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.
