The Fourth Generation
“No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him ….” - James Russell Lowell.
After two years we were expecting a son; at least everyone else was expecting us to have a son, for it is written that a son shall take the place of the father.
How well I remember a conversation between my sisters and myself when the subject came up as we sat sewing one sultry summer afternoon on my mother’s shady side lawn. Mother had been reading aloud to us, as had been her custom since we were little girls, but we had stopped to discuss some point. It was “Dickie” who started the slight altercation which followed when she said suddenly, in her positive way:
“When my child is born I shall call him Frederick Horace Johnson, junior.”
Bess said, “Well, Wayne is almost four, and if I should have another son I should certainly name him Frederick Banta Blair, junior.” Then she added, partly in earnest and partly to tease me, perhaps, “and you, Ruth, of course, you will have a Frederick Madison Smith, junior. That would be only proper, as the church is expecting it of you.”
“I’m sorry,” I answered, a little more tartly than necessary, no doubt, as the heat and the shadow of a new responsibility had put my nerves into a slightly sensitive condition, “but I did not agree to furnish a grandson for the president of the church. I know that Fred M. wants a little girl, just as I have always dreamed of having one, with brown hair and eyes like her father’s; and her name is to be Alice,” I said, smiling significantly at my mother, who had listened to our conversation quietly but with an amused little pucker to her lips.
“All right,” argued Bess in her most tantalizing manner, “you can say you want a girl, but you will never be able to make the church people believe that you do not want a boy!”
“I don’t care what they think,” I answered her, “and I know that Fred doesn’t care either. But of course, if - if it should be a boy I would name him - Frederick.”
The girls laughed, but my mother said, almost seriously, “Girls, it is very fine to have three men running to do my bidding or wait on my slightest wish whenever I speak the name of my sons-in-laws, but I think if you were to give us three more Freds it would be too confusing for comfort. We can at least distinguish our men-folk now by adding the second initial, but what would we do if we had two of each?
“Never mind, mother,” said my older favorite sister, who had never found any pleasure in an argument that caused her mother or me any discomfiture, “Ruth and I will have lovely girls to care for and comfort you, won’t we, Ruth?” and she pointed to little Helen who had stopped her play to run and nestle her yellow curls against her grandmother’s knee; and certainly no one has ever been able to make my mother admit that my sister’s Helen, and my Alice and Lois, and Wayne’s and Ethyl’s baby Lois Helen have not made “grandmuddah” quite as happy as have the fine and loving grandsons.
It was because of the little garments that I had just begun to make when this conversation occurred that an unexpected lesson come to Fred and me, and we became aware for the first time that we were no longer children with good homes and careful parents to plan and care for us, but that we were really a husband and wife and were obligated to assume the responsibility of regulating our own lives and even of looking forward to the care of children of our own.
We were still living with my mother in the big house in Lamoni. Ever since we had been little girls my sisters and I had had the privilege of running to my mother’s purse where it lay on the kitchen clock shelf and taking from the funds laid out for household expenses whatever we needed for small incidental purchases. I had run in, I remember, to get some money to buy lace or material for my sewing, when it suddenly occurred to me that I and my child no longer had any right to my mother’s purse. I talked to my husband about it and he agreed with me.
He was then doing editorial work for a small consideration on the official church publication with his father.
It was difficult, I recall, for Father smith to realize that his son was a grown and responsible man, and frequently in his dealings with department men the president would quite override the previously rendered decisions of his assistant. In this regard Fred was very patient. His training had always made him respectful to older men and superior officers and he was especially so with his father; but on one occasion, he told me, he was obliged to cal his father’s attention to the fact that he was no longer a child, and that as an assistant he must be give the consideration usually accorded to a man in that position.
A man whose material my husband had repeatedly refused, and whose custom it was under such circumstances to take the matter over the son’s head to the father, had gained his point, and Fred was attempting to discuss the matter with his father.
“Not a word, Freddie,” said the older man positively, “not another word!”
“Yes, father,” said Fred, “there will be just one more word. I did not ask you or your men for the office which I occupy; and if I am not to be allowed to function as another man would in my position, I shall resign immediately.”
“Frederick!” exclaimed Father Smith, suddenly awakened to the justice of his son’s demand, (and from that time he seldom called his son Fred) “take the material out. Hereafter I shall consult with you on such matters.”
It was at about this time, however, that the leading church men insisted that my husband take a “mission.” They believed it seems, that the experience of a missionary would help to round out and develop their future president. They also seemed to think that while I was still living with my mother and would have both her loving care and her financial assistance, if needed, he could well afford to let me make the sacrifices which his absence and the small allowance of a missionary would necessitate.
To those grown old in the work of the church, such sacrifices seemed only a privilege, and the pinch of poverty seemed in significant beside the pleasure of helping to promulgate the ideas and ideals of the church. To a healthy, red-blooded young man of twenty-five, however, and one about to become a father, the welfare of the “heathen,” black or white, at home or abroad, seemed by no means as important as the comfort and happiness of his wife and future family. He therefore refused temporarily to take the mission offered him at this time and found instead a position as foreman of a telephone construction gang that was building on of the first cross-country lines near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
His letters to me were filled with interesting experiences. He was soon made “boss” of the gang and his men were fond of him. He got on well with them in spite of certain essential differences of trait and habit between himself and the rough laboring men whom he directed. They found, of course, that he would not drink or gamble with them and that their attempts to bully him into doing anything he did not wish to do were entirely unavailing. His personality was such, however, that instead of accepting his abstinence as an indication of weakness, they realized his superiority and made use of it by intrusting him with part of their wages of pay nights, with the solemn injunction that he was not to give the money back to them if they were intoxicated, no matter how much they insisted. He was always true to a trust. More than once the men tried to fight him for their money, but he never gave it to them until morning had brought back their reason, and they could gratefully thank him for protecting them against themselves.
He says he will never know just what would have happened if several of them had set on him at once in their attempts to retrieve the money they had intrusted to him; but I know that he would have put up a grand fight, and that they would have had to “knock him out” to have taken it from him. But it never came to that. Ordinarily he was able to control them better with the force of his character and personality than most men could have with fists and firearms.
I think he rather enjoyed his power over them; and again he enjoyed for the last time a freedom from the responsibility of his father’s position, as he had at the University of Iowa. It was a joy to him to know that he could make his way by himself without depending on the favor of his father’s friends or people.
The family with whom he boarded in Wheeling, West Virginia, when his work held him there for a time, were members of his church, but he did not tell them until he was ready to leave that he was their president’s son. One day before he left, however, he stopped before a large picture of his father which hung over their mantel, and remarked:
“That is a fine picture of father, isn’t it?”
His friends could not understand, of course, (and they had become quite fond of him, too) why he had not told them who he was, but answered simply that he wanted to be liked for his own sake and not because of his father.
I think I did not have the modern girl’s love of money. I had been raised with plenty and had been taught to take when I needed and to give no thought to what I did not need or could not afford. I must confess, however, to a keen pleasure in the receipt twice monthly of that pay check from the East. It pleased me, in a way, as it did him, to know that he could “make good,” and that he had gone into the wilderness to face danger and difficulty in order that he might more properly care for me. Another reason was that much of the money was spent for the most exquisite of materials, silks and soft cashmeres, lace and ribbon, with which my mother and sisters and I spent many an afternoon fashioning the small garments that are so dear to every young woman.
Not even the cablegram which recently announced his return from a year’s tour of Europe brought a thrill like that of his telegram from a roadside station in Pennsylvania, when it was at last time for me to send for him. Preparations were made for his homecoming, and I dressed myself in my daintiest gown to greet him. He appeared however in the work clothes in which he had been dressed when he got our word, a suit of ill-fitting and badly soiled corduroy, a black sateen shirt, an old cap and shoes, and a red bandana handkerchief.
He had been summoned and had no intention of being late. Without calling for his luggage in Pittsburgh, or even waiting for a Pullman, he had taken the first freight car running west, and the last hundred miles riding in the engine with an acquaintance “of the line” had not added anything to his appearance.
“He let me first for him,” he exulted, for he was bubbling over with this latest experience and could talk of nothing else, “and what do you think, Ruth? Part of the way he actually let me drive the engine!”
“O Fred, to think that you were responsible for the lives of all those people,” I cried. I never could understand how he could fearlessly undertake to drive anything from a mule to a passenger train. Of late years I have marveled at the unconcern with which he would get into a friend’s car, of a make absolutely unknown to him, and start for the most crowded districts of New York, London, or Chicago, or even into the notorious congestion of Los Angeles.
“Well,” he said abruptly, when he had told me all about driving the engine, “I suppose I look pretty dirty to you. I’d better go and clean up.” He started off quite matter-of-factly, but I called him back.
“Why, Fred!” I said. “You’re to going off without saying anything about me, are you?”
“I forgot it,” he admitted contritely, “but surely, Ruth, you know that you have always seemed perfect to me as a sweetheart, as a wife, and now as you are about to become a mother - “
“Yes,” I said tearfully raising my head from his shoulder, “but I always have to make you say it - “ The wonderful brown eyes of his were filling with tears and tenderness; but suddenly I began to laugh, for the tears that slipped from under his long, curling lashes were making a thousand little rivers among the furrows of his grimy faces.
My best of dreams at last came true. The baby girl that they laid in my arms on rainy March morning did indeed have hair that lay in dark silky ringlets over her tiny ears, and her eyes of softest, deepest brown looked up from under long, curling lashes, just like her father’s.
As soon as he could be persuaded that she was not to blame for the suffering she had caused me, he began to take a very lively interest in his firstborn. Like every fond father, he convulsed his friends with his awkward devotion and inane remarks. I remember once when some women were calling, how he stood over the little bed watching solemnly until suddenly she sneezed.
“Why Ruth,” he exclaimed with a brightening countenance, “she sneezes quite naturally!”
Manlike, too, but with even more persistence than the average man, he insisted on regarding her as anything but a human child. She was his amusement, his plaything, his pride; but if I ever tried to solicit his aid in impressing the small lessons that are better taught the earlier they are taught, he usually looked puzzled and left the room. Yet I remember once how annoyed he was with her, when he found me sitting on the stairs crying after a long season of reasoning with her and a final decree that she should not leave her room until she had controlled her stubbornness.
It was with about the same sort of pleasure that he always took in pulling a dog’s ears or scaring a cat that played with and teased his youngster. His fondness for a child or an animal is usually expressed in this way, and his idea of an interesting pet is one which will fight back. Unlike most men, he likes cats better than dogs. He appreciates their fire and spirit and gracefulness and the quick impetuosity of their attack far better than the patient devotion of the sullen resentment of the dog. He likes, too, their odd tricks. He once taught a pet kitten to dance which he shuffled his feet in his big Indian slippers and used to laugh at its queer antics till he cried.
Consequently, when he found that the new pet responded more feebly than a domestic animal to his advances, and besides was asleep most of the time so that she could not be played with at all, he devised another sort of amusement. He began to photograph her.
At first we were all delighted. He had an excellent camera that had been given him by his grind, William Pitt, the inventor of the Irving-Pitt ring binder, who was one of my husband’s friends and one who supplied much of the inspiration and equipment with which my husband kept up the scientific interests which were denied him as a profession.
Mr. Pitt, with his wise, scientific mind and his genial personality, was a friend in who company Mr. Smith and I found much pleasure through all our years in Independence, and with him and his wife we occasionally exchanged informal dinner or evening’s entertainment. Mr. Smith and Mr. Pitt had been playmates when they were about five years old in Plano, Illinois, my husband’s birthplace, and they still have a great deal in common.
Besides their discussions of photography, they were both much interested in astronomy, and whenever it was our privilege to be in their home, and the weather permitted, the greater part of the evening was often spent in the observatory which was an essential part of Mr. Pitt’s home. The telescope in this private observatory was of a size and quality of which many a professional astronomer would have been proud, and if Frederick enjoyed the stars from the scientific point of view, they were always a matter of, I might say, a more artistic or philosophic interest to the girls and me, and while the men were comparing figures Alice and I would be wondering if there really were people on Saturn and Mars, and if there were, how the Saturnites must feel to live in a world with seventeen moons and a ring, or what the Martians must thinks of us up here on our little green earth.
William Pitt, I say, is the inventor of the ring binder and the manufacturer of the loose-leaf notebooks which now bear the name Irving-Pitt. When the invention was new he had the rare good sense and good fortune to become associated with a man of unusual business ability, Mr. Irving, who promised to sell as many notebooks as Mr. Pitt could make.
Many others have infringed on the patent rights, but to a man of Mr. Pitt’s ability it was usually easier not to fight these by law, but to continue not only to improve his product but his methods of producing it, so that he has been able successfully to withstand all competition. He has told me recently that his business extends throughout not only the United States but Canada, England, South American, and Africa, the product going to all the principal counties of the world.
I remember asking Mr. Pitt once what it felt like to be a genius and to succeed as he has in his invention and production, so that he was able to give himself and his friends such opportunities as he did us to study and enjoy with him his lovely home, his laboratories and his observatories. My questions in regard to his work were usually only sufficient intelligent to bring an indulgent smile, but this time he answered me modestly that in the matter of financial success he was greatly indebted to his partner, and that genius was usually the application of a long half-seen vision worked out through many sleepless nights.
I think my husband has a touch of the same sort of genius. Whatever his mechanical or scientific problem, his project was carefully worked out and the operation conducted with a painstaking attention to detail.
It was so with his early penchant for photography, for instance. He was more thoughtful and scientific from the first than the average amateur; and of course if was apparent to me and my family, if not generally, that our baby was the finest possible subject. We willing dressed her in her best at all hours and in all lights, risked pneumonia for outdoor exposures and blindness for flashlights, but as the piles of negatives and prints increased and he began to demand more difficult varieties of costumes, settings and groupings we could only comply as best we might, and stand back to witness the birth of this new hobby.
Every busy man, of course, is entitled to a hobby; but my husband has several. Most of them developed in later years when the enthusiasm of his youth had worn off a little and the increasing complexity of his work demanded that he seek recreation and change. But his delight in photography was one of the fads which developed early and has never been outgrown.
The mania for photographing our infant passed, of course; in fact, he soon passed entirely the stage of photographing his friends.
He has look to nature for his material, and, with a delicacy and artistry that has surprised even his closest associates has sometimes produced results which are far beyond the achievement of the average amateur and may be quite favorably compared with the work of the professional landscape photographer.
With true creative impulse, he is more interested in the production of his pictures than in any lucrative disposition of them. I have rarely been able to persuade him, with all his traveling and picture taking, to set down any of his experience which might be illustrated by his photographs. He says that the scenery has been too well described before, and, with his characteristic modesty, that his personal experiences would not be of any interest. An occasional article has appeared, of course, such as the one of “Lights and Shadows in Southern California,” and a much later one on “lights and Shadows in Palestine,” which I remember particularly, and at other times certain of his pictures have drifted into such magazines as the “Scientific American” or into the displays of the big photographic supply houses; but it has been rather through chance than through any effort of his to place his pictures.
His pleasure has been rather in their making. He has studied the newest developments of the subject with his usual thorough and scientific mind. He learned to make and to tint his own prints and has even investigated the new color photography. He has dabbled in every known process of lantern slide making.
Occasionally he has been persuaded to collect these slides and to lecture on them at various times. I remember one talk which he called “The Life of Christ,” illustrated with copies of lovely paintings and engravings, which was very popular with the church people; but as a rule, he was more than willing to turn over his equipment to some other lecturer, once he had worked it out to his satisfaction, and to go on to some new phase of the subject. His favorite appliance, I think is a mechanical device which enables him to determine the exact length of exposure. When I have been with him in his traveling, it has been one of my sorest trials to have to wait while he set up his tripod, and adjusted and readjusted, and twisted and studied and computed, while his party looked on, unsympathetically and impatiently.
Electricity, too, was an interest which my husband abandoned only after many years and many reversions. He was never happier than when he was installing a new method of lighting a Christmas tree or an unusual system of door bells. In the old house where there were many doors he finally put in so many door bells that he was obliged to rig up an indicator, like those used in elevators, to determine which on of his many bells was ringing.
Lamoni still remember a great ice and snow storm which occurred while we were still living with my mother. In the morning when the rain and sleet had ceased and the winter sun glittered beautifully on the inch-thick burden of ice which every shrub and tree and telegraph wire had taken on during the storm, it became rumored through the town that the telephone system which had for some years was almost completely demolished.
Fred and I were standing on our front porch admiring the wonders of sun and ice when he turned to me suddenly:
“Ruth, would you have confidence enough in me to put what money you can raise right away into this ruined telephone company, so that I could have the chance to build it properly? You know it has never been adequate and now is the time to rebuild it. If we could get them to reorganize the company, I am sure I could build up the lines again better than before and it would be a good investment for us.”
Consequently, it was on the confidence that Fred Smith could rebuild the fallen lines better than before that the new company was formed, and he did not fail it. His Eastern experience was a good foundation, and he worked out his problem with great enjoyment and considerable skill. The same traits which have made him a leader always, his foresight and his executive ability, combined with his mechanical genius, were more than enough to make this small venture a success.
Quite like some of the vexatious problems of his later leadership was the quarrel he found imminent between the company and some of the property owners on the prerogatives of the telephone builders. One of the leading townsmen refused to let the linemen trim the beautiful old maples that lined the street in front of his residence. This man said they never had been trimmed and never should be and that he would sue anyone who touched them. Mr. Smith, much to his disgust, was obliged to plead for the right even to cut a little hole in the luxuriant foliage for the lines to run through.
Our interest in the venture was too small for its success materially to affect our finances, and I presume the most lasting thing we gained from the affair, besides the pleasure of once more seeing that my husband could “make good” on what he attempted, was our telephone number. When the new phones were installed, Fred reserved for our home the number 5, and from then until Bess finally moved to Kansas City only a few years ago, the number 5 has been in the possession of some member of my mother’s family.
And the baby? She soon grew into a sturdy, independent, good-natured youngster with a mathematical tendency that quite delighted her father. He taught her to add and subtract simple numbers almost as soon as she could talk and to do fractions in butter and table commodities. He used to practice a small deception when she was still very young and put down a great string of numbers for her, which carefully kept low enough to avoid the necessity of carrying, when he had her do them for his friends.
And often as she pattered along the dusty streets where once her father had heard his destiny pronounced, or as she plodded cheerfully about in her dearly beloved rubber boots, through the deep Iowa mud, she would be stopped by some of her father’s people who would look into her round, happy face and say:
“So this if Fred M.’s little girl. How much you look like your father, my dear!” but there was none who ever added, “And you must remember, little lady, that you will some day be expected to take over his position of great responsibility.”
It was Mr. Lowell, I think, who said that no man is born into the world whose work is not born with him; but that is not yet true of women, and for once I can rejoice in the limitations of my sex. For when I think of what my husband’s life had been ever since his childhood, of what trials and sacrifices and responsibilities he has had to overcast the joy of service and how the knowledge of his failures has been ever present to crush out the satisfaction of his successes, I thank God that though a man-child of mine might have been born to greatness, this little woman by curious combination of ancient custom and modern usage is still permitted to “fight her way outward and upward to freedom.”
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