The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-03-13
UNCLE jim.
Author of "Trail of the Sword" "The Tres
passer." etc, etc.
tcopyrighted, 1897. by gilbert Parser.)


me that he let me call him Uncle Jim.
1t seems only yesterday that, for the first
time. j saw him standing by log outside
the woodhouse door, splitting oak knots
He was all bent by years and hard work
with. muscles of iron, hands gnarled and
.umpy, but .clinching like a wise, gray head
thrust forward on shoulders which had car
ried great forkfuls of hay and grain, and
leaned to the cradle and the scythe, and
been heaped with cordwood till they were
like hide and metal, white struggling beard
and red watery eyes, which, to me, were al
ways hung with intangible veil of Gnys-
tery-though that, maybe, was my boyish
f9ncy. Added to all this he was so very
deaf that you had to speak clear and loud
into his ear; and many people he could not
hear at ALL IL their words were not sharp
cut no matter how loud. A silent, with
drawn man he was. living close to mother
earth, twin brother of Labor, to whom
morning and daytime were sounding boards
for his axe, scythe, saw, fail and milking
pail, and night round hollow of darkness
into which he crept, shutting the doors
called silence behind him till the impish
page of toll came tapping again, and he
stepped awkwardly into the working world
once more. Winter and summer saw him
after 4 O'Clock, in winter issuing with lam
tern from the kitchen door to the stable
and barn to feed the stock; in summer sniff
fling the gray dawn and looking out on his
fields of rye and barley and buckwheat be-
fore he went to gather the cows for milking
ard take the horses to water
For forty years he and his worn-faced
wife bowed themselves beneath the yoke,
first to pay for the hundred-acre farm, and
then to bring up and educate their seven
children. Something noble in them gave
them ambitions for their boys and girls
which they had never had for themselves;
but when had passed the forty years, in
which the little farm had twice been mort
gagged to put the oldest son through college
as doctor, they faced the bitter fact that
the farm had passed from them to Sidney
the second son, who had come at last to
keep hotel in a town fifty miles away
Generous-hearted people would think that
THESE groWn-up sons and daughters would
have returned the old peoples long toll and
care by buying up the farm and handing it
back to them, their rightful refuge in the
decline of life. But it was not So They
were tenants where they had been owners.
dependents where they had been givers
slaves where once they were masters. The
old mother toiled without a servant, the old
man without a helper save in harvest time.
But the great blow came when Sidney
married the designing milliner who Haunted
her wares opposite his barroom; and, some
now, from the date of that marriage Sid
ney's good fortune and the hotel declined.
When he and his wife first visited the little
farm after their marriage, the old mother
shrank away from the young womans
noiVo tad Zoo
showed in her bearing and in her patient
smile afterwards. But she took Sidney's
wife through the house, showing her all
there was to show, though that was not
much. There was the little parlor with it's
hair-cloth chairs, rag carpet, center table
and. iron stove with black pipes, all gaiIy
vanished. There was the parlor bedroom
off 1T, with the one feather bed of the house
bountifully piled up with coarse homemade
blankets, topped by silk patchwork quilt
the artistic labor of the old wifes evening
hours, while Uncle Jim peeled apples and
strung them to dry from the rafters. There
was room, dining room in summer, and
kitchen dining room in winter, as clean as
aged hands could scrub and dust it, hung
abount with stray pictures from illustrated
papers, and a good old clock in the corner
ticking life, and youth, and hope away.
There was the buttery off that, with its
meager china and crockery its window
looking out on the field of rye, the little
orchard of winter apples, and the hedge of
cranberry bushes. Upstairs were rooms
with no ceilings where, lying on a corn
husk bed, you reached up and touched the
sloping roof, with windows at the end only,
facing the buckwheat field, and looking
down two miles towards the main road for
the farm was on a concession or side-road,
dusty in summer, and in winter sometimes
impossible for weeks together. 1t was not
much of home, as anyone can see with
the minds eye, but four stalwart men and
three fine women had been born raisel and
Quartered there, until, with good clothes,
and speaking decent English, and with
money in their pockets, hardly got by the
old people. one by one they issued forth into
the world.
The old mother showed Sidney's wife what
there was for the eye to see, not forgetting
the three hives Of bees on the south side be-
meath the parlor window. She showed it
with kind Of pride, for it all seemed good
to her, and every dish, and every chair.
and every corner in the little house had to
her a glory of its own, because of those
who had come and gone-the firstlings of
her flock, the roses of her little garden of
love, blooming now in rougher air than
ranged over the little house on the hill She
had looked out upon the pine woods to the
east and the meadow land to the north,
the sweet valley between the rye field and
the orchard, and the good honest air that
had blown there for forty years, bracing
her heart and body for the battle of love
and life, and she had said through all: Be-
hold it is very good.
But the pert millner saw nothing of all
this; she did not stand abashed in the
sacred precincts of a home where seven
times the Angel of Death had lowered over
a birthbed. She looked into the face which
Gods finger had anointed and motherhood
had etched with trouble and said:
'"Tisn't much, is it? Only a clapboard
house, and no ceilings upstairs and rag
carpets-pshaw!"
And when she came to wash her hands
for dinner, she threw aside the unscented,
common bar soap, and, Struggling her mar
row shoulders at the coarse towel wiped
her fingers on her cambria handkerchief.
Any other kind of women, when she saw
the old mother going about with her twisted
wrist-a doctors bad work with fracture
would have tucked up her dress. and tied
l,,Alr, -. L