Stepsons of Light

Excerpt

STEPSONS OF LIGHT

There are two sorts of people—those who point with pride and those who view with alarm. They are quite right. The world will not soon forget Parkman “of Ours.” Here was a man of learning, common sense, judgment and wide sympathies. Yet once he stumbled; the paregorical imperative, which impels each of us to utter ignominious nonsense, urged Francis Parkman to the like unhappiness, drove him to father and put forth this void and singular statement:

I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition of life, or a desire of shaking off the restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey.

The year was 1846; the place, Independence, in Missouri; that strange migration was the winning of the West. Mr. Parkman viewed it with alarm. The passage quoted may yet be found in the first chapter of “The Oregon Trail.” We, wise after the event, now point with pride to that strange migration of our fathers. The Great Trek has lasted three hundred years. To-day we dimly perceive that the history of America is the story of the pioneer; that on our shifting frontiers the race has been hammered and tempered to a cutting edge.

That insane hope of better things—the same which beckoned on the Israelites and the Pilgrim Fathers; restraints of law and society, which in Egypt made the Israelite a slave, in England gave the Puritan to the pillory and the stocks, and in this western world of ours took the form of a hollow squire, founder by letters patent of a landed oligarchy—so that the bold and venturesome sought homes in the unsquired wilderness; and restlessness, that quality which marks the most notable difference between man and sandstone. Restlessness, shaking off restraints, insane hopes—in that cadence of ideas what is there of haunting, echolike and familiar? Restraints of society? When the very stones of the streets shrieked at him the name of that town—Independence! Now we know the words that haunted us: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!” Never was echo clearer. The emigrants were there in exercise of those unavoidable rights. Not happiness, or the overtaking of happiness; the pursuit of happiness—the insane hope of a better condition of life.

That which perplexed Parkman looked upon, disapproving, was the settlement of America—the greatest upbuilding of recorded time; and the prime motive of that great migration was the motive of all migrations—the search for food and land. They went west for food. What they did there was to work; if you require a monument—take a good look!

Here is the record of a few late camp fires of the Great Trek.

“Why-Why had been principally beaten about the face, and his injuries, therefore, were slight.”

—The Romance of the First Radical.

“A fine face, marred by an expression of unscrupulous integrity.”

—Credit Lost.

The lady listened with fluttering attention. The lady was sweet and twenty, and the narrator—myself—was spurred to greater effort. Suddenly a thought struck her. It was a severe blow. She sat up straight, she stiffened her lips to primness, her fine eyes darkened with suspicion, her voice crisped to stern inquiry.

“I suppose, when Sunday came, you kept right on working?”

It was an acid supposition. Her dear little nose squinched to express some strong emotion—loving-kindness, perhaps; her dear little upper lip curled ominous. She looked as though she might bite.

“Kept right on working is right. We had to keep on working,” I explained. “We couldn’t very well work six days gathering cattle and then turn them all loose again on the seventh day—could we now?”

The lady frowned. The lady sniffed. She was not one to be turned aside by subterfuge....