Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

by Stephen Hines

  After three years of fighting he was given a 30 days furlough and permission to spend the time with his friends in San Francisco. During his stay in San Francisco, Alphonse was persuaded to tell in public of the life of the soldiers and of his experiences in the war. He made several speeches to large audiences and, because of the sympathy he aroused for the French soldiers and his habit of wishing they might enjoy the good things that were making his visit so pleasant, his friends decided they would supply him with some gifts to take back with him for the soldiers over there.

  The idea was given a little publicity in the papers with the result that besides many donated gifts, $600 was raised for the purchase of other gifts.

  Alphonse went back to the battle front loaded with presents for his poorly paid, ill-fed comrades; happy because he can, in this way, share with them his visit home.

  Alphonse says it is a different world over there, a world of kindness and friendship where people do things as a matter of course for each other, which would be thought very remarkable in any but a war world. He says, “My friend saves my life today and I save his life tomorrow and nothing is thought of it and always we share with each other.” Friendship is not just a name over there. It means braving danger for, suffering for, and sharing with one’s friends. Alphonse could not have been happy with the good things showered upon him during his visit unless he had known he could share them with his soldier friends.

  And so amid the awfulness of war, we find the spirit of loving and giving which three terrible years of fighting at the front has not killed but greatly strengthened. It certainly gives us cause to believe in the ultimate triumph of that spirit, if only we who stay at home can stand the test as well.

  How will we be affected by the stress and strain, the anxiety and perhaps the grief which we must go thru together? Will struggle brighten and strengthen our good qualities as it has those of Alphonse and his soldier friends of France? Will our feeling of comradeship grow until we cannot be happy unless others share the good things which we enjoy and until we will do the helpful thing for friend and neighbor as a matter of course?

  If when anyone is in difficulty we would all help instead of taking advantage of the situation; if when trouble comes to those we know, we would do our utmost to make it lighter instead of gossiping unkindly about it; and if we would not be satisfied until we had passed a share of our happiness on to other people, what a world we could make!

  When our soldiers come home from that “war world” of which Alphonse has told, what a delightful surprise it would be for them if they should find themselves at home in a world of that kind—where the loving and sharing and good comradeship reached all the year around.

  Make Your Dreams Come True

  February 5, 1918

  Now is the time to make garden! Anyone can be a successful gardener at this time of year and I know of no pleasanter occupation these cold, snowy days, than to sit warm and snug by the fire making garden with a pencil, in a seed catalog. What perfect vegetables we do raise in that way and so many of them! Our radishes are crisp and sweet, our lettuce tender and our tomatoes smooth and beautifully colored. Best of all, there is not a bug or worm in the whole garden and the work is so easily done.

  In imagination we see the plants in our spring garden, all in straight, thrifty rows with the fruits of each plant and vine numerous and beautiful as the pictures before us. How near the real garden of next summer approaches the ideal garden of our winter fancies depends upon how practically we dream and how we work.

  It is so much easier to plan than it is to accomplish. When I started my small flock of Leghorns a few years ago, a friend inquired as to the profits of the flock and, taking my accounts as a basis, he figured I would be a millionaire within five years. The five years are past, but alas, I am still obliged to be economical. There was nothing wrong with my friend’s figuring, except that he left out the word “if” and that made all the difference between profits figured out on paper and those worked out by actual experience.

  My Leghorns would have made me a millionaire—if the hens had performed according to schedule; if the hawks had loved field mice better than spring chickens; if I had been so constituted that I never became weary; if prices—but why enumerate? Because allowance for that word “if” was not made in the figuring, the whole result was wrong.

  It is necessary that we dream now and then. No one ever achieved anything, from the smallest object to the greatest, unless the dream was dreamed first, yet those who stop at dreaming never accomplish anything. We must first see the vision in order to realize it; we must have the ideal or we cannot approach it; but when once the dream is dreamed it is time to wake up and “get busy.” We must “do great deeds; not dream them all day long.”

  The dream is only the beginning. We’d starve to death if we went no further with that garden than making it by the fire in the seed catalog. It takes judgment to plant the seeds at the right time, in the right place, and hard digging to make them grow, whether in the vegetable garden or in the garden of our lives. The old proverb says, “God helps the man who helps himself,” and I know that success in our undertakings can be made into a habit.

  We can work our dreams out into realities if we try, but we must be willing to make the effort. Things that seem easy of accomplishment in dreams require a lot of good common sense to put on a working basis and a great deal of energy to put thru to a successful end. When we make our dream gardens we must take into account the hot sun and the blisters on our hand; we must make allowance for and guard against the “ifs” so that when the time to work has come they will not be of so much importance.

  We may dream those dreams of a farm of our own; of a comfortable home; of that education we are going to have and those still more excellent dreams of the brotherhood of man and liberty and justice for all; then let us work to make this “the land where dreams come true.”

  Victory May Depend on You

  February 20, 1918

  “It is a war in each man’s heart. Each man is fighting as the spirit moves him,” said Hira Singh, speaking of the war, in the absorbing story of Talbot Mundy.1

  Every day is showing more plainly that Hira Singh was right and that his statement is true in more ways than the author meant. It is a fact that not only is it a “war in each man’s heart,” but that the issues of this war are being fought over in the hearts of all the people—men, women and children.

  The keynote of the statement of the nation’s war aims, made by President Wilson recently, was unselfishness, an unselfish championing of the rights of nations too small to defend themselves and of people who have been oppressed so long they are helpless.

  As a nation we stand for unselfishness, courage and self-sacrifices in defence of the right. Our soldiers are fighting on the battlefields that these principles shall be recognized as governing the nations of the world. And our hearts are the battlefields where these same qualities strive to become rulers of our actions.

  It is indeed a “war in each man’s heart,” and as the battles go in these hearts of ours so will be the victory or defeat of the armies of the field, for a nation can be no greater than the sum of the greatness of its people. There never before has been a war where the action of each individual had such a direct bearing on the whole world.

  One of the liveliest skirmishes of which I know takes place when our spirit of patriotism and duty comes in conflict with our instinct of hospitality, for here a seeming generosity to those near at hand blinds us to the fact that in these days when we feed those who are not hungry we are stealing from those who are starving, even tho the food is our own.

  We are all in the habit of feeding our friends when we entertain them and we feel we have failed as hosts if we do not offer our guests the usual feast of good things. Now is our opportunity to substitute for this the “feast of reason and the flow of soul” which is the only thing that makes the meeting of friends worth while. Now is our chance to see that the food and the
companionship are placed in their proper relation to each other, with the food, of course, secondary.

  The refreshments at an evening gathering during the holidays were brown bread sandwiches and coffee. The entertainment is an annual affair and altho elaborate refreshments always were served in previous years, the evening was a bigger success this year than ever before.

  Keep Journeying On

  March 5, 1918

  “Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,

  Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past

  And spreads its thin hands above the glowing embers.

  That warm its shivering life-blood till the last.”2

  Those lines troubled me a great deal when I first read them. I was very young then and I thought that everything I read in print was the truth. I didn’t like it a little bit that the chief end of my life and the sole amusement of my old age should be remembering. Already there were some things in my memory that were not particularly pleasant to think about. I have since learned that few persons have such happy and successful lives that they would wish to spend years in just remembering.

  One thing is certain, this melancholy old age will not come upon those who refuse to spend their time indulging in such dreams of the past. Men and women may keep their life blood warm by healthy exercise as long as they keep journeying on instead of sitting by the way trying to warm themselves over the ashes of remembrance.

  Neither is it a good plan for people to keep telling themselves they are growing old. There is such a thing as a law of mental suggestion that makes the continual affirmation of a thing work toward its becoming an accomplished fact. Why keep suggesting old age until we take on its characteristics as a matter of course? There are things much more interesting to do than keeping tally of the years and watching for infirmities.

  I know a woman who when she saw her first gray hair began to bewail the fact that she was growing old, and to change her ways to suit her ideas of old age. She couldn’t “wear bright colors any more” she was “too old.” She must be more quiet now, “it was not becoming in an old person to be so merry.” She had not “been feeling well lately” but she supposed she was “as well as could be expected of a person growing old,” and so on and on. I never lost the feeling that the years were passing swiftly and that old age was lying in wait for the youngest of us when in her company.

  Of course, no one can really welcome the first gray hair or look upon the first wrinkles as beautiful, but even those things need not affect our happiness. There is no reason why we should not be merry as we grow older. If we learn to look on the bright side while we are young, those little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes will be “laughing wrinkles” instead of “crows feet.”

  There is nothing in the passing of the years by itself to cause one to become melancholy. If they have been good years, then the more of them the better. If they have been bad years, be glad they are passed and expect the coming ones to be more to your liking.

  Old age is not counted by years, anyway. No one thinks of President Wilson as an old man. He is far too busy a person to be thought old, tho some men of his years consider their life work done. Then there is the white-haired, “Grandmother of the Revolution” in Russia still in the forefront of events in that country, helping to hold steady a semblance of government and a force to be considered in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many years she has lived. These two are finding plenty to do to keep warmth in their hearts and need no memories for that purpose.

  Perhaps after all the poet whose verse I have quoted meant it as a warning that if we did not wish to come to that unlovely old age we must keep on striving for ourselves and for others. There was no age limit set by that other great poet when he wrote:

  “Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul

  As the swift seasons roll!”3

  It is certainly a pleasanter, more worthwhile occupation to keep on building than to be raking up the ashes of dead fires.

  Make Every Minute Count

  March 20, 1918

  Spring has come! The wild birds have been singing the glad tidings for several days, but they are such optimistic little souls that I always take their songs of spring with a grain of pessimism. The squirrels and chipmunks have been chattering to me, telling the same news, but they are such cheerful busy-bodies that I never believe quite all they say.

  But now I know that spring is here for as I passed the little creek, on my way to the mail box this morning, I saw scattered papers caught on the bushes, empty cracker and sandwich cartons strewn around on the green grass and discolored pasteboard boxes soaking in the clear water of the spring. I knew then that spring was here, for the sign of the picnickers is more sure than that of singing birds and tender green grass, and there is nothing more unlovely than one of nature’s beauty spots defiled in this way. It is such an unprovoked offense to nature, something like insulting one’s host after enjoying his hospitality. It takes just a moment to put back into the basket the empty boxes and papers and one can depart gracefully leaving the place all clean and beautiful for the next time or the next party.

  Did you ever arrive all clean and fresh, on a beautiful summer morning, at a pretty picnic place and find that someone had been before you and that the place was all littered up with dirty papers and buzzing flies? If you have and have ever left a place in the same condition, it served you right. Let’s keep the open spaces clean, not fill them up with rubbish!

  It is so easy to get things cluttered up, one’s days, for instance, as well as picnic places—to fill them with empty, useless things and so make them unlovely and tiresome. Even tho the things with which we fill our days were once important, if they are serving no good purpose now, they have become trash like the empty boxes and papers of the picnickers. It will pay to clean this trash away and keep our days as uncluttered as possible.

  There are just now so many things that must be done that we are tempted to spend ourselves recklessly, especially as it is rather difficult to decide what to eliminate, and we cannot possibly accomplish everything. We must continually be weighing and judging and discarding things that are presented to us, if we would save ourselves, and spend our time and strength only on those that are important. We may be called upon to spend our health and strength to the last bit, but we should see to it that we do not waste them.

  “Oh, I am so tired that I just want to sit down and cry,” a friend confided to me, “and here is the club meeting on hand and the lodge practice and the Red Cross work day and the aid society meeting and the church bazaar to get ready for, to say nothing of the pie supper at the school house and the spring sewing and garden and—Oh! I don’t see how I’m ever going to get thru it all!”

  Of course she was a little hysterical. It didn’t all have to be done at once, but it showed how over-tired she was and it was plain that something must give way—if nothing else, herself. My friend needed a little open space in her life.

  We must none of us shirk. We must do our part in every way, but let’s be sure we clear away the rubbish, that we do nothing for empty form’s sake nor because someone else does, unless it is the thing that should be done.

  Visit “Show You” Farm

  Prosperity and Happiness Is Found on a 25-Acre Plot

  March 20, 1918

  There is at least one Missourian who is not asking to be “shown.” A. C. Barton of Show You Farm says Missouri people have said “show me,” long enough and they should now say “I will show you,” which he is proceeding to do.

  Mr. Barton used to be a Methodist preacher. He says that no one ever accused him of being the best preacher at the St. Louis conference, but they did all acknowledge that he was the best farmer among them. He thought perhaps he had made a mistake like the man who saw, in a vision, the letters G. P. C. and thought he had a call to preach, the letters standing for “Go Preach Christ.” Later he decided that the letters meant “Go Plow Corn,” so Mr. Barton made up his mind to follow the profess
ion in which he excelled. He came to Mountain Grove from Dallas county, Nebraska, 8 years ago.

  While waiting for his train in Kansas City, Mr. Barton noticed a man, also waiting, surrounded by bundles and luggage. For some reason Mr. Barton thought he was from the Ozarks and approaching him asked:

  “Are you from Missouri?”

  “Yes sir,” the man replied.

  “From the Ozarks?” Mr. Barton inquired.

  “Yes sir,” answered the man.

  “Are there any farms for sale down there where you came from?” Mr. Barton asked.

  “Yes sir. They’re all for sale,” replied the man from the Ozarks.

  While that might have been true at the time, it would not be true now, for Show You Farm is not for sale.

  When Mr. Barton bought his 80-acre farm on the “post oak flats” near Mountain Grove, the people he met gave him the encouragement usually given the new comers in the Ozarks. They told him the land was good for nothing, that he could not raise anything on it.

  One man remarked in his hearing, “These new comers are workers,” and another replied: “They’ll have to work if they make a living on that place. Nobody’s ever done it yet.”

  So “everybody works” and “father.” The proprietors of Show You Farm are A. C. Barton, Nora L. Barton and family.

  They soon found that there was more work on an 80-acre farm than they could handle, for while there were eight in the family, the six children were small, so it was decided to adjust the work to the family and 40 acres of the land, on which were the improvements, were sold for $2,500. Later 15 acres more were sold for $600. As the place had cost only $40 an acre that left only $100 as the cost of the 25-acre farm that was kept.