The Crow's Nest Part 18

Story of a Farmer

There once was a tall husky fellow, big hands and feet; not much education. (Though he came of a fairly good family.) He had very bad teeth. His father had left him a farm, and that was his great interest--farming. He had the kind of feeling about farming that a good shoemaker has about shoes. Of course, he complained more or less, and felt dissatisfied and discouraged, and threatened to give up his farm when things went badly. But there was nothing else he could have willingly turned to; and he was never weary of experimenting with different ways of planting his crops.

He was a sound-thinking man, and men trusted him. He grew prominent.

Held some offices. As a result, when he was forty-three he had to go away from home for some years. This was while he was managing an army.

And I ought to explain that it was a hard army to manage. It was not only badly equipped and poorly trained, but sometimes the men would run away in the midst of a battle. That made this man angry. He was ordinarily composed and benign in his manner, but when he saw the soldiers showing fear he used to become violently aroused, and would swear at them and strike them. His nature loathed cowardice. He cared nothing for danger himself, perhaps because of his teeth, and he couldn't understand why these other men dreaded to die.

All his life, when he was at table with others, he used to sit there in silence, drumming on the cloth with his fork. He seldom joked. He was hardly ever playful. People said he was too dignified, too solemn. Well!

one isn't apt to be a comedian, precisely, with toothache. He was only twenty-two when he began having his teeth pulled, they tortured him so; and he kept on losing them, painfully, year after year.

About this army again. He didn't want to manage it. He had had quite a liking for military work, as a youth, and had even gone on a small expedition to see active service, though his mother had interfered all she could, and tried hard to prevent him. But as this was all the experience he ever had had, and as he had never studied warfare, he didn't know anything about handling large bodies of troops.

However, he had a clear mind and a good natural insight; and in spite of his ignorance, of which he was painfully conscious, he managed to win the war, and then thankfully returned to his farm. He went back with enthusiasm. He had been away for eight years altogether, and for six of those years he did not once set foot on his fields. He had found time, however, in between whiles, to talk with the farmers in the northerly parts of his country, and collect new ideas. He now began to experiment with plaster of Paris and powdered stone as fertilizers. He tried clover, rye, peas, oats and carrots to strengthen his land. He tried mud. He planted potatoes with manure, and potatoes without, and noted exactly what the difference was in the yield. His diary speaks of the chinch bugs attacking his corn, and of the mean way the rain had of pa.s.sing by on the other side of the river, falling generously there, while "not enough fell here to wet a handkerchief." He laboriously calculated the number of seed in a pound (this retired Commander!) and found that red clover had 71,000, timothy 298,000 and barley 8,925.

He also began at this time to use false teeth, which fitted him badly.

And he was laid up occasionally with malaria, and fever and ague. And he was called upon to help frame a const.i.tution for his little nation. A busy period. He had an attack of rheumatism, too, which lasted over six months, and it was sometimes so bad he could hardly raise his hand to his head or turn over in bed. And when the national const.i.tution had been adopted they elected him president. That meant a lot of outside work for another eight years.

Some of this work he hated. He hated speech-making for instance. At his inauguration he was so agitated and embarra.s.sed that men saw he trembled, and when he read his speech his voice was almost too low to be heard. He was always very conscious of having a poor education, and being a bad speller and so forth. But the people didn't care about that, much: they trusted his judgment, and admired the man's goodness and spirit.

A sculptor was sent to make a statue of him, late in his life. He couldn't get him to pose satisfactorily. No n.o.ble att.i.tudes. In vain did the sculptor talk about state affairs and that war. Such things did not stir him. He remained either stiff or relaxed. But one day they were out on the farm together; and as this man watched his live-stock, he unconsciously took a fine, alive att.i.tude. So the sculptor made a statue of him that way; and that statue is famous.

In spite of his usual benignity, this man had a temper. He used to get very sore and warm at times, when unfairly criticized. At one of his cabinet meetings, for instance, says a contemporary, he became "much inflamed, got into one of those pa.s.sions when he cannot command himself, ran on much on the personal abuse which had been bestowed on him [and said] that by G.o.d he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world, and yet that they were charging him with wanting to be a king. That that rascal Freneau sent him three of his papers every day, as if he thought he would become the distributor of his papers; that he could see nothing in this but an impudent design to insult him," etc., etc. Poor, stung human being; with all his serenity gone!

A great portrait painter said of him that his features were indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable pa.s.sions; and had he been born in the forests, it was his opinion that he would have been the fiercest man among the savage tribes.

This was the temperament that smoldered in him: the lurking flame that he had to live with daily. But by reflection and resolution he obtained a firm ascendancy over it.

One night when he was sixty-seven years old he woke up at about two in the morning feeling very unwell. He had had a sore throat, and now he couldn't swallow; felt suffocated. A miserable feeling. His wife would have got up to call a servant; but he wouldn't allow her to do it lest she should catch cold. He lay there for four hours in the cold bedroom, his body in a chill, before receiving any attention or before even a fire was lighted. Then they sent for the doctors. They bled the old hero three times, taking the last time a quart. He was physically a vigorous man, but this weakened him greatly. "I find I am going," he said. He was in great pain, and said, "Doctor, I die hard." A little later he added: "I feel I am going. I thank you for your attention, you had better not take any more trouble about me, but let me go off quietly." His breathing became much easier just at the end.

Did he look back over his life as he lay there, waiting, and what did he think of it? That his farming had been interesting though difficult, and much interrupted? That his fellow-men had really asked a good many sacrifices of him, and not left him nearly as much time as he wished for his fields? Or did he think that in death he would at least have no more trouble with teeth? A set of dental instruments was found in one of his drawers after the funeral. In others were memoranda about affairs of state he had worked at, and various kinds of plows he had tried, and his farming accounts.

His name was George Was.h.i.+ngton.