[176] Chapter 11 The Man at Home "Ah tell you, Mis' Gillen, dat Mistah Smith, he' de fines' white man Ah ebah see!" - Lottie Hays.   The home that we made in Independence we built ourselves, and Mr. Smith took great pleasure in seeing that the materials used and the workmanship were of the best. He had a knowledge of carpentry and plumbing and masonry and electricity which made his oversight more than a matter of idly looking on, and at times if the work did not go exactly as he wished he himself picked up a hammer, a monkeywrench or a paint brush and worked with the men. He insisted especially that the substantial frame be sunk well into the concrete foundations; and during many nights of howling storm or the occasional "twister" which passed our way it was a satisfaction to us to know that our little home was so firmly and snugly built. [177]   It was rather typical of my husband's skill and ability to get on with men, that the laborers about the place never resented his suggestions nor belittled his assistance. Typical, too, was the manner in which he forgot in his eager interest in the progress of the building the fact that he was not really one of them until I reminded him that it was not altogether fitting for a churchman of his prominence, newly arrived in a community like Independence, to go to the mill or hardware store in his overalls with the soil of labor on his face and hands; but after I spoke he usually dutifully made himself neat and clean to go to town.   For the exterior, our home was a modest, two-story frame house that we always kept painted in quiet grays as long as we lived there, the one real beauty of which was the gigantic oaks and walnut trees with which it was surrounded. The planning of the interior was left entirely with the architect and me, except that Fred made three stipulations. The stairways, he said, must be wide, the doors high and the bathing facilities ample. He said he was tired of bumping his head on the tops of doors, of squeezing through narrow passages and of so often finding too small a tub in other people's [178] houses, and wanted no such inconveniences in his own house.   We furnished our living rooms simply in browns and tans, yet substantially, with oak and leather chairs and library table to harmonize with the finish that Frederick carefully selected himself at the mill, some bright tapestries against the brown burlap and a multitude of bookcases, for when my library was combined with Mr. Smith's and the children's collections added, our walls were always well lined with books, in spite of those which had been given away or loaned and never returned.  We have always liked to share our books with our friends, and Mr. Smith in his attempts to educate and interest his people has given very freely; and as a consequence we have discovered volumes bearing his book plate or mine in every corner of the country. People of course had not meant to keep our books; often they did not know even how they had come by them, but a book once started on its travels, like gossip, goes a long way, but it seldom gets back so soon.   His love of electricity and things electrical still clung to him. He assisted in wiring the house himself and through the habit of sending acquaintances to his favorite supply house earned for his commission several fixtures [179] and contrivances, including a pretty bit lighted statuary, "The Dawn," which he selected carefully to please my artistic taste, he said. These he displayed to his friends with an air of great pride, not because he owned them, but because he had earned instead of purchased them.   Once Bess' sister-in-law, Viola Blair, who used to stop in for a cup of tea as she came from shopping in the city, had been shown the collection to which she herself had contributed with generous orders, and as she pointed from the latest contrivance to our youngest daughter who at six month sat very straight in her high chair, she exclaimed laughingly:   "I shouldn't be surprised, Ruth, if by the next time I come Fred will have wired up the baby and she will be running around by electricity, too!"   When "Aunt Vee" came to see us the next time the child was actually on her feet. Her "record book" say she walked "by things" at seven months, but the amusing part was that she did not feel her way cautiously about from one chair to another or along the wall, but grasping the bottom of her light carriage ran at top speed as long as she could push the cart before her, or with undaunted courage ran on tiptoe from one [180] place of support to another, while "Aunt Vee's" beautiful hair always exquisitely dressed as it was all but stood on end as she watched her.   Whether or not she was run by electricity or some other mysterious fluid, Lois kept herself and everyone else actively engaged, day and night, for she cried constantly, and no amount of effort could discover the reason for her suffering. Our good friends gradually stopped coming to see us during the infancy of this child, and "Aunt Vee" told me once that they did not see how we endured continually what no one else could stand for more than fifteen minutes at a time. The little one' father, however, developed unsuspected patience and understanding with the unfortunate child and frequently walked the house with her at night in order to give me a little rest. In fact, I rather think her baby illnesses endeared her to us all, and they certainly did her no lasting harm, for she has since developed a husky constitution and promised to be as enthusiastic an athlete as her father, having a special preference for baseball and swimming - but throughout her early childhood her father was very gentle and tender with her, and loved to have her with him as he worked about the house and grounds. [181]   She considered it a great privilege to be allowed to sit on a "saw-horse" or step-ladder in the dark room he had fitted up in the basement while he fussed with his exposures and "bolutions," as she called the chemical baths he used in his work photography.   He had some modern ideas too about landscape gardening and for years found time to care for his own lawn and terrace, his canna bulbs and his barberry hedge, though he was never at home long enough to attend to a vegetable garden. He loved especially the flowering shrubs and the plants which grew from bulbs with their luxurious foliage and rich brilliant colors. The giant trees of the place sapped much of the life from the soil so that he was often grieved to see his roses and lilacs struggle on for a few years and die out, but the tulips and hyacinths prospered, and the lilies. He always called me to the window in the spring to see the first gay tiger lily that opened in the clumps of early flowers he so carefully tended.   Anything around the house that required mechanical ability amused him and rested him, he said, from his desk work; and besides he has often worked out some of his most trying and important problems as he meditated while fashioning bookcases, sewing tables or doll's furniture at his bench, or cutting [182] wood for the fire or sifting ashes. His heating appliances were a source of unusual pleasure to him and he was always devising new methods of automatic control of filling the house with fumes as he tried out a new fuel. Once when I was very ill and the nurse had left me with him for a short time he smelled smoke, and shouting "Fire!" started for the basement but did not return.   When the nurse came in an hour or so later she found me almost in a state of collapse, having lain all that time too weak to move and thinking that he had been overcome and had left me to be burned in my upstairs bedroom.   "Where have you been? What was the matter?" I asked when I had recovered a little and he finally appeared.   "Why, it was just the furnace smoking," he answered calmly, for it had never occurred to him that I might have been worried, "and I just stopped to attend to some work in the basement."   Another of his favorite tasks is to carve a roast or fowl for a large dinner, and to serve it in the good, old-fashioned, English way. We frequently plan our meals to give him this pleasure which he takes in the actual serving of his family and friends, even when service form the kitchen might be more convenient [183] or in better form. He is a good cook too, and breakfast is his specialty. Whenever members of my family visit us they always order up some of "Fred's good pancakes" as soon as they arrive and are quite scornful if I suggest fixing them anything else.   Those who have know him about his home neighborhood of course are acquainted with these domestic traits and with his willingness to serve in the small ways as well as in the more official capacity, but those who have known him only through his writings, his occasional short exhortations from the pulpit or as an adamantine chairman or a business session in which numerous fine parliamentarians from the floor are waiting to take the meeting from under his control at the slightest opportunity, are sometimes surprised at the simplicity of his taste and the generosity of his nature. The wife of one of our church officers, who was called to Independence by the illness of her husband personally before, was greatly astonished when on her first morning it was not I but the president of her church who brought in the breakfast cakes.   It is unfortunate that a man who so loved [184] his home and his home duties should have grown into a work that gradually left us so little time for domestic pleasures and privacy.   We once received an anonymous letter from a neighbor who censured us for extravagance on the grounds that he or she had seen the ice cream wagon stop in front of our place for three Sundays in succession. We could only laugh. Had we known or cared who our accuser was we might easily have defended our case, I think, by asking that person to spend a season in our home as it came to be. From earliest morning to latest night we were busy with the duties of church, school and home.   Our Sundays particularly, from six-thirty or seven in the morning, when people were waiting on the front porch even before we were up, until hours after the evening meeting when the last caller left, one group jostled another for room in our long living room and dining room, and no one would leave until another had come to take his place. We tried always to be at the morning sermon and afterwards were obliged to meet with committees, arrange the educational services or hurry home to play the host and hostess for a number of guests, or one would stay at the church, another serve [185] the dinner at home and a third leave for city to courteously bring over the speaker of the afternoon. It is scarcely surprising then that we had sometimes to resort to the confectioner for our Sunday desserts.   With the passing years as the business of "open house" grew more arduous and insistent, we came eventually to accept the public character of our home life, to look for its amusing side and sometimes to enjoy a very warm and pleasant side as well. We are persons to whom the love and confidence of our people has meant much in spite of the sacrifices we have had to make in order to serve them, and there is also a pleasurable thrill in being able to welcome some one who has come a long way, whether he be an old-time friend or an utter stranger.   I recall particularly the time when Rachel LaRue came from Salt Lake City. She was a modiste of unusual ability and of fine character who had been in our home there frequently, a woman without home or family and whose step was halting, but when she determined to come to Independence she set out bravely and arrived one night on a late train at the little depot several blocks from our house. There was no cab at the station and though she was tired from the long trip and a stranger in the town, she started to [186] walk, hoping to find some place where she might ask her way to our house.   As she stumbled up the uneven brick walk of the long, illy lighted street, each house, she said, seemed to repulse here with its dim lights and tightly drawn shades, until finally she saw one house where the light streamed out brightly through a big unshaded window and across an unfenced lawn and drive. Instinctively she turned in.   I was reading in the "library" as we called the book-lined, windowed recess at one end of our long living room, when Alice answered a timid knock at the door.   "Why its Rachel!" exclaimed the child with an odd little squeal of welcome. Our lifelong habit of leaving out lights burning and our shades not drawn had guided one more wanderer to our door.   Rachel told me once, some time afterward, that our was the only home in the world where she felt free to come on a Sunday or a holiday or when she was lonely, because she knew that there, not matter what we were doing or who was with us, she was always welcome.   Another winter night, I remember, the door was opened to a groups of pilgrims from even farther away than the Great Salt Lake or Utah, for on that occasion the big policeman [187] from the station brought us a family from Basel, Switzerland. It was very late, but this was not the first time the officer had piloted strangers to our door and he waited patiently while Mr. Smith dressed and let them in. I too dressed hurriedly and the girls, who never slept when anything else was going on, came creeping down to see a strange tableau. The patrolman explained that he thought we must be the people they wanted, though he didn't understand their talk, and went away leaving a Swiss standing watchfully in the midst of his luggage, his face haggard with lack of sleep and the responsibility of the long journey, while his pale-faced, pretty girl wife looked about her timidly, and a little child in a short plaid skirt, tight jacket and long loose golden hair, looking like a picture from a story book, stood silently and with dignity in the midst of all this strangeness.   "You are welcome," exclaimed my husband in German, turning to the young man with a hearty handclasp. The fine young face lighted with pleasure; they were probably the first words he had understood since he reached this country. With a long sigh of relief, he motioned to his family that they were welcome, took off his great-coat and settled himself into a big chair to rest. He [188] was a portrait painter, he told Mr. Smith while we set out a quick lunch, and had started for American and the headquarters of his church with only on phrase of English at his command - "Frederick M. Smith, Independence, Missouri." All the way from New York he had found his way only by a repetition of that phrase, and now the magic password had accomplished its purpose and he could rest.   Lois with her innate tact had brought her treasure chest a bunch of little silk flags of various nations, the collection of which had accompanied the losing through parental discipline of her baby teeth, and even the Swiss mother's pale face relaxed into an amused smile to see the way the baby reached out her chubby hands gleefully for the banner which bore the white cross on the crimson background. Next morning when they went away with Mr. Smith the child still carried with her that precious emblem of her lost country, but the next time we saw the baby, she had bobbed hair and wore an American dress with socks to match, and understood no word but English.   There were others who came from foreign countries, many others, and they were made welcome in their own tongue. Mr. Smith speaks German with fair fluency, and his [189] French is adequate for reading purposes and for conversing with foreigners in America; but when he was not at home the difficulties of receiving these wanderers were increased.   A youth once came from Holland during his absence, and though we took him in and made him welcome we had trouble in making him understand us. But before he left he sat down at the piano and told us in a language which no one could misunderstand how much he appreciated our kindness to him. Several months later he returned to say in words what he had told us in music before, and we marveled at the rapidity with which he had learned English. He was a pleasant fellow and we spent a long evening before the fireplace, toasting marshmallows and listening to his tales of Holland and to his account of his experiences in America since he had gone to work in a shop with one of our church boys, and of his attempts to learn our language.   On of the most curious strangers who ever came, I think, was not from a far country, but the circumstances of his coming were so peculiar that we have since referred to him as "the Christmas visitor." That was a memorable Christmas. I had sent Fred as a gift to an old friend in Los Angeles who needed his comfort and advice, and his [190] return from San Francisco was delayed by this, and by the great snowstorm which stopped the continental trains in the very heart of the Rockies. Mr. Smith at his Christmas dinner on a stranded Pullman train some place in Colorado with some army officers who were "old Iowa men," and losing track of the time, he had forgotten to telegraph us Christmas greetings, so that one day passed in solitude and anxiety.   In the evening as we sat by the fir alone the stranger had come out of the cold splendor of that Christmas night, knocking at our door. I was startled at first by his uncouth appearance as he stood in his dirty mackinaw and rough wool cap with the snow still lying on his sodden shoulders and unkempt beard.   "Are there any Latter Day Saints living here?" he demanded abruptly.   "Yes," I said, throwing open the door, "and the same old Latter Day Saint welcome1"   We took him in and made him comfortable by the fire and a second glance at his rugged old face assured me. Dirty he certainly was, and gruff, but with the warmth of the fire and our matter-of-course acceptance of him he gradually became confidential, and we heard from him a strange story. He had once been a missionary in our church, he [191] said, but as he grew older and his wife died, his children scattered, and he was left alone on his farm in a Northern State. His daughter would have welcomed him, he said, but they insisted on his wearing clean collars and wiping his shoes at the door and he could endure no such restrictions.   For many years he had been thinking and experiment with farm machinery and had finally worked out a design and models for a plow which would stir up the soil without turning the rich surface of the land, a principle which is now used in most modern machinery. And from his battered luggage he brought the designs and explained them, telling us that he had brought them as a gift for the church. His thought was always for the church.   "Ever since I have been a child,' he said simply, "I have always knelt in the morning with my face toward the rising sun, and prayed for the church and its leaders, and that I might live to see a literal Zion built on the earth."   Of such, we are told, is the kingdom of heaven. And yet, with all its child-like assurance, I do not think that the faith of this old follower was any greater or more sincere than that of the leader whom many look upon as their prophet and president. [192]   Among the household ceremonies which grew up in our home were several which reflected the spiritual nature of this man who is my husband. We read together often on Sunday evenings, and each member of the family chose something to be read. Mr. Smith's favorite book at one time was a great old-fashioned history called Fleetwood's "Life of Christ." It was so big that we were able to read from it for many years without exhausting its fund of quaint and beautiful stories from the life of Jesus. We used to have our own testimony meetings, too, to which even the baby contributed the discussion of her childish experiences with sage morals attached. Mr. Smith was both amused and pleased, I remember, at one little trick of Lois'. At family prayer, lest any of us should forget the Lord's Prayer which she insisted should be said in unison after we had each prayed alone, she used to rush with such breathless haste from the "Amen" of her little prayer which was last to the "Our Father who art in heaven" with which the greatest of all prayers begins, that her little voice was utterly exhausted and we were obliged to finish the prayer without her.   Not to the strangers alone did our home become a place of refuge. The children of [193] the neighborhood in which we lived in Independence could have told that the swings which Mr. Smith put up in the big oak trees, the sand box he built in the back yard and the tennis and basketball courts and the baseball diamonds which he marked out in the vacant lots of either side of our Independence home were as much for their use as for that or our own girls.   We have always believed that in places wee there are not adequate playground and gymnasium facilities people should turn over their unused property to the children of the community - and besides I think Fred liked to have them around. In fact I have sometimes caught him pitching back the balls the boys knocked into the lawn with something of wistfulness in his eyes.   With these children of the neighborhood my husband came to be very close friends. I remember a Halloween party we once had for the children and to which we invited every child, big and little, for two blocks around. It was the children's party, but their father enjoyed it as much as any Briggs or Elliott who attended, and indeed he was the life of the party, for when they had pulled as much taffy as they could eat they sat down with their buttery faces and scorched palms while Mr. Smith held them spellbound [194] with a remarkably literal version of "Androcles and the Lion," which he followed with an even more stirring recital of Ichabod Crane's famous ride, after which even the oldest was afraid to go home in the dark. It was an experience which they still remember and recall to him, even as he congratulates them on their college successes.   Among Mr. Smith's most loyal supporters today are men who were boys about the place in those days when the complexity of life had not quite taken from him the time and opportunity to be "neighbors" with those whose homes adjoined ours.   One of these men is Ellis Short, jr. Now a man of keen business ability and rare honesty and courage and good humor, he was a mischievous, careless, happy-go-lucky boy, who more than once used to try the patience of his adult friends and relatives. His father, I remember, used to say that he wouldn't take a million dollars for the youngster, but he wouldn't give two cents for another one like him.   But Frederick always stood up for the boy. In the first place my husband always found him amusing. Fred is not a man to remember and repeat the ordinary run of jokes, but he has certain anecdotes which he greatly delight to tell on his friends, particularly [195] when they themselves are present to enjoy the tale or not, according to their natures. One of the choicest of these stories is that which he tells of Ellis's interest in bear stories, and how his father finally cured him of the taste.   "One day I was out hunting," said elder Mr. Short to his son when the boy had climbed on his lap demanding another bear story, "and I saw a big bear up in a tree. I shot at him and missed him and he turned around, jumped out of the tree and started for me. What do you suppose I did?"   "Don't know," murmured Ellis aghast.   "Why, when he got up close and opened his mouth to eat me, I just put my hand down his throat, and got hold of his tail, and pulled him wrong side out!"   There was a moment of painful silence while Ellis figured out just what sort of a story had been told him.   "Let me down, father," said the boy solemnly. "Let me down."   It was more that amusement, however which led Mr. Smith always to insist that Ellis would make a fine man in spite of his early shortcomings.   "But have you ever noticed," my husband would say when he heard of some prank, "that Ellis is always ready to say 'I'm sorry' [196] when he sees how far his mischief has gone?"   With Ellis's family, Bishop Short and his wife, who lived through the block, we were the best of friends. Their big brick house was hospitably opened to us while our own was building, and to our girls "Aunt Eva" and Mr. Short were almost like fairy godparents, though to be sure our good neighbor was scarcely the man to call a fairy, with his sturdy frame, his square jaw that closed firmly on any matter involving integrity or principle and his droll way of telling the most impossible yarns with all becoming dignity and seriousness.   Mr. Short was very fond of Alice Myrmida and once promised her a pony. We had forgotten the promise entirely when one day he led onto the back porch a very pretty small horse of a sturdy Western breed which he said was asking for little Miss Smith. Before she could get to the door, however, the pet had advanced to meet her, and he was standing with both feet on the threshold when she caught sight of him.   For several years this pony was our principal means of transportation and the source of our most lasting pleasures. We formed the habit the, which we have retained to an extent to this day, of gathering [197] up our supper and the children and driving out to rest and eat in the open.   The family had about outgrown the little carriage which was a present from our good Scotch brother Daniel Macgregor, however, when an equally sturdy and a little more commodious Dodge car came to take the place of our pony. Mr. William Crick and his wife, now of LaJolla, California, were buying as gifts for their son and daughter two Dodge cars, and after a little desultory talk with Frederick about makes and upkeep ordered three instead.   "Keep yourself and the family out in the fresh air, Frederick, and leave as many of your troubles at the office as you can," said Mr. Crick, bringing the third car to our door much as Roy had come some time before.   We have never since been without some kind of car, and his automobile is one of my husband's greatest delights. He loves to attend to the small matters of repair and upkeep which make car owning burdensome to the less mechanically inclined. It hurts him to see machinery abused as it would to see a child kicked or a helpless animal tortured. It was with difficulty that he was persuaded to let anyone else learn to drive the car, but he was always wonderfully patient about planning his work to accommodate us all. [198] He is usually considered a careful driver, too, though he has occasionally narrowly escaped upsetting the car to keep from running over a chicken or a toad in the road.   A sister once asked me, after a particularly stormy session of the General Conference, how I dared to live with a man who pounded his fists and shouted as my husband did in his earnestness to get across some point of logic or parliamentary practice. If she could have seen, as I have, how greatly the big heart and generous sympathy overbalances the official sternness I think perhaps she would have understood.   When he has been called to the bedside of suffering children his tenderness has been very great.   Among Lois's favorite playmates were Aileen and Clarice Gillen, the daughters of an apostle in the church, and most talented and beautiful children. My husband has come in many times to tell me of some queer ceremony in which he had surprised the children, and their ceremonies ranged all the way from the funeral of a pet squirrel to a suffrage meeting.   Lois seems to have inherited some taste for public performance from one side or the other of the family. She was discovered at the age of three lecturing and gesticulating [199] to an assembled audiences of one kitten, two teddy bears and her sister's old doll, and explained when questioned that she had been elected mayor and was making a speech of acceptance. It was quite natural therefore that public ceremonies of all sorts should appear in her plays, and the Gillen children, daughters of an able missionary, were congenial companions in this, too.   Mr. Smith particularly remembers the time he found a colony of mice in the cobs he had bought for kindling and sent for Lois, Clarice and "Pussy Blue" to help him exterminate the pests. Pussy undoubtedly had the most efficient method but she was a canny cat and would eat only the young and tender ones, while Mr. Smith chased out the elders and Lois and Clarice killed them with some old brooms. It was Clarice's first taste of blood and when the hunting became most exciting she quite lost her poise and struck right and left with her weapon, beating Mr. Smith over the head with her broom almost as often as she hit a mouse.   Several years later after we had left Independence the older sister Aileen, sent for Mr. Smith when she was dying. She had lain for months wasting away with a deadly heart disease, and late one night when we came in from a long journey we learned that [200] the little girl had asked that Brother Smith come and pray with her in the morning.   "We will not wait till morning," I said, and tired as we were we took the long drive to visit the sick child who had loved and trusted him. He prayed, not that she would live, but that she might have peace, and before morning she slept and died without waking. The tears still come to his eyes as my husband speaks of his gratitude in being able to fulfill her last request, and that he had reached her before it was too late.   If by any chance our lives are judged by what they say of us - those people among whom we all live, who know so very little about us, but each of whom has some small point of contact on which to build up an opinion and much to say in support of that opinion - if, I say, we should be judged by this alone rather than by that which we ourselves might testify before the Great Tribunal, I have no fear for my husband. Because, for everyone who will be there to criticize some fault of manner or detail of policy, I think perhaps there will be another who has known and can testify to his kindliness and the greatness of his inner nature - some child made happy, some tramp fed, some servant courteously trespasser generously forgiven.   For instance there was a fine old Negro "mammy" who washed for us for many years and who once paid Mr. Smith a very splendid compliment.   "I have a 'trade-last' for you," I told Fred one evening when we were taking our drive. "And it's a good one, so think hard."   "Well," he said slowly after quite a while, for he dislikes such nonsense but had the natural curiosity to want to know what I was going to tell him. "The other day I heard your old friend Brother Francis Sheehy say that he thought you grew more like your mother every day and that you had her brilliant philosophical mind."   "All right," I said, "that will do, though I think you told it to me before. Well, Mrs. Gillen told me that our mammy Lottie said that you were the very finest white man she every saw."   Fred looks at me quizzically for a minute, and then he grew thoughtful. Presently he said, "Yes, I think that it is a worth-while compliment. Lottie is a very old woman - she doesn't even know how old herself - was a slave for years. She must have know many people in her lifetime, and should be a good judge of men and their qualities."   Now, I am not so old as Lottie, nor have I known so many men as she indeed must [202] have known in all those years of service; yet I know this one man better than I think even she could have, and I, too, think that he is just about the finest white man I ever saw. Previous chapter (10) Next chapter (11) Frederick M Smith page Who was who