again. Then he tried more manure. The idea of manuring heavily for two consecutive seasons never reached him at all.”
“You seem to like gardening,” Fred Allen remarked.
“Yes, it is splendid. I tell you, when you come out in the early morning and put your feet against the soft, cold ground, it gives you a real sensation. I believe,” he added, that half the criminals who throng our jails, and half the wastrels who throng our ball-rooms, would be saved by that sansation.”
Fred Allen laughed. “You’re putting it rather strong, aren’t you?”
“Why?”
“I mean, by classing jails and ball-rooms together.”
“It is a little hard on the jails,” mused the professor, “because most of those fellows never had any chance. The other crowd had the chance, but failed to take it.”
“It seems to me that the other crowd is taking its chance.”
“No,” said the professor, “taking its chances.”
“What do you mean?”
The professor put the knuckle of his left forefinger under his left ear and made a gagging sound in his throat. “It came in France,” he said, “remember ninety-three? How far do you think we are from ninety-three?”
“A long way, I hope.”
“So do I, but as the Scotchman says, ‘I ha’ me doubts. Do you realize the extent of the discontent? These strikes, dynamitings, riots—all mean the same thing. People are seething with unrest.”
“I really don’t see why they should be discontented.”
“Aren’t you discontented?”
“Why, no, are you?”
“Yes, I am. Try it yourself. Try to run a house and pay your grocer. Go and watch the speed of the needles in the sweat-shops. Look in at the iron mills. Visit the homes of the man who labor. I tell you, it is hideous. Discontented? Sometimes. I am savage.”
Fred Allen thought a minute, then, “Did you learn that from Miss Wade?” he asked.
The professor laughed. “Perhaps,” said he. “Has Ruth been after you?”
“Yes, it was she who brought me down here.”
“Oh, yes, you are the man she met at the shore,” and for an instant the professor looked searchingly at Fred Allen.
“Yes, I am the fellow.”
The professor paused in his work and looked Fred Allen fairly in the face.
“Ruth Wade knows two classes of people, those who understand and those who don’t. Those who don’t understand are in turn divided into two classes, those who are worth saving, and those who aren’t. If Ruth didn’t think you were worth saving, you wouldn’t be here now.”
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