I (The Land)

I.

Dear Tornik, you see how it is: your Papik has grown old — I have passed my seventieth year — and you are left the only heir of our ancestral house. I had but one firstborn son, Toros by name, a son beyond compare, brave and hard-working. It was he who turned every wheel of our household. In due time I married him off; alas, only two years he stayed beside his beloved young bride; he left and went to Stambul.¹ After his going you were born. I put word in a letter to your father that a son had been born to him; they baptized you, and I set down your name: Ruben. Toros your father never saw your birth or your swaddling-bands, never kissed your infant cheeks. When you were two or three years old, your tongue was loosed; you would call only mayrik and papik — mama and grandpa; there was no hayrik, no papa, for you to see and know. How bitter a thing is this, when mothers give birth here, and fathers hear of it from Stambul!

There are sometimes fathers who, whether by reason of their journeying or from want of conscience, remain ten and even twenty years in foreign parts and never see their children's faces. And sometimes the fathers call their sons to Bolis to their aid, when they are so sunk in the deep mire of exile² that they cannot stir themselves out of it. Often it happens that a forsaken, unhappy wife, at her wits' end, sends her only grown son — the light of her eyes — to Bolis, saying: go, see what has become of your father; these many years he sends neither letter nor money.

But Toros your father was not such a one; he always sent letter and money in due season; he greatly honored your Papik, and had a most tender heart toward his wife. And you — how he loved you, without ever a caress or a meeting! He would send you pretty, handsome clothes; your mother would dress you in them and say: your hayrik sent these. And you would ask: Mayrik, when will my hayrik come from Bolis? Poor trusting babe, you did not know that Toros would never come from Bolis. After a time a letter came from Toros, in which he wrote: "I have fallen sick; my fellow villagers have carried me to the hospital." Do you not remember, Tornik, when Papik wept and mourned with your mother over Toros's death? You kept asking: why do you weep, Papik and Mayrik? We would not tell you that we wept for Toros your father, dead in Bolis.

Do you think, Tornik, that I wept that day only? No: even now, alone by myself, I take up the same mourning and weeping when I remember Toros's death and his memory. You do not know what past things that sweet name brings into my mind. My great-grandfather used to tell how other Toroses were born of our house — all of them, too, died roaming far and wide, and one was driven off captive when the Persian raid came upon our village.

I confess it to you, Tornik: that road of exile — it was I who first opened it before our poor Toros. He saw how, going and coming to Bolis time after time, God gave me success, and I would return with fair sums earned. But do you know with what great hardship, with what bitter sweat, our pandukht brothers² earn their money? One day I shall never forget: eight of us stout porters were carrying a huge bale slung on poles, up the slope of the New Khan³ in Bolis; the sweat came beading from our brows and ran down in streams, pouring over our faces and soaking our bared chests. We saw Hayrik⁴ coming toward us; we set the bale down and stood. Hayrik gave us greeting and asked how we fared. Of our company I was the bold one; I said: Hayrik, this is how we fare — crushed under our burdens we groan, and shed our bitter sweat upon these paving-stones. I looked, and Hayrik's eyes had filled; I said within myself: to our condition and the sweat of our brows Hayrik answers with the tears of his eyes. Yes — Hayrik gave one short answer. My poor sons, he said, you must carry that burden until you learn to read and write, until you come to know the worth of your village and your soil — where, had you poured out that much laboring sweat, you would never have seen the face of exile. So much Hayrik spoke, wiped his eyes, and passed on. And since I could read a little, that evening I made my companions well understand the meaning of what Hayrik had said.

It is true, Tornik — I learned it by trial: if we labor with all our soul and heart to work our lands, we shall live, and never see the face of exile. As I said above, I went several times to Bolis and came back; I brought money in plenty. But you should know: in that money gained from Stambul there was no blessing or increase; I would watch it be spent within a year or two, drying up quickly like the springs in autumn. Alas! the young flower of my life was withered by the scorching wind of exile; late in the day my wits came back to my head. When I returned from Bolis the last time, I had already set my mind first of all to go on pilgrimage to the church of the Holy Mother of God at the monastery of Archak. I made ready candles, incense, and oil for the lamp, and went; I entered the church, bared my head, went down on my knees before the altar, and prayed; my heart broke within me and I wept long. I called upon the Lady Mother of God and begged success for my undertaking, and before the altar of Christ's cross I vowed that I would never again leave the village, never forsake my house and home, my fields and my plains.

I came out of the church with a glad heart; a new courage came over me. From that moment I believed that the Holy Mother would grant my heart's desire, and that Christ would prosper some work of mine. Straightway, with the money I had brought from Bolis, I bought two buffaloes and six oxen; I fitted out a gutan⁵ with its full set of gear; I took off my fine broadcloth clothes and put on trousers of homespun shal; I lifted from my head the scarlet fez with its great tassel and set on the peasant's plain felt cap, the kolos; I drew off my creaking city shoes and put on charukhs — rawhide sandals — and wound their thongs. A ring I had too; that also I drew from my finger and laid in the chest with the fine clothes, saying: let me keep it for my Tornik's bridegroom-day. When all this was done, I hired two or three laborers besides, took up the drover's whip, cast off the European fashion, and went to the field; I set the gutan going, and the plowing began — and from that day to this I have never seen the face of exile.

Thus, Tornik, I gave myself soul and body to husbandry; I plowed, I sowed, and God gave bread in plenty; I never went wanting for bread. Ours is an old patriarchal house; guests are never absent from its door, and I am now the aged patriarch of our house. When I die, you must succeed to my place.

Now you, dear Tornik, are the only heir of our house and hearth; and before I am dead, I mean to give you many good and useful lessons and counsels. Do you know, I have learned to read and write tolerably well — in my grown years, at the monastery of Varag, where for a long while I worked as plowman. In later days, when lessons in agriculture began to be given there, I would listen with close attention, and in the idle winter season I always labored at learning.

And in summer I learned even more, by practical trial; for Hayrik was not only abbot of the monastery of Varag, tending the school's garden besides — he was still more a laborer of the field; for he knew that the monastery's numerous household and the pupils of the school cry bread! bread! For this he dearly loved the labor of the soil; his thought was always how to ease the grinding toils of the old tillage — that men might have relief, and the poor beasts too — and how, by working the soil with more care, to make it fruitful. So, turning it over in his mind, he would at times put ingenious methods and means to work; his single aim was to carry the art of agriculture at least some little way forward and better it, so that monastery and school might be maintained by the profit of husbandry. For the monastery of Varag, apart from its landed estates, has no other properties bringing steady rent.

Here I must confess, Tornik, that as plowman of Varag's tillage I learned a great deal from Hayrik's tested ways; and now, like a schoolmaster, I must hand down to you what I learned, giving it lesson by lesson. Attend carefully to my lessons, for they matter greatly to us; for we are villagers, and our living and our life is the earning of husbandry alone. And what earning is there on this earth more just, more free, and more unadulterated than the tillage of the soil?

Clever, quick-witted Tornik, now shall Papik begin his lessons. No schoolhouse is needed, no desk, no paper, no pen, no ink — see where I shall speak my lessons! In the house, in the stable, in the field, on the mountains, at the springheads. At gutan-time I shall hold the plow-handle and speak my lessons both at once; and you, walking at the yoke, give ear to my lessons and hearten the team with your voice. Like the opening furrows, I too shall plow open your mind. At sowing-time — vash! how lovely it is — from one hand the grains of wheat, and from the other I shall sow my lessons into your mind. At harvest-time, when the reapers sit in the shade of the breeze whetting their sickles, I too shall sit, speak your lesson, and whet your blunt young mind. And the threshing-floor — what a fit schoolroom it is! While you stand on the threshing-sledge, I shall swing my four-tined fork all round the floor, turning the strewn sheaves on the one hand and mixing my lessons in with them; and winnowing, I shall part the wheat from the straw — and you, pour it in and keep it in the granary of your mind.

Now I shall begin to give you the plain and easy lessons of husbandry, so much as I have heard and so much as I have learned by trial. Clever Tornik, turn your whole attention to me; grasp my lessons well and gather them up in your mind. The time has come: if your Papik dies, at least my lessons and my counsels will remain to you for an inheritance — and do you know that this inheritance is more precious than anything? Who knows — one day you too will grow old and become a Papik like me, and what you learn from me today you will hand down to your own tornik. But see that you do not count these scant lessons of Papik's sufficient: you must be skillful and inventive, and learn ever new things by your own labor. Time drives men always forward; you too must go forward; you must know that he who lags behind goes hungry for bread. It is the land that gives us bread and every other good. Whoever works the land — that is, labors at plowing and sowing — his house is filled with bread and plenty; but he who lets the gutan's handle drop from his hand and strolls about in idleness and emptiness — his house is emptied into destitution; bread fails from the trough and butter from the crock, and poverty overtakes him like a swift-footed courier, as the proverb speaks.⁶ And of all this I shall speak to you at large. Hearken then, Tornik, to Papik's lessons and good counsels; for you shall learn what the land is, and its inhabitants, the townsman and the villager — the townsman has his craft, the villager his husbandry; how these two classes of people exchange with each other the fruits of their labor; what is the state of our husbandry today, still sunk in the old ways; how, little by little, the old ways may be changed and the land worked by newer ways, whereby our labor will be lightened, the land will yield the more, and our gain and earnings will be doubled. And the profit of the land's yield is a benefit not to us alone, but to the state and to the whole people; for great upon this earth is the question of bread, since by bread men live.

I. THE LAND

Dear Tornik, I must begin from Adam our grandsire. When the Lord God put our offending First Father Adam out of paradise, He gave him one command: to work the land and keep it, and by the sweat of his face to find his bread and live.⁷

Take it well to heart, Tornik: this land we dwell on — this globe of earth — the Lord God has given to man as an inheritance, or say as capital stock. And do you know how vast, how unfailing and inexhaustible is the natural wealth of this all-abundant, ever-renewing earth? Listen while I number it for you: seas without shore or bound; dry lands stretching wide beyond measure, whereon dwell millions of men and divers nations; plains, mountains, valleys, glens, springs, rivers; plants of a myriad kinds, trees and flowers; the fish of the sea, the wild and the tame beasts of the dry land, the flocks of birds, and many things besides has the Lord God created for man and given to men — that men might live upon the earth, enjoy those good things, and bless the name of Him who made them and gave them. Therefore must men work the land, for the land is the keeper of their life.

But do you see, Tornik, how men labor upon the earth? The villager in his husbandry wets the furrows of his plowed field with his sweat; the townsman at his craft pours out that same sweat. Have you seen the sweat the blacksmith sheds — standing half-naked before the blazing furnace, beating iron with tremendous ardor, forging the share for our gutan? The merchant, journeying over sea and land, goes from country to country, suffers, and sheds the same sweat. The very governors of this world shed sweat in governing it: from the king down to the last clerk they have the same sweat; for the mind that directs and rules has its own sweat too — his sleep is harried with every wasting care, while the reaping laborer, his head laid on a sheaf of wheat, sleeps sweet in the open field, and his bed is the soft soil he himself has worked. Yet among sweats and labors there are great differences: the husbandman sheds his sweat in the field under the sun — but oh, how bitter, how hard is the toil of those workmen who, five hundred cubits down in the depth of the earth, without light or sun, dig coal in grinding labor, so that the steamships and the steam-carriages and all the engine-works may run without ceasing.

The free laborers of our fields are a thousand times happier than they — who roam the meadows, walk among the valley flowers, and eat their bread seated at the head of a cold spring. Give glory to God, Tornik, that this is your lot, and your labor is sweet and pleasant.

Thus upon this earth men of every rank and degree, some more, some less, are condemned to shed sweat; and so the sentence God appointed falls unerringly upon all mankind: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread."⁸ So men — under the sun, in the depths of the earth, upon the dry land, upon the seas — in weary labor must each man win the daily bread of himself and of his household. Of this speaks wise Solomon: "All the labor of man is for his mouth."⁹ Righteous is the man who lives only by the bread of his own sweat; unrighteous the man who without labor eats the bread of another's sweat, full of wrongs — and who can measure the manifold wrongs that are done under the sun upon this earth? The ranks of the wronged make up the greatest part of men.

And know this, Tornik: he who knows no letters, cannot read, has no learning, is untaught, is of the rude crowd — in one word, is ignorant — his life upon this earth is misery always; it is the ignorant man's fate ever to suffer wrong, and ignorance itself is the greatest wrong the ignorant man bears. Though at times even the learned and educated man suffers wrongs at the hand of the rich and powerful ignorant one. And do not marvel; for in man's social life there are many contrary and contradictory things, seeing which we fall into doubt, and sometimes even raise complaint against Providence: why are the good persecuted, while the wicked prosper?

David too saw this thing, and laid it before God: "Behold, these are the sinners, and they prosper; they hold the greatness of the world."¹⁰ But let us leave this question, Tornik — we have strayed out of our matter's order; let us begin our needful lessons.