Chapter 8 THE ROMANCE OF COTTON

From the moment of Uncle James Frederick Dillingham's arrival there began for the McGregor children an era of delight. The newly found relative, they soon discovered, was not only all they had pictured, but more-far more!

He did not, it is true, actually live at Mulberry Court, for because of the crowded conditions of the McGregor home he took a room near-by; nevertheless he might as well have lived there for he only used his own room to sleep in and stow away his luggage. Each morning just before breakfast his step would be heard on the stairs and off would race the children in merry rivalry to see who would reach the door first and have the honor of admitting him. Once inside the cosy kitchen he made it his headquarters and it did not take long to find out that he was a valuable asset there.

For example who could fry fish so deliciously as he? And who could make such chowder? And as for washing dishes and wiping them he was quicker than any of the young folks. To behold an officer in gold braid presiding at the dishpan at first caused a protest from Mrs. McGregor; but when the little old man asserted that it was a treat to be inside a home and handle a mop and soap-shaker what could one say? So he mixed the foaming suds and dabbled in them up to his elbows, and when his sister witnessed the general frolic into which his leadership suddenly transformed the dishwashing she no longer objected. The center of an admiring group of youngsters Uncle Frederick scrubbed pots and pans until they shone like mirrors, and all to a chain of the most wonderful stories.

What marvel that there were quarrels as to who should help him and actual bribes offered for the coveted pleasure? The children's chatter never tired him. On the contrary he was in his element when they swarmed about his chair and perched on his knee. As for his namesake, James Frederick, there was not another such baby to be found in all the world, he declared. Often he would sit with the little fellow in his arms, crooning to him fragments of old sea chanties whose refrains were haunting to hear. Or he wheeled the baby out with as much pride as if he were treading the decks of the Charlotte.

To see him one would have imagined that he had always lived at Mulberry Court. How naturally, for example, he wandered into the market, bringing back with him mysterious bundles which on being opened disclosed lamb chops, sweet potatoes, and oranges. And what a feast big and little McGregors had when such parcels made their advent in the kitchen! Or he would venture into the shopping district and appear with his pockets bulging with rubbers, mittens, and caps. Oh, there never was such an uncle! His purse seemed lined with gold; or if it were not lined with this precious metal at least the supply of pennies it contained was unending.

And not only was there one of these shiny pennies for each child in the family but before long the train of benefactions lengthened until there was scarce a boy or girl to be found in all Mulberry Court who did not have tucked away in his mitten a golden disc with the shining face of Abraham Lincoln upon it. So it was that he became uncle not alone to the wee McGregors but to the community as well.

Now of course it followed that such a visitor could not be more than a short cycle of hours in the neighborhood without making the acquaintance of the Harlings, and running in to amuse the shut-ins with his tales of foreign lands. For he was a rare story-teller, was Uncle Frederick. Never was there a better. And with running here and running there was it to be wondered at that he found himself as busy if not busier than he had been when aboard the Charlotte-a very lucky thing too, for he confided that he always got fidgety for his ship if he was idle when on shore.

Now he had no chance to become nervous or fretful. Much travel had rendered it easy for him to establish contacts with persons. In consequence all types of human beings interested him and with a charm quite his own he swept aside the preliminaries and by simple and direct methods made straight for the hearts of those he met. He reached them, too-there was no doubt about that. Had he chosen he could have astounded Mulberry Court with all he knew about Julie O'Dowd, the Murphys, and the Sullivans. Why, he even knew all about Davis and Coulter's mills before he had been in Baileyville twenty-four hours!

Now this delightful relative could not but increase in the community the prestige of the McGregor family. To have a connection so popular, traveled, and prosperous-a man of rank, and adorned with brass buttons, what a luster all this shed over the inhabitants of the fifth floor of Mulberry Court! Carl, Mary, Tim, Martin, were no longer rated as little street Arabs; suddenly they became the nieces, nephews (probably the heirs) of Captain James Frederick Dillingham who commanded the Charlotte and had sailed to every port under the sun. How the neighbors gossiped, congratulating themselves that they had discovered Mrs. McGregor's virtues in time to be included in her circle of acquaintances! Oh, they had always known she was a lady! Wasn't her ancestry stamped upon her very face?

As for the Captain himself, his career, when contrasted with the humdrum life of Mulberry Court, was like that of a returned Columbus. How could he fail to be enveloped in a halo of fascination? For Mulberry Court was dingy and dull. Probably not one of its toiling throng was destined ever to see much beyond the city's muddy streets, crowded sidewalks, cheap shops, and seething tenements. But at least, even right here in Baileyville, it was possible to glimpse through other eyes the wonders denied them.

Therefore when Captain Dillingham came to call one did the next best thing to really going to India-one went there by proxy and saw in imagination white-turbaned natives, resplendent temples, sun-flooded tropics arched by turquoise skies. Even the Murphys could do that, and without it costing them a cent, either. The Captain told Julie O'Dowd stories of China while she ironed Joey's dresses, and the tediousness of the task was forgotten in the enchantment of the tale. As for Grandfather Harling, after the stranger's first visit he strained his ears for a second, and when with a cheery "Ahoy!" the knob turned and the small gray man entered, it seemed as if the very sunlight came with him. And Mrs. Harling welcomed his coming too for even the men's talk of cargoes, commerce, shipping, and stevedores had its lure for her.

In fact, all the neighborhood agreed that the dapper little captain "had a way with him."

"Why, he could actually talk about dried codfish, I do believe, and make you think there was nothing on earth like it!" exclaimed Julie O'Dowd to Mrs. Murphy. "I never saw such a man! And so kind withal. Simple as a child, too. You don't catch him prating about his doings. Why, Mike Sullivan who went once to New York talked more about it than does this critter all his circlings of the globe."

Aye, the Captain was modest. Everybody agreed to that. Nevertheless he certainly had at his tongue's end an astonishing amount of information which came hither when occasion arose for him to use it.

Carl had an illustration of that one day when he chanced to drop a remark about the Tartary lamb.

"Tartary lamb, eh!" commented his uncle, catching up the phrase quickly. "And how, pray, did you hear of the Tartary lamb?"

"Mother told us."

"A funny idea, wasn't it?" Uncle Frederick spoke as if Tartary lambs were topics of everyday conversation. "And yet no stranger than some of the notions we hold now, I imagine. We do not know all there is to be known ourselves-not by a good sight-even though we do think ourselves very up-to-date. With all the learning the ages have rolled up handed to us in a bundle we should blush were we not better informed than poor Sir John Mandeville, who had no books to speak of. Had he been able to read Herodotus, for example, he would then have learned from that Greek writer who lived so many centuries ago that there was in India a wild tree having for its fruit fleeces finer than those of sheep; and that the natives spun cloth out of them and made clothing for themselves. Herodotus tells many other interesting facts about cotton and its uses, too. A present, he remarks, sent to the king of Egypt, was packed in cotton so that it would not get broken. That sounds natural, doesn't it? He even makes our clever inventor, Eli Whitney, appear unoriginal by describing a Greek machine that separated cotton seeds from the fiber."

"Then the cotton gin wasn't new, after all," frowned Carl.

"The idea of it was not new, no; but the device Whitney and his friend Mr. Miller produced was a fresh method for getting this age-old result. Up to 1760 the same primitive ginning machine was used in England as had been used in India for many, many years. Think of that! But as civilization grew and people not only wove more cloth but made an increasing variety of kinds the demand for material to make it increased. And old Herodotus is by no means the only early historian to mention cotton. Other writers went into even more details than he, describing the plant, its leaves and blossoms, and telling how it was set out in rows. Apparently as long ago as 519 B.C. the Persians were spinning and weaving cloth and dyeing it all sorts of colors, using for the purpose the leaves and roots of tropical plants. It therefore followed that when the officers of Emperor Alexander's army returned from the East they brought back to Greece tales of the cotton plant, and Greeks and Romans alike began to use the material for awnings much as we do now."

"How funny!" smiled Carl. "I'll bet they were glad to have something to shade them from the sun. I shouldn't relish spending the summer in Greece or Italy."

"I guess you wouldn't. Baileyville may be hot in July but it is nothing to what Rome must have been. The stone seats of the Forum were like stove covers; and because the rich old Romans enjoyed comfort quite as much as anybody else, lengths of cotton cloth were stretched across certain parts of the structure to shade it. Even your friend Julius C?sar was not so toughened by battle that he fancied having the hot sun beat down on his head; he therefore ordered a screening of cloth to be extended from the top of his house to that of the Capitoline Hill so when he rode hither he could be cool and sheltered. Oh, the Romans knew a good thing when they saw it-never fear! In the meantime Greeks and Romans alike were using the newly discovered material for tents, sails, and gay-colored coverlets."

"Didn't cotton grow in any other country beside India, Uncle Frederick?" interrogated Mary.

"We do not really know about that," was her uncle's reply. "Certainly it was found in other places-Egypt, Africa, Mexico, and America; but whether it was native to these lands or had been transplanted to them it is impossible to say. We do know, however, that the ancient Egyptians depended chiefly on flax for their cloth and imported cotton from other countries, so although the plant did grow there they could not have had much of it. The little they had was cultivated, I believe, almost entirely as a shrub and used merely for decoration."

"But loads of cotton come from Egypt now," declared Carl. "The teacher told us so."

"Indeed it does," nodded Captain Dillingham. "I have brought many a bale of it back in my ship, so I know."

"Really!" ejaculated his listeners.

"Yes; Egypt, India, and the United States are the great cotton-producing countries of the world. India comes first on the list; then we ourselves, with our vast southern crops; then Egypt. And it is because India raises such great quantities of cotton and is obliged to ship it to England for manufacture afterward buying it back again-that Gandhi and his followers who are eager for India to be independent of England are raising little patches of cotton, weaving their own cloth on hand looms, and refusing to purchase that of English make. It certainly seems fair enough that the wealth derived from this crop should remain in India and not be spent for things the people of India do not like. However, all that is too big a question for you and me."

"Did you ever see cotton growing, Uncle Frederick?" asked Tim, who had drawn near.

"Oh, often, sonny. As a general thing the plant is like a Christmas tree in shape. The perennial plants, or those that come up every year, frequently grow to be six or eight feet tall; but the annual ones remain little three or four-foot bushes. Still each grows into pyramid form, having the wider branches at the bottom. The leaves are not unlike the lilac; and there is a deep, cup-shaped pod having points that turn up like fingers and hold the cotton in tightly. But no matter whether perennial or annual, the cotton plant must have a hot, humid climate to thrive, and if the land is not naturally moist it must be irrigated as it is in Egypt."

"I thought things like cotton just grew wild, Uncle Frederick," said Tim.

"No, indeed," laughed his uncle. "You cannot gather big crops of anything unless you are willing to work for them. The Lord does not mean to make life too easy for us. He gives us all these things and then He has done His part; we must do the rest. The world is a place of opportunities, that is all. If we are too lazy to take them, or too stupid, it is our own fault. Many a man gets nowhere because he fails to grasp this idea. So, sonny, you do not get your cotton all grown for you, and with the seeds picked out. You are given the root and if you wish a big cotton crop you must plant seeds, or better yet set out cuttings, cultivate and care for the plants. Every minute your mind must be on the thing you are trying to raise. You must watch, for instance, for pests of insects; diseases that will spoil your plants; blights caused by fungi; and above all for sudden changes in the weather. Should it turn scorching hot just when your cotton shoots are up and beginning to spread their roots the result will be fatal. Or an early frost will work ruin. Sometimes, you know, we have a spell of hot weather in the late winter that fools the growing things into thinking spring has come, and the poor misguided plants begin to put out their leaves. Then, like a mischievous joker, old Winter comes back and nips the trusting little creatures. Cotton doesn't fancy that sort of joke. Nor does it like too much wet weather, for then the cotton gets damp and sodden and cannot be picked. Should it be gathered in this condition it would mold and mildew, and become a wreck."

"It sounds to me as if cotton raising was pretty hard work," sighed Tim.

"Oh, no harder than are most other things, Timmie," returned Uncle Frederick. "Generally speaking cotton plants sail along safely enough unless a pest attacks them. That is their greatest menace. When a pest descends on the crop the grower does lose courage, I can tell you. It is queer to think what damage a crowd of tiny insects can do, isn't it? Some of them will bore through the pods as if in pure spite and spoil the cotton fiber at the time it is just beginning to form-a detestable trick! Others, fattening on the tender green leaves near the top of the plant, will turn into caterpillars, creep down the stalk, and devour every leaf as they go along. This leaves the roots of the plant unprotected from the sun and speedily every particle of moisture on which the growth is so dependent is dried up. So the plants shrivel and die. Then there are beetles, locusts, grasshoppers, and all the rest of the army of trouble-makers who wait to steal a march on the unwatchful planter. All these rebels must be kept their distance if you would harvest a big cotton crop."

"I guess I never would have any cotton," remarked the disheartened Tim.

"Oh, yes, you would, son," laughed his uncle. "Surely you wouldn't let yourself be beaten by a lot of bugs and worms, would you? Should you live in a climate where cotton could be raised you would pitch in, fight the pests, and be as proud of your snowy field as many another man is. For when the pods are ready for gathering there is no prettier sight. It is like a huge bowl of popcorn."

"I'd like to see a cotton field," ventured Mary.

"You'd have to go to India, the southern part of your own country, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, or the South Sea Islands then," Captain Dillingham responded. "That is, if you wanted to see the best of it-that which is strongest of fiber."

"But isn't cotton all alike?" queried the girl, with parted lips.

"No, indeed, child! There are many different kinds of cotton. Some have seeds of one color, some of another; some seeds come out easily, some do not; some cotton is strong fibered, some is weak and snaps at a touch; some has long fibers and some short. Each variety has its name and is peculiar to a given country."

"Oh!" came in chorus from his audience.

"For instance, the most delicate or fine quality of thread is produced from the Sea Island cotton, and usually this type is quite expensive; it has so many seeds and they take up so much room in the pod that after they have been removed only a small quantity of cotton remains and that makes it costly. Almost every other kind gives more lint (or picked cotton) than does this variety. The Egyptian cotton is somewhat on this same order. India, China, Arabia, Persia, Asia Minor, Africa, and the Coromandel Coast all have a common type of plant which probably first grew in the latter place and was transplanted from there to the other countries.

"In Cuba a sort of cotton vine is found that has very large pods and a great number of seeds. Some of the fibers of this plant are long and some short. It is not a very good kind of cotton to cultivate because the long fibers get tangled up with the seeds and often break when being separated. Moreover the short fibers are all mixed in with the long.

"This gives you some notion of the different species of cotton. Were I to tell you of all the kinds you would be tired hearing about them. I myself get interested because I carry so much cotton in my ship-bales upon bales of it. Sometimes I take cotton out from America to countries that either do not have any, or do not have as much as they want; sometimes I bring back here varieties that we cannot raise in the South."

"What kind of cotton do we raise in the United States?" Mary asked.

"The bulk of our cotton is long-stapled and is called Georgian Upland," was the response. "The whole plant is rough and hairy-leaf, branch, and pod. Some persons think that originally it came from Mexico. However that may be, here it is, and although we raise some little of other sorts we have far more of this than anything else. We can thank it, too, for much of the wealth of this country of ours for Texas, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas are all big cotton-growing States. Florida, Tennessee, Indian Territory, Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma also lie in the cotton belt and ship substantial crops."

The little man rose.

"I could go on talking cotton forever," jested he. "Think of a sacred cotton tree often as high as twenty feet, growing along the coast of the Indian Ocean, the cotton from which is used only for weaving cloth for the turbans of Hindoo priests! And think of still another exquisitely fine Indian cotton called Dacca cotton that is spun and woven into fragile oriental muslins and Madras Long Cloth. It almost makes your mouth water to grow cotton, doesn't it?"

"Well, at least you can go and see it grown, Uncle Frederick, and that is more than we can do," piped Tim.

"True, sonny," nodded the captain. "But still you who stay at home and do not see it grown have your share in its benefits. You wear, use, and eat cotton products."

"How?" questioned the wondering Tim.

"Don't you have cotton cloth for clothing, bedding, and no end of other comforts? Of course you do."

"But-eating cotton--" faltered Tim. "I don't do that."

"There are medicines made from the cotton root; cottonseed oil for cooking and to use on salads, you may not be aware, comes from the meaty kernel inside the cotton seed."

"I didn't know that," Tim answered.

"Oh, cotton has many by-products," returned his uncle. "The lint that cannot be used for spinning is made into cotton wadding to pad quilts, skirts, and coat linings; and cotton waste is excellent for cleaning machinery. Ripe cotton fiber furnishes an almost pure cellulose, too."

"Cotton certainly seems to do its part in the world," Mary murmured thoughtfully. "But I'm not sure," added she, with a mischievous little smile, "that I know just what cellulose is."