Part 27 (1/2)
Nay, what save the lovely city and the little house on the hill, And the wastes and the woodland beauty and the happy fields we till, And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead, And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet's teaming head.
And the painter's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music--all those that do and know.
For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair.”
In the very advent of my spiritual life I gravitated toward the church. There I added to my faith a theology. A theologian is a fighter--a doctrinaire. Every item of knowledge I got I sharpened into a weapon to confound the Catholics.
Before my nakedness was wholly covered I was shouting with my sect for ”Queen and Const.i.tution,” and I could discuss the historic Episcopate before I could write my own name. Then came a hidebound orthodoxy. I measured life by a book and for every ill that flesh is heir to I had an ”appropriate” text. I had a formula for the salvation of the race.
I divided humanity into two camps--the goats and the sheep. I had a literal h.e.l.l for one crowd and a beautiful heaven for the other. The logical result of this was a caste of good (saved) people for whom I became a sort of an ecclesiastical attorney. Naturally one outgrows such obsolescence. Such archaism has an antidote: it is an open-minded study of the life of Jesus. The result of such a study to me was a rediscovery of myself, that I think is what Jesus always does for an inquiring soul. He is the Supreme Individualist, the Master of Personality.
I did not ask him what to wear or how to vote. I did not even ask him what was moral or immoral, for these things change with time and place and circ.u.mstance.
I asked him the old eternal questions of life and death and immortality, of G.o.d and my neighbour, of sin and service. The answers stripped me of fear and gave me a scorn of consequences. The secret of Jesus is to find G.o.d in the soul of humanity. The cause of Jesus is the righting of world wrongs; the religion of Jesus the binding together of souls in the solidarity of the race.
Three miles north of Peekskill and two miles east of the Hudson river lies this farm place that I have named Happy Hollow. It looks to me as if G.o.d had just taken a big handful of earth out from between these hills of Putnam County and made a shelter here for man and beast.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Happy Hollow,” Mr. Irvine's Present Home Near Peekskill, New York]
The Hollow is meadow-land through which runs a brook. Across the meadow in front of the house, rises almost perpendicularly a hill five hundred feet high. It is clothed now in autumnal glory. On the summit there are several bare patches of granite rock surrounded by tall dark green cedars that look like forest monks, from my study window. There are over two hundred acres, two-thirds of them woodland. Through the woods there are miles and miles of old lumber roads over which my predecessors have hauled lumber since the days of the Revolution.
”Is there a view of the Hudson River from any of these hills?” I asked when buying.
”Somewhere,” said the owner, but she was not quite sure.
One day I was exploring the fastnesses and came upon a rock ledge standing a hundred feet high. I walked to the edge, pushed the branches of the elder bushes aside and out there in front of me lay that glorious valley and beyond the valley over the top of my house lay the mighty river like an unsheathed sword!
On that ledge I have built a platform of white birch and behind the platform a bungalow from the window of which I have a full view of the valley, the Westchester County hills and the river. I have named the ledge ”Ascension Point” in memory of the valued friends.h.i.+ps formed at the church on Fifth Avenue.
On the edge of the amphitheatre-shaped meadow, beside the old road that leads to the river, stands the farmhouse. It is sheltered from winter winds by the hills and from summer sun by elm, maple and walnut trees.
There is nothing to boast of in the arrangement; it was built quickly and not over-well. If the man who planned it had any more taste than a cow he must have expressed it on the building of the barn, not on the house. It had been heated with stoves for years, but I tore away the boards that covered the open fireplaces. I built a cistern on the hill and a cesspool down in the meadow, and between them, in a large room in the house, arranged a bathroom, a big bathroom, big enough to swing a cat around.
I am now knocking a wall down here and there, wiping some outbuildings off the map, and by degrees making it habitable throughout the year.
There is a five-acre orchard on the hill east of the house and through it runs a brook that can be turned to good account.
I had a population of twenty-five during the summer. They were encamped within a few hundred yards of each other in tents, overhauled barns, etc. We were all hand-picked Socialists--dreamers of dreams.
Of course we had to eat and as the raw-food fad did not appeal to us we had to have a fire on which to cook; and as there was an abundance of wood I inst.i.tuted a wood pile!
To any one about to form a cooperative community I can recommend this inst.i.tution as an infinitely better gauge of human character than either the ten commandments or the royal eight-fold pathway! We didn't need much wood and there were plenty of men. We had good tools and--I was going to say, ”wood to burn.”
”It was jolly good fun, don't you know,” to hack up about three sticks; then the woodcutter would have a story to tell or he ”had something he had left undone for days.” There was an atmosphere around the pile that affected us as the hookworm affects its victims in some Southern communities--we grew listless, dull, flaccid.
The influence was baneful, subtle. None of us ever confessed to being affected. It rather emphasized our idealism.
”In the future,” said one comrade as he laid the axe down after his second stick, ”wood will be cut by machinery!” We looked interested.
”Yes,” he said as he rolled a cigarette, ”there will be a machine that will cut a cord a second!”
”Why don't you invent one?” we asked.