“Not if the bucket is empty,” answered the blacksmith.
Then the man, for whom the blacksmith was working, spoke up. “Why don’t you go get a bucket of water?” he asked.
“I will for a nickel,” said the boy.
“Yes, we’ll go for a nickel,” agreed the other boy.
“Were you going to pay for your drink?” asked the man innocently and the boys looked at him surprised and then slunk away, without filling the bucket. Just an example of selfishness made more contemptible by being so plainly unfair.
Co-operation, helpfulness, and fair dealing are so badly needed in the world and if they are not learned as children at home it is difficult for grownups to have a working knowledge of them.
So much depends on starting the children right!
Before Santa Claus Came
December 20, 1916
Hundreds of years ago when our pagan ancestors lived in the great forests of Europe and worshiped the sun, they celebrated Christmas in a somewhat different fashion than we do today.
The sun, they thought, was the giver of all good. He warmed and lighted the earth. He caused the grass to grow for their flocks and herds to eat and the fruits and grains for their own food, but every year after harvest time he became angry with them and started to go away, withdrawing his warmth and light farther and still farther from them. The days when he showed them his face became shorter and shorter and the periods of darkness ever longer. The farther away he went the colder it grew. The waters turned to ice and snow fell in place of the gentle summer showers.
If their god indeed left them as he seemed to be doing, if he would not become reconciled to them, they must all perish, for nothing would grow upon which they could live and if they did not freeze they would die of hunger. Their priests’ prayers availed nothing and something must be done to make the sun god smile upon them once more. The priests demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of a child!
What is now our Christmas eve was the night chosen for the ceremony. On that night the door of every hut in the village must be left unfastened that the priests might enter and take the child. No one knew which house would be entered nor what child taken to be sacrificed on the altar of the Sun God.
Perhaps the priests knew that the shortest day of the year had arrived and that the sun would start on its return journey at this time. They may have taken advantage of this knowledge to gain greater control over the people, but it may be that the selection of the right day at first was purely accidental and they believed, with the people, that the Sun God was pleased by the sacrifice. It was, to them, proof of this that he immediately started to return and smiled upon them for another season.
Do you suppose the children knew and listened in terror for footsteps on Christmas eve? The fathers and mothers must have harkened for the slightest noise and waited in agony, not knowing whether their house would be passed by or whether the priests would enter stealthily and bear away one of their children or perhaps their only child. How happy they must have been when the teachers of Christianity came and told them it was all unnecessary. It is no wonder they celebrated the birth of Christ on the date of that awful night of sacrifice, which was now robbed of its terror, nor that they made it a children’s festival.
Instead of the stealthy steps of cruel men, there came now, on Christmas eve, a jolly saint with reindeer and bells, bringing gifts. This new spirit of love and peace and safety that was abroad in the land did not require that the doors be left unbarred. He could come thru locked doors or down the chimney and be everywhere at once on Christmas night, for a spirit can do such things. No wonder the people laughed and danced and rang the joy bells on Christmas day and the celebration with its joy and thankfulness has come on down the years to us. Without all that Christmas means, we might still be dreading the day in the old terrible way instead of listening for the sleigh bells of Santa Claus.
* * *
1. Proverbs 27:1.
2. The controversy over who really discovered the North Pole has never quite ended. Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick A. Cook vied for the claim of first place until Dr. Cook’s lack of evidence put an end to his claim. As for Peary, although there have always been strong reservations, National Geographic Magazine continues to support him.
3. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.1.
4. This trip in 1894 is written about in her diary, published as Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, On the Way Home (New York: Harper Collins, 1962).
5. The Civil War.
6. Coverlet or bedspread.
7. Slang for “Who knows?”
8. This story appears in Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), chapter 26.
9. From the poem “The World’s Need” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
1917
What’s in a Word?
January 5, 1917
A group of friends was gathered around a glowing fire the other evening. The cold outside and the warmth and cheer and soft lights within had opened their hearts and they were talking freely together as good friends should.
“I propose that we eliminate the word can’t from our vocabularies for the coming year,” said Mrs. Betty. “There ain’t no such animile anyhow.”
“But sometimes we just c—” began sister Sue, then stopped abruptly at the sound of an amused chuckle.
“Oh, well—if you feel that way about it!” rejoined Mrs. Betty, “but I still insist that if you see such an animal it is only a creature of the imagination. When I went to school they tried to teach me that it was noble to say, ‘I’ll try’ when confronted with a difficult thing to be done, but it always sounded weak to me. Why! the very expression presupposes failure,” she went on with growing earnestness. “Why not say I will, and then make good? One can, you know, for if there is not one way to do a thing there are usually two.”
“That word ‘can’t’ with its suggestion of failure!” exclaimed George. “Do you know a man came up to me on the street the other day and said, ‘You can’t lend me a dollar, can you?’ He expected to fail in his request—and he most certainly did,” he added grimly.
“After all,” said brother James slowly, “people do a good deal as they are expected to do, even to saying the things they are expected to say. The power of suggestion is very strong. Did you ever notice how everyone will agree with you on the weather? I have tried it out many a time just for fun. Before the days of motor cars, when we could speak as we passed driving along the road, I have said to the first man I met, ‘This is a fine day,’ and regardless of what the weather might be, he never would fail to answer, ‘Sure, it’s a fine day,’ or something to that effect and pass on smiling. To the next man I met I would say, ‘Cold weather we’re having,’ and his reply would always be, ‘Coldest I ever knew at this season,’ or ‘Mighty cold this morning,’ and he would go on his way shivering. No matter if it’s raining, a man usually will agree with you that it’s awfully dry weather, if you suggest it to him right.”
“Speaking of friends,” said Philip, which no one had been doing tho all could trace the connecting thought, “Speaking of friends, —I heard a man say not long ago that he could count all the friends he had on the fingers of one hand. I wonder”—and his voice trailed off into silence as his thought carried him away. A chorus of protest arose.
“Oh, how awful!” exclaimed Pansy, with the tender eyes. “Anyone has more friends than that. Why, if everybody is sick or in trouble everybody is his friend.”
“It all depends on one’s definition of friend,” said Mrs. Betty in a considering tone. “What do we mean when we say ‘friend?’ What is the test for a friend?” A silence fell upon the little group around the glowing fire.
“But I want to know,” insisted Mrs. Betty. “What is the test for a friend? Just what do you mean Philip, when you say, ‘He is my friend?’”
“Well,” Philip replied, “when a man is my friend I expect he will stand by me in trouble, that he will do whate
ver he can to help me if I am needing help and do it at once even at cost of inconvenience to himself.”
“Now, Pansy! How do you know your friends?” still insisted Mrs. Betty.
“My friends,” said Pansy, with the tender eyes, “will like me anyway, no matter what my faults are. They will let me do as I please and not try to change me but will be my friends whatever I do.”
“Next,” began Mrs. Betty, but there were exclamations from every side. “No! No! It’s your turn now! We want to know what your test of friendship is!”
“Why! I was just asking for information,” answered Mrs. Betty with a brilliant smile, the warmth of which included the whole circle. “I wanted to know—”
“Tell us! Tell us!” they all insisted.
“Well, then,” earnestly, “my friends will stand by me in trouble. They will love me even tho I make mistakes and in spite of my faults, but if they see me in danger of taking the wrong course they will warn me. If necessary, they will even tell me of a fault which perhaps is growing on me unaware. One should dare anything for a friend, you know.”
“Yes, but to tell friends of a fault is dangerous,” said gentle Rosemary. “It is so likely to make them angry.”
“To be sure,” Mrs. Betty answered. “But if we are a friend we will take it thankfully for the sake of the spirit in which it is given as we do a Christmas present which otherwise we would not care for.”
“Remember well and bear in mind
A constant friend is hard to find
And when you find one good and true
Change not the old one for the new.”1
quoted Philip as the group began to break up.
“No, don’t change ’em,” said George, in the bustle of the putting on of wraps. “Don’t change ’em! Just take ’em all in!”
Giving and Taking Advice
January 20, 1917
I have just learned something new! Isn’t it a wonderful thing that we are “never too old to learn” and also sometimes isn’t it strange that no matter how many years we have numbered we still learn best from that old, old teacher Experience? For instance, there was the time when I read, (not in a farm paper) that the addition of a little vinegar to the lard in which doughnuts were fried would keep them from soaking fat. I was preparing a company dinner not long afterward, and wishing to have my doughnuts especially good, was about to pour the vinegar into the lard when the Man of the Place came into the kitchen. From long association with the cook, he knew that she was doing something different and demanded to know why. When I had explained, he advised me not to try any experiments at that particular time. “Oh, it will be all right,” I answered easily, “or it would not have been in that paper.” I added the vinegar and learned it was perfectly true that the doughnuts would not soak the grease. They would hardly soak anything they were so tough.
Experience had taught me one more lesson!
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It is so easy to give advice. It is one thing with which the most of us are well supplied and are perfectly willing to part. Sometimes I think we are too quick to do this, too free in handing out unasked an inferior article. There is no way of estimating the mischief done by the well meant but ill-considered advice of friends and acquaintances. Knowing only one side of a question, seeing imperfectly a part of a situation, we say: “Well I wouldn’t stand for that a minute,” or “You’ll be foolish if you do,” or “I would” do this or that and go light heartedly on our way never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some persons will take advice and use it.
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There were once two men who had different ways of treating their horses when they went around them in the barn. One always spoke to his horses as he passed so that they might know he was there and not kick. The other never spoke to them. He said it was their business to look before they kicked. This last man often spoke of his way as being much the best. One day he advised the other to change his way of doing because someday he would forget to speak and get kicked. Not long after, this actually happened and the man was seriously injured. His wife said to me, “If he had spoken to the horse when he went into the barn as he used to do he would not have been hurt, but lately he had stopped doing that and the horse kicked before it saw him.” I always have thought that the accident happened because of his friend’s advice and I have seen so often where what was best for me might not be just the thing for the other fellow that I have decided to keep my advice until asked for and then administer it in small doses.
- - - - - -
There are ways of profiting by the experience of others, besides taking advice carelessly given. We might watch, you know, while some one else tried the vinegar on the doughnuts. And that brings me back to where I started to tell of the new thing I had learned. It is a great help with the work of sewing to cover the tread of the sewing machine with a piece of soft, thick carpet. The carpet will act as a cushion and one’s feet will not become so tired as they otherwise would when using the machine a great deal. There is another advantage in the use of the carpet in cold weather as it is much warmer for the feet to rest on than the cold iron of the machine.
According to Experts
February 5, 1917
In the late issue of a St. Louis paper, I find the following: “Experts in the office of home economics of the United States Department of Agriculture have found it is possible to grind whole wheat in an ordinary coffee mill fine enough for use as a breakfast cereal and even fine enough for use in bread making.”
If the experts of the Department of Agriculture had asked anyone of the 200 people who spent the winter of 1880–81 in De Smet, S. Dak., they might have saved themselves the trouble of experimenting. I think, myself, that it is rather a joke on our experts at Washington to be 36 years behind the times.
That winter, known still among the old residents as “the hard winter,” we demonstrated that wheat could be ground in an ordinary coffee mill and used for bread making. Prepared in that way it was the staff of life for the whole community. The grinding at home was not done to reduce the cost of living, but simply to make living possible.
De Smet was built as the railroad went thru, out in the midst of the great Dakota prairies far ahead of the farming settlements, and this first winter of its existence it was isolated from the rest of the world from December 1 until May 10 by the fearful blizzards that piled the snow 40 feet deep on the railroad tracks. The trains could not get thru. It was at the risk of life that anyone went even a mile from shelter, for the storms came up so quickly and were so fierce it was literally impossible to see the hand before the face and men have frozen to death within a few feet of shelter because they did not know they were near safety.
The small supply of provisions in town soon gave out. The last sack of flour sold for $50 and the last of the sugar at $1 a pound. There was some wheat on hand, brought in the fall before for seed in the spring, and two young men dared to drive 15 miles to where a solitary settler had also laid in his supply of seed wheat. They brought it in on sleds. There were no mills in town or country so this wheat was all ground in the homes in coffee mills. Everybody ground wheat, even the children taking their turns, and the resultant whole wheat flour made good bread. It was also a healthful food and there was not a case of sickness in town that winter.
It may be that the generous supply of fresh air had something to do with the general good health. Air is certainly fresh when the thermometer registers all the way from 15 to 40 degrees below zero with the wind moving at blizzard speed. In the main street of the town, snow drifts in one night were piled as high as the second stories of the houses and packed hard enough to drive over and the next night the wind might sweep the spot bare. As the houses were new and unfinished so that the snow would blow in and drift across us as we slept, fresh air was not a luxury. The houses were not overheated in daytime either, for the fuel gave out early in the winter and all there was left with which to c
ook and keep warm was the long prairie hay. A handful of hay was twisted into a rope, then doubled and allowed to twist back on itself and the two ends tied together in a knot, making what we called “a stick of hay.”
It was a busy job to keep a supply of these “sticks” ahead of a hungry stove when the storm winds were blowing, but everyone took his turn good naturedly. There is something in living close to the great elemental forces of nature that causes people to rise above small annoyances and discomforts.
A train got thru May 10 and stopped at the station. All the men in town were down at the tracks to meet it, eager for supplies, for even the wheat had come to short rations. They found that what had been sent into the hungry town was a trainload of machinery. Luckily, there were also two emigrant cars well supplied with provisions, which were taken out and divided among the people. Our days of grinding wheat in coffee mills were over, but we had learned without expert aid that it can be done and that the flour so ground will make good bread and mush. Perhaps I would better say that we had all become experts and demonstrated the fact. After all necessity is the mother of invention and experience is a good old teacher.
Are You Going Ahead?
February 20, 1917
“I cannot stand still in my work. If I do not keep studying and going ahead, I slip back,” said a friend the other day.
“Well, neither can I in my work,” I thought. My mind kept dwelling on the idea. Was there a work that one could learn to do with a certain degree of excellence, and then keep that perfection without a ceaseless effort to advance?
How easy and delightful life might be if we could do this, if when we had attained the position we wished we might rest on our oars and watch the ripples on the stream of life.
Turning my mind resolutely from the picture of what would happen to the person who rested on his oars, expecting to hold his position where the tide was rippling, I began looking around for that place in life where one could stand still, without troubling to advance and without losing what already had been gained.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist Page 13