Poor White | Page 4

against a
hard climate and had managed to find a living on stony unproductive
soil. The milder climate and the rich deep soil of Michigan was, they
felt, full of promise. Sarah's father like most of his neighbors had gone
into debt for his land and for tools with which to clear and work it and
every year spent most of his earnings in paying interest on a mortgage
held by a banker in a nearby town, but that did not discourage him. He
whistled as he went about his work and spoke often of a future of ease
and plenty. "In a few years and when the land is cleared we'll make
money hand over fist," he declared.
When Sarah grew into young womanhood and went about among the
young people in the new country, she heard much talk of mortgages
and of the difficulty of making ends meet, but every one spoke of the
hard conditions as temporary. In every mind the future was bright with
promise. Throughout the whole Mid-American country, in Ohio,
Northern Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa a hopeful spirit
prevailed. In every breast hope fought a successful war with poverty
and discouragement. Optimism got into the blood of the children and
later led to the same kind of hopeful courageous development of the
whole western country. The sons and daughters of these hardy people
no doubt had their minds too steadily fixed on the problem of the

paying off of mortgages and getting on in the world, but there was
courage in them. If they, with the frugal and sometimes niggardly New
Englanders from whom they were sprung, have given modern
American life a too material flavor, they have at least created a land in
which a less determinedly materialistic people may in their turn live in
comfort.
In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellow
defeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who
had become Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed
the blood of the pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She
and her husband would, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while
and then move on to a larger town and a better position in life. They
would move on and up until the little fat man was a railroad president
or a millionaire. It was the way things were done. She had no doubt of
the future. "Do everything well," she said to her husband, who was
perfectly satisfied with his position in life and had no exalted notions as
to his future. "Remember to make your reports out neatly and clearly.
Show them you can do perfectly the task given you to do, and you will
be given a chance at a larger task. Some day when you least expect it
something will happen. You will be called up into a position of power.
We won't be compelled to stay in this hole of a place very long."
The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the
indolent farm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own
people. Every afternoon when her housework was done she took the
boy into the front room of the house and spent hours laboring with him
over his lessons. She worked upon the problem of rooting the stupidity
and dullness out of his mind as her father had worked at the problem of
rooting the stumps out of the Michigan land. After the lesson for the
day had been gone over and over until Hugh was in a stupor of mental
weariness, she put the books aside and talked to him. With glowing
fervor she made for him a picture of her own youth and the people and
places where she had lived. In the picture she represented the New
Englanders of the Michigan farming community as a strong god-like
race, always honest, always frugal, and always pushing ahead. His own
people she utterly condemned. She pitied him for the blood in his veins.

The boy had then and all his life certain physical difficulties she could
never understand. The blood did not flow freely through his long body.
His feet and hands were always cold and there was for him an almost
sensual satisfaction to be had from just lying perfectly still in the
station yard and letting the hot sun beat down on him.
Sarah Shepard looked upon what she called Hugh's laziness as a thing
of the spirit. "You have got to get over it," she declared. "Look at your
own people--poor white trash--how lazy and shiftless they are. You
can't be like them. It's a sin to be so dreamy and worthless."
Swept along by the energetic spirit of the