Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1909-12-21

John Whitson gave up his ambition
ut eighteen, leaving college and tax
ing up the reins which his father had
dropped. 1t was not to be temporary
he understood. but i complete renun-
citation of all his plans-of his life as
he had hoped to make it. There were
six children and a rundown farm and
Il mother whose waning strength
should be nourished rather than
drawn upon. It was the only way;
better to sacrifice his ambition than
that they should be forced upon char
ity. In his own plans it would be
years before he could educate himself
and make a living.
So the books were laid aside, and he
forced his energy to a study of the
farm and its possibilities. His father
had been content with the old meth
DDS and had fallen behind. He must
push on into the new, not only for the
necessary livelihood. but for the grow
ing needs of his brothers and sisters
and their education. A city was but
a few miles away, and gradually he
fortified the barren fields to renewed
productiveness to such vegetables as
the markets called for.
He was shy by nature, a scholar
whose world was in retirement with
his books, but now he forced himself
upon peddler'S cart and sold vegeta-
bles and fruit from house to house.
bargaining for the needs at home. He
counted his earnings Hike a miser and
planned for their shrewd expenditure.
and he lost sleep in the study of con-
verting soil and sunshine and labor
into hard. necessary dollars
But with it all the road was difficult
and sometimes almost beyond his pow
er of endurance. Ten years and he
still wore the coat he had worn back
from college. now frayed and patched;
the mortgage on the farm remained
the same, and he still went from house
to house selling vegetables, not yet
able to hire a boy to do the marketing
But. on the other hand, the brothers
and sisters were all he could have
wished. The oldest boy was working
his way through an agricultural col
lege. with an ambition for a higher ed.
ucation beyond; the next was in a
technical school at Philadelphia study
ing to be a civil engineer. One girl
was at the state normal. another learn
ing to be nurse, while the two young
est were still too young to have
thought much about their future. Dur
ing vacations they came home and
helped him, and from time to time all
of them had entreated to be allowed
to do their share in the support. But
here he was firm. They should have
what he had missed. he declared, and
it was too late for him to go back and
take up life as he had left it.
So the\years went on, and he toiled
early and late and planned and bar
gained and improved, but for all that
he was not a farmer and never could
be, for it was his will in the work,
not his heart. He never went to
house to ask trade but what he shrank
back as from a blow, and long after
his hands had grown hard and knotty
his thoughts would wander surrepti-
tiously to the books he had laid aside.
Perhaps it was his recognized dis
taste for the work that made him do
it so thoroughly and conscientiously.
There was not a farm in the country
round that was better managed or that
produced more for its size. John Whit
son was a crank. the neighbors said.
which meant that he was always on
the lookout for weak, sensitive places
in fence or field. as in himself, that
could be strengthened by timely re-
newal or patching or toning up. IL
there was any duty he shrank from,
that was the duty he was apt to seek
first and do most thoroughly.
BY the time the younger children
were ready for the final studies which
were to fit them for their chosen call
ings the college graduate and the civil
engineer were at work and sending
their mites to the home fund. And
with the coming of these mites came
Johns first opportunity to turn his at
tention to the mortgage.
OF late years he had not permitted
himself TO regard the future as per-
sonal problem. 1t was too far away.
But with the lessening of the mort
gage and the near establishment of
the last of the children his own fu-
rure was again drawing maryelously