Classic Poem

Ben Enoch bought his farm back in wartime
Acre by acre as chance favored him.
At last he had three hundred acres lying
Along Mill Creek. The flat Beaver Meadows
Lifted to rolling hills with fern gullies
Where cool streams trickled down from the mountains
Through thickets of sweet fern and dogwood.
Then he bought the ground for his own homestead
And built a house and painted it York Brown
(Years after we called it the Red House Farm),
And set out apple trees over the place,—
Fall Pippins, Pound Sweets, Ben Davis, and Russets,
Wine-Saps, Gilly Flowers, Sheep-Nose, Spice Sweetings
And twenty other kinds we've forgotten,
Except when we go gypsying in the Fall
And smell fruit passing by an old orchard,—
Cidery, chilled by the early frosts
And water-cored by the warm noon-day sun;
Then our mouths drip for those old apples,
And the names chime in our minds like the tinkle
Of the sheep-bells in an upland pasture.

Ben Enoch was land-hungry; he wanted
More than he could work to advantage.
But he put droves of sheep on the hillsides
And raised cattle and kept a big dairy.
He packed his butter in tubs and teamed it
Out to the railroad and prospered and prospered.

But he had one strange quirk in his make-up:
Among the hired men who worked for him
He always kept one fool, some poor fellow
Just to make sport for him and the others;
And as soon as one died or ran away
He would hunt up another—a real fool
Not one who was just daft or half-witted.
He liked them best that way. I've heard him
Talk after chore-time in summer:

“No-sir-ee.
No half fools for me; I had one once; ‘Johnny,’
We called him; he was half-witted.
They palmed him off on me at the Poor-house
As a genuine fool; bless you, he wasn't.
I kept him a spell, but never felt easy.
There are two kinds of men to have near you:
Smart men or fools,—real fools without cunning,
Honest and simple, who'll work for you, grateful
For their clothes and a penny or nickel
Fair-time to spend on peppermint candy,
And contented as Rover my sheep-dog.
Johnny was dangerous, he could think sometimes,
Once in a while: there lay the trouble.
Try as you would, you'd never discover
Which days were the days he was a stark fool,
And which he was thinking just as you were.

“And did he harm you?” I asked.

“No, he was harmless—
That didn't trouble me,—'twas the bother
Of wondering how I should speak to him
And never quite knowing if I should say
Words to him, or whistle as to Rover.
I sent him back, and I made up my mind then
A man who knows half is always a danger;
Who can tell what he'll do when he's angered?
And by-and-by he'll ask you for money.
Now Johnny learned about reading and writing
And how to count money; he got a man
To write to Chicago to get him a wife,
And he used to wait and watch for the stagecoach
Hoping she'd come:—now you couldn't stand that.

“If a man who's hard-worked wants to take
Solid comfort, I'd tell him to hunt out
And get a real fool to chore round for him,
For a fool will always see right in your doings,
Smile if you smile, keep away if you frown.
Nobody can hire him from you; he'll be loyal
As Rover here. You can have affection
From fools; they're as gentle as children,
Asking no more of you than their keeping—
Something to eat, a bed in the corner,
And a place in the kitchen to snuggle
Close by the stove in the cold days in winter.
In my lifetime I've taken more pleasure
With real loving fools than with smart men.
Women's the same; steer clear of the pert ones.”