SHIO
F . HOPKINS
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
BY
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
PRIVATELY PRINTED
BOSTON
MCMVII
Copyright, 1907
BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
A PLEA FOR THE SIMPLER LIFE
OF FORMER TIMES
DELIVERED AT THE HARVARD UNION
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
FEBRUARY 27, 1907
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
MY memory goes back some forty
years to a small room lighted by
wax candles and the blaze of an open
wood fire. There is a table on which
rests a work-basket and some books.
Other books in cases line the walls
from floor to ceiling. A sweet young
granddaughter, with a rose at her
throat, sits at the piano in the dark
ened corner, running her fingers over
the keys.
Beside the table is a rocking-chair,
and within reach of the cheery blaze
sits a woman. Her hair is gray,
a silver-gray, with a satin sheen where
the light strikes; her skin is soft and
fresh; about her shoulders is a gossa
mer scarf breaking the line of the simple
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dress, which is fastened close up to
the throat. Now and then she lays
down her knitting and half closes her
eyes, listening the more intently to
the music that ripples beneath the
girl s hands.
Soon the door opens and the slender
figure of a man, with his spectacles
pushed high up on his forehead, enters. /
He walks to her chair, slips his hand
with a loving pat under her chin, and
takes the seat beside her. She raises
her face, and a light breaks over it.
She has known the touch of that hand
for forty years.
Everywhere is the atmosphere of
the home, the softened lights, the
cheery blaze of the logs, the quiet,
the restfulness, the joy of close compan
ionship. More than anything else
there broods the spirit of content
ment, a contentment that the wealth
of the Indies cannot buy.
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
With this picture clear in my mind
there comes another, one I saw at
the opera some few weeks ago. Nor-
dica was singing, and the house was
packed to the roof.
" A very brilliant scene," remarked
the woman on my left, sweeping the
auditorium with her opera -glass.
" Every seat is full, and every box
crowded except old Mrs. Millions s.
There she is now ! Who s that with
her ? Oh, yes, her granddaughter.
Elise looks lovely in white, don t you
think so ? " and she handed me her
glass.
I readjusted the lenses, and fol
lowed the direction indicated by her
head. Elise certainly did look lovely
in white.
The young girl, however, did not
interest me. It was her grandmother
that absorbed my attention. Through
the shimmer of flashing lights and
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across the flower-bed of white gowns
and pink shoulders in full bloom, I
could not realize that her son was near
my own age and that her grandson
had gone to school with my boy. Her
poise was that of a woman who was
perfectly at home in any and all at
mospheres.
Her dress suited the occasion, and
was of the latest mode; throat and
neck bare, a string of pearls and an
edging of lace softening the skin, a
spray of diamonds surmounting a head
of hair as black as it was at twenty.
Every few minutes during the entr
acte new figures would appear, their
white shirt-fronts rose-coloured in the
softened light. Grandmother and
granddaughter were equally gracious,
but the grandmother received the most
attention, especially from the younger
men just grown, most of them.
" On the lookout for invitations for
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
her T balls," my lady of the opera-glasses
whispered to me from behind her fan.
I made no answer. I didn t believe
it, not all of it. I was still studying
the tightly drawn skin and deep shad
ows under the eyes, the thin, semi-
transparent ears, the series of undulat
ing hollows that lay over the wide
expanse between the pearls and the
edging of lace.
Now and then, even at this distance,
I detected without the aid of my mer
ciless glass, an expression of weariness
cross her face, which lingered for a
moment like a shadow or cleared when
some one of her guests spoke to her.
At midnight I saw her again. She
was standing in the lower lobby wait
ing for her carriage. Her liveried
footman had brought a heavy fur wrap,
which he had hung about her neck.
This she drew closer as she stood
shivering by the ever-swinging door,
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
her bare shoulders half covered, her poor
thin ankles chilled to their brittle bones.
These two pictures always follow
one another in my mind, and with them
this question: What has come over
our social conditions in the last fifty
years to produce this change? Why
should the mother and grandmother
of to-day turn her back upon the sweet,
reposeful life of the mother and grand
mother of the sixties and affect the
life of a young married woman of
twenty ? Is it because she alone could
educate the granddaughter to take her
place in the sphere of life to which
she was born, and which modern con
ditions require her to fill ? Or was the
home which she had left behind her a
few hours before so dull and com-
panionless, so devoid of comforts, de
spite its luxuries, that she preferred
the glare of the opera-h6use to her own
fireside? Or was it because she had
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
set her pace earlier in life, and it bored
her to put on the brakes as she grew
older? What has happened, I repeat,
to our civilization, and through what
degrees of degeneracy has it fallen,
that this type of mother is so seldom
found in what is called the higher
circles of our social life? How is it
that this low-voiced, gentle woman,
shrinking from publicity, her fireside
her rostrum, her children and husband
her religion, nursing the sick, not
with her check-book, but with her own
gentle hands, thoughtful of her
friends, hospitable to the stranger,
merciful to her servants, ready to
praise, speaking ill of no one, her
highest ambition to maintain the tra
ditions of her blood, how is it, I say,
that this old-fashioned woman has
been so largely supplanted?
Once more let me flash on the screen
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
of my talk two other contrasting pic
tures drawn from the home and home
life of this woman of the past and this
woman of the present.
In the old days every drawing-room
door was open wide on any night of
the week to whoever might call. If
the table was full at meal-time the old
butler could always squeeze in a place
for one more, or, if this was impossible,
some neighbour and his wife would al
ways draw up outside the circle, or
wait in the drawing-room until the
meal was over, to take their places
later at a rubber of whist, or perhaps to
listen to a quartette in which the father
and daughters took part. No one had
to ask whether it was convenient,
no one was invited two weeks ahead.
Even as late as ten o clock the old
brass knocker would continue to re
spond to the hands of welcome guests,
the sound bringing the old butler to
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
the door on the run, where he would
bend low until they were ushered into
his master s presence. Not the hired
butler for the night, or for the season,
but one who had served his master
and his master s people from his boy
hood, who had carried every child on
his back, and whose pride in the family
name was as great as his master s.
Nor were the young people s pleas
ures forgotten. Almost every night
during the winter there was a dance
somewhere, or a game of blind man s
buff, with all the mahogany chairs and
big sofas moved back, the old people
taking their share of the frolic.
At eleven everybody went home,
the young men and young girls escorting
each other, leaving the older people
first ; no fear of footpads, and no need
for chaperones. Every young girl was
the sister of every young man so far as
protection was concerned. His re-
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
sponsibility to her mother was only
equalled by his responsibility to him
self. The traditional millstone hanging
about the neck of the offender of little
ones would be light in weight com
pared to his load, and the depths of the
sea a welcome oblivion if he infringed
one hair s breadth. A young man who
could not be trusted with the night-key
and the daughter could not hope for
social recognition of any kind.
In contrast to the life of this home
and its open, welcoming hospitality,
let us ring the front door-bell of one of
our equally representative mansions
on any one of our principal avenues.
If we have been invited two weeks in
advance and arrive exactly on the
minute, we will be welcome. On en
tering, the butler, after removing our
coat and hat, hands us a tiny white
envelope containing a card upon which
is written the name of the lady whom
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
we are to have the honour of escorting to
dinner. Our host and hostess expect
us. They are both standing on the rug
beside the gas-log fire, or at the other
end of the drawing-room, under the
hired palms. We shake hands and are
introduced to some one within reach,
our lady of the envelope, it may be,
or some one else, it makes no differ
ence to the hostess. * Other guests
enter ; half of them perhaps all of
them have never met before ; some
of them never want to meet again.
Dinner is announced by the drawing
of the curtains, or the profound bow
of the high-priced functionary, and
we file in and arrange ourselves about a
table that represents the product of
half the globe. In its centre is a hedge
of roses circled about by candelabra and
candle-shades that serve as an impene
trable screen, shielding from view your
host and hostess, with whom you have
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
not exchanged half a dozen words, and
will not, probably, during the whole
evening. Conversation is restricted
to your fellow sufferers on your right
and left. This you do impartially as
you can, the woman on your right being
" up " in literature, with a leaning
toward Shelley and Keats, and the
woman on your left loving nothing so
much as collie dogs and Angora cats.
You try to be just in your attentions
and not get the two topics mixed, but
the strain ruins your dinner.
When the last course is served, you
rise with the others, conduct your
partner to the drawing-room, and are
shown by another high-priced function
ary into a third room, where you smoke.
The conversation now extends to the
man whose bald head you caught shin
ing between the candles, and to the
gentleman who craned his head around
the roses to speak to you. You never
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
met any of them before, but this only
enhances the excitement.
When you return to the drawing-
room you discover, to your surprise,
that a great change has taken place in
its interior fittings. Where the hostess
received her guests there has been
erected a portable platform on which
are grouped a quartette of negro min
strels, or perhaps it supports a sleight-
of-hand artist, or a comic singer. This
form of entertainment has been pro
vided in the full knowledge of the fact
that you are unable to entertain your
self, nor can any one of your compan
ions. To ask you to help entertain the
company would be an unpardonable
breach of good taste and quite out of
the question, one which any gentle
man or lady would resent, they not be
ing " professionals." At eleven o clock
your carriage is announced and you go
home.
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A week later you again ring the bell,
hand the butler your card, and retire.
The only uncomfortable feeling you
have is the fear of meeting some one
of the family on the front steps who
might invite you in. The incident is
now closed.
Continuing the comparisons along
these lines, let me bring to your mind
the business man of the old days. One,
a man of fifty when I knew him (I a boy
less than twenty), lived in one of the
upper parts of the town, and about ten
New York blocks from his office. The
street was like any other city street, the
houses in rows on both sides, in which
resided his neighbours. From the curb
in front of this old-time mansion, pro
tected by a wooden tree-box, rose a
mighty elm. Under this elm stood his
saddle-horse in the morning, when he
rode down to his office, at lunch-time
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
and at night, when he returned again.
This fact is impressed upon my mem
ory, for I often rode the horse back to
the stable, a great treat to me.
The house had wide steps, with an
old colonial door and knocker, and
iron railings with brass knobs. The
pavement was of brick; the street
paved with cobbles. In summer the
old servant kept the bricks and cobbles
wet with a hose, giving the patient horse
a foot-bath once in awhile. This
sprinkling and drenching was to make
a cool spot for the master to sit in after
the day s work was done, say five
o clock, rarely so late as six. On his
dismounting in the late afternoon and
the horse taken to the stable, an easy
chair was brought out and placed on
the clean, scoured steps, and later the
master would appear in a light seer
sucker or black alpaca coat, the after
noon paper in his hand, or perhaps
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
with the arm of one of his daughters
about his neck, she, dressed in white,
with some bit of colour at her throat
and waist. Every passing neighbour
stopped and had a word either with
him or the dear wife by his side, or the
daughter the girl s arm still about her
father s neck. In those days no one
was ashamed of wearing his heart on
his sleeve.
Supper would soon be announced,
the front door left wide open while the
meal went on. After supper the steps
would begin to fill up with the visiting
neighbours for in summer the front
steps were the drawing-room; chairs
and cushions would then be brought
out, so that even the sidewalk would
be covered, some of the older men
with their chairs tipped back against
the tree-box.
Counting the hours that he had spent
in his office, and he had not been
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
altogether five hours away from his
home, this kind of business life
would not make him a millionaire;
wouldn t give him one- tenth of a mil
lion; did not, probably, give him one-
half of that one-tenth ; but it gave him
rest and the sweet repose of his home and
time enough to be gracious and hospi
table and courteous to every human
being who sought his companionship.
This old fashioned father had time
for many other things besides this pur
blind provincial business life of his.
Time for a day s outing with his sons,
or a long walk in the country, if he
pleased, with his daughters ; time for a
rubber of whist, or a game of chess in
the winter afternoons, with some crony
from across the street; time for his
books, the whole family reading,
the room quiet as the library of a
modern club; time to look after the
purchasing of supplies for his house-
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
hold, and the care of his servants;
mindful of their welfare, being inter
ested in their families and the raising
of their children, even when they left
him and had homes of their own out
side his roof. Time to serve his city
and his State, as juror or guardian, and
his church the older men being ves
trymen and the younger serving in the
Sunday schools. What he lived for was
his family; anything that might lead
him from this object he rejected as not
worth the price it would cost him.
Again my restless search-light sweeps
over the intermediate years, and again
I select a contrasting type, - a type
which is increasing over the length and
breadth of the land as our ever in
creasing commercial supremacy asserts
itself.
This type lived in a Western city,
where he accumulated forty millions of
dollars, a man among his fellows, a
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power in the commercial world. Half
a dozen like him could own a State,
would have done so in old baronial
days, perhaps will yet. Starting life on
a farm, he had worked his way up,
seizing the opportunities offered every
American boy, and at sixty years of
age was about to drop into his grave
prematurely worn out in the struggle.
Two years before the final collapse his
physician said to him :
" You must stop work, or I cannot
answer for your life. Everything needs
rest, heart, nerves, brain, and body."
The millionaire was seated in his
office at the time, from the window of
which he could overlook the yards
blocked with crunching cars and the
clouds of sooty smoke rising from the
chimneys, and where every breath of
the summer air was filled with the
stench of boiling vats.
" Give up business ! Why, man,
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you re crazy ! What would you have
me do?"
" Any one of a dozen things."
" Name them."
" Stock your private car; get to
gether a few of your friends, and go out
West and shoot some prairie-chickens."
" Oh, that don t appeal to me. I
haven t had a gun in my hands since I
was a boy. Besides, nobody has
time to go with me."
* Well, then, buy a few hundred
acres of land and begin raising some
fine stock, that s interesting for a
man like you who knows good cattle,
and it will be profitable, too."
The millionaire tapped his desk with
the end of his pencil, and said slowly,
as he looked out upon the desolate
yard:
" No, that s not in my line. Don t
want to live in the country too
lonely."
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The doctor leaned back in his chair,
thought a moment, and struck another
lead:
Why not try orchids ? They are a
most interesting study. Hunt for them
all over the world. Cost a lot of money,
but you ve got that."
"Orchids? What are orchids?"
" Rare tropical air-plants, beautiful
in colour and of endless variety. You ve
seen them a dozen times in the florists
windows, but you may not have noticed
them carefully."
Again the pencil beat a tattoo.
" That might do for a woman, but it
wouldn t suit me. Great deal of trouble
raising flowers. No, I guess not,
doctor."
" Well, then, begin collecting books
and pictures; you can spend a million
in pictures very easy, and there is noth
ing gives a man so much pleasure once
he gets interested in collecting."
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
" Oh ! I don t know anything about
pictures. Have to hire somebody to
pick em out. Books are all right, but
I never get much time to read. Have
to": grow up to that, and I ve always
had to work."
The doctor began pacing the floor.
The case was an urgent one; relief
from the daily strain must come at once.
" Tell me, then," he said, " what
you do like to do. You ve got to
stop this. What else will you take up ? "
" What do I like to do, doctor ? I
like to get up at seven in the morning,
eat my breakfast, read the paper for
ten minutes, get to my office at half-
past eight, open my letters, attend to
what business comes up, go to the club
for lunch, back to the office, and up
town. After dinner I have a cigar and
go to bed. That s what I ve been
doing all my life; that s what I m
accustomed to, and that s what I like."
OLD FASHIONED FOLK
" Poor devil ! " I said to myself, when
the doctor finished telling me the story,
" Poor, miserable, God-forsaken
pauper ! Bankrupt of everything in
life but his balances. Marley s ghost
was weighed down with fewer chains,
cash-boxes, and money-bags than this
poor creature. Flowers might bloom,
brooks sing in the sunlight, cool winds
steal through silent forests; there was
fishing and hunting, golf, horseback-
riding, pictures, books, curios, any
number of personal pleasures, not to
take into account the thousand of ways
open to him to relieve the sufferings of
the unfortunate. None of all that for
him ! He must continue to wear the
same Chinese shoe he had put on when
a boy. It had warped and stifled and
cramped his growth ; slowly and grad
ually it had crushed every impulse out
side of his daily task, and strangled
every taste. At twenty there was a
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OLD FASHIONED FOLK
buoyancy in his step; life was before
him; he would make the money fast,
then he would enjoy it. At thirty he
was still pegging away, no time for
pleasure. At forty the million came,
and with it the craving for another.
At fifty his name stood highest in the
Street ; at fifty, also, he had lost all his
earlier good intentions. At sixty came
the end.
Never once in all his life had he had
any fun. The newspapers commented
on the number of men he had em
ployed; of the mouths he had fed; of
his donations to current charities. One
critic ended a long editorial with the
remark: " He was the type of man
whose efforts have made us the great
est commercial power on the earth. Of
such is the Kingdom of America ! "
Not one of them made any reference
to his whole-souled cheeriness, to his
buoyant temperament, to his love of
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giving; to the wide circle of intimate
friends that loved him for himself.
Even yellow journalism stopped short
when they approached that phase of
his career.
As for me, I thought of the sons who
had raised themselves, pretty bad
raising it was in two instances; of
the wife he had neglected ; of the hours
wasted in filling a tin box in a bank s
vault, never seen but twice a year,
when he or his clerk cut off coupons, and
many of them never taken from the
coffin holding his earlier aspirations ; of
his narrow, commonplace, treadmill
life, a life without colour and totally
devoid of charm.
This man, perhaps, is an extreme
type, but he is a type that is still held
in high esteem by many of our pro
gressive young men. Not all of these
would-be followers start out to toe-
mark his steps. Many of them intend
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to possess themselves of an equal
amount of money, although determined
to lead a different life in obtaining it.
Thousands of our modern homes are
founded with this idea in full view,
and up to a certain point the fathers
of these homes succeed in carrying out
these ideas. Then comes the many
temptations that beset a progressive
business man full of energy, full of
brains, and full of the initiative. Grad
ually the hours of work are lengthened,
the brain is subjected to new strains ; the
much coveted financial position cannot
be reached except through herculean
efforts ; this directorship, or the control
of that corporation, or that company,
cannot pass into his hands without this
or that supreme sacrifice. The family
or friend must wait, so must books and
foreign travel, and idle days by the
brook, or with the dog and gun. At
fifty, he says to himself, " I will
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soon be free to do as I please, the
girls and the boys, or the wife and I
will have our fun then." When the
strain becomes more tense and some
small strand in his rope snaps, his
nerves, or his brain, or his lungs,
he will stop and look about him. To
his horror he is in a quicksand up to his
neck, the blue sky above him, just
where it has always been, the green
fields about him, the birds singing,
but, and here is the pity of it, every
thing is out of his reach except the
mud he clings to and which is slowly
engulfing him ! One consolation is his,
and one only, the tin box at the
bank is full.
What pitfalls would he have avoided
in life, had he been so fortunate as to
have had one of those old fashioned
mothers, and, better still, had he lis
tened to her advice, as did a lad in an
old fashioned town, who went to work
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when he was sixteen years of age, and
whom I knew when I was a boy. His
father s money having given out at
the time the boy was getting ready
for college, this lad took a position at
fifty dollars a year.
His work was the tying up of iron
rods, marking boxes of hardware, pack
ing shovels and scythes, rolling them
out on the sidewalk, and helping load
them on the drays that carried them to
the steamboats and railroad stations.
In the busy season, that is, in the
spring and fall, the boy got up at
five o clock in the morning, was at the
store at seven, and returned home often
as late as midnight. In the summer and
winter he worked only from nine until
five.
The boy and the boy s mother were
chums had been chums for years,
ever since the boy began to talk. The
mother understood the boy and the boy
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understood the mother. She got out
of bed when the boy got up, sat by him
while he ate his breakfast, and never
closed her eyes until he came home,
no matter how late, then she kissed
him good-night.
The harder he worked the better the
mother liked it, and the better she loved
him. He had been lazy and inclined
to be luxurious, his home affording
him all the comforts. He was also a
little proud and sometimes put on airs