CHAPTER XXVII. THE PIE EATER'S PARADISE

The Greasy Spoon was all right. It was a peaceful place. The landlady

was Irish, and her motto was: “If there's any fighting to be done here

I'll do it myself.” On the sideboard she kept a carving knife as big

as a cavalry saber. Whenever two men started a row, she grabbed this

carving knife and with a scream like a panther she lit into them.

“Stop yer fightin' before I hack your hands off!”

The men were in deadly fear of her because they knew she meant business.

The sight of that swinging knife quelled every riot before it got

started. We fellows were like children in that we only thought of one

thing at a time. And when we saw the landlady's carving knife we forgot

whatever else was on our minds. This woman was a real peacemaker. She

not only wanted peace, she knew how to get it. Such things afford us

lessons that are useful all our lives. This woman had learned by sad

experience that healthy men will quarrel and thump each other; that

these fights put men in the hospital, after breaking her dishes and

splattering her tablecloths with blood. Hating bloodshed, she prevented

it by being ever ready to shed blood herself. She stood for the moral

law, but she stood armed and ready.

Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of itself;

it needs no fighters to support it. The man who believes that is

ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous. Right is always trampled down

when no fighter upholds it. But men will fight for right who will not

fight for wrong. And so right conquers wrong because right has the

most defenders. Let no man shirk the battle because he thinks he isn't

needed.

The reason a woman with a carving knife was strong enough to put a stop

to fighting in the Greasy Spoon was this: she had behind her every man

except the two who were fighting. Had either of those men struck down

the woman, then twenty other men, outraged by such a deed, would then

and there have swarmed upon the two and crushed them. The woman stood

for right and she always triumphed because she had (and these two knew

she had) the biggest bunch of fighters on her side.

This is what peace means, an equilibrium between forces. It is the

natural law,--God's way of keeping peace. And any plan for World Peace

that is builded not upon this law is nothing. Justice must stand with an

upraised sword. When two states quarrel she must admonish them, and let

them know that should they overthrow her, all good nations would rush in

and crush them. The same law that keeps peace in a rowdy boarding-house

will keep the peace of the world. For what is this world but a big wide

boarding-house, and all the nations rough and greedy grabbers at the

table?

I left the Greasy Spoon and went to the “Pie Boarding-House.” The Greasy

Spoon had peace, but peace is not enough. After peace comes prosperity.

The Pie House represented prosperity. For the woman who ran it knew how

to make more pies than the fellows ever heard of. You see, we were all

from the British Isles where they have pudding. The pie is an American

institution. Nobody knows how to make pies but an American housewife.

And lucky that she does, for men can not thrive in America without

pie. I do not mean the standardized, tasteless things made in great pie

factories. I refer to the personally conducted pies that women used to

make. The pioneer wives of America learned to make a pie out of every

fruit that grows, including lemons, and from many vegetables, including

squash and sweet potatoes, as well as from vinegar and milk and eggs and

flour. Fed on these good pies the pioneers--is there any significance

in the first syllable of the word--hewed down the woods and laid the

continent under the plow. Some men got killed and their widows started

boarding-houses. Here we workers fed on proper pie, and we soon changed

this wooden land into a land of iron. Now the pie is passing out and we

are feeding on French pastry. Is our downfall at hand?

Life in the Pie Boarding-House was a never-ending delight. You never

knew when you sat down at the table what kind of pie would be dealt you.

Some of the fellows had been there half a year and swore that they had

seen fifty-seven varieties and were expecting new ones at any meal. The

crowd here was a selected crowd. It was made up of the pie connoisseurs

of mill-town. Word was quietly passed out among the wisest fellows to

move to this boarding-house and get a liberal education in pie. So it

was a selected and well-behaved crowd. They didn't want to start any

rumpus and thus lose their places at this attractive table.

And that is one way that virtue is its own reward. Only the well-behaved

fellows were tipped off to the pie bonanza. From this I learned that the

better manners you have, the better fare you will get in this world.

I had steadily risen from the “Bucket of Blood,” through the “Greasy

Spoon” to a seat at the cherished “Pie” table. Here the cups were so

thin that you couldn't break a man's head with them. I was steadily

rising in the social world.