The Plum Tree | Page 2

his door. I'd hang out a big sign of my own over
my own office door."
My mother burst into a radiant smile. "I've been waiting a year to hear
that," she said.
Thereupon I had a shock of fright--inside, for I'd never have dared to
show fear before my mother. There's nothing else that makes you so
brave as living with some one before whom you haven't the courage to
let your cowardice show its feather. If we didn't keep each other up to
the mark, what a spectacle of fright and flight this world-drama would
be! Vanity, the greatest of vices, is also the greatest of virtues, or the
source of the greatest virtues--which comes to the same thing.
"When will you do it?" she went on, and then I knew I was in for it, and
how well-founded was the suspicion that had been keeping my lips

tight-shut upon my dream of independence.
"I'll--I'll think about it," was my answer, in a tone which I hoped she
would see was not hesitating, but reflective; "I mustn't go too far,--or
too fast."
"Better go too far and too fast than not go at all," retorted my wise
mother. "Once a tortoise beat a hare,--once. It never happened again,
yet the whole timid world has been talking about it ever since." And
she fell into a study from which she roused herself to say, "You'd better
let me bargain for the office and the furniture,--and the big sign." She
knew--but could not or would not teach me--how to get a dollar's worth
for a dollar; would not, I suspect, for she despised parsimony, declaring
it to be another virtue which is becoming only in a woman.
"Of course,--when--" I began.
"We've got to do something in the next six months," she warned. And
now she made the six months seem six minutes.
I had at my tongue's end something about the danger of dragging her
down into misfortune; but before speaking I looked at her, and, looking,
refrained. To say it to her would have been too absurd,--to her who had
been left a widow with nothing at all, who had educated me for college,
and who had helped me through my first year there,--helped me with
money, I mean. But for what she gave besides, more, immeasurably
more,--but for her courage in me and round me and under me,--I'd
never have got my degree or anything else, I fear. To call that courage
help would be like saying the mainspring helps the watch to go. I
looked at her. "They can't kill me, can they?" said I, with a laugh which
sounded so brave that it straightway made me brave.
So it was settled.
But that was the first step in a fight I can't remember even now without
a sinking at the heart. The farmers of Jackson County, of which Pulaski
was the county seat, found in litigation their chief distraction from the
stupefying dullness of farm life in those days of pause, after the Indian

and nature had been conquered and before the big world's arteries of
thought and action had penetrated. The farmers took eagerly to
litigation to save themselves from stagnation. Still, a new lawyer,
especially if he was young, had an agonizing time of it convincing their
slow, stiff, suspicious natures that he could be trusted in such a crisis as
"going to law."
To make matters worse I fell in love.
* * * * *
Once--it was years afterward, though not many years ago--Burbank, at
the time governor, was with me, and we were going over the main
points for his annual message. One of my suggestions--my orders to all
my agents, high and low, have always been sugar-coated as
"suggestions"--started a new train of thought in him, and he took pen
and paper to fix it before it had a chance to escape. As he wrote, my
glance wandered along the shelves of the book-cases. It paused on the
farthest and lowest shelf. I rose and went there, and found my old
school-books, those I used when I was in Public School Number Three,
too near thirty years ago!
In the shelf one book stood higher than the others--tall and thin and
ragged, its covers torn, its pages scribbled, stained and dog-eared.
Looking through that old physical geography was like a first talk with a
long-lost friend. It had, indeed, been my old friend. Behind its broad
back I had eaten forbidden apples, I had aimed and discharged the
blow-gun, I had reveled in blood-and-thunder tales that made the
drowsy schoolroom fade before the vast wilderness, the scene of
breathless struggles between Indian and settler, or open into the high
seas where pirate, or worse-than-pirate Britisher, struck flag to
American privateer or