Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/77

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 64 The mailman comes in the afternoon. Perhaps today I receive several letters from boys in CO. camps, discussing Tolstoy and bringing up questions which puzzle them. It is now 6 p.m. and I go to the dairy for my quart of milk, perhaps carry a can of water also, and chop wood for half an hour. Evenings are cool and even in the summer a cover is required. The apple, cherry and peach wood burns brightly in the fireplace. Even twigs burn well in the range.

It is now early April and asparagus, which has come up for years throughout the orchard, presents a fine supper for the vegetarian. Many times with a half pint of milk, a little pepper and shortening added, it makes a filling and delicious meal. At other times slowly fried and mixed with rice it gives a flavor resembling oysters. (Some meat-eater may correct me, for I have not tasted oysters for thirty years.)

Perhaps a letter or article in the CHRISTIAN CENTURY, which a friend kindly subscribed to for me along with several other papers, suggests an article which I feel impelled to write. Perhaps I am writing another Tolstoy booklet corresponding with my Doukhobor friends in Canada, or writing a digest or review of a book which a friend has loaned to me. My only luxury, a semi-stuffed armchair, is in front of the fireplace; the stove to the right and a table of apple boxes to the left, where my typewriter and current correspondence is scattered. A large table to the back which has been used for apple sorting is used for bread mixing, hectographing, and a general place for material I want within easy reach. I use a board across my lap for a table and have the food handy at the stove.

Before me, above the fireplace, are oil paintings by the former owner of the orchard. This man was a Christian Scientist whose mother knew Mrs. Eddy. Neighbors tell of his reading "The Book" to sick animals and saying that the power of right thought would make grain instead of the weeds now in the fields. There are undoubtedly metaphysical laws little understood by most of us which show the relationship between the great waves of hatred, fear and war which sweep over and surround the atmosphere of this world and the waves of epidemics, blights, floods and so-called "Acts of God." St. Francis could tame the man-eating wolf of Gubbio at a glance, but he had first tamed the passions, hatreds and materialism which had previously held sway in his own being. Christian Scientists or any of the cults springing from that premise cannot expect to control weeds, insects and wholesale epidemics as long as they bless war and the economic system which feeds on war. When they have the courage and the spirituality of the early Christians then they can surely "take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." But warmongers and Mammon worshippers need not expect miracles.

A picture of Jesus at the carpenter's bench finally wore out after I had put it up and taken it down when moving around. My half-pacifist young Lutheran minister friend, Leeland Soker, gave me Sallman's Head of Christ. My unorthodox array of "Saints" on the wall are Tolstoy, Debs, Thoreau, Jefferson, Abdul Baha, St. Francis, Vanzetti and Gandhi. The pictures of my own girls and family and that of an Indian maiden is the only touch of femininity in the house. This room is 14 by 16 feet with two windows and three doors, and the