Читать книгу Life is an Adventure - R. J. Manion - Страница 7

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It may safely be asserted that mine was a strange upbringing for one destined later to deal with large affairs of state, for those early boyhood years were surely spent in primitive surroundings. The chief redeeming feature to counteract the example of rough men, most of whom were uneducated, was the influence of good women—my own mother and the mothers of my boy chums. Many of these women were of the very noblest character—patient, kind, generous and good; seeing no evil and telling no evil; ready at all times to sacrifice themselves for the physical comfort, the moral improvement, and the general happiness of their husbands and children. Most of them were ladies in the highest sense of that word, for the term ought to refer more to the qualities of heart than of head. They might not know (except by gentle instinct) the niceties of polite society in a modern drawing-room, and they might not always use the proper spoon or fork at a society dinner; but the manner of their gracious spirit was impeccable, for their minds were always bent on serving others. Never would they intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings; thoughtful of their loved ones, their neighbours also felt the vital warmth of a self-sacrifice that was of the noblest character. By their unselfish actions they unconsciously inspired their children to better things. During the years that have gone I have had the opportunity of meeting people of all classes, titled and untitled, and I have met few who equalled them. No doubt the women of to-day would measure up to the old standards of nobility of character; but they are fortunate in not having to develop their virtues by enduring the same hardships and denials.

My own mother talked much to her children. She told us of the old stone farm-house in the Ottawa valley where she was born, and in which house forty or fifty years later I visited the son of the man who bought it from her father, though it was built by her grandfather on his arrival from Ireland in 1824. In those days it was a common statement that the Irish did well everywhere but in Ireland, and the house illustrates it, for descended from that same Patrick O’Brien, her grandfather, came Tim Foley, the great American railroad contractor; Nick Bawlf, who built up the Bawlf Grain Company; John Hourigan, successful business man and mayor of Port Arthur; Dr. David O’Brien, my mother’s brother, and his son, Dr. Jack O’Brien, outstanding physicians of Ottawa—among others.

At her knee not only did we learn our prayers (for she had the deep piety of the Irish people), but one of my sweetest remembrances is of the fairy tales she told us, and other stories based upon her Celtic superstition, in many of which I think she half believed, though I have always been impressed with the thought that they were recited for their moral effect. For example, in addition to the stories which she had been told by her mother and her grandmother of the fairies playing on the green lawns of Ireland at the first peep of dawn, she told us of a young man who was so pure and good that he could walk into a room when the sun was shining through the window, throw his coat across a sunbeam, and it would hang there—a proof on the part of the good God that He appreciated the innocence and goodness of the young man’s character. Then having, as the Irish have, a deep reverence for the clergy, she told of a priest in the Ottawa valley who while driving along a road was intentionally covered with mud by the galloping feet of a “heretic’s” horse. The following winter the heretic met a violent death in the woods, as a punishment, she verily believed, for his irreverence—and incidentally, we assumed, to instil into us the deep respect which she felt for the priesthood.

Another tale amused us and at the same time had its moral. She reminded us that in Ireland, in the olden days, farmers marked off their land with large stones at each corner to show the boundaries between the properties of neighbours. One dishonest Irishman had moved the stones so that he took part of the land of the next farmer. Dying without confession and repentance, and without having corrected the injustice which he had done to his neighbour, his soul could not rest in peace, so that all those who passed that way by night were frightened by the wailing of the lost soul, which kept chanting, “Where shall I put it? Oh! where shall I put it?” But one night a countryman passing that way—one who had taken, as Irishmen sometimes do, a little too much poteen—heard the wailing query, and replied that he should “put the damn thing back where he got it.” This apparently answered the question of the unrepentant sinner, for the voice was heard no more in the lonely hours of night.

The softening influence of this gentle, sweet mother, and the moral effect which she had upon us all, did much to counteract the indiscipline which was engendered by so many other sides of our life. Her sway over us was the greater because we always felt that her life had not been a very happy one, though she never complained. Her dreamy Irish blue eyes seemed always to be gazing wistfully to that quiet, peaceful childhood in the far-off Ottawa valley—so different from the coarser existence on the frontier. Her name was that sweet one, Mary—Mary O’Brien—and her mother’s was a lovely, quaint one which I have never known since—Nanora. God rest both their souls!

My father, on the other hand, while showing on every occasion a deep and real affection for all of us, seemed ruled by that old notion that a father should not be too intimate with his children. He was one of those who apparently think that to show one’s real feelings is somewhat effeminate; and consequently we rarely got inside his guard. A father is always at a disadvantage in dealing with his children, particularly if he has to compete with a mother who is affection personified. Therefore, we were fully grown to manhood before we knew him at all well; for even when I was leaving for college (and returning after vacations) to avoid any show of emotion he always remained in bed that morning, forcing me to go to his room to say good-bye to him. He would ostensibly rouse himself from sleep, utter a gruff “Good-bye, and good luck, son!” and I would pass from his room. Of a very frank, straightforward disposition—so much so, that if he disliked one he did not wish even to speak to him—and being always strictly honest in his dealings with others, he had the friends as well as the enemies that the plain, blunt, honest man usually has.

Even in his most prosperous days, and they were much in the majority as we grew older, he rarely gave us directly any pocket money; but he would ask one of us to count the cash register and remove the money from it for deposit in the bank the next day, during which task it was understood that the one doing it would take what he required. Needless to say, we were exceedingly generous to ourselves, and no questions were ever asked of us so long as times were good and money abundant. Or he would throw to one of us a huge roll of bills, telling the chosen one to deposit it in the bank. To the query as to how much the roll contained the reply would be that he did not know, and again the one handling the roll was expected to take sufficient to supply his own needs. It was a very careless system, but it ultimately taught us a sense of honour and responsibility in our dealings with money matters. The possession of this sense of honour, despite my early association with boyish banditti, is proven by the anger and disgust with which I repelled an attempt at bribery offered me when only fifteen, while handling the records of grain cars received in the Canadian Pacific offices where I was working for thirty dollars per month. A grain merchant, to whom the records were of value, offered to double my earnings if given certain information from these records. A shamed blush overspread his face as I answered, in a somewhat melodramatic manner, that he had “made a mistake in his man”—a man of proud and honest fifteen!

Nevertheless my father’s peculiar method of allowing us to use our own judgment in handling his money well illustrates the rather careless and haphazard manner in which we received disciplinary training of any kind. One cannot help but conclude that whatever good qualities we finally developed (and one knows no reason for feeling that they were less than those exhibited by others in different surroundings and with far greater opportunities) were the result of the inherent high ideals that actually dominated the actions of both parents, thereby providing us with examples worthy of imitation. For each one’s character is the result of his environment, as it affects his inherited qualities—inherited quite likely, as Dr. Adami once said, one-half from parents, one-quarter from grandparents, one-eighth from great-grandparents, and so on ad infinitum—so that one may, by atavism, be the victim of some vicious tendency in a tree-climbing ancestor; or, on the contrary, be the inheritor of virtues of someone who died in the crusades!

In those days there was a great deal of begging by tramps (or, as we called them, “hoboes”) who came into and went out of the village on freight trains. These regular callers at the kitchen door gave to both my parents their opportunity of teaching us the virtues of charity, for there was an unwritten rule in our home that none of these men must ever be turned away hungry—in spite of the fact that at times we could ill afford to display this generosity. Though my father was not a religious man, in charity toward the poor he was always quite as keen as my mother. In later life he often expressed the opinion that anything given to the poor is returned somehow, somewhere. Bread cast upon the waters!

Both my parents were of pure southern Irish descent. I have found trace of no admixture of any kind. Indeed, on my arrival in Ottawa to attend the House of Commons, an old librarian with a rich Irish brogue asked me if I knew that I was descended from an Irish king.

“Sure I do,” said I. “All Irishmen are descended from kings.”

But he haled me into the library, and showed me, to my surprised amusement, that my name is derived from that of a King of Ulster—by all the Powers! Was it an ancient bar sinister, or was it merely a love of travel and adventure (inherited honestly by myself) that had changed us into southerners from Cork and Tipperary?

One learned useful lessons from many and varied teachers—men and women of splendid type, who devoted their lives to hewing homes out of the wilderness, while building up characters of the fullest and richest qualities. They were “rough diamonds” so far as their contacts with their fellow-men were concerned. The hardships experienced, the tragedy or near-tragedy encountered, the temptations resisted, the sins committed, the poverty endured without complaint—all had their place in moulding character, all helped to achieve a broad, human background which produced in later life sympathetic understanding and self-discipline in dealing with larger affairs. This continent has produced, and will continue to produce, from such simple surroundings many boys of sterling character who, through hard work and honest ambition, attain the highest pinnacles of business or public service. In newer countries such as ours, one generation of educational opportunity often lifts him who takes advantage of it out of the humdrum of ordinary life to the adventure and romance of a much wider sphere. Any young man who has average ability, and who takes advantage of his opportunities, will profit by disciplinary hardships in his youth. Indeed, my conclusion, long since arrived at, is that a little hardship in one’s early life does much to help him in later life. He discovers in both periods that as he meets difficulties which he must surmount, the nearer he gets to them the easier they are to conquer, resembling in this the hills which he approaches in an automobile and which lower their peaks as he comes towards them.

Canada has gone far since those days before the turning of the century. Often do I ask myself whether we are happier now, or if we are healthier, morally and physically. Has it been real progress which we have made by our scientific and mechanical development? While it is true that happiness is largely a state of mind, one may well doubt whether our children are morally and physically richer than were those boys who led the life of the primitive frontier. Hollywood vulgarity and Chicago law observance; war threats and increased armaments; a world economic crisis in which millions have been in need of food and clothing and shelter—all these things may well make one ask himself whether the world has progressed or retrogressed since those days of forty years ago! And one finds himself wishing that, in times of depression and hardship such as the present, a little more of the pioneering spirit might be displayed which was so bravely shown by many worthy Canadians in unfolding the map of this dear land.