The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

C >> Charlotte Perkins Gilman >> The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

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This is a six-room two-story cottage, natural wood finish, unplastered,
on two and a half acres of land, 600 feet on the lake, with an old apple
orchard and many other trees. It has on two sides covered piazzas,
outside blinds, open fireplaces in two rooms; and new white enameled
open plumbing, with hot and cold water. It is about a mile and a half
from Essex Village, and about one-quarter of a mile from the post
office, at the Crater Club, an exclusive summer colony. Access by boat
and train.

I have not seen this cottage, but I've seen plans, elevations and
photographs of it, and of views from it. It stands on a bluff, close to
the lake, the Green Mountains far in the east, and the Adirondacks some
twelve miles to the west. The people who own it will answer further
questions and state facts fully on request, both advantages and
disadvantages.

The list of furnishings is accurate and circumstantial, as follows:

INVENTORY OF CONTENTS OF COTTAGE

LIVING ROOM

Mahogany sofa, small mahogany table
Marble-topped table and "Crowning of Esther"
4 rosewood chairs, steamer chair
Whatnot, wall-bracket, books, basket
Mahogany table, small round 3-legged
Long mantel mirror, gilt frame
3 oil paintings, 3 engravings
Rustic seat (filled with wood)
Old-fashioned heating stove, crated
Candle-lantern, 2 Japanese trays
Door-scraper, woodbasket
Tongs-holder, hearth brush
Child's garden tools
2 sofa cushions
Various small ornaments

KITCHEN

Ironing Table, stand, wax, bosom board
Tin pail, dipper, basin
1 new broom, 1 old broom
Tool box, tools, nails, saw, hatchet
Hammock, barrel hammock, tie ropes
Soap rack, dustpan, scrap basket
Folding hat rack, ladder
Carving set, 6 knives (very old)
Coffee pot, toaster, egg whip, egg beater
5 large white china plates
5 medium and 6 small ditto
6 demi tasse and saucers, same
2 tea cups, 6 saucers, same
2 egg stands, green; 2 sugar bowls
1 butterfly cup and saucer
6 glasses, 1 lemon squeezer
1 mechanical red-glass lamp
2 reading lamps, 3 small hand lamps
3 small bracket lamps, 1 shade
White shades at all windows

GREEN BEDROOM

Green bedstead (three-quarter)
2 mattresses, 2 pillows, madras cover
Green bureau; green washstand
Green table; green rocking chair
Oak chair; 2 pictures; 1 chamber

LARGE EAST BEDROOM

Oak bedstead (double)
Oak bureau, oak washstand
2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster
2 pillows, madras spread
1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow
2 chairs, 2 towel racks
Bureau cover, pen cushion, etc.
3 pictures

SOUTHWEST BEDROOM
Black walnut single bedstead
1 hair mattress and bolster
1 pillow, 1 feather bed, 1 madras spread
Bureau (mirror broken), 2 towel racks
Mahogany washstand, mirror
Small 3-legged table
3 rosewood chairs
Bureau cover, pin cushion, etc.
Shoebag on wall
Oil painting, on copper
Brass stair rods, in closet

NORTHWEST BEDROOM

2 mahogany bureaus, empty trunk
Portable bath-tub, clothes basket
On shelves: 7 sheets, 7 pillow cases
3 table cloths, 10 doilies
4 towels, dish cloths and towels
Bureau and tray cloths
Curtains, enough for doors
Curtains for some windows

Apply to "Summer Cottage," care of The Forerunner or to John B. Burnham,
Agent, Essex, N.Y.

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 8
JUNE, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Clothing is for five purposes: Decoration, Protection, Warmth, Modesty,
and Symbolism. Can you explain yours?

THE PURITAN

"Where is God?" I cried. "Let me hear!"
"I long for the voice of God!"
And I smote and trod
On all things clamoring near;
Small voices dear,
That wept and murmured and sung
Till my heart was wrung;
That shrieked, shrieked loud and clear,
As I with hammer and sword
Slew them in the name of the Lord.
Where is God?" I cried. "Let me hear!"
But my ears were ringing yet
With cries I could not forget;
The blood was flowing still,
From the thing I could not kill;
A smothered sobbing cry
Filled all the red, wet earth, the cold, hard sky--
God came not near.

Then long I lived alone,
On the desolate land; a stone
On the thing I could not kill.
I bent to my hardened will
All things that lived below;
I strove to climb above,
To the land of living love
I had dreamed of long ago,
But I could not see--not know.
"O God!" I cried, "Come near!
Speak! Let thy servant hear!
Have I not utterly slain
With tears of blood, with sweat of pain,
In this base heart of mine
All voices old and dear--to hear but Thine!
And if there struggleth still
The thing I could not kill,
Have I not put a stone
On its head? O Thou alone
Whom I would follow and fear--
Speak! Let Thy servant hear!"

Silent I lay, and weak;
Then did the darkness speak;
"Child of the World! My love
Is beneath as well as above!
Thou art not always led
By a light that shines ahead!
But pushed by an impulse blind--
A mighty Power behind!
Lifted, as all things grow,
By forces from below!
Fear not for thy long mistake--
Listen! And there shall wake
The voice that has found the way
From the beginning, upward ever, into the light of day!
Lo! I am with thee still--
The thing thou couldst not kill!

MAKING A LIVING

"There won't be any litigation and chicanery to help you out, young man.
I've fixed that. Here are the title deeds of your precious
country-place; you can sit in that hand-made hut of yours and make
poetry and crazy inventions the rest of your life! The water's
good--and I guess you can live on the chestnuts!"

"Yes, sir," said Arnold Blake, rubbing his long chin dubiously. "I
guess I can."

His father surveyed him with entire disgust. "If you had wit enough you
might rebuild that old saw-mill and make a living off it!"

"Yes, sir," said Arnold again. "I had thought of that."

"You had, had you?" sneered his father. "Thought of it because it
rhymed, I bet you! Hill and mill, eh? Hut and nut, trees and breeze,
waterfall--beat-'em-all? I'm something of a poet myself, you see!
Well,--there's your property. And with what your Mother left you will
buy books and writing paper! As for my property--that's going to Jack.
I've got the papers for that too. Not being an idiot I've saved out
enough for myself--no Lear business for mine! Well, boy--I'm sorry
you're a fool. But you've got what you seem to like best."

"Yes, sir," said Arnold once more. "I have, and I'm really much obliged
to you, Father, for not trying to make me take the business."

Then young John Blake, pattern and image of his father, came into
possession of large assets and began to use them in the only correct
way; to increase and multiply without end.

Then old John Blake, gazing with pride on his younger son, whose acumen
almost compensated him for the bitter disappointment of being father to
a poet; set forth for a season of rest and change.

"I'm going to see the world! I never had time before!" quoth he; and
started off for Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Then Arnold Blake, whose eyes were the eyes of a poet, but whose mouth
had a touch of resemblance to his father's, betook himself to his Hill.

But the night before they separated, he and his brother both proposed to
Ella Sutherland. John because he had made up his mind that it was the
proper time for him to marry, and this was the proper woman; and Arnold
because he couldn't help it.

John got to work first. He was really very fond of Ella, and made hot
love to her. It was a painful surprise to him to be refused. He argued
with her. He told her how much he loved her.

"There are others!" said Miss Ella.

He told her how rich he was.

"That isn't the point," said Ella.

He told her how rich he was going to be.

"I'm not for sale!" said Ella, "even on futures!"

Then he got angry and criticised her judgement.

"It's a pity, isn't it," she said, "for me to have such poor
judgment--and for you to have to abide by it!"

"I won't take your decision," said John. "You're only a child yet. In
two years' time you'll be wiser. I'll ask you again then."

"All right," said Ella. "I'll answer you again then."

John went away, angry, but determined.

Arnold was less categorical.

"I've no right to say a word," he began, and then said it. Mostly he
dilated on her beauty and goodness and his overmastering affection for
her.

"Are you offering marriage?" she inquired, rather quizzically.

"Why yes--of course!" said he, "only--only I've nothing to offer."

"There's you!" said Ella.

"But that's so little!" said Arnold. "O! if you will wait for me!--I
will work!--"

"What will you work at?" said Ella.

Arnold laughed. Ella laughed. "I love to camp out!" said she.

"Will you wait for me a year?" said Arnold.

"Ye-es," said Ella. I'll even wait two--if I have to. But no longer!"

"What will you do then?" asked Arnold miserably.

"Marry you," said Ella.

So Arnold went off to his Hill.

What was one hill among so many? There they arose about him, far green,
farther blue, farthest purple, rolling away to the real peaks of the
Catskills. This one had been part of his mother's father's land; a big
stretch, coming down to them from an old Dutch grant. It ran out like a
promontory into the winding valley below; the valley that had been a
real river when the Catskills were real mountains. There was some river
there yet, a little sulky stream, fretting most of the year in its
sunken stony bed, and losing its temper altogether when the spring
floods came.

Arnold did not care much for the river--he had a brook of his own; an
ideal brook, beginning with an over-flowing spring; and giving him three
waterfalls and a lake on his own land. It was a very little lake and
handmade. In one place his brook ran through a narrow valley or
valleyette--so small it was; and a few weeks of sturdy work had damned
the exit and made a lovely pool. Arnold did that years ago, when he was
a great hulking brooding boy, and used to come up there with his mother
in summer; while his father stuck to the office and John went to Bar
Harbor with his chums. Arnold could work hard even if he was a poet.

He quarried stone from his hill--as everyone did in those regions; and
built a small solid house, adding to it from year to year; that was a
growing joy as long as the dear mother lived.

This was high up, near the dark, clear pool of the spring; he had piped
the water into the house--for his mother's comfort. It stood on a level
terrace, fronting south-westward; and every season he did more to make
it lovely. There was a fine smooth lawn there now and flowering vines
and bushes; every pretty wild thing that would grow and bloom of itself
in that region, he collected about him.

That dear mother had delighted in all the plants and trees; she studied
about them and made observations, while he enjoyed them--and made poems.
The chestnuts were their common pride. This hill stood out among all
the others in the flowering time, like a great pompon, and the odor of
it was by no means attractive--unless you happened to like it, as they
did.

The chestnut crop was tremendous; and when Arnold found that not only
neighboring boys, but business expeditions from the city made a practice
of rifling his mountain garden, he raged for one season and acted the
next. When the first frost dropped the great burrs, he was on hand,
with a posse of strong young fellows from the farms about. They beat
and shook and harvested, and sack upon sack of glossy brown nuts were
piled on wagons and sent to market by the owner instead of the
depredator.

Then he and his mother made great plans, the eager boy full of ambition.
He studied forestry and arboriculture; and grafted the big fat foreign
chestnut on his sturdy native stocks, while his father sneered and
scolded because he would not go into the office.

Now he was left to himself with his plans and hopes. The dear mother
was gone, but the hill was there--and Ella might come some day; there
was a chance.

"What do you think of it?" he said to Patsy. Patsy was not Irish. He
was an Italian from Tuscany; a farmer and forester by birth and
breeding, a soldier by compulsion, an American citizen by choice.

"Fine!" said Patsy. "Fine. Ver' good. You do well."

They went over the ground together. "Could you build a little house
here?" said Arnold. "Could you bring your wife? Could she attend to my
house up there?--and could you keep hens and a cow and raise vegetables
on this patch here--enough for all of us?--you to own the house and
land--only you cannot sell it except to me?"

Then Patsy thanked his long neglected saints, imported his wife and
little ones, took his eldest daughter out of the box factory, and his
eldest son out of the printing office; and by the end of the summer they
were comfortably established and ready to attend to the chestnut crop.

Arnold worked as hard as his man. Temporarily he hired other sturdy
Italians, mechanics of experience; and spent his little store of capital
in a way that would have made his father swear and his brother jeer at
him.

When the year was over he had not much money left, but he had by his
second waterfall a small electrical plant, with a printing office
attached; and by the third a solid little mill, its turbine wheel
running merrily in the ceaseless pour. Millstones cost more money than
he thought, but there they were--brought up by night from the Hudson
River--that his neighbors might not laugh too soon. Over the mill were
large light rooms, pleasant to work in; with the shade of mighty trees
upon the roof; and the sound of falling water in the sun.

By next summer this work was done, and the extra workmen gone. Whereat
our poet refreshed himself with a visit to his Ella, putting in some
lazy weeks with her at Gloucester, happy and hopeful, but silent.

"How's the chestnut crop?" she asked him.

"Fine. Ver' good," he answered. "That's what Patsy says--and Patsy
knows."

She pursued her inquiries. "Who cooks for you? Who keeps your camp in
order? Who washes your clothes?"

"Mrs. Patsy," said he. "She's as good a cook as anybody need want."

"And how is the prospect?" asked Ella.

Arnold turned lazily over, where he lay on the sand at her feet, and
looked at her long and hungrily. "The prospect," said he, "is divine."

Ella blushed and laughed and said he was a goose; but he kept on
looking.

He wouldn't tell her much, though. "Don't, dear," he said when she
urged for information. "It's too serious. If I should fail--"

"You won't fail!" she protested. "You can't fail! And if you
do--why--as I told you before, I like to camp out!"

But when he tried to take some natural advantage of her friendliness she
teased him--said he was growing to look just like his father! Which
made them both laugh.

Arnold returned and settled down to business. He purchased stores of
pasteboard, of paper, of printers ink, and a little machine to fold
cartons. Thus equipped he retired to his fastness, and set dark-eyed
Caterlina to work in a little box factory of his own; while clever
Guiseppe ran the printing press, and Mafalda pasted. Cartons, piled
flat, do not take up much room, even in thousands.

Then Arnold loafed deliberately.

"Why not your Mr. Blake work no more?" inquired Mrs. Patsy of her
spouse.

"O he work--he work hard," replied Patsy. "You women--you not
understand work!"

Mrs. Patsy tossed her head and answered in fluent Italian, so that her
husband presently preferred out of doors occupation; but in truth Arnold
Blake did not seem to do much that summer. He loafed under his great
trees, regarding them lovingly; he loafed by his lonely upper waterfall,
with happy dreaming eyes; he loafed in his little blue lake--floating
face to the sky, care free and happy as a child. And if he scribbled a
great deal--at any sudden moment when the fit seized him, why that was
only his weakness as a poet.

Toward the end of September, he invited an old college friend up to see
him; now a newspaper man--in the advertising department. These two
seemed to have merry times together. They fished and walked and
climbed, they talked much; and at night were heard roaring with laughter
by their hickory fire.

"Have you got any money left?" demanded his friend.

"About a thou--" said Arnold. "And that's got to last me till next
spring, you know."

"Blow it in--blow in every cent--it'll pay you. You can live through
the winter somehow. How about transportation?"

"Got a nice electric dray--light and strong. Runs down hill with the
load to tidewater, you see, and there's the old motorboat to take it
down. Brings back supplies."

"Great!--It's simply great! Now, you save enough to eat till spring and
give me the rest. Send me your stuff, all of it! and as soon as you get
in a cent above expenses--send me that--I'll 'tend to the advertising!"

He did. He had only $800 to begin with. When the first profits began
to come in he used them better; and as they rolled up he still spent
them. Arnold began to feel anxious, to want to save money; but his
friend replied: "You furnish the meal--I'll furnish the market!" And he
did.

He began it in the subway in New York; that place of misery where eyes,
ears, nose, and common self-respect are all offended, and even an
advertisement is some relief.

"Hill" said the first hundred dollars, on a big blank space for a week.
"Mill" said the second. "Hill Mill Meal," said the third.

The fourth was more explicit.

"When tired of every cereal
Try our new material--
Hill Mill Meal."

The fifth--

"Ask your grocer if you feel
An interest in Hill Mill Meal.
Samples free."

The sixth--
"A paradox! Surprising! True!
Made of chestnuts but brand new!
Hill Mill Meal."

And the seventh--

"Solomon said it couldn't be done,
There wasn't a new thing under the sun--
He never ate Hill Mill Meal!"

Seven hundred dollars went in this one method only; and meanwhile
diligent young men in automobiles were making arrangements and leaving
circulars and samples with the grocer. Anybody will take free samples
and everybody likes chestnuts. Are they not the crown of luxury in
turkey stuffing? The gem of the confection as _marron glaces_? The
sure profit of the corner-merchant with his little charcoal stove, even
when they are half scorched and half cold? Do we not all love them,
roast, or boiled--only they are so messy to peel.

Arnold's only secret was his process; but his permanent advantage was in
the fine quality of his nuts, and his exquisite care in manufacture. In
dainty, neat, easily opened cartons (easily shut too, so they were not
left gaping to gather dust), he put upon the market a sort of samp,
chestnuts perfectly shelled and husked, roasted and ground, both coarse
and fine. Good? You stood and ate half a package out of your hand,
just tasting of it. Then you sat down and ate the other half.

He made pocket-size cartons, filled with whole ones, crafty man! And
they became "The Business Man's Lunch" forthwith. A pocketful of roast
chestnuts--and no mess nor trouble! And when they were boiled--well, we
all know how good boiled chestnuts are. As to the meal, a new variety
of mush appeared, and gems, muffins, and pancakes that made old epicures
feel young again in the joys of a fresh taste, and gave America new
standing in the eyes of France.

The orders rolled in and the poetry rolled out. The market for a new
food is as wide as the world; and Jim Chamberlin was mad to conquer it,
but Arnold explained to him that his total output was only so many
bushels a year.

"Nonsense!" said Jim. "You're a--a--well, a _poet_! Come! Use your
imagination! Look at these hills about you--they could grow chestnuts
to the horizon! Look at this valley, that rattling river, a bunch of
mills could run here! You can support a fine population--a whole
village of people--there's no end to it, I tell you!"

"And where would my privacy be then and the beauty of the place?" asked
Arnold, "I love this green island of chestnut trees, and the winding
empty valley, just freckled with a few farms. I'd hate to support a
village!"

"But you can be a Millionaire!" said Jim.

"I don't want to be a Millionaire," Arnold cheerfully replied.

Jim gazed at him, opening and shutting his mouth in silence.
"You--confounded old--_poet_!" he burst forth at last.

"I can't help that," said Arnold.

"You'd better ask Miss Sutherland about it, I think," his friend drily
suggested.

"To be sure! I had forgotten that--I will," the poet replied.

Then he invited her to come up and visit his Hill, met her at the train
with the smooth, swift, noiseless, smell-less electric car, and held her
hand in blissful silence as they rolled up the valley road. They wound
more slowly up his graded avenue, green-arched by chestnut boughs.

He showed her the bit of meadowy inlet where the mill stood, by the
heavy lower fall; the broad bright packing rooms above, where the busy
Italian boys and girls chattered gaily as they worked. He showed her
the second fall, with his little low-humming electric plant; a bluestone
building, vine-covered, lovely, a tiny temple to the flower-god.

"It does our printing," said Arnold, "gives us light, heat and
telephones. And runs the cars."

Then he showed her the shaded reaches of his lake, still, starred with
lilies, lying dark under the curving boughs of water maples, doubling
the sheer height of flower-crowned cliffs.

She held his hand tighter as they wound upward, circling the crown of
the hill that she might see the splendid range of outlook; and swinging
smoothly down a little and out on the green stretch before the house.

Ella gasped with delight. Gray, rough and harmonious, hung with
woodbine and wildgrape, broad-porched and wide-windowed, it faced the
setting sun. She stood looking, looking, over the green miles of
tumbling hills, to the blue billowy far-off peaks swimming in soft
light.

"There's the house," said Arnold, "furnished--there's a view room built
on--for you, dear; I did it myself. There's the hill--and the little
lake and one waterfall all for us! And the spring, and the garden, and
some very nice Italians. And it will earn--my Hill and Mill, about
three or four thousand dollars a year--above _all_ expenses!"

"How perfectly splendid!" said Ella. "But there's one thing you've left
out!"

"What's that?" he asked, a little dashed.

"_You_!" she answered. "Arnold Blake! My Poet!"

"Oh, I forgot," he added, after some long still moments. "I ought to
ask you about this first. Jim Chamberlain says I can cover all these
hills with chestnuts, fill this valley with people, string that little
river with a row of mills, make breakfast for all the world--and be a
Millionaire. Shall I?"

"For goodness sake--_No_!" said Ella. "Millionaire, indeed? And spoil
the most perfect piece of living I ever saw or heard of!"

Then there was a period of bliss, indeed there was enough to last
indefinitely.

But one pleasure they missed. They never saw even the astonished face,
much less the highly irritated mind, of old John Blake, when he first
returned from his two years of travel. The worst of it was he had eaten
the stuff all the way home-and liked it! They told him it was Chestnut
Meal--but that meant nothing to him. Then he began to find the jingling
advertisements in every magazine; things that ran in his head and
annoyed him.

"When corn or rice no more are nice,
When oatmeal seems to pall,
When cream of wheat's no longer sweet
And you abhor them all--"

"I do abhor them all!" the old man would vow, and take up a newspaper,
only to read:

"Better than any food that grows
Upon or in the ground,
Strong, pure and sweet
And good to eat
Our tree-born nuts are found."

"Bah!" said Mr. Blake, and tried another, which only showed him:

"Good for mother, good for brother,
Good for child;
As for father--well, rather!
He's just wild."

He was. But the truth never dawned upon him till he came to this one:

"About my hut
There grew a nut
Nutritious;
I could but feel
'Twould make a meal
Delicious.

I had a Hill,
I built a Mill
Upon it.
And hour by hour
I sought for power
To run it.

To burn my trees
Or try the breeze
Seemed crazy;
To use my arm
Had little charm--
I'm lazy!

The nuts are here,
But coal!--Quite dear
We find it!
We have the stuff.
Where's power enough
To grind it?

What force to find
My nuts to grind?
I've found it!
The Water-fall
Could beat 'em all--
And ground it!

PETER POETICUS."

"Confound your impudence!" he wrote to his son. "And confound your
poetic stupidity in not making a Big Business now you've got a start!
But I understand you do make a living, and I'm thankful for that."

*

Arnold and Ella, watching the sunset from their hammock, laughed softly
together, and lived.

TEN SUGGESTIONS

This is a sermon.

Its purpose is to point out the need of a clearer conception of right
and wrong, based on knowledge.

Its text is from Ecclesiastes I, 13, "And I gave my heart to seek and
search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven;
this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised
therewith."