Asa Holmes: or, At the Cross-Roads

Chapter I

THERE is no place where men learn each other's little peculiarities more thoroughly than in the group usually to be found around the stove in a country store. Such acquaintance may be of slow growth, like the oak's, but it is just as sure. Each year is bound to add another ring to one's knowledge of his neighbours if he lounges with them, as man and boy, through the Saturday afternoons of a score of winters.

A boy learns more there than he can be taught in schools. It may be he is only a tow-headed, freckle-faced little fellow of eight when he rides over to the cross-roads store for the first time by himself. Too timid to push into the circle around the fire, he stands shivering on the outskirts, looking about him with the alertness of a scared rabbit, until the storekeeper fills his kerosene can and thrusts the weekly mail into his red mittens. Then some man covers him with confusion by informing the crowd that "that little chap is Perkins's oldest," and he scurries away out of the embarrassing focus of the public eye.

But the next time he is sent on the family errands he stays longer and carries away more. Perched on the counter, with his heels dangling over a nail keg, while he waits for the belated mail train, he hears for the first time how the government ought to be run, why it is that the country is going to the dogs, and what will make hens lay in cold weather. Added to this general information, he slowly gathers the belief that these men know everything in the world worth knowing, and that their decisions on any subject settle the matter for all time.

He may have cause to change his opinion later on, when his sapling acquaintance has gained larger girth; when he has loafed with them, smoked with them, swapped lies and spun yarns, argued through a decade of stormy election times, and talked threadbare every subject under the sun. But now, in his callow judgment, he is listening to the wit and wisdom of the nation. Now, as he looks around the overflowing room, where butter firkins crowd the calicoes and crockery, and where hams and saddles swing sociably from the same rafter, as far as his knowledge goes, this is the only store in the universe.

Some wonder rises in his childish brain as he counts the boxes of axle-grease and the rows of shining new pitchforks, as to where all the people live who are to use so many things. He has yet to learn that this one little store that is such a marvel to him is only a drop in the bucket, and that he may travel the width of the continent, meeting at nearly every mile-post that familiar mixture of odours – coal oil, mackerel, roasted coffee, and pickle brine. And a familiar group of men, discussing the same old subjects in the same old way, will greet him at every such booth he passes on his pilgrimage through Vanity Fair.

Probably in after years Perkins's oldest will never realise how much of his early education has been acquired at that Saturday afternoon loafing-place, but he will often find himself looking at things with the same squint with which he learned to view them through 'Squire Dobbs's short-sighted spectacles. Many a time he will find that he has been unconsciously warped by the prejudices he heard expressed there, and that his opinions of life in general and men in particular are the outgrowth of those early conversations which gave him the creed of his boyhood.

"Them blamed Yankees!" exclaims one of these neighbourhood orators, tilting his chair back against the counter, and taking a vicious bite at his plug of tobacco. "They don't know no better than to eat cold bread the year 'round!" And the boy, accepting the statement unquestioningly, stores away in his memory not only the remark, but all the weighty emphasis of disgust which accompanied the remark in the spitting of a mouthful of tobacco juice. Henceforth his idea of the menu north of the Mason and Dixon line is that it resembles the bill of fare of a penitentiary, and he feels that there is something coldblooded and peculiar about a people not brought up on a piping hot diet of hoe-cake and beaten biscuit.

In the same way the lad whose opinions are being moulded in some little corner grocery of a New England village, or out where the roads cross on the Western prairie, receives his prejudices. It may be years before he finds out for himself that the land of Boone is not fenced with whiskey jugs and feuds, and that the cap-sheaf on every shock of wheat in its domain is not a Winchester rifle.

But these prejudices, popular at local cross-roads, are only the side lines of which every section carries its own specialty. When it comes to staple articles, dear to the American heart and essential to its liberty and progress, their standard of value is the same the country over.

One useful lesson the youthful lounger may learn here, if he can learn it anywhere, and that is to be a shrewd reader of men and motives. Since staple characteristics in human nature are repeated everywhere, like staple dry goods and groceries, a thorough knowledge of the group around the stove will be a useful guide to Perkins's oldest in forming acquaintances later in life.

Long after he has left the little hamlet and grown gray with the experiences of the metropolis, he will run across some queer Dick whose familiar personality puzzles him. As he muses over his evening pipe, suddenly out of the smoke wreaths will spring the face of some old codger who aired his wisdom in the village store, and he will recognise the likeness between the two as quickly as he would between two cans of leaf lard bearing the same brand.

But Perkins's oldest is only in the primer of his cross-roads curriculum now, and these are some of the lessons he is learning as he edges up to the group around the fire. On the day before Thanksgiving, for instance, he was curled up on a box of soap behind the chair of old Asa Holmes – Miller Holmes everybody calls him, because for nearly half a century his water-mill ground out the grist of all that section of country. He is retired now; gave up his business to his grandsons. They carry it on in another place with steam and modern machinery, and he is laid on the shelf. But he isn't a back number, even if his old deserted mill is. It is his boast that now he has nothing else to do, he not only keeps up with the times, but ahead of them.

Everybody goes to him for advice; everybody looks up to him as they do to a hardy old forest tree that's lived through all sorts of hurricanes, but has stood to the last, sturdy of limb, and sound to the core. He is as sweet and mellow as a winter apple, ripened in the sun, and that's why everybody likes to have him around. You don't see many old men like that. Their troubles sour them.

Well, this day before Thanksgiving the old miller was in his usual place at the store, and as usual it was he who was giving the cheerful turn to the conversation. Some of the men were feeling sore over the recent election; some had not prospered as they had hoped with their crops, and were experiencing the pinch of hard times and sickness in their homes. Still there was a holiday feeling in the atmosphere. Frequent calls for nutmeg, and sage, and cinnamon, left the air spicy with prophecies of the morrow's dinner.

The farmers had settled down for a friendly talk, with the comfortable sense that the crops were harvested, the wood piled away for the winter, and a snug, warm shelter provided for the cattle. It was good to see the hard lines relax in the weather-beaten faces, in the warmth of that genial comradeship. Even the gruffest were beginning to thaw a little, when the door opened, and Bud Hines slouched in. The spirits of the crowd went down ten degrees.

Not that he said anything; only gave a gloomy nod by way of greeting as he dropped into a chair. But his whole appearance said it for him; spoke in the droop of his shoulders, and the droop of his hat brim, and the droop of his mouth at the corners. He looked as if he might have sat for the picture of the man in the "Biglow Papers," when he said:

The miller greeted him with the twinkle in his eye that eighty years and more have never been able to dim; and Perkins's oldest had his first meeting with the man who always finds a screw loose in everything. Nothing was right with Bud Hines. One of his horses had gone lame, and his best heifer had foundered, and there was rust in his wheat. He didn't have any heart to keep Thanksgiving, and he didn't see how anybody else could, with the bottom dropped clean out of the markets and the new road tax so high. For his part he thought that everything was on its last legs, and it wouldn't be long till all the Powers were at war, and prices would go up till a poor man simply couldn't live.

It was impossible not to be affected more or less by his gloomy forebodings, and the old miller, looking around on the listening faces, saw them settling back in their old discouraged lines. Clasping his hands more firmly over the top of his cane, he exclaimed: "Now look here, Bud Hines, I'm going to give you a proverb that was made on purpose for such a poor, weak-kneed Mr. Ready-to-halt as you are: 'Never be discouraged, and never be a discourager!' If you can't live up to the first part, you certainly can to the second. No matter how hard things go with you, you've no right to run around throwing cold water on other people. What if your horse has gone lame? You've got a span of mules that can outpull my yoke of oxen any day. One heifer oughtn't to send a man into mourning the rest of his days, and it would be more fitting to be thankful over your good tobacco crop than to groan over the failure of your wheat. More fitting to the season. As for the rest of the things you're worrying over, why, man, they haven't happened yet, and maybe never will. My old grandad used to say to me when I was a lad, 'Never cross your bridge till you come to it, Asa,' and I've proved the wisdom of that saying many a time. Suppose'n you put that in your pipe and smoke it."

If Perkins's oldest learns no other lesson this year than to put those two proverbs into practice, he will have had a valuable education. How many Thanksgivings they will help to make for him! How many problems and perplexities they will solve!

"Never be discouraged; never be a discourager! Don't cross your bridge until you come to it!" It is a philosophy that will do away with half the ills which flesh imagines it is heir to.

Thanksgiving Day! How much more it means to the old miller than to the little fellow beside him on the soap box! To the child it is only a feast day; to the old man it is a festival that links him to a lifetime of sacred memories.

"Five and eighty years," he says, musingly, resting his chin on the wrinkled hands that clasp the head of his cane. A silence falls on the group around the stove, and through the cracked door the red firelight shines out on thoughtful faces.

"It's a long time; five and eighty years," he repeats, "and every one of them crowned with a Thanksgiving. Boys," lifting his head and looking around him, "you've got a good bit of pike to travel over yet before you get as far as I've gone, and some of you are already half fagged out and beginning to wonder if it's all worth while – Bud, here, for instance. I'd like to give you all a word of encouragement.

"Looking back, I can see that I've had as many ups and downs as any of you, and more than your share of work and trouble, for I've lived longer, and nearly all the years are marked with graves. Seems to me that lately I've had to leave a new grave behind me at every mile-stone, till now I'm jogging on all alone. Family gone, old neighbours gone, old friends – I'm the last of the old set. But, still, when all is said and done, I haven't lost heart, for 'I've lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best.'

"When I was milling down there on Bear Creek you'd 'a' thought I was a fool if I hadn't taken my rightful toll out of every bushel of grist that ran through my hopper, and sometimes I think that the Almighty must feel that way about us when we go on grinding and grinding, and never stopping to count up our share of the profit and pleasure and be thankful over it. I believe that no matter what life pours into our hopper, we are to grind some toll of good out of it for ourselves, and as long as a man does his part toward producing something for the world's good, some kind of bread for its various needs, he will never go hungry himself.

"And I believe more than that. You've heard people compare old age to a harvest field, and talk about the autumn of life with its ripened corn waiting for the reaper Death, and all that, and speak about the 'harvest home,' as if it were the glorious end of everything. But it never did strike me that way, boys. The best comes after the harvesting, when the wheat is turned into flour and the flour into bread, and the full, wholesome loaves go to make up blood and muscle and brain. That's giving it a sort of immortality, you might say, raising it into a higher order of life. And it's the same with a man. His old age is just a ripening for something better a little further on. All that we go through with here isn't for nothing, and at eighty-five, when it looks as if a man had come to the stepping-off place, I've come to believe that 'the best is yet to be.'"

There is a stir around the door, and the old miller looks around inquiringly. The mail has come in, and he rises slowly to get his weekly paper. Perkins's oldest, waiting his turn in front of the little case of pigeonholes, eyes the old man with wondering side glances. He has not understood more than half of what he has heard, but he is vaguely conscious that something is speaking to him now, as he looks into the tranquil old face. It is the miller's past that is calling to him; all those honest, hard-working years that show themselves in the bent form and wrinkled hands; the serene peacefulness that bespeaks a clear conscience; the big, sunny nature that looks out of those aged eyes; and above all the great hopefulness that makes his days a perpetual Thanksgiving.

The mute eloquence of an unspoken invitation thrills the child's heart, he knows not why:

It is the greatest lesson that Perkins's oldest can ever learn.

Chapter II

ONE would have known that it was the day before Christmas at the Cross-Roads store, even if the big life insurance calendar over the desk had not proclaimed the fact in bold red figures. An unwonted bustle pervaded the place. Rows of plump, dressed turkeys hung outside the door, and on the end of the counter where the pyramid of canned tomatoes was usually stacked, a little evergreen tree stood in a brave array of tinsel and tiny Christmas tapers.

It was only an advertisement. No one might hope to be the proud possessor of the Noah's ark lodged in its branches, or of the cheap toys and candy rings dangling from every limb, unless he had the necessary pennies. Still, every child who passed it eyed it with such wistful glances that the little rubber Santa Claus at the base must have felt his elastic heart stretch almost to bursting.

Above the familiar odour of coal-oil and mackerel, new leather, roasted coffee and pickle brine, rose the holiday fragrance of cedar and oranges.

"Makes me think of when I was a kid," said a drummer who had been joking with the men around the stove, trying to kill time while he waited for the train that was to take him home for Christmas. "There's nothing like that smell of cedar and oranges to resurrect the boy in a man. It puts me straight back into knickerbockers again, among a whole grove of early Christmas trees. I'll never forget the way I felt when I picked my first pair of skates off one of them. A house and lot wouldn't give me such a thrill now."

"Aw, I don't believe Christmas is at all what it's cracked up to be," said a voice from behind the stove, in such a gloomy tone that a knowing smile passed around the circle.

"Bet on you, Bud Hines, for findin' trouble, every time," laughed the storekeeper. "Why, Bud, there ain't no screw loose in Christmas, is there?"

"Well, there just is!" snapped the man, resenting the laugh. "It comes too often for one thing. I just wish it had happened on leap-year, the twenty-ninth of February. It would be a heap less expensive having it just once in four years. Seems to me we're always treading on its heels. My old woman hardly gets done knitting tidies for one Christmas till she's hard at it for another.

"Anyhow, Christmas never measures up to what you think it's a-going to – not by a jug-full. Sure as you get your heart set on a patent nail-puller or a pair of fur gloves – something that'll do you some good – your wife gives you a carpet sweeper, or an alarm-clock that rattles you out an hour too early every morning."

The drummer led the uproarious laughter that followed. They were ready to laugh at anything in this season of good cheer, and the drummer's vociferous merriment was irresistible. He slapped the speaker on the back, adding jokingly, "That's one thing Job never had to put up, did he, partner! He nearly lost his reputation for politeness over the misfit advice he didn't want. But there's no telling what he'd have done with misfit Christmas gifts. It would take a star actor to play the grateful for some of the things people find in their stockings. For instance, to have a fond female relative give you a shaving outfit, when you wear a full beard."

"You bet your life," answered the storekeeper feelingly. "Now, if Santa Claus wasn't a fake – "

"Hist!" said the drummer, with a significant glance toward a small boy, perched on a soap-box in their midst, listening open-mouthed to every word. "I've children myself, and I'd punch anybody's head who would shake their faith in Santy. It's one of the rosy backgrounds of childhood, in my opinion, and I've got a heap of happiness out of it since I was a kid, too, looking back and recollecting."

It was very little happiness that the boy on the soap-box was getting out of anything, that gray December afternoon. He was weighed down with a feeling of age and responsibility that bore heavily on his eight-year-old shoulders. He had long felt the strain of his position, as pattern to the house of Perkins, being the oldest of five. Now there was another one, and to be counted as the oldest of six pushed him almost to the verge of gray hairs.

There was another reason for his tear-stained face. He had been disillusioned. Only that noon, his own mother had done that for which the drummer would have punched any one's head, had it been done to his children. "We're too poor, Sammy. There can't be any Christmas at our house this year," she had said, fretfully, as she stopped the noisy driving of nails into the chimney, on which he contemplated hanging the fraternal stockings. To his astonished "Why?" she had replied with a few blunt truths that sent him out from her presence, shorn of all his childish hopefulness as completely as Samson was shorn of his strength.

There had been a sorry half-hour in the hay-mow, where he snuffled over his shattered faith alone, and from whence he went out, a hardened little skeptic, to readjust himself to a cold and Santa Clausless world. The only glimmer of comfort he had had since was when the drummer, with a friendly wink, slipped a nickel into his hand. But even that added to his weight of responsibility. He dropped it back and forth from one little red mitten to another, with two impulses strong upon him. The first was to spend it for six striped sticks of peppermint candy, one for each stocking, and thus compel Christmas to come to the house of Perkins. The other was to buy one orange and go off in a corner and suck it all by himself. He felt that fate owed him that much of a reparation for his disappointment. He was in the midst of this inward debate when a new voice joined the discussion around the stove. It came from Cy Akers.

"Well, I think it's downright sinful to stuff a child with such notions. You may call 'em fairy-tales all you like, but it's nothing more or less than a pack of lies. The idea of a Christian payrent sitting up and telling his immortal child that a big fat man in furs will drive through the air to-night in a reindeer sleigh right over the roofs and squeeze himself down a lot of sooty chimneys, with a bag of gimcracks on his back – it's all fol-de-rol! I never could see how any intelligent young one could believe it. I never did. But that's one thing about me, as the poet says, 'If I've one pecooliar feature it's a nose that won't be led.' I never could be made to take stock in any such nonsense, even as a boy. I'll leave it to Mr. Asa Holmes, here, if it isn't wrong to be putting such ideas into the youth of our land."

The old miller ran his fingers through his short white hair and looked around. His smile was wholesome as it was genial. He was used to being called in judgment on these neighbourhood discussions, and he spoke with the air of one who felt that his words carried weight:

"You're putting it pretty strong, Cy," he said, with a laugh, and then a tender, reminiscent light gleamed in his old eyes.

"You see it's this way with me, boys. We never heard any of these things when I was a lad. It's plain facts in a pioneer cabin, you know. Father taught us about Christmas in the plain words that he found set down in the Gospels, and I told it the same way to my boys. When my first little grandson came back to the old house to spend Christmas, I thought it was almost heathenish for his mother to have him send letters up the chimney and talk as if Santa Claus was some real person. I told her so one day, and asked what was going to happen when the little fellow outgrew such beliefs.

"'Why, Father Holmes,' said she, – I can hear her now, words and tones, for it set me to thinking, – 'don't you see that he is all the time growing into a broader belief? It's this way.' She picked up a big apple from the table. 'Once this apple was only a tiny seed-pod in the heart of a pink blossom. The beauty of the blossom was all that the world saw, at first, but gradually, as the fruit swelled and developed, the pink petals fell off, naturally and easily, and the growing fruit was left. My little son's idea of Christmas is in the blossom time now. This rosy glamour of old customs and traditions that makes it so beautiful to him is taking the part of the pink petals. They will fall away by and by, of their own accord, for underneath a beautiful truth is beginning to swell to fruitage. Santa Claus is the Spirit of Christmas love and giving, personified. It is because I want to make it real and vital, something that my baby's mind can grasp and enjoy, that I incarnate it in the form of the good old Saint Nicholas, but I never let him lose sight of the Star. It was the Spirit of Christmas that started the wise men on their search, and they followed the Star and they found the Child, and laid gifts at his feet. And when the Child was grown, he, too, went out in the world and followed the Star and scattered his gifts of love and healing for all the children of men. And so it has gone on ever since, that Spirit of Christmas, impelling us to follow and to find and to give, wherever there is a need for our gold and frankincense and myrrh. That is the larger belief my boy is growing into, from the smaller.'

"And she is right," said the old man, after an impressive pause. "She raised that boy to be an own brother to Santa Claus, as far as good-will to men goes. It's Christmas all the year round wherever he is. And now when he brings his boys back to the old home and hangs their stockings up by the fire, I never say a word. Sometimes when the little chaps are hunting for the marks of the reindeer hoofs in the ashes, I kneel down on the old hearthstone and hunt, too.

"A brother to Santa Claus!" The phrase still echoed in the heart of Perkins's oldest when the group around the stove dispersed. It was that which decided the fate of the nickel, and filled the little red mittens with sticks of striped delight for six, instead of the lone orange for one. Out of a conversation but dimly understood he had gathered a vague comfort. It made less difference that his patron saint was a myth, since he had learned there might be brothers in the Claus family for him to fall back upon. Then his fingers closed over the paper bag of peppermints, and, suddenly, with a little thrill, he felt that in some queer way he belonged to that same brotherhood.