328. The Dumb Prayer Answered

The Dumb Prayer Answered

Hos_2:21-22 : ’93I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel.’94

All-suggestive Thanksgiving text! Famine and trouble had reigned in Jezreel, but this text promises in allegory great harvests. To show the dependence of things on God and on each other they are represented as at prayer. The sun kneels at the golden altar, the stars kneel at the silver altar, and the clouds at the blue altar of the heavens. And they cry to God: ’93Give us light, give us warmth, give us moisture.’94 ’93You shall have them,’94 says the Lord. Then the lakes and rivers of earth kneel at the edge of the valleys and the valleys at the foot of the hills and the hills at the foot of the mountains, and the mountains at the foot of the cloud, crying: ’93Give us sunlight and moonlight and starlight and showers;’94 and sun and moon and star and cloud respond: ’93You shall have them.’94 Then the orchards and vineyards and harvest fields and plantations and furrows cry to river and valley and hill and mountain: ’93Give us ripe fruit and full-headed grain and food for man and beast;’94 and the waters and the hills answered: ’93You shall have them.’94 Then the people of Jezreel, hungry and weary with many privations and hardships, knelt under the withered leaves, and by the parched furrows and by the empty garners, and cried to the barren earth: ’93Give us relief from our hunger and nakedness and woe;’94 and the earth responds: ’93You shall have all you need.’94 So the blessing starts at the top of God’92s throne and rolls to the bottom of the world’92s necessities. ’93I will hear, saith the Lord. I will hear the heavens and they shall hear the earth and the earth shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil and they shall hear Jezreel.’94

So, during the past twelve months all our land has been at prayer, and here are the answers written all over this audience-room in letters of green and gold and white and orange. God heard the heavens, and the heavens heard the solar and lunar and stellar and cloudy influences, and they heard the earth, and the earth heard the fruits and grains, and these heard the American people. My heartiest thanks to those who gathered and arranged these products of the earth into a great object-lesson of the divine goodness. Here are corn and wheat and oats from all sections, rice and cotton from the Carolinas, oranges from Florida, pomegranates from Louisiana, pears and grapes from California, cotton from South Carolina, gold and silver and copper and asbestos and granite and jasper and coal and iron from all quarters, while Long Island and New York and New Jersey have their products strewn all over the platform and around the galleries.

I have come in possession of a gold mine of facts. Last week I wrote to the Chief of the Bureau of the Treasury Department at Washington for a statement of this year’92s harvests so that I might have complete accuracy, and my letter evoked the facts of sixty years, showing God’92s determination to bless this land as he has blessed no other. I acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department, and of his assistants. In all the sixty years the tides of national resource have risen higher and higher. But I shall take a retrospect of ten years and from 1873 to 1883. Bushels of corn in 1873, nine hundred and thirty-two million two hundred and seventy-four thousand; in 1883, one billion five hundred and seventy-seven million. Bushels of wheat in 1873, two hundred and eighty-one million two hundred and thirty-four thousand; four hundred and ten million this year. The potato crop is not often mentioned in discourse because of the homeliness of the vegetable and the lack of rhythm in the word. But what more beautiful to a keen appetite than the good, honest, everywhere-present potato, whether roasted or baked or scalloped or boiled or fried or stewed or croqueted or Saratogaed. When right out of the oven, or off the hearth, cracked with the knuckles till it bursts with excess of mealiness, sending up its incense to appreciative and hungry guests, no one will despise this vegetable link between oppressed Ireland and free America, the ever-present potato. In 1873, one hundred and six million and eighty-nine thousand bushels; in 1883, one hundred and ninety-five million bushels. So there is no need that at this Thanksgiving table you put with small spoon on the corner of a big plate a faint white dab of Mercer or Bermuda when the supply ought to drop with a ladle of profusion in the centre of the plate till the recipient requires both hands to hold it.

The cotton crop of 1873, three million nine hundred and thirty thousand bales; this year, ending August thirty-first, six million nine hundred and forty-nine thousand bales. Notwithstanding all the evil prophecies a million and a half bales more this year than last, while to show how much richer the South is without slavery than it is with it I put the fact that in 1861 before the war she produced three million six hundred and fifty-six thousand bales opposed to the fact that this year produced six million nine hundred and forty-nine thousand. Then look at the exportation to other countries, for exportation is the strongest test of our national prosperity. In 1873 we exported ninety-eight million nine hundred and forty-three thousand dollars’92 worth of bread and breadstuffs; in 1883, two hundred and eight million dollars’92 worth. Provisions exported in 1873, seventy-eight million one hundred and ninety-seven thousand dollars’92 worth as against this year, one hundred and seven million three hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars’92 worth. And now that the Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads are open the augmentation will distract the statisticians with the almost infinity of agricultural and mining resources. The canals are blocked with freight pressing down to the markets. The cars rumble all through the darkness and whistle up the flagman in dead of night to let the Western harvest come down and feed the mouths of the great cities.

No Thanksgiving ever found so many happy and contented people in the United States as this. There were more good breakfasts this morning than any other Thanksgiving morning since this national habit was established. The coffee was better, the intermixture of chicory less observable, the butter was honest butter made in honest churns, the milk was milk, the meat you could chew, and more people rose from the table thankful than on any similar morning. Then we have not only the present surroundings to make us happy, but our minds are crowded with vivid reminiscences. On a day like this the memory becomes a kaleidoscope, and every minute the scene changes. You give to the kaleidoscope of memory a turn and there they are, natural as life, around the country hearth on a cold winter night. Hear the hickory fire crackle and see the shadows flit up and down the wall. Games that sometimes wellnigh upset the chairs’97’94Blind Man’92s Buff,’94 ’93Who’92s Got the Button,’94 ’93The Popping Corn,’94 ’93The Molasses Pulling,’94 and the witch stories that made the neighbor’92s boys afraid to go home after dark. Hickory nuts on one dish, roseate apples on the other. The boisterous plays of ’93More Bags on the Mill,’94 ’93Leap Frog,’94 ’93Catcher,’94 around and around the room until some one got hurt, and a kiss was offered to make up the hurt, the kiss more resented than the hurt. High old times! Father and mother got up and went into the next room because they could not stand the racket. Then, instead of compunctions of conscience, a worse racket. But now the scene is fading out. The old fireplace is down, and the house is down with it. One of those boys went to sea and was never heard of. Another became squire in the neighboring village. Another went to college and became a minister. Another died the following summer, and they are all gone, and you had better turn the kaleidoscope quickly or you will get us all crying.

There! Turn it on farther, for I want to see that old Thanksgiving dinner. Father at one end, mother at the other end, the children between wondering if father will ever get done carving the turkey. Oh, that proud, strutting hero of the barnyard, upside down, his plumes gone and minus his gobble. Stuffed with that which he can never digest! The brown surface waiting for the fork to plunge astride the breast-bone, and with knife sharpened on the jambs of the fireplace lay bare the folds of white meat. Give to the boy disposed to be sentimental the heart. Give to the one disposed to music the drumstick. Give to the one disposed to theological discussion the ’93parson’92s nose.’94 Then the pies! For the most part a lost art. What mince pies, in which you had all confidence, fashioned from all rich ingredients, instead of miscellaneous leavings which are only a sort of glorified hash! Not mince pies with profound mysteries of origin! But mother made them, chopped the meat for them, spiced them, sweetened them, flavored them, and laid the lower crust and the tipper crust, with here and there a puncture by the fork to let you look through the light and flaky surface into the substance beneath. No brandy, for old folks were stout for temperance. Dear me! What a pie! You deluded New Englanders can talk till you are gray about your pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving day; give me an old-fashioned New Jersey mince pie. Of the ten at that table all are gone save two’97some in village churchyard, some in city cemetery’97but we shall sit with them yet at a brighter banquet. Better turn the kaleidoscope.

Yes; there they go down the hill head first on a sled, coasting. Clear the track! Four sleighs abreast and four in the rear, the touch of the toe the only rudder. The walk up-hill thrashing the numb fingers around the body more than paid for by the descent, swift as the sled of a Laplander. Many of our lives only a repetition of that process, walking up-hill for the sake of riding down it.

Turn the kaleidoscope, and you see the neighborhood quilting. The mothers and wives came in the afternoon, all wrapped up from the cold, and their feet on a foot-stove. When they got warm and took out their needles and sat down it was a merry group and full of news. Once in a while a needle would slip and make a bad scratch upon the character of some absentee, but for the most part it was good, wholesome talk. And in the evening when the young people came and the old people were in one room and the young people in another, in the latter there was some lively stepping. While the black boy played ’93Moneymusk’94 even grandfather in the next room, who had distributed many tracts on the sin of dancing, was seen to make his heel go. It seemed to me a great fuss and a great gathering to get one quilt made. But the fact was that good neighborhood was quilted, warm sympathies were quilted, lifetime friendships were quilted, and connubial bliss quilted. And they stayed late. And such plays as you had in that back room when you joined hands, and one of the loveliest stood in the ring! What a circumference to what a centre!

Turn again the kaleidoscope, and there is the old meeting house, solemn and sleepy, bumble-bees humming about the old clap-boards, horses under the shed stamping at the flies. Choir in the gallery with a broken fiddle. Farmers in their sleeves aroused from their slumbers by the hymn: ’93My drowsy powers, why sleep ye so?’94 Aged minister, good enough for translation. The old church from floor to ceiling full of old-fashioned religion, one ounce of which is worth twenty tons of the humbug of modern evolution. Where’92s the old minister now? Where’92s the choir now? Where are the leaders who sat around the pulpit and listened till the sermon got to the seventeenthly?

Turn the kaleidoscope again, and there is the old country schoolhouse where the master pulled our ears till they have always since been a little out of proportion. The tin cup out of which fifty drank without any fastidiousness. The gad cut out of the woods by the boy who was to suffer it in his own chastisement. The modest house in the woods and the jealousies because a pair of black or blue eyes would have uncomplimentary preferences. The bullies of ten years old imposing on those of seven. The rising of mirthful feeling among the ribs, quaking the young diaphragm and rising till it twitched the corners of the mouth and suppression was no more possible, and though frowning schoolmaster sat on the valve it would come to explosion, shattering the whole school into splinters of fun, one giggle setting off a whole magazine of cachinnation.

Turn the kaleidoscope and there is the corn husking and the ’93raising’94 frolic, and there the snowballing carousal, and there the sleigh-riding party, and there the springtime blossoms and here the treat of the first ripe harvest apples. Was anything ever half so joyous?

One more turn to the kaleidoscope, and you see your early struggles. You now realize what were your best blessings. Your elaborate and prolonged decision as to whether it should be new hat or new coat, for it could not be both at the same season. Your effort to make ten dollars do the work of twenty dollars. The snubbing you got when you attempted higher position. The skilful buttoning up of the coat to hide patches. Your subordinate place to those who had not half your ability or morals. The endurance of those who swashed about big with brief authority. At last your triumph, your raised salary, your advanced position, your affiancing, your marriage, your two rooms that were a plenty. The cradle with miracle of dimpled beauty, the high chair at the table pounding with spoon and rattle. The hardships of life widening into a comfortable livelihood and perhaps a competency. The graves covered with chaplets of consolation. The crosses with crowns hung on the top of them. The whole struggle and mystery of your life adjusted for your welfare here and hereafter. Enough! Put down the kaleidoscope of reminiscence, and take up the palm branch of thanksgiving.

But the present as well as the past demands your gratitude. I step into your house. You say it is rather small. That is nothing. A large house is a great trouble to keep clean. Small houses are cosy. Beside that, a great house gives children too large expectations, and when married and they have to take a smaller one, they are discontented, saying: ’93I was never used to such cramped apartments.’94 These lights of your house have flashed upon many a joyous scene, and if the walls could speak they would tell of social party and Christmas tree and neighborhood merrymaking. These keys have thrummed a carol or wept under the touch of your child, and the portfolio in the rack hath many a well-worn song of Oaken Bucket and Old Armchair. Instead of the rough-hewn rafters and bare walls among which your grandfathers entertained their guests, your walls bloom with wonders wrought by painter’92s pencil or engraver’92s knife or sculptor’92s chisel. I step into your nursery, and am greeted by the song and laughter of your children. They clap their hands. They hide. They bound away. What bright eyes! what quick feet! what happy hearts! God bless them. Busy all day without fatigue, they fall asleep chattering to wake up singing. You expect those hands will smooth your locks when they are gray, that these feet will run to your ministration when you are sick, and that these eyes will weep for you when you are gone. Be thankful today that upon your household has come the brightness of childhood. I step into your dining hall, and I find that all the world has been waiting on you. Men grew weary and worn in making that carpet. Cabinet-makers toiled faithfully in making this furniture. Sailors were lashed to the storm in bringing you these foreign delicacies. Flocks and herds have fallen under butcher’92s knife to please your palate. Miners toiled in damp and darkness to exhume that glowing anthracite. And summer sun and howling storm and drifting snow have sent luxurious contributions to your table. I step into your library and I find the tables are covered with magazines and newspapers and books fresh from all the publishers. Historians and pamphleteers and fabulists and philosophers of all ages seem to await your bidding. On the historical shelf stand Bancroft and Prescott and Macaulay ready to tell you the story of early America, or describe the glories of Mexican scenery, or call back the scenes of parliaments that old death dissolved with more than the imperiousness of a Cromwell. On the poetic shelf are Walter Scott, sounding the Highland bagpipe, and Longfellow beating the Indian warwhoop through his Hiawatha, and Bryant mingling moan of wild wood with call of the brown thresher. Dickens has a shelf all to himself, I expect, because no other single writer is able to stand beside him from Oliver Twist to Edwin Drood, avenging the world’92s wrongs, weeping the world’92s sorrow, kindling the world’92s mirth, exposing the world’92s hypocrisy, and earning the world’92s thanksgiving. Thank God for your books. Books for hard study, books to waft you into revery, books to make you laugh, books to make you weep, books in morocco, in satin, in gold, books of anecdote, of travel, of memoir, of legend; books wreathed and starred and columned; books about birds, about fishes, about shells, about insects; books for the young, books for the old.

You may not possess all these blessings of the parlor and nursery and dining hall and library, but still you know something of the height and depth and breadth of the sweet and tender and joyous and triumphant word’97home. Look not upon it merely as a place to stay as the lion looks upon his lair or the fox his burrow or the eagle its aerie. Call it not your residence or your house or lodging or domicile, but for the sake of childhood, for the sake of duty, for the sake of all that is good and beautiful and true and blessed, call it home!

What is that thunder? It is the ten-cylinder printing-press. Scribner and Appleton and Leslie, Harper and Lippincott and Ticknor! It thunders again, and this time it is the swift revolving presses of eleven thousand eight hundred and two newspapers and periodicals of the United States and the Canadas.

Look abroad and see this great country. For these many years whose hand has turned back from our land the violence of plagues which have swept with their train of terrors through other countries? Who has grown in our fields harvests richer than Sicilian or Russian grain fields? Who hath raised up our national enterprise to beat back wilderness and plant town after town, till every gleam of the wave on the lakes is answered by the gleam of city towers and the roar of the ocean at one side of the harbor has been answered by the din of a great metropolis at the other? Something higher than the American plow cultured the harvests. Something sharper than the American ax hewed down the forests. Something heavier than the American hammer built the cities. He who walked Gennesaret hath traversed our lakes. He who helped Simon Peter with his net hath blessed our fisheries. He whose disciples plucked golden ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands, hath helped gather our harvests. He who tarried at Bethany hath set all around about us the villages. Not a ship’92s keel but he helped to launch it. Not a wheel’92s tire but he helped to forge it, or a bouquet’92s blossom but he helped grow it, or a robin’92s wing but he helped to tinge it.

To inspire our poets and kindle the painter’92s emotion we have stupendous mountains rolling up from table-land to table-land, higher and higher, scarred with great agonies of ruin, and heights with forests where God drops the meat into the eagle’92s aerie, while in twisted, cloven sheets of silver come down the torrents a-gleam and a-dash and a-foam, tangled under rocks mossed and century-rusted, while elsewhere the student of nature may find awful cataracts which stand in walls of beryl and amethyst and jasper, rumbling like thunder and flashing like fire, then plunging down into unfathomed abyss from which come up the wailing of their despair and the mists that seem like the smoke of their torment ascending forever and ever.

I also rehearse our civil and religious liberties. While millions of our fellow-men are in bondage and ruled by despotisms, we worship God in our own way, and no official spies watch our entrance, nor doth an armed soldiery interfere with the honest utterance of truth. We stand here today with our arm free to work, our head free to think, and our tongue free to speak. This Bible! See, it is all unclasped. This pulpit, there is no chain round about it. There is no snap of musketry in the street. Blessed be God that today we are free men, with the prospect and determination of always being free. We have no State religion. I glory in the fact that there is not on all our statute books one law that gives advantage to one sect over another. All are equal in the sight of the law, Jew and Gentile, Arminian and Calvinist, Trinitarian and Unitarian, Protestant and Roman Catholic. And if time of persecution should come, arms would be strong and hearts would be stout and blood would be free and hell would be baulked and the right of man to worship God would be acknowledged, though it were at the point of the bayonet with horses plunged bridle-deep in carnage.

Go home now to your sumptuous repasts, and if one be absent from you and absent from earth whose voice was most gleesome last Thanksgiving do not let your grief overpower your gratitude; but after all are seated at the table and merry voices are hushed, bow your heads for a blessing, and say: ’93Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage