i imagine that most of us, at one time or another, expect to set the world on fire. so we start what we consider a nice little blaze and stand back to see it spread. for we think the world is as dry as a stack of hay in a drought—only needing our little flare of flame to start it going. we find the world more like a soggy swamp. it does not flare up—our little blaze strikes the wet spots, and not having heat enough to dry out the water it comes to an end. missionaries who have been among the savage tribes of africa say that the most wonderful thing to the average savage is the simple act of striking a match. these men and their ancestors have for centuries obtained fire only after long and patient rubbing of two sticks together. often many hours of this laborious friction were needed before they could obtain even a glow at the end of a stick, and then nurse it into flame. here at one scratch this “magic stick” produced the effect of hours of hard toil! one savage stole a box of matches and undertook to “show off” before his friends. he could start the little flame of the match well enough, but he tried to make a fire out of big logs or damp sticks, direct from the match. of course, the little match flame could only spread to things of its own size. you cannot jump flame from a glimmer to a giant log unless the latter is full of oil or gunpowder.
two things have brought that to mind recently. my young friend, henry barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver before some political society. when a man is well satisfied with his own literary production, he goes about shedding the evidence of his admiration. when you come to be as old as i am, you will recognize the signs. i knew henry felt that he had produced a world-beater—one of those great bursts of mental flame which every now and then set the world on fire. yet no honest person, except perhaps his mother or sister or sweetheart, would imagine that society would stumble or even pause for an instant at its delivery. henry would deliver it with a loud voice and many gestures, and then wait for the world to blaze up. when there was no blaze he would feel that he had been casting pearls before swine, when in truth he had thrown his match into a soggy pile of large sticks, where it sputtered for a moment and then flickered out. youth cannot understand how long years of drudgery are required to split and splinter those big sticks and dry them out with the fire of faith before the match can start the blaze, and then in after years the man who throws in the match gets the credit which belongs to the patient workers, who have been silently splitting and drying the wood. i tried to tell henry that when lincoln delivered his speech at gettysburg few people realized that it was to become a classic. a new generation with the power to look back through the mellowing haze of the years was needed to give it a full place in the american mind. henry could not see it. when did youth ever know the back-looking vision of age? it is a wise thing that youth must ever look ahead.
i had all these things in mind as we came to the last lap of our journey to starkville, miss. that pleasant town lies west of the mobile & ohio railroad—on a side road of its own. when i went there 37 years ago the track wound on through what seemed like a wilderness, with here and there a negro cabin. now it seemed like one continuous stretch of farm villages or blue grass pastures. in former years the streets of starkville were just ribbons of mud or dust, as the seasons determined. i knew a man who came to town in november and bought an empty wagon. he could not haul it home until the following april, so deep was the mud. now the main street was as smooth and solid as broadway, and firm stone roads branched out into the country in all directions. the streets were thickly lined with cars. here, as in kentucky, i saw men riding on genuine saddle horses, which shuffled quickly along like a rocking-chair on four animated legs. it seemed like a moving-picture show taken from some old fairy tale, and it is no wonder that the years fell away and i went back in memory to those old days.
it was in 1883 that i was graduated at an agricultural college and went down to “reform and uplift the south.” since then i have heard the motive or spirit of such a wildcat enterprise variously called “cheek,” “gall,” “nerve,” “assurance” or “foolishness,” with various strong adjectives pinned to the latter! yet, looking back upon it now, i feel that while perhaps all these terms were appropriate, they do not cover the essential thing. i had a smattering of such science as could be taught in those days. i had a great abiding faith in the power of education to lift men up and set them free. a few years before i had given up the thought of ever being anything except an ordinary workman, because i had had no training which fitted me to do anything well. it seemed to me that the agricultural college had given me almost the miraculous help which came to the man with the darkened mind. who could blame youth for feeling that the great joy and power of education could actually remove mountains of depression and trouble? i had been told that the chief assets of mississippi were “soil, climate, character and the determination of a proud and well-bred race to train their hands to labor!” that was surely in line with my stock of material assets, and so i came to set the south on fire with ambition and vision.
well do i remember the day i walked into the little brick building where the southern live stock journal was printed. colonel o’brien and sergeant hill looked me over. colonel o’brien was tall and straight—every inch a soldier. sergeant hill was short and fat. you would not think it, but he was with forrest when they captured fort pillow. sergeant hill’s remark was:
“another one of them literary cranks, i’ll bet.”
colonel o’brien was more practical.
“come out and feed the press and then fold these papers.”
and almost before i knew it my job of uplifting the south was on. i suppose you might call me a “useful citizen.” i fed the press, set type, swept the office, did the mailing, acted as fighting editor, tried to sing in the church choir, taught “elocution,” pitched baseball on the town nine and filled columns of the paper with soul-stirring editorials. at least, they stirred me if they had no effect upon any other reader. those were the days when living was a joy. some days there would be a little run of subscriptions and perhaps a big advertisement would come. now and then some ball club would come to town and our boys would send them home in defeat and disgrace. these occasions were bright spots on the calendar, but they were as nothing in the bright lexicon of youth to the great editorials i ground out at that battered and shaky table in the corner. among other things i broke a labor strike in that town, alone and unassisted. it was the talk of the town, but to me it seemed a very poor thing beside the great editorial on “the south’s future,” which i wrote on that stormy day in christmas week.
it comes back to me now as i write this. in those days everybody “knocked off” during christmas week and we printed no paper. yet we all seemed to come to the shop a few hours each day as part of our “holiday.” it was cold and wet, with mud nearly to your hips. colonel o’brien had started a fire in the fireplace, and he and sergeant hill stood before it smoking their pipes and telling war stories. colonel o’brien was telling how he heard the soldiers around their fires at night saying it was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” sergeant hill told about the indian who went after the molasses and glue to make into printer’s rollers, and how in consequence the yankees captured the printing outfit. i must tell you that story some day. and while these two old vets kept down on the ground in thought i was up on the heights developing a glorious future for the “sunny south.” and at the last flourish of the pen i cleared my throat and read it to these old soldiers. and, honestly, i did not get the humor of it. these two men had given all they had of youth, ambition, money and hope to their section. they must walk softly all their remaining days amid the ruins and the melancholy of defeat. and here was i without the least conception of what life must have meant to the southern people, with the enthusiasm of a boy, pouring out dreams of a future which seemed even beyond the vision of an isaiah. great is youth and glorious are its prophetic visions. at any rate, the old soldiers let their pipes go out as they listened.
“fine,” said sergeant hill. “splendid. i reckon you’ll have us all in heaven 40 years hence?”
“fine,” said colonel o’brien. “fine. i hope i’ll be here to see it; but today i saw that paper collector from new orleans in town. we can’t pay his bill. he’ll have to leave on the night train. better shut up the office.” and they tramped out into the mud, and i knew that as they plowed up the street they were looking at each other as men do when they feel a pity for some weak-minded lunatic who has stepped out in front of the crowd with a thought or an act that is called unorthodox. and i locked the door and sat before the fire polishing that editorial. collectors might pound on the door, paper and ink might run short—what were these poor material things to one whose winged thoughts were to save the country? surely, i had it all planned out that night, and went home, rising far up above the fog and rain, and bumping my head against the stars! do i not know just how henry barkman felt about his great oration? heaven give him the philosophy to endure with patience the day which finally came to me when i had to realize that i was not an uplifter, after all! and yet cursed be he who would, with a sneer, deny to youth the glorious foolishness with which he
“longs to clutch the golden keys;
to mold the mighty state’s decrees
and shape the whisper of the throne!”
and now, 37 years after, there is nothing left of all these dreams. colonel o’brien and sergeant hill have answered the last call.
“they know at last whose cause was right
in god the father’s sight!”
old sol, the black man who turned the press, has passed on with them. years ago the southern live stock journal was absorbed by a stronger publication. it is doubtful if in all the town or country you could find an old copy of the paper. those great editorials which i climbed into the clouds to write were evidently too thin and light for this world. they have all sailed away far from the mind of man. the little building where we started the candle flame which was to burn up all the prejudice and depression in the south seems to be occupied as a negro hotel or boarding house. the little shop where (with sol on the crank of the press and i feeding in the papers) we turned out what we felt to be a mental feast, is now a kitchen where cow peas, bacon and greens and corn bread form a more substantial food than we ever served up in printer’s ink. it was no longer a molder of public opinion.
“to what base uses we may return, horatio.”
and yet the sky was blue, the day was fair—the vision had come true. i wished that colonel o’brien and sergeant hill might stand in front of the old building and look about them. no longer a sea of mud, but smooth, firm pavements. the sidewalks were lined with cars. beautiful trees shaded the streets, until the town seemed like a new england village with six generations behind it. outside, stretching away in every direction, was the thick, beautiful carpet of blue grass and clover. here and there was a young man in the uniform of the american union. in the vaults of the banks were great bundles of liberty bonds. and a gray-haired man on the street corner told me this:
“you will find that the very states which sixty years ago tried to break up the union will, in the future, prove to be the very ones which must hold it together.”
yet let me tell henry barkman and the millions who felt as he did about his oration, that no one in all that town remembered my former editorials or the great work of the journal. my literary work has been blown away as completely as the clouds among which it was composed. at the end of the great college commencement exercises a man came on the stage with a great bunch of flowers and bowed in my direction. i am not much in the habit of having verbal bouquets fired at me, but i will confess that i thought: “here is where my soul-inspiring editorial work is appreciated. all things come round to him who will but wait.”
but this orator, like the rest of them, never dreamed that i ever tried to “uplift the south.” he said i entered into the young life of the town and was remembered with affection because i played baseball with skill and taught that community how to pitch a curved ball!
and let me say to the henry barkmans who read this that the lesson of all this is the truest thing i know. many a man has gone out into life like a knight on a crusade, armed with what he thinks are glorious weapons. in after years people cannot remember what his weapons were, but he got into their hearts with some simple, common thing which seemed foolish beside his great deeds. nobody remembered my brain children, though they were embalmed in ink and cradled in a printing press. but i put a twist on a baseball, overcame the force of gravity and made the ball dodge around a corner, and my memory remains green for 40 years! not one of my old subscribers spoke of the paper, but seven of the old baseball club, gray or bald, near-sighted or rheumatic, yet still with the old flame of youth, got together.
i think you older people will get my point. for the benefit of henry barkman and his friends perhaps i can do no better than to quote the following:
“god hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and god hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.”
