Sara Ware Bassett

“ Tempting as was the tree the aroma of browned turkey rose in his nostrils.
"I vote for turkey," announced he at last.
"No tree? No Christmas tree?" murmured Martin, his lip quivering.
"You have a tree at kindergarten, silly, and so does Nell," declared the elder brother quickly.
"'Tain't like having it here—our really own tree," bewailed Martin.
"Couldn't we have a simpler dinner, Mother, and manage to get a tree?" interrogated Mary. "It is fun to trim it and the little children love it so."
"Girls always like things that look pretty," piped Tim in disdain. ”

“ I often think of the toil and misery that went into the cotton-growing of those slavery days. After working for a long stretch of hours in the blazing sun the negroes came in at night worn out. But were they allowed to rest? Perhaps some of them who had considerate owners were; but many, many others less fortunate were set to picking out seeds and lest they fall asleep at their task overseers prodded them with whips."
"Gee!"
"That was slavery, son," declared Captain Dillingham. "Do you wonder that Abraham Lincoln thought it would be worth even a war to rid this country of such an evil? ”

“ Julie O'Dowd did not go through life, however, kneeling before Mrs. McGregor on her bended knees; but she did a more practical and efficacious thing. Everywhere she went she sounded the praise of her neighbor; talked of her kindness, her wisdom, her unselfishness, until not only Mulberry Court, but the area adjoining it began to view the gaunt, austere figure from quite a different angle. Shyly the women began to nod a greeting to the stranger.
"It's just her way to be curt and quick," explained they to one another. "She doesn't mean a thing in the world by it. ”

“ But this spinning business hitched right up to Uncle Frederick, Hal Harling and what we've been talking about. I don't see why Miss Dewey couldn't have let me alone to learn about that."
"Probably she didn't dream you were interested in it," said Mary. "How should she, pray?"
"I know it. I suppose she didn't," answered Carl with fairness. "She certainly is no mind reader; and I didn't mention it."
"Then don't go blaming poor Miss Dewey," Mary retorted. "Besides, what kind of a school would she have if every child in it refused to learn anything but what he cared about. ”

“ Carl objected.
"You mean the piece-work system? Aye, I know," nodded his uncle. "And as we grow wiser, and come to care more for our fellows, we begin to wonder whether so much specializing is as fine a notion as we at first thought it. It makes for efficiency, for without question a man who does just one thing over and over becomes expert at his particular job; but does he not in time, because of his very expertness, lapse into a machine whose hands move automatically and whose mind is idle? ”

“ Carl replied simply.
"On the contrary, I think you'll find Mr. Michael Finnerty knows much more than you give him credit for," retorted Mrs. McGregor. "He probably knows more than he himself realizes. He may not have learned about engines out of books; but if not he has learned about them from actual contact with them. All learning does not come from between book covers, sonny. Experience is a wonderful teacher. Books simply give us the same result without making us stumble along to learn everything ourselves. ”

“ To be out of work was a very real tragedy in the world in which he lived. He knew only too well how indispensable was money and that the necessity of it was even greater in the Harling home than in his own. The Harlings, alas, had no absent Uncle Frederick to fall back upon. On the contrary the entire upkeep of their home and family fell upon the young shoulders of the boy and girl who toiled at the spinning mills. Now with Louise out of the race Hal would be left alone with all the burden, and whether he would be able to carry so heavy a one was a question. ”

“ The next morning, fluttering excitedly round a Christmas tree spangled with tinsel and aglow with lights, the McGregors received their presents; and not they alone, for Julie O'Dowd, with her five youngsters, swelled the party, together with the Murphys and the Sullivans from the floors below. There was popcorn for everybody and satiny striped candy, and from the mysterious basket an orange for each guest was produced.
"When we have so much ourselves it would be wrong to keep it all," Mrs. McGregor had asserted; and her household fully agreed with her. ”

“ Scientific men began to whisper there could be no such thing as the lamb of the Tartars; it was not possible. Cotton was merely a plant. You can imagine what discussions such an assertion as that raised. The public had come to like the notion of the Tartary lamb and did not wish to give it up; besides, if the story were all a myth, it put the travelers who had told it in a very bad light, and shook the confidence of readers in some of the other tales they had published. Science always upsets us. ”

“ Apprehensive at the sight, Tim backed into the room. Brass buttons, in his limited experience, meant either firemen or policemen and either of these dignitaries was equally terrifying.
"You don't know your Uncle Frederick, do you, sonny?" observed the stranger.
The voice, more than the words, brought Mrs. McGregor to her feet in an instant, and what a rush she made for the door! Gauze, spangles, scissors, and spool flew in all directions and the children, deciding that some unprecedented evil had befallen, stampeded after her. ”

“ And the better the world the farther ahead will be its civilization. Progress is not all in wonderful discoveries of science, in fine architecture, or in great books; much of it lies in the peoples of the globe learning to live peacefully together and help one another. Kindness to our neighbor, therefore, helps civilization. It cannot avoid doing so if we live it on a large enough scale."
"I never thought of that before," meditated Carl. ”

“ Should it turn scorching hot just when your cotton shoots are up and beginning to spread their roots the result will be fatal. Or an early frost will work ruin. Sometimes, you know, we have a spell of hot weather in the late winter that fools the growing things into thinking spring has come, and the poor misguided plants begin to put out their leaves. Then, like a mischievous joker, old Winter comes back and nips the trusting little creatures. Cotton doesn't fancy that sort of joke. Nor does it like too much wet weather, for then the cotton gets damp and sodden and cannot be picked. ”

“ You cannot allow part of a country to rise up and walk out any more than you can let some of the wheels of a watch announce they are not going to turn any more," laughed his uncle. "It requires every part to make the watch go; and it takes the united strength of a people to make a nation. North and South were all beloved children of one land, and Abraham Lincoln, like the father of a big family, was not going to let any of the household break away from the organization to which it belonged. It meant a struggle to do the two things necessary—free the slaves and preserve the Union ”

“ Let some brute stone a kitten; torment a boy smaller than himself; snatch an apple from the stall of the old woman at the corner and, with a justice whose speed was incredible, Hal Harding descended upon the miscreant and pommeled into him a lesson in squareness that he did not soon if forget. ”

“ When meat stew, what a dish for the gods! And who could have asked for a greater treat than a thick slice of Mary's fresh bread coated over with molasses or peanut butter?
Every month a long blue envelope containing a check from Uncle Frederick arrived and that, together with what Mary and her mother earned, kept the household going. But they seldom saw Uncle James Frederick Dillingham. He was always sailing to India, China, or South America. ”

“ He becomes passive until at length all initiative is destroyed. For many years the colored people of the South reaped precisely this harvest of mental inertia. Now, thank heaven, they are rousing out of the lethargy that has been their inheritance and their brains are getting to work. It will, however, take years, perhaps generations, for some of them to work up to a normal mental activity and intelligence; but if they persist results will surely come. Many of them have already shaken off their intellectual fetters so that not only are their bodies free but their minds are also. ”

“ Uncle Frederick Dillingham suddenly began to take on in his eyes an aspect quite new; an aspect so alluring that when contrasted with the myth of purple and ermine the latter tradition shriveled into something very minor in importance. Was not the master of a ship a far more intriguing character than a dull old king who did nothing but sit on a crimson velvet throne and wave a scepter? ”

“ Every detail of Carl's amazing story had to be told over and over again that his listeners might enjoy to the full the marvel and humor of each successive event. Everything was clear as crystal now—Corcoran's transfer, Louise's reinstatement, Hal's increasing salary, the Christmas dinners. Even the conundrum of the watch remained an enigma no longer.
"It was, of course, Mr. Coulter who told Corcoran about your rescuing his baby," Carl explained to his chum. "I remember that I happened to mention the accident to him." ”

“ Carl sighed. Plainly the flaws of the educational system were too many for him. Nevertheless he attempted a modest defense of his theory.
"No, she wouldn't," contradicted he. "Some of 'em don't want to learn anything anyhow, and since they have to they are as well pleased to learn one thing as another. Billie Tarbox, for instance, hasn't any preferences; he just hates all highbrow stuff alike. And the Murphys and Jack Sullivan wouldn't care a hurrah what they learned. All Jack wants to do when he grows up is to run a steam roller and if he can do that he'll be perfectly satisfied." ”

“ I have seen many abuses of the negroes in my day, both on shipboard and ashore, and the subject turns me hot. Just how the evils of cotton-gathering are to be avoided I do not know. We must wait, I fear, until some clever individual bobs up with a scheme that does away with hand harvesting of cotton. In the meantime the only remedy left us is to vary the work of the men and women who toil at it as much as is possible."
"I wish, Uncle Frederick, you would tell us just how the cotton is gathered," said Mary, who had joined the group. ”

“ There were Christmas carpet sweepers, Christmas teakettles, Christmas coal hods and how surprised and embarrassed they must have been to find themselves dragged out of their modest corners and, arrayed in splendor, set forth before the public gaze. Nothing was too mundane to be transformed by the holiday's magic into a thing mystic and unreal. Even such a prosaic article as a washtub, borrowing luster from the season's witchery and in shining blue dress became a thing to covet and dream about. ”

“ Surely you wouldn't let yourself be beaten by a lot of bugs and worms, would you? Should you live in a climate where cotton could be raised you would pitch in, fight the pests, and be as proud of your snowy field as many another man is. ”

“ Captain Dillingham agreed. "But cottonseed oil is a genuine by-product of cotton."
"What is a by-product?" smiled Mary ingenuously.
"A by-product is something made from the leavings," put in Carl without hesitation. "Hash is a by-product of corned beef."
A laugh greeted the assertion.
"Technically speaking a by-product is something that is turned to account from what would otherwise have been waste. Every person who manufactures on a large scale tries to think what he can do with what is left after he has made the thing he started out to make. ”

“ No doubt, too, the same tyranny reigned in India. Wherever work must be done by hand and labor is cheap and plentiful, human beings come to be classed to a great extent as machines. Plantation owners become so interested in the money they are to make that they forget everything else. Of course labor was never as cheap in our Southern States even during slave days as in India and therefore until the advent of the cotton gin cotton was not one of our valuable crops."
"You mean because the seeds had to be picked out by hand?" Carl said. ”