Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation

Will Levington Comfort

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• Publié par: abbo
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 29
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Child and Country, by Will Levington Comfort
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Title: Child and Country
A Book of the Younger Generation
Author: Will Levington Comfort
Release Date: January 13, 2009 [EBook #27793]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHILD AND COUNTRY
BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
Lot & Company
Red Fleece
Midstream
Down Among Men
Fatherland
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORKChild and Country
A Book of the Younger Generation
BY
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
AUTHOR OF "MIDSTREAM," "LOT & COMPANY,"
"DOWN AMONG MEN," "ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE," ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1916,
By George H. Doran Company
TO THOSE
WHO COME AFTER THE WRECKERS
TO THE BUILDERS
OF THE RISING GENERATION
[Pg vii]
FOREWORD... To-day the first glimpse of this manuscript as a whole. It was all detached
pieces before, done over a period of many months, with many intervening
tasks, the main idea slightly drifting from time to time.... The purpose on setting
out, was to relate the adventure of home-making in the country, with its
incidents of masonry, child and rose culture, and shore-conservation. It was not
to tell others how to build a house or plant a garden, or how to conduct one's
life on a shore-acre or two. Not at this late day. I was impelled rather to relate
how we found plenty with a little; how we entered upon a new dimension of
health and length of days; and from the safe distance of the desk, I wanted to
laugh over a city man's adventures with drains and east winds, country people
and the meshes of possession.
In a way, our second coming to the country was like the landing of the Swiss
[Pg viii]Family Robinson upon that little world of theirs in the midst of the sea. Town life
had become a subtle persecution. We hadn't been wrecked exactly, but there
had been times in which we were torn and weary, understanding only vaguely
that it was the manner of our days in the midst of the crowd that was dulling the
edge of health and taking the bloom from life. I had long been troubled about
the little children in school—the winter sicknesses, the amount of vitality
required to resist contagions, mental and physical—the whole tendency of the
school toward making an efficient and a uniform product, rather than to develop
the intrinsic and inimitable gift of each child.
We entered half-humorously upon the education of children at home, but out
of this activity emerged the main theme of the days and the work at hand. The
building of a house proved a natural setting for that; gardens and woods and
shore rambles are a part; the new poetry and all the fine things of the time
belong most intensely to that. Others of the coming generation gathered about
the work here; and many more rare young beings who belong, but have not yet
come, send us letters from the fronts of their struggle.
It has all been very deep and dramatic to me, a study of certain builders of to-
morrow taking their place higher and higher day by day in the thought and
action of our life. They have given me more than I could possibly give them.
[Pg ix]They have monopolised the manuscript. Chapter after chapter are before me—
revelations they have brought—and over all, if I can express it, is a dream of the
education of the future. So the children and the twenty-year-olds are on every
page almost, even in the title.
Meanwhile the world-madness descended, and all Europe became a
spectacle. There is no inclination to discuss that, although there have been
days of quiet here by the fire in which it seemed that we could see the
crumbling of the rock of ages and the glimmering of the New Age above the red
chaos of the East. And standing a little apart, we perceived convincing signs of
the long-promised ignition on the part of America—signs as yet without
splendour, to be sure. These things have to do with the very breath we draw;
they relate themselves to our children and to every conception of home—not
the war itself, but the forming of the new social order, the message thrilling for
utterance in the breasts of the rising generation. For they are the builders who
are to follow the wreckers of war.
Making a place to live on the lake shore, the development of bluff and land,
the building of study and stable and finally the stone house (a pool of water in
the centre, a roof open to the sunlight, the outer walls broken with chimneys for
the inner fires), these are but exterior cultivations, the establishment of a visible
[Pg x]order that is but a symbol of the intenser activity of the natures within.
Quiet, a clean heart, a fragrant fire, a press for garments, a bin of food, a
friendly neighbour, a stretch of distance from the casements—these are sanedesirable matters to gather together; but the fundamental of it all is, that they
correspond to a picture of the builder's ideal. There is a bleakness about buying
one's house built; in fact, a man cannot really possess anything unless he has
an organised receptivity—a conception of its utilities that has come from long
need. A man might buy the most perfect violin, but it is nothing more than a
curio to him unless he can bring out its wisdom. It is the same in mating with a
woman or fathering a child.
There is a good reason why one man keeps pigs and another bees, why one
man plants petunias and another roses, why the many can get along with
maples when elms and beeches are to be had, why one man will exchange a
roomful of man-fired porcelain for one bowl of sunlit alabaster. No chance
anywhere. We call unto ourselves that which corresponds to our own key and
tempo; and so long as we live, there is a continual re-adjustment without, the
more unerringly to meet the order within.
The stone house is finished, roses have bloomed, but the story of the
cultivation of the human spirits is really just beginning—a work so joyous and
[Pg xi]productive that I would take any pains to set forth with clearness the effort to
develop each intrinsic gift, to establish a deep breathing of each mind—a
fulness of expression on the one hand, and a selfless receptivity on the other.
We can only breathe deeply when we are at peace. This is true mentally as
well as physically, and soulfully, so far as one can see. The human fabric is at
peace only when its faculties are held in rhythm by the task designed for them.
Expression of to-day makes the mind ready for the inspiration of to-morrow.
It may be well finally to make it clear that there is no personal ambition here
to become identified with education in the accepted sense. Those who come
bring nothing in their hands, and answer no call save that which they are
sensitive enough to hear without words. Hearing that, they belong, indeed.
Authorship is the work of Stonestudy, and shall always be; but first and last is
the conviction that literature and art are but incident to life; that we are here to
become masters of life—artists, if possible, but in any case, men.
... To-day the glimpse of it all—that this is to be a book of the younger
generation.... I remember in the zeal of a novice, how earnestly I planned to
relate the joys of rose-culture, when some yellow teas came into their lovely
being in answer to the long preparation. It seemed to me that a man could do
[Pg xii]little better for his quiet joy than to raise roses; that nothing was so perfectly
designed to keep romance perennial in his soul. Then the truth appeared—
greater things that were going on here—the cultivation of young and living
minds, minds still fluid, eager to give their faith and take the story of life; minds
that are changed in an instant and lifted for all time, if the story is well told.... So
in the glimpse of this book as a whole, as it comes to-day (an East wind rising
and the gulls blown inland) I find that a man may build a more substantial thing
than a stone house, may realise an intenser cultivation than even tea-roses
require; and of this I want to tell simply and with something of order from the
beginning.
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT.
STONESTUDY, March, 1916.
[Pg xiii]CONTENTS
PAGE
BEES AND BLOOMS 17
BLUFF AND SHORE 28
STONESTUDY 38
IMAGINATION 43
WILD GEESE 55
WORKMANSHIP 65
THE LITTLE GIRL 78
THE ABBOT 90
THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 102
COMPASSION 113
THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 123
TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 134
NATURAL CRUELTY 151
CHILDREN CHANGE 163
A MAN'S OWN 171
THE PLAN IS ONE 186
THE IRISH CHAPTER 196
THE BLEAKEST HOUR 202
THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 217
COMMON CLAY BRICK 222
[Pg xiv]THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 230
MIRACLES 248
MORE ABOUT ORDER 259
THE FRESH EYE