From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:
Fred Allen and Will Evans spent the next morning and a large part of the afternoon in setting door frames. Although he rather prided himself on his mechanical accomplishments, Fred Allen was not nearly a match for his co-worker with the hammer, square, saw, and plane. He made a valuable assistant though. At lunch time, when he descended upon the table like a two-weeks’ hungry wolf on its prey, he felt peculiarly satisfied with his morning’s work. They had set one frame, and made a fair start on the other. Meanwhile, Will Evans had philosophized.
“There is something strongly satisfying to the human spirit about this craft work,” he began “I have “been in business a little; I have written a little, and I have talked a little; but never have:, I run into anything so truly enjoyable, so filling and satisfying in the largest sense. You know about business yourself. You go on and on and on. There is no goal, no end, no getting-off place, nothing in sight except more business. Now of all satisfying things in the world ‘more’ is the superlative. There is absolutely no chance of getting anywhere because ‘more’ is ‘the next step beyond any quantity, no matter how large.
Fred Allan nodded.
“You’re surely right there,” he affirmed. “That has been exactly my experience. Each time I open a new territory, or land a big job in the old field. I ask myself right away how I can I do a. bigger thing next time.”
He paused, reflectively; and then as he picked up a tension saw he glanced furtively toward the point where a white jumper flitted about in Ruth Wade’s front yard. And he added—
“Since I have come down here, the thing has struck me more forcibly than it ever did in my whole life before. I will go through with it, build up a big business, and die in my tracks, building up a bigger one. It really doesn’t sound sane, does it?”
“Have you ever tried to write?” Will Evan asked.
“Never—except business letters, and someway I was always able to write them without half trying.”
“Well,” Will Evans continued, “you may take my word for it, writing is little better than business. Take any form you like, poetry, fiction—even scientific writing—is subject to constant revision, criticism and bickering. You do your level best—perhaps you get a moment of inspiration in which you do a little more than you best—and the next day, or rather the day after your poem appears in print, your next-door neighbor writes a vile criticism in which he shows you as man wholly ignorant or versification, prejudiced, tradition-bound, with out ideas, and perhaps with an embryonic moral sense. The thing is done, and you are pilloried before a hundred people that believe his criticism without ever seeing your poem. Whoa!” he exclaimed, as Fred Allen slipped a stick into place, “you must set that back another half inch to allow for the hinges. Right-O.”
“Will you need a shaving off that left side?” questioned Fred Allen.
Will Evans examined the stick carefully, first with one eye and then with a level.
“No,” he said, “I guess it will go as it is. Here, you take the plane and dress that down a quarter at the far end, while I set in the sill. No, I guess it’ll take both of us.”
While the sill was being worked into place, Will Evans took up the conversation again.
“Oh, it’s a hang-dog life, this ‘more,’ ‘more’ business, I can tell you. It’s like the old lady who went to the cupboard to get her poor doggie a bone. When she had shuffled into her old slippers and traipsed across the kitchen oilcloth, she found to her dismay that there wasn’t one. It’s so in business. You get there and find that you aren’t there at all, because the place you wanted to reach has moved just that much farther into the distant future. There goes the dinner bell now. One more nail—ah, that part of the job is done.”
They laid their tools aside, piled the remaining sticks of the frame against the cement step, and started briskly toward the Inn. As they strode along, Will Evans went on,-
“Now just see the difference. Those fellows down at the shop carved those sticks and sent them over to us; we fit them into their places; old man Ansen comes along and puts on two coats of varnish and the job is all over. This morning we finished one door and set the sill on the second. The whole thing is done—done for all time—until the house burns or is torn down or rots or something. Meanwhile, we have finished. That gives us the satisfied feeling under our hats, and the empty feeling under our belts—
Something done,’
you know, just like the village blacksmith. Craft work surely is Joy work. You get results that you can see and results that bear a pretty definite relation to the amount of intelligent effort expended on the task. There is no labor problem to worry you, and no competition to destroy your credit. You get what you make and have done.”
Walking and talking they passed the day away. Before Fred Allen knew what had happened, the sun was sinking toward the west, and the bugle was calling to base-ball practice. It was five o’clock. While they were picking up their tools. Fred Allen turned to Will Evans.
“That’s about the heartiest day I have spent for an age,” said he. “How can I thank you for it?”
“Thank me?” the other laughed, back. “This good house thanks you. Your appetite, your khaki pants thank you, and to-morrow your blisters will thank you in no uncertain terms. Thank me? Never, man, the thanks are all on the other side.”
As Fred Allen made his way to the diamond, he espied Ruth Wade coming toward him across the common. Her strong face looked radiant in the red glow of a half-cloudy western sun. On either hand hung one of the children who trotted at her heels whenever she moved abroad.
“The soft pink has been replaced by a strong ochre,” she laughed.
“Wrong, madam,” Fred Allen replied gravely. “The soft pink abdicated. It could not endure the strenuous air of Arden Town.”
“Strenuous?” she asked, mischievously. “Have you not been resting to-day?”
“Yes, resting in the shade of a half-completed house, wrestling shavings from birch and sawdust from rock-oak, enjoying, meanwhile, an exposition of the gentle philosophy of craft-work.”
“How splendid!” she cried. “Uncle Will can talk crafts better than almost anyone I ever knew. He talks it frequently, too. My wonder last night was that he did not follow the encomiums on Walt Whitman by a panegyric on William Morris. He lives on that.”
“Is it this evening that we take a good walk in the moonlight?” Fred Allen asked, with just a shade of sentiment in his voice.
“To-night? Tuesday night? Of course not, to-night is the choral.”
“An entertainment?” he asked. “Who does it?”
“A labor of love. We do it.” she responded promptly.
“Yes! soft pink,” came the captain’s voice from across the green, “the stage waits! “
“I may walk over to the—the—”
“The choral—yes. Come down to my house at seven-thirty.” As she skipped along with the children, who seemed to love her so dearly, Fred Allen turned to the diamond. There was more hard work and a welcomed dinner before seven-thirty.
“Seven-twenty-eight,” he announced formally, as he entered the open door of Ruth Wade’s cottage. “Mr. Fred Allen to see Miss Ruth Wade.”
They walked toward the Club House in the thickening twilight. The last touches of a gorgeous red and gray sunset lay close to the horizon. The little cirrus clouds, floating high up in the luminous sky, tossed the rays of the descending sun against the village windows, making tiny dim reflections. In the south a star began to twinkle, at first faintly, then as it gained courage, more sharply and boldly. A suggestion of a breeze was following the torrid day. A dog barked. Some children called to one another. Through the stillness a cricket chirped loudly beside the path. From far away came the faint tones of a rollicking song.
Fred Allen breathed a great, deep breath of the soft, fragrant air. “This is life,” he said earnestly.
“We love it always,” Ruth Wade answered in the same tone of earnestness, “and our love for it grows stronger the more we have of it. It seems to be one of the things that does not lose its charm on further acquaintance. It wears.”
They walked on in silence for another minute. Then, as halt a dozen people met them at a fork in the road, Fred Allen asked, after a formal greeting,—
“What is this affair to-night? You have not yet told me.”
“There is a man named Neilson living hare,” Ruth Wade explained, “Who is a musical director of considerable ability. This summer he said that if any one wished to go in with him and organize a chorus, he would direct. Of course it was a rare opportunity. As I say he is a very able man; so people piled in, young and old alike. I will let you judge for yourself as to the outcome; but remember that when these people started six weeks ago, at least three-quarters of them had never had even the elements of voice training.”
“You’re certainly not going to let the dear man sit and look on,” ventured one of the crowd.
“I had expected to, of course,” replied Ruth Wade. “What else can I do with him? It’s too lonely over here to leave him at home, and he might get lost wandering about the village by night.”
“Make him sing, of course.”
Ruth turned to Fred Allen.
“Can you sing?” she asked.
“Don’t ask him, ask us,” cried one of the girls, indicating her companions. “We heard him last night as he was corning back from the swimming hole. He can do tenor to perfection.”
“How stupid of me?” Ruth exclaimed. “Of course you know that in Arden no one except strangers and grouches look on.” She looked sideways at him. “You are not a grouch. certainly.” she added.
“And I judge.” he said, “that I am fast ceasing to be a stranger.”
The benches at the Club House were ranged around the piano. Fred Allen found a place among the tenors. Neilson directed the rehearsal and Fred Allen wondered, as he glanced around at the motley collection of ages and sexes, how it was possible to draw harmony and tone out of such a gathering. The harmony and tone were there, however, in generous quantity.
When Fred Allen slipped into bed an hour after the rehearsal adjourned, he began to review the events of the day stretching out against the friendly mattress meanwhile, with a feeling of utter satisfaction. He got as far as breakfast, recollected that the eggs wore tail feathers and mufflers, and then without more ado, he passed into oblivion.
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