From the Diary of George E. Crothers at Age 16, 1878
‘Percy (cousin) came over with Lion (Percy’s dog) and we went spooring rabbits - - our usual Saturday employment,’ Percy writes in 1948. “Spooring” is a word I am sure I had not thought of for more than sixty years. In Africa when an animal goes through the jungle, it leaves a spoor or as we would say now a track. We got the word from a story in Youth’s Companion and like all kids when we get a new word, we adopted it. ….scraped and greased harnesses today….broke steers…split wood…Sam (brother) went over after Libbie (sister taught at Vroman Schoool for second term this year)…went to church at Oxford…cleaned up wheat…dragged…spread manure…planted potatoes…made garden…drew Ho ples…ploughed…dug stones…cut brush…played dominoes…burned brush…the folks went to Kilbourn and left Mamie (niece) here…listened to Mamie’s singing…went to post office…got Youth’s Companion, the Sentinel, and the Irish papers…read during A.M….did not feel well today-indigestion…Mr. Wiley and Libbie (sister) went to the P.O.)….Ma and Pa went down to Jim’s…Herbert and Clifford (son’s of Jim) came home with them. Maggie (sister) came along on her way to Milwaukee. She left Fred an Mamie here (Maggie’s children.) …sat with open mouth while Hank filed me with terror by terrible threats of going away to the Red River to the north…visited by Robert and Hattie (brother and sister-in-law)…churned butter…planted corn…May 23 Ma and Pa went up to Annie’s (sister) to see James E. Keerbough (Annie’s son) christened. …grubbed—broke the evener and had to quit…hoed corn…pulled cockle…bound and set up wheat…put up hay…picked apples…helped thresh…stacked heat…fished…dug potatoes all day like a puppy…Beaver (Sam’s dog) and I went coon hunting…cut corn…picked cucumbers…Annie May (Maggie’s daughter) was over…cut buckwheat…husked corn…helped butcher a hog…went to Mr. Larsen’s to a candy pull…went to meeting at Tanner School (near Ab Flooks, now called Flook School)
(This was Sam’s last year at home. He was working John Whipple’s farm.)
On Reading a Hometown Newspaper
One day this week Pete Powers, the hardware man, lent me tow recent copies of the "Kilbourne Events." It tells of the tragic death of Lewis Buckley, killed in an automobile accident on the streets of Portage. Well, I was sorry to read that. He was 98 years old. In his younger days no ordinary automobile could have killed him. He was big and brawny with something of a swagger in his walk and talk, and although I did not indulge in profanity as a boy, I greatly enjoyed hearing Lew Buckley swear. I laugh yet at recollections of his grotesque profanity and his Irish wit. He married our schoolteacher right in the middle of the term, and I remember how funny it was to stop calling her Miss Acherson on Friday night and start calling her Mrs. Buckley on Monday morning.
As I go back to the columns of the paper I found in the locals that my own brother—my kid brother (Will)—and his wife had been a few miles away on a gamily visit. Come to think of it, Sunday was his birthday, and I know he is well up in his fifties, and his hair is gray. But through the sunny haze of the September day I am with him in the cornfield, and our jacket pockets are stuffed with apples, and we tell stories, and set the puppy digging for mice under the corn stalks. We throw the corn knife at a corpulent pumpkin, after the fashion of an Indian tomahawk to see if we can “massacre” the pumpkin. At dusk we go down into the clover field and bring home the cows, and we talk of such queer old fashioned things for boys. When the fall work is finished, we go for rambles around the lake and climb the birch high among the sweeping branches. Oh, every column of that old Kilbourn paper gave me a “thousand thrills.”
Scent of New-mown Hay
…the simple scent of cool dew on new cut grass…always lights up a particular picture in my memory—a part of the old home farm where grew a strip of mixed grasses between the upland and the marsh—in it were mingled clover and timothy with fine marsh grass. I can smell it yet as the dew fell in the quiet evening, as I rode the mower around and around a rectangular part of the meadow. An old willow tree stood in the field—left there probably when it was cleared, to make a resting place for the mowers in the days when the grass was cut with scythes—I remember that too, and I recall that we kept the water jug in the shade of that old willow. The meadowlarks would mount the top-most bough and over beyond the tree, where the ditch came down through the swampy part of the meadow and tall weeds with purple blossoms grew. There the boblinks would balance and swing on the big week tops. Across on the farther side poplar trees grew where the blackbirds found a perching place—all this and much more the scent of cool dew on new mown hay brings back to me.
Panic of 1873
…Although but a small boy, I remember well the panic of 1873. Except for the fact that an older brother and other young men of the community were working at that time in the mining city of Marquette, Michigan, and were thrown out of a job and lost some of their wages, we at home on the farm would not have known of the panic except by vague rumors. We owed no debts, and people in our community were in debt at least only of trifling extent. That year we had good crops—325 bushels of wheat, plenty of oats, rye, and some buckwheat; a good crop of corn, which we cut and husked by hand; a patch of sorghum furnished us with a barrel of syrup; our sheet furnished us with wool for socks, mittens, and some of clothes and bedding; we had hens, geese, and turkeys; a good orchard of apples and plums and grapes; a garden filled with all kinds of vegetables and we never failed to make a full barrel of sauerkraut; home-grown tallow furnished us with candles, and scraps of fat and wood lye gave us a barrel of soap; apples, flour etc….bartered at the village shoemakers, with a small sum of cash equipped all the boys with winter boots. In those days eggs and butter could not be sold for cash, but were exchanged for such household goods as could not be produced at home. A few swarms of bees furnished us with honey. The glass fruit jars had not then come into general use, but fruits were preserved and dried.
During fall evenings, the entire family gathered around the table, pared and cored apples, string the quarters on long pieces of twine to be hung over the kitchen stove to dry. We often had a full barrel of dried apples, besides dried sweet corn, pumpkins, etc…. Our meat—beef, pork, mutton, and poultry—was all home grown and home cured. This was supplemented with an occasional mess of fish from the lake that skirted the farm. There were also wild ducks and partridges. These were some sources of ready money. Wheat was always a cash crop, and pork though often cheap sold for money, as also did steers for beef or feeders. But little money was needed. What about taxes? On our farm of 120 acres the taxes are usually less than $25. Road taxes were “worked out” in summer—and it must be admitted did little for the roads.
Just how a panic could harm the farmer in those circumstances is hard to see. Not all farmers were so comfortable; some ad small sandy farms; some were in debt, and small debt was a fearful burden n those days; some had been nearly ruined by the “hop-panic” of 1869—an episode in several Wisconsin counties worthy of a chapter in local history. But on the whole farmers were well fortified in their own homes. No extravagant plans nor inflated values had led them into the morass of indebtedness They had few if any luxuries, but if industrious and thrifty, they knew no real want.
Drouth of 1870-1872
Usually our granary carried a considerable hold-over of wheat, and as we had this ground at the local grist mill, I felt a certain “social security”, knowing that we would at least have bread and seed. But 1870-72 were dry years, what was a short crop, and our bins were swept clean. In coming home from school in the summer term I would sometimes walk around by the wheat fields and watch anxiously the gowning grain. Then when the drouth came, and I saw pale whitish her and there in the fields, I know that the drouth and the cinch bugs, which generally came together, were getting in their work, and a shrunken crops would be the result. In the summer of 1873 this fear was very strong pon me, but good rains came just in the nick of time, and we had a fine crop.
Buckwheat Pancakes
In our community, and for many miles around, pancakes were a standard food in most families all winter. The batter was “set” as soon as cold weather started in the winter and kept going till early in spring by daily additions. Like the widow’d cruse of oil mentioned in the Bible, it never gave out—not in any miraculous manner, but by new cupfuls from the flour bin. Every farm household had a large pancake griddle, which covered half of the top of the big stove. This was swabbed generously with a think slab of fat pork, called a greaser, and the batter was ladled on. It was something of an art, not only the proper mixing but the cooking process as well—watching to see when the bubbles on top indicated a proper browning on the bottom. Then there was another exercise of judgment, after a dexterous flopping over, as to when they were cooked clear through and not burned. often the kitchens were filled with smoke from the griddle and the aroma of baking pancakes filled the air outside; frequently noticeable at long distances; going out like an incense on the winds of the morning. It was no easy task for the housewife to stand over the hot stove and make pancakes for an hour at a stretch for hungry flock of boys and girls. We got up early in those days and one of my first recollections was the fragrance of baking pancakes coming up through the cracks in the chamber floor in the old log house and coming down at my mother’s call to see the candle burning dimly in the smoke of the kitchen. It was amazing to see how quickly a great stack of pancakes, saturated with port grease and sorghum, would disappear before the onslaught of a healthy family.
Churning Butter
Churning by hand with a sash churn was one of my boyhood tasks—and not one that greatly enjoyed.
Mild was set in shallow pans on cellar shelves in summer and pantry shelves or in cpboards in the winder. The cream was skimmed off when it had risen to the top, put into jars or crocks and stirred—new skimmings being added until a “churning” was gathered.
We had no milk thermometers in those days and no was of testing the ‘ripeness” of the cream. It was a cut and try system.
When the cream was too cold, it would often swell and bubble up around the churn dasher or around the lid, running down the sides of the churn in a most discouraging manner.
Sometimes we churned and churned for hours before butter appeared. When the cream began to “cut” there was great rejoicing…sometimes faint granulation being a false alarm, and the churning would have to go on and on again indefinitely. I can not now recall, however, any case when we failed finally to get butter.
As soon as granulation was well established, we rocked the churn from side to side to make it “gather.” Then mother took charge with the wooden ladle and big bowl to remove, wash, and work the butter.
It did not irk me so much to churn if the cream did not sputter or if it were light enough so I could churn with one hand. With the free hand I would hold the Youth’s Companion or a book and read—thus by “not letting my right hand know what my left had was doing,” I combined business with pleasure.
Although this butter was made with much labor, it was sold at a very low price, often six to ten cents per pound—not cash, but in trade.
However, we never on a strike. If I had lain down on the job or quit the steady up and down stroke, probably my mother would have the “striking.”
Reviving the old crude method of making butter for a short time may not be so bad an experience. The present generation will learn something of the difficulties of pioneers.
The Old Wood Box
…there were other farm chores for boys to do when they came home from school, and there were several boys besides my father to do them, but I remember the big wood box best. Back and forth I went bringing as heavy armfuls as possible to cut down the number of trips. With cap well pulled down and on my hands the heavy, homeknit woolen mittens faced with leather, I suffered little from the cold.
Indeed the process was not always hurried. The old black farm dog, who usually spent long lonesome days when we boys were at school, and who usually came half way tomeet us on our way home, was always ready for a frolic, running around and around as I carried the wood, challenging me to a tussle, plunging into deep snow banks and racing about with a stick or corn stalk in his mouth. It was great sport to have a tug-of-war with him.
Only when someone had been over to the country post office, two miles across the woods, and brought home the Youth’s Companion was there any great hurry in getting the wood box filled.
And even a boy may have a keen sense of the beauty of a winder landscape. Across the ice-clad lake wreaths of snow sped before the blast and came in billows over the high bank where the house stood. The big sentinel pines here and there along the bank braced themselves heroically against the wind, and the long, gracefully curving branches of the birches that fringed the lake, whistled shrilly their Aeolian tunes. Perches in their limbs partridges picked their fill of the buds. Then the high heaped wood box was back ground for a happy domestic picture when darkness settled down. The big stove threw out a friendly heat and a wonderful fragrance that stimulated our already keen appetites as supper cooked in its oven and on its griddles. My father brought in a large panful of ear corn, which was shelled in the evening and placed where it would be warm for the hens’ breakfast, the cobs being carefully piled below the hearth for the morning’s kindling.
Afger supper we gathered around the candle-lighted table to read or study our next day’s lessons. The wood box, always well filled, gave a sense of plenty and security.
Breaking Ground
Now I am content. I have seen the tractor down at Maple Glen Farm pulverizing new fields, of which only a few years ago I walked through as a primeval forest. A piece of new land open to cultivation always looks good to me. It seems so full of hope and promise, so clean and fresh before foul weeds have invaded it. One must have, it seems to me, some background of actual experience for all keen appreciations, and I can account for my high satisfaction at the sight of that new soil leveled down by a tank like tractor. I do not remember ever having been so tired as when, as a ten year old boy, I harrowed a piece of rooty new land for my brother-in-law with a yoke of half-broken young oxen and an old peg-tooth drag. When I went to clear the drag of roots, those steers headed for a remote corner of he field or for the creek or struck out for home. It was only because I was a good runner that I kept them in the clearing. At night I could not sleep because my legs ached so. That is why a new field laid level with a snorting tractor looks good to me.
County School
…it stood first, as I remember it, on a bleak kill exposed to every wind that blew. Later, after a local civil war that nearly disrupted the community, it was moved to a sheltered nook on a sunny slope, hedged in the woods except on the south. I recall many days in both locations. Before the school house was moved and when I was still a very small boy, we had to cross the lake on the ice in winter facing west wind for nearly a mile.
When we arrived at the school house, heated with its big box stove, it appeared like a city of refuge. It seems as if the old school room in winter was filled with big boys and girls, really young men and women, and I marvel yet, at the discipline maintained by a tiny teacher weighing less than a hundred pounds.
In summer we dwell in fairy land, walking around the shore to school, the waves lapping at our bare feet on the soft sands of the beach. Myriads of minnows lived in the shallows and were watched by the keen-eyed bass out in the clear waters just beyond . Then farther along were patches of rushes and flotillas of white water lilies at anchor, each with a hoard of gold in its upturned cup.
After the school house was moved, it never seemed so cold in winter. A stream crossed the road a short distance below, draining a boggy pond, also filled with great beds of white pond lilies. In spring we built dams across the stream—mighty feats of engineering, so it seemed at the time. Down in the marsh grass by the pond grew long-stemmed wild strawberries and a small variety of violets. On the wooded edge above the school there were many of the large violets and other flowers, with here and there patches of blueberries. In summer when no fire was needed in the stove, the griddle in the middle of the top was removed, the stove was decorated with pussy willow, lilacs, and other flowers and the teacher’s desk was also thus adorned. This old school house is gone forever from the landscape—burned one winter night—but a clear picture of it still may be found in the mind of those who gathered there—now scattered far in great cities, in northern town, in prairie homes and in homes beyond the mountains of the west. And none of them, I know, will scorn the pictures that arise in their minds in some quiet hour of retrospect, born of the days in the old gray school house by the road.
Old fashioned School Slates
The school slates have disappeared entirely and almost mysteriously. When and where did they go? Like the passenger pigeons, they were here in great multitudes a generation ago; now they have vanished. Some of us older folks will recall the crusade against slates. They were noisy in the school room. Then they were fitted with felt pads on the frames. Then they were charged with being unsanitary and I suppose that was the cause of their downfall. It may all have been propaganda of the paper manufacturers. Certain it is that the passing away of the school slate has resulted in the sale of reams and reams of “scratch paper” and tablets to the pupils, but I can not help cherishing a happy recollection of my old school slate. It seemed to be, as I recall it, a permanent boyhood companion. I outgrew my first reader, my second reader, and passed on to the third and fourth, but my slate went with me. At the close of the term it was laid away and there I found it ready to go with me when school opened again for the next term—we did not have “semesters” in those days, just “terms.” My old slate grew to have a personality. It lent itself to all my school necessities. On it were copied the multiplication table, the tables of avoirdupois, and apothecaries weights. Both its back faces would sometimes be covered over with long problems in “partial payments.” It was with me not only in arithmetic, but in other studies as well, and on it I diagrammed sentences out of the old grammar, drew maps of Patagonia and Sendgamia and other far-off countries and outlined my history lessons. Often pupils wrote their spelling tests on their slates, which were exchanged for correction. No doubt there were good reasons why the old school slates have gone the way of memories. From its face each morning we washed the blunders of the day before—the mistakes in addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, the ill-constructed diagrams, the misspelled words—and with fresh courage and a renewed determination, I took my pencil to trace the tasks of a new day. Maybe the old school slates of that generation gone taught us something of a fine philosophy of life—the thought of starting each morning with a clean slate, wiping away the errors of yesterday forgetting its crooked lines and grotesque drawings, and with a cheerful heart setting forth on the work that lay before us.
Boyhood War Games
…when I was a little lad, the facts and traditions of the Civil War were still fresh in the minds of the older boys at school. Sam Kershaw’s uncle had been a Colonel in the Federal Army, and Same was full of military enthusiasm. He had a big black dog named Grant, which came to school every day, and became a sort of school mascot, though most of the dog’s activities were connected with the “army>” Sam had us all organized, big and little, into regiments. Some of us were “unions” and some “Rebs”—nobody wanted to be “Rebs”, but we couldn’t have a battle with only one army. Sam organized and drilled both sides. We had strong wooden guns, pointed on the ends for bayonets, and for ammunition, especially for bombs, we used—old shoes! We carried off all the old dilapidated boots and shoes we could find at home. These were poised on the end of bayonets, and with a dexterous swing of the gun, we would hurl them into the “enemy, who economically picked them up and threw them back. If a boy got hit by a “bomb” of course he was dead. We had some sort of system of “taking prisoner”, but I have forgotten how it was done.
Sometimes we went “foraging” at the noon hour, and with the aid of Grant, killed some gray squirrels. These were skinned and roasted over a fire built in the old sand pit in the woods back of Joe Stone’s house. I can smell again the restaurant odor that arose from that sand pit as the boys cooked the squirrels…
The “battlefield” was not picturesque—just a barren hillside overgrown with sorrel, milkweeds, and scrubby little oak trees. Our “army” was a tattered demolition crew, barefooted and dirty…but out of our spontaneous methods of play were developed a willingness to “give and take” with withal a lot of outdoor exercise.
Christmas in the Log House
I was fortunate enough to have been born in a log house—one that was built of logs from the bottom of the cellar to the chamber eves. There was no attic—the rafters , roof boards, and shingles being all that kept the storms and starlight out of our sleeping rooms. The chamber floor was made of wide rough oak boards which had been alid when green, and shrunk so as to leave cracks of considerable size, letting the light from the kitchen below form a pattern of a glowing gridiron.
Christmas eve all the children, except those well grown up, hung their stockings on nails along the kitchen walls. Up to the “age of discretion” we had the orthodox faith in Santa clause, though for myself, I confess doubt at quite an early age that Santa come down the chimney or stove pipe, it being m opinion that he came in directly at the door, since our door was never locked.
We went to bed early Christmas eve and sometimes had difficulty settling down and getting to sleep.
The cracks in the floor made it easy to hear conversation taking place down stairs, but someway it seems that our parents took this into consideration. Never to my recollection did we get an inkling from any word spoken below that the stockings were being filled, although I remember some suspicious rustlings of paper.
But at last the house grew quiet, and we fell asleep. Although our parents were early risers, getting up a five o’clock even in the winter time, we children were awake long before there was any stir downstairs.
The only heat in the house came from a kitchen stove, in which the fire was banked at bedtime, so the rooms became very cold before morning. Often I remember the long handled dipper would be frozen fast in the water pail on the bench by the door.
It was still dark as midnight when we awoke on Christmas morning, but we could not wait for the coming of daylight or even until my father kindled the kitchen fire. We chose one among us or called for a volunteer to go down the cark and creaky stairs to grope for the stockings along the wall and bring them back to the others in bed, carrying them so as not to spill the contents and also keep them so separated that each stocking went to the proper owner. Then came our efforts to identify the presents. Generally this was not so difficult even in the dark, although I recall some occasions when we were puzzled until the candle light down stairs helped us to solve the mystery of certain small packages.
In later years we had a Christmas tree in the school house, with a Santa Claus who wore a buffalo overcoat and a string of sleigh bells around him like a belt. We had a program of singing, speaking “pieces”, and disturbing of presents hung on the tree, with big red apples tossed quite freely about.
Probably our Yuletide story is the “short and simple annals of the poor”—and yet we were not poor when our wants and our means were compared. We had sufficient food, clothing, and fuel. No one was on relief nor asked to be given aid, but it would not be called today and “abundant life.”
Perhaps little progress would have been made had there been no effort to multiply the pleasures and delights of the holidays. The season has been highly commercialized—the holiday trade being so great as to tax all the avenues of distribution of goods and burden all lines of transportation.
We would not check this wonderful tide of commerce if it were possible, but in its bustle and confusion, we would preserve, if we could, all the spirit of bounty and kindliness and some of the simplicity of the old-time Christmas.
Oxford, the Nearest Village
This little village was for many years without a railroad and even now is not touched by any of the concrete highway arteries.
The first inland villages of Wisconsin were mostly located on streams where water power could be developed. In the early fifties, or possibly forties, a dam was built on Neenah Creek in Marquette County, a few miles below the place where gushing springs came out from under the sand and gravel ridges of Adams County. Here a mill was built to grind the settlers’ wheat, which grew abundantly—also other grains of all kinds.
Flour for shipment was produced and was sent out by steamboats in summer on the Fox River some seven miles away. Later, the flour was freighted to stations on the Milwaudee and St. Paul Railroad.
Around this mill a village grew up with all the pioneer industries—a sawmill, blacksmith shop, other shops for making and repairing wagons and sleights, boots, shoes, and harnesses—in fact all that a primitive community would need and with them stores of all kinds. There came also professional men—several lawyers, doctors, and ministers…
Visiting Kilbourn
Although twelve miles away from our farm home, Kilbourne was our nearest reailroad station—twelve miles over hills and sandy roads.
Even when quite small, we children were often permitted to go with our parents to our market town, to see the sights quite wonderful to our youthful eyes. I recall making the trip with an oxen team in quite cold weather, when from time to time I got out and ran along behind the wagon to keep warm. Across Dell Prairie the bitter wind nearly swept me off my feet. Then in summer the heat and dust from the sand were almost suffocating. But the sights at the end of the journey more than offset the hardships along the way.
If we came into the village along what is now Highway 13, in hot weather we always stopped at the crystal spring just at the edge of town to dip water for the thirsty team. Then came the long sash and door factory and the saw mill, where I often went cautiously to hear the ringing circle saws and watch the men at work. From the bridge across the canyon where the rattling planks always startled our young team of horses, we caught awe inspiring glimpses of the majestic river coming down darkly between its high sandstone walls.
Then we would sometimes slip away, while the elders did their trading, to stand on the wagon way underneath the railroad bridge and watch the lumber rafts go through the chute of the dam. It certainly looked hazardous and gave us a thrill more realistic than any modern movie.
Little dreaming that they were being observed by the sharp eyes of childhood all of the business men were well known to the farm boys. I remember Mr. Smith, the grain buyer, taking me by the hand and leading me along the depot platform to watch the train come in. How did he know that I was a little frightened and would like to have some one hold my hand? I recall also the first dells steamboat, and how its hoarse whistle echoes and re-echoes through the rock canyons.
The name and face of every business and professional man of the village are stereotyped in my memory, and I was really amazed on my recent visit to see the sign of A.C. Dixon still on the old store front. All other old names seem to be gone except the Finch Hotel, which I recall, was first known as the Tanner House.
Wisconsin Dells is now know nationally and even throughout the world for its scenic beauty.
Kilbourn Becomes Wisconsin Dells
I understand that in some way the name of Kilbourn has been changed to Wisconsin Dells—some commercial idea, I suppose, to advertise the Dells. However, I “ha’ me doots” as the Scotch express it. Kilbourn has long been synonymous with the Dells anyway. To me it meant the Dells and much more. There is a music in certain words, and I always felt that Kilbourn was a beautiful word. It had a romance about it, too—a place of mystery. As a farm boys I loved to prowl abut the town incognito—as kings sometimes used to travel. I knew every business man in the place and none of them knew the urchin who went abut the sidewalks taking notes of all their peculiarities. I loved to go out on the bridge and watch the dark water pouring down from the upper gorge and go tumbling over the dam. Often I could get a big thrill by having a great train go thundering over my head on the railroad bridge above. It was a bigger thrill to see the rafts with their sturdy crews swinging the great oars across the bow and stern to guide their course, approach the dam, skillfully slide into the chute, and rush headlong into the lower waters. And I know all the stories and legends—the great fire, the Gates murder, the Pat Wildrik lynching, Belle Boyd the Rebel Spy, and the mysterious young lady who came and went in the winter night and was found dead on the great mound.
All that was part of Kilbourn as was also the beauty and majesty of the Dells.
Ancestors and Races
I had a job on my hands today, sorting over a big bunch of papers which had accumulated on my bedroom dresser—clippings, deposit slips, store statements, notes from sermons or speeches coming over the radio, memoranda of ideas, and with my own or some picked up along the street, letters, post cards, odds and ends. I empty my pockets at intervals, piling their contents on the dresser and then have a “field day” occasionally, sorting it over and attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff, and it is often hard for me to decide what to keep and what to discard.
My father always assured his children that there was strong Scotch strain in their paternal ancestry, and some of my personal traits and experiences confirm me in the conviction that this is true—I have great reluctance about throwing anything away. As a boy, my pockets were always filled with trinkets and bits of nondescript things, more or less worthless.
For several years, I carried two bits of iron ore, a black hematite, and another kind, both brought by an older brother from the iron region of Marquette, Michigan. Another reassured keepsake was a phalangeal bone from the paw of old dog, Beaver, which after his death, I succeeded in retrieving as a sort of sacred relic. Generally, my Scotch blood is controlled, but at times I could feel the stirring of an alien strain—Irish perhaps, and I would have a strong impulse to throw my precious pocket specimens at the birds.
Of course, one is considerably handicapped at times by not having the privilege of picking out his own ancestors. At least it would seem that one might have a better chance of obtaining a consistent steady-going character if he were not of ‘mixed types.” Again it may be that there is an advantage in having a variety of strains in ones’ makeup. It may make for a fuller, richer, more varied personality.
American has been called the great “melting pot” of nationalities and here we hope to see—or at least future generations will see—the new Americans with all the best traits of the aboriginal Indians, combined with those of the thrifty Scotch, the witty Irish, the industrious and enterprising English, the mercurial and gay French. the Scandinavian, the musical and artistic Italians, and so one through all the nations, tongues, and people.
Even though the American of the future may find within himself a lifelong struggle to keep his tendencies balanced, as one strain pulls and another pushes this way and that this internal strife ma of itself make for harmony and strength. To be sure, in such a mixture of races, we are likely to have some mongrels of a low class, but on the whole we can hope for a fine American type in the future.
As a matter of fact there are few pure races n Europe. The English are as composite in blood as in language, which is a most wonderful mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Celtic, French, and other Latin sprung speech, so we need not fear another turn of the race-mixer. It will probably continue to turn faster in the future. The meeting of all races in the public schools, the rapid transit of automobiles on concrete pathways, the radio and telephones, are all bringing the populations into a more unified people booth in race and language. the “melting pot” will continue to be a racial crucible from which will come forth a new race.
Curling
…curling is a real Scotch game played on the ice with heavy blocks of granite, wood, or iron symmetrically shaped and fitted with a handle. the blocks are slid on the ice toward concentric rings in the center of which is the “tee.” Nearly fifty years ago I watched with much curiosity the Scotchman playing at curling on the ice of the little lake at Portage, Wisconsin. It is a fine outdoor sport and has established itself in that city. Curling teams come there from Minneapolis, Duluth, and even as far away as Winnipeg. The game has taken hold not only of the Scotch decent, but men of all other nationalities that live in Portage. It is a great game. It beats pitching horseshoes, which was the natural sport when I was a boy. The devotees of pool and billiards may feel that their game has more of a moral uplift, more of a spectacular setting of battle, as they play in the gray clouds of cigarette smoke. The enthusiastic bowlers may think that their game makes mightily for the development of their lumbar and dorsal muscles and adds grace and beauty to their forms, but I assure you, they are all tame and insipid beside a quartette of burly Scotchman with plaid caps, red noses, and sorrel whiskers waving in the wind, as they chase their ponderous curling blocks over ice.
A Train Trip Recalls Childhood Memories
It was a dull, monotonous, uninteresting winter landscape. Everyone in the car seemed agreed upon that, though nobody spoke of it. The gentleman from Illinois in the seat opposite looks out with a sad, bored expression at the level waste of snow, doted with scrub oaks and scattered jack pines, or at frozen marshes, as far as the eye could reach. A fair lady banked her fur coat in the corner of the seat and went to sleep. Four tired travelers with faces devoid of expression, played cards on the side of a suitcase resting upon their knees. What was there in the scene which whirled past as the train sped on its way, to awaken a thought or stir an emotion—scarce a sign of life, little deserted houses and abandoned fields growing up with scraggly bushes? Yes, one might for a moment wonder whence had come the people who once lived here, and whither they had they gone? However, they were nothing to any of us, who looked out at the dim, pathetic trail they had left behind them; but it was only because we never knew these folks that we looked with indifference at the eve of their failure. Of a sudden, a long-drawn whistle, and a peculiar rumble told me the passing over the Wisconsin River. I was all alert now—the other passengers dozed on—there to the north stood Piet-en-well Rock, as it had stood sphinx-like for centuries, marking the onward flow of the river and listening to the beating of the years on the metronome of Time. I was now on sacred soil—the country in which I was born and spent all my boyhood days. The view varied little from that through which we had just passed, but familiar land-marks began to loom in the distance. Far away rose Roche-a-cre Rock, castle-like in the thin winter air. Here tinkled along beside the track, the lipid stream that bears the same name as the great sandstone bluff. And now nearer at hand, only two miles away is Friendship Mound. It, too, is like some ancient fortress, with Chimney rock standing sheer against its face, three hundred feet high and separated from its parent rock by a cleft, across which venturesome boys and girls used to leap and dance on the rock’s flat top. At the foot nestles the quiet little village—I cannot see it from the train—but more memories, for there I first met those giants of the school world, Professor Duncan MacGregor, the late president of Platteville Normal, and Professor A.J. Hutton of the Whitewater Normal. There, too I met groups of ambitious, bright young people who surely somewhere must have left their impress on upon the world. Many of them got their first vision of broader, greener fields of life in the two weeks teacher’s institutes of those early days. No one but myself even looks out of the window or seems stirred to reveries as we flash along. Soon more familiar scenes—roads, houses, Neenah Creek—and I smile reminiscently as I look off to the right and see the spot where a loose plank on a wooden bridge tipped a small boy into the creek when we were spearing suckers! There down across the corner of he field stands the house where my older sister lived, and where I spent many happy hours. My kindred have found new homes—most of them nearer the sunset sea. A few miles on we dash through a pretty village and the engine stands panting for a minute at the station. I caught a glimpse of the tress on the school campus—it is foolish and impossible, of course, but just for a day—only a day- would I like to be one of them again who wind their way along the diagonal path to the school house door. Just beyond, the valley broadens out into prairie-like fertile farms. Straight corn stubble rows, more than half a mile long, stretch across the white snow fields. The sun light now stands from the west and throws shadows from the bordering hills far out into the valley. There across the distance, bright in the dying rays, stands a stately farm home, amidst ancestral trees, the great barn and towering silo looming in solemn dignity. Until the train enters the cut on the east side of the valley I look toward that grand old home. I see it as the wings of darkness droop over it this winter evening. I can see it as it stood on summer days gone by, and silent summer night, when the moonlight fell among the trees and down the gravel driveway where we walked. It is a love story—but it will never be written. Nobody knows the story but myself—and it is sacred. Darkness settle down. The passengers sit stupid or asleep—uninterested, knowing not that they had passed through a land of real romance, a land where love and joy were born and flourished like a fair flower and like a flower were plucked, pressed, and laid away forever and for aye. The train glided on.
Robert and Jane Taken by Diptheria
“Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.” In the economy of nature, this scriptural command is ever obeyed—somehow, somewhere all is gathered up; nothing lost—so I believe.
In an old village churchyard close to the edge of the “French Country” in the province of Quebec, stand two tiny headstones—at least they stood there many years, and doubtless remain low-sunken in the sod, if the frosts and winds of more than eighty years have not crumbled the ‘mossy marbles’ into dust. On one was carved “Robert, aged 7”; the other ”Jane, age 5.” The children’s parents and younger brothers and sisters crossed the continent to a new Wisconsin home, where other children were born. With the household articles that the gamily brought was a small, brown wooden box, in which were some family keep-sakes and reassures. Among them was little collection of silver coins. The children had died long before the days of diphtheria antitoxin, but hoping against hope, the parents had given them doses of nauseous medicine, which the doctors of that day prescribed. In order to bribe the little sufferers into taking the remedy, each was given, from time to time, a small silver coin. For awhile the children would hold the glittering coins in their feverish hands, then drop them listlessly. The money was laid away in the little treasure box when the children died: it was never spent. Some days of privation came to the Wisconsin home—days when there was not enough money in the house to buy a postage stamp, except for the little Canadian coins. But no one thought for a moment of spending them. They were as precious and sacred a treasure as the locks of brown and golden hair that had been laid away with them. These little folks died years before I was born, but to me they have always been as much a brother and sister as any of the living ones. Over and over again to each of us in succession was told the story of their brief lives and their tragic death—the story revealing to us as much the living character of our mothers as it did the pathos of the children’s death. There is no question that the old, sad story developed in more than one childish mind some tendency to sympathy that is a permanent possession—a fragment gathered up and never lost. This is not an argument for the death of little children, nor disasters of other kinds, but a statement of the law that bids the lily bloom, brings forth fresh fragrance from moist, decaying earth, and shakes in the summer air the flaming poppy’s red on fields fertilized by human blood.
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