The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

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If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman
One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman
Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman
Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman
"Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman
And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE
CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

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Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from
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THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
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Volume 1. No. 12 OCTOBER, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Tin soldiers have long been a popular toy.
Why not tin carpenters?

ONLY MINE

They told me what she had done--
Of her life like a river free:
Teaching and showing with tender truth,
Giving her light to age and youth,
Till fathers and mothers and children grew
To listen and learn and see
What the village had come to be;
How they had no sickness, young or old,
And had lost but one from all their fold;
For all the people knew
How to keep life strong and true;
And I asked her how had her love begun
To ripen and reach to every one.

She lifted a royal head,
Standing straight, as a tree;
While troops of little ones clustered and clung
To raiment and hand and knee.
"Should I not be glad," said she,
"In health and beauty and joy like this?
Babies by hundreds to cuddle and kiss;
A happier town was never sung;
A heaven of children for old and young;
There is only one that is dead--
It was only mine," she said.

THE BOYS AND THE BUTTER

Young Holdfast and J. Edwards Fernald sat grimly at their father's
table, being seen and not heard, and eating what was set before them,
asking no questions for conscience' sake, as they had been duly reared.
But in their hearts were most unchristian feelings toward a venerable
guest, their mother's aunt, by name Miss Jane McCoy.

They knew, with the keen observation of childhood, that it was only a
sense of hospitality, and duty to a relative, which made their father
and mother polite to her--polite, but not cordial.

Mr. Fernald, as a professed Christian, did his best to love his wife's
aunt, who came as near being an "enemy" as anyone he knew. But Mahala,
his wife, was of a less saintly nature, and made no pretense of more
than decent courtesy.

"I don't like her and I won't pretend to; it's not honest!" she
protested to her husband, when he remonstrated with her upon her want of
natural affection. "I can't help her being my aunt--we are not
commanded to honor our aunts and uncles, Jonathan E."

Mrs. Fernald's honesty was of an iron hardness and heroic mould. She
would have died rather than have told a lie, and classed as lies any
form of evasion, deceit, concealment or even artistic exaggeration.

Her two sons, thus starkly reared, found their only imaginative license
in secret converse between themselves, sacredly guarded by a pact of
mutual faith, which was stronger than any outward compulsion. They
kicked each other under the table, while enduring this visitation,
exchanged dark glances concerning the object of their common dislike,
and discussed her personal peculiarities with caustic comment later,
when they should have been asleep.

Miss McCoy was not an endearing old lady. She was heavily built, and
gobbled her food, carefully selecting the best. Her clothing was
elaborate, but not beautiful, and on close approach aroused a suspicion
of deferred laundry bills.

Among many causes for dislike for her aunt, Mrs. Fernald cherished this
point especially. On one of these unwelcome visits she had been at some
pains to carry up hot water for the Saturday evening bath, which was all
the New England conscience of those days exacted, and the old lady had
neglected it not only once but twice.

"Goodness sake, Aunt Jane! aren't you ever going to take a bath?"

"Nonsense!" replied her visitor. "I don't believe in all this wetting
and slopping. The Scripture says, 'Whoso washeth his feet, his whole
body shall be made clean.'"

Miss McCoy had numberless theories for other people's conduct, usually
backed by well-chosen texts, and urged them with no regard for anybody's
feelings. Even the authority of parents had no terrors for her.

Sipping her tea from the saucer with deep swattering inhalations, she
fixed her prominent eyes upon the two boys as they ploughed their way
through their bread and butter. Nothing must be left on the plate, in
the table ethics of that time. The meal was simple in the extreme. A
New Hampshire farm furnished few luxuries, and the dish of quince
preserves had already been depleted by her.

"Mahala," she said with solemn determination, "those boys eat too much
butter."

Mrs. Fernald flushed up to the edging of her cap. "I think I must be
the judge of what my children eat at my table, Aunt Jane," she answered,
not too gently.

Here Mr. Fernald interposed with a "soft answer." (He had never lost
faith in the efficacy of these wrath turners, even on long repeated
failure. As a matter of fact, to his wife's temper, a soft answer,
especially an intentionally soft answer, was a fresh aggravation.) "The
missionary, now, he praised our butter; said he never got any butter in
China, or wherever 'tis he lives."

"He is a man of God," announced Miss McCoy. "If there is anybody on
this poor earth deserving reverence, it is a missionary. What they
endure for the Gospel is a lesson for us all. When I am taken I intend
to leave all I have to the Missionary Society. You know that."

They knew it and said nothing. Their patience with her was in no way
mercenary.

"But what I am speaking of is children," she continued, not to be
diverted from her fell purpose. "Children ought not to eat butter."

"They seem to thrive on it," Mrs. Fernald replied tartly. And in truth
both the boys were sturdy little specimens of humanity, in spite of
their luxurious food.

"It's bad for them. Makes them break out. Bad for the blood. And
self-denial is good for children. 'It is better to bear the yoke in thy
youth.'"

The youth in question spread its butter more thickly, and ate it with
satisfaction, saying nothing.

"Here, boys!" she suddenly assailed them. "If you will go without
butter for a year--a whole year, till I come round again--I'll give each
of you fifty dollars!"

This was an overwhelming proposition.

Butter was butter--almost the only alleviation of a dry and monotonous
bill of fare, consisting largely of bread. Bread without butter! Brown
bread without butter! No butter on potatoes! No butter on anything!
The young imagination recoiled. And this measureless deprivation was to
cover a whole year. A ninth or an eleventh of a lifetime to them
respectively. About a fifth of all they could really remember.
Countless days, each having three meals; weeks, months, the long dry
butterless vista stretched before them like Siberian exile to a Russian
prisoner.

But, on the other hand, there was the fifty dollars. Fifty dollars
would buy a horse, a gun, tools, knives--a farm, maybe. It could be put
in the bank, and drawn on for life, doubtless. Fifty dollars at that
time was like five hundred to-day, and to a child it was a fortune.

Even their mother wavered in her resentment as she considered the fifty
dollars, and the father did not waver at all, but thought it a Godsend.

"Let 'em choose," said Miss McCoy.

Stern is the stock of the Granite State. Self-denial is the essence of
their religion; and economy, to give it a favorable name, is for them
Nature's first law.

The struggle was brief. Holdfast laid down his thick-spread slice. J.
Edwards laid down his. "Yes, ma'am," said one after the other. "Thank
you, ma'am. We'll do it."

*

It was a long year. Milk did not take the place of it. Gravy and
drippings, freely given by their mother, did not take the place of it,
nor did the infrequent portions of preserves. Nothing met the same
want. And if their health was improved by the abstinence it was in no
way visible to the naked eye. They were well, but they were well
before.

As to the moral effect--it was complex. An extorted sacrifice has not
the same odor of sanctity as a voluntary one. Even when made willingly,
if the willingness is purchased, the effect seems somewhat confused.
Butter was not renounced, only postponed, and as the year wore on the
young ascetics, in their secret conferences, indulged in wild visions of
oleaginous excess so soon as the period of dearth should be over.

But most they refreshed their souls with plans for the spending and the
saving of the hard-earned wealth that was coming to them. Holdfast was
for saving his, and being a rich man--richer than Captain Briggs or
Deacon Holbrook. But at times he wavered, spurred by the imagination of
J. Edwards, and invested that magic sum in joys unnumbered.

The habit of self-denial was perhaps being established, but so was the
habit of discounting the future, of indulging in wild plans of
self-gratification when the ship came in.

*

Even for butterless boys, time passes, and the endless year at last drew
to a close. They counted the months, they counted the weeks, they
counted the days. Thanksgiving itself shone pale by contrast with this
coming festival of joy and triumph. As it drew nearer and nearer their
excitement increased, and they could not forget it even in the passing
visit of a real missionary, a live one, who had been to those dark lands
where the heathen go naked, worship idols and throw their children to
the crocodiles.

They were taken to hear him, of course, and not only so, but he came to
supper at their house and won their young hearts by the stories he told
them. Gray of hair and beard was the preacher and sternly devout; but
he had a twinkling eye none the less, and told tales of wonder and
amazement that were sometimes almost funny and always interesting.

"Do not imagine, my young friends," he said, after filling them with
delicious horror at the unspeakable wickedness of those "godless lands,"
"that the heathen are wholly without morality. The Chinese, among whom
I have labored for many years, are more honest than some Christians.
Their business honor is a lesson to us all. But works alone cannot
save." And he questioned them as to their religious state, receiving
satisfactory answers.

The town turned out to hear him; and, when he went on circuit,
preaching, exhorting, describing the hardships and dangers of missionary
life, the joys of soul-saving, and urging his hearers to contribute to
this great duty of preaching the Gospel to all creatures, they had a
sort of revival season; and arranged for a great missionary church
meeting with a special collection when he should return.

The town talked missionary and thought missionary; dreamed missionary,
it might well be; and garrets were ransacked to make up missionary boxes
to send to the heathen. But Holdfast and J. Edwards mingled their
interest in those unfortunate savages with a passionate desire for
butter, and a longing for money such as they had never known before.

Then Miss McCoy returned.

They knew the day, the hour. They watched their father drive down to
meet the stage, and tormented their mother with questions as to whether
she would give it to them before supper or after.

"I'm sure I don't know!" she snapped at last. "I'll be thankful when
it's over and done with, I'm sure. A mighty foolish business, I think!"

Then they saw the old chaise turn the corner. What? Only one in it!
The boys rushed to the gate--the mother, too.

"What is it, Jonathan? Didn't she come?"

"Oh, father!"

"Where is she, father?"

"She's not coming," said Mr. Fernald. "Says she's going to stay with
Cousin Sarah, so's to be in town and go to all the missionary doin's.
But she's sent it."

Then he was besieged, and as soon as the horse was put up, by three
pairs of busy hands, they came to the supper table, whereon was a full
two pounds of delicious butter, and sat down with tingling impatience.

The blessing was asked in all due form--a blessing ten miles long, it
seemed to the youngsters, and then the long, fat envelope came out of
Mr. Fernald's pocket.

"She must have written a lot," he said, taking out two folded papers,
and then a letter.

"My dear great-nephews," ran the epistle, "as your parents have assured
me that you have kept your promise, and denied yourselves butter for the
space of a year, here is the fifty dollars I promised to each of
you--wisely invested."

Mr. Fernald opened the papers. To Holdfast Fernald and to J. Edwards
Fernald, duly made out, receipted, signed and sealed, were two $50 life
memberships in the Missionary society!

Poor children! The younger one burst into wild weeping. The older
seized the butter dish and cast it on the floor, for which he had to be
punished, of course, but the punishment added nothing to his grief and
rage.

When they were alone at last, and able to speak for sobbing, those
gentle youths exchanged their sentiments; and these were of the nature
of blasphemy and rebellion against God. They had learned at one fell
blow the hideous lesson of human depravity. People lied--grown
people--religious people--they lied! You couldn't trust them! They had
been deceived, betrayed, robbed! They had lost the actual joy
renounced, and the potential joy promised and withheld. The money they
might some day earn, but not heaven itself could give back that year of
butter. And all this in the name of religion--and of missionaries!
Wild, seething outrage filled their hearts at first; slower results
would follow.

*

The pious enthusiasm of the little town was at its height. The
religious imagination, rather starved on the bald alternatives of
Calvinism, found rich food in these glowing tales of danger, devotion,
sometimes martyrdom; while the spirit of rigid economy, used to daylong
saving from the cradle to the grave, took passionate delight in the
success of these noble evangelists who went so far afield to save lost
souls.

Out of their narrow means they had scraped still further; denied
themselves necessaries where no pleasures remained; and when the
crowning meeting was announced, the big collection meeting, with the
wonderful brother from the Church in Asia to address them again, the
meeting house was packed in floor and gallery.

Hearts were warm and open, souls were full of enthusiasm for the great
work, wave on wave of intense feeling streamed through the crowded
house.

Only in the Fernalds' pew was a spirit out of tune.

Fernald, good man though he was, had not yet forgiven. His wife had not
tried.

"Don't talk to me!" she had cried passionately, when he had urged a
reconciliation. "Forgive your enemies! Yes, but she hasn't done any
harm to _me!_. It's my boys she's hurt! It don't say one word about
forgiving other people's enemies!"

Yet Mrs. Fernald, for all her anger, seemed to have some inner source of
consolation, denied her husband, over which she nodded to herself from
time to time, drawing in her thin lips, and wagging her head decisively.

Vengeful bitterness and impotent rage possessed the hearts of Holdfast
and J. Edwards.

This state of mind in young and old was not improved when, on arriving
at the meeting a little late, they had found the head of the pew was
occupied by Miss McCoy.

It was neither the time nor the place for a demonstration. No other
seats were vacant, and Mrs. Fernald marched in and sat next to her,
looking straight at the pulpit. Next came the boys, and murder was in
their hearts. Last, Mr. Fernald, inwardly praying for a more Christian
spirit, but not getting it.

Holdfast and young J. Edwards dared not speak in church or make any
protest; but they smelled the cardamum seeds in the champing jaws beyond
their mother, and they cast black looks at each other and very secretly
showed clenched fists, held low.

In fierce inward rebellion they sat through the earlier speeches, and
when the time came for the address of the occasion, even the deep voice
of the brother from Asia failed to stir them. Was he not a missionary,
and were not missionaries and all their works proved false?

But what was this?

The address was over; the collection, in cash, was in the piled plates
at the foot of the pulpit. The collection in goods was enumerated and
described with full names given.

Then the hero of the hour was seen to confer with the other reverend
brothers, and to rise and come forward, raising his hand for silence.

"Dearly beloved brethren and sisters," he said, "in this time of
thanksgiving for gifts spiritual and temporal I wish to ask your
patience for a moment more, that we may do justice. There has come to
my ears a tale concerning one of our recent gifts which I wish you to
hear, that judgment may be done in Israel.

"One among us has brought to the House of the Lord a tainted
offering--an offering stained with cruelty and falsehood. Two young
children of our flock were bribed a year ago to renounce one of the
scant pleasures of their lives for a year's time--a whole long year of a
child's life. They were bribed with a promise--a promise of untold
wealth to a child, of fifty dollars each."

The congregation drew a long breath.

Those who knew of the Fernald boys' endeavor (and who in that friendly
radius did not?) looked at them eagerly. Those who recognized Miss
McCoy looked at her, too, and they were many. She sat, fanning herself,
with a small, straight-handled palmleaf fan, striving to appear
unconscious.

"When the time was up," the clear voice went on remorselessly, "the year
of struggle and privation, and the eager hearts of childhood expected
the reward; instead of keeping the given word, instead of the money
promised, each child was given a paid life membership in our society!"

Again the house drew in its breath. Did not the end justify the means?

He went on:

"I have conferred with my fellow members, and we are united in our
repudiation of this gift. The money is not ours. It was obtained by a
trick which the heathen themselves would scorn."

There was a shocked pause. Miss McCoy was purple in the face, and only
kept her place for fear of drawing more attention if she strove to
escape.

"I name no names," the speaker continued, "and I regret the burden laid
upon me to thus expose this possibly well-meant transaction, but what we
have at stake to-night is not this handful of silver, nor the feelings
of one sinner, but two children's souls. Are we to have their sense of
justice outraged in impressionable youth? Are they to believe with the
Psalmist that all men are liars? Are they to feel anger and blame for
the great work to which our lives are given because in its name they
were deceived and robbed? No, my brothers, we clear our skirts of this
ignominy. In the name of the society, I shall return this money to its
rightful owners. 'Whoso offendeth one of these little ones, it were
better that a millstone be hanged about his neck and he cast into the
depths of the sea.'"

A QUESTION

Why is it, God, that mother's hearts are made
So very deep and wide?
How does it help the world that we should hold
Such welling floods of pain till we are old
Because when we were young one grave was laid--
One baby died?

IS IT WRONG TO TAKE LIFE?

"Thou shalt not kill."

This is about as explicit as words can be; there is no qualification, no
palliating circumstance, no exception.

"Thou"--(presumably you and I, any and every person) "shalt not"--(a
prohibition absolute) "kill"--(take life: that is, apparently, of
anything).

How do we read this? How apply it?

Some have narrowed it to assassination only, frankly paraphrasing the
simple law, as "Thou shalt do no murder," and excepting the whole range
of war-slaughter, of legal execution, of "self-defence" and "justifiable
homicide."

Some have widened it to cover not only all human beings, but all animal
life as well; the Buddhist and his modern followers sparing even the ant
in the path, and the malaria-planting mosquito.

Such extremists should sit in sackcloth and ashes over the riotous
carriage of their own phagasytes; ever ruthlessly destroying millions
upon millions of staphyllococci and similar intruders.

Where should the line be drawn? And why? Especially why? Why is it
wrong to kill?

If we hark back to the direct command, we find that it could not have
been intended as universally binding.

"Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," and all the
explicit directions as to who should be killed, and how; for such and
such offences, certainly justify the axe and rope of the executioner;
and beyond that come numbers of inspired commands as to the merciless
extermination of opposing tribes in which men, women and children were
"put to the sword"--even to babes unborn. Killing seemed highly
honorable, even compulsory, among the people on whom this stern command
was laid.

Scholars teach us that the ten commandments were in truth not given to
the Israelites until after the return of Hezekiah; that may alter the
case a little, but assuredly if we are to believe the Old Testament at
all there was no blame attached to many kinds of killing.

The Prophets and Psalmists particularly yearned to have their enemies
destroyed, and exulted in their destruction.

In the teachings of Jesus we find another spirit altogether, but we have
not therefore abrogated the old commandments, and the problem of this
clear prohibition remains unsolved.

Those of us to-day who feel most keenly the evil of "taking life" are
almost Buddhistic in attitude. They object to killing for food or
killing in self-defence.

Fortunately for them, we have not many destructive wild beasts among us,
thanks to the vigorous killing of our less scrupulous forefathers.

Some millennial dreamers suggest that the wolves and catamounts might
have been tamed, if taken young; the natural resistance of the parents
to the "taking" overcome by moral suasion, doubtless! Yes, it is
conceivable that all the little snarling cubs and kittens might have
been tamed, and taught to feed out of the hand--_but on what?_

In India some there may be who would emulate their saintly master, who
offered his own body as food to a starving mother tiger; a sacrifice of
less moment than appears, since he believed he would soon have
another--that he had to have a great many--and that the sooner he got
through with the lot the better.

From this unkind point of view his offering was much like that of a lady
giving away a dress she is tired of, to promote the replenishment of her
wardrobe.

The popular objection to killing, in India, results in the continuance
of man-eating tigers and deadly serpents; which again results in their
killing, in their untaught vigor, great numbers of human beings and
other useful animals. The sum of the killings would be less if the
killers were killed.

In our cooler land we have fewer poisonous reptiles and creeping things,
yet insects there are which most of us slay with enthusiasm; the most
sentimental devotee would hardly share couch or clothing with them!
Surely no rational person objects to "justifiable insecticide"?

The most merciful will usually admit our own right to live, and
therefore to kill in self-defence all creatures that would kill us.
Where the line is drawn, however, by many earnest thinkers and feelers,
is at killing harmless, inoffensive creatures for food.

The sheep we may shear, but not make into chops; the cow we may milk,
but not turn into steaks and stews; the hen we may rob of her potential
young, but neither roast nor fricassee.

It is no wonder, in view of the steaming horrors of the slaughter-house,
that we recoil from killing; but is it the killing which is wrong in
itself, or merely the horrors?

Let us first consider how this might be done; and then, if, at its best,
the essential act of "taking life" is deemed wrong, we will consider
that.

Suppose green pastures and still waters, the shade of trees, the warmth
of the sun, the shelter of roof and walls; suppose protection and kind
care, provision for the winter, and that we only shared the milk with
the calves instead of barbarously separating the mother from her young.
Calves might be bottle-fed, to satisfy their hunger, and afterward
turned loose with the mother; they could not take all the milk then, and
we might have the rest.

Suppose creatures thus living in an animal paradise, then gathered in
small numbers, in local centers, and neatly, instantaneously and
painlessly killed, any surgeon can tell us how. They could then be
dressed, chilled and sent to larger centers for more general
distribution.