"Lord, who shall dwell in Your tabernacle? Who shall dwell on Your holy hill?
He who walks and lives uprightly and blamelessly, who works rightness and
justice and speaks and thinks the truth in his heart.
He who does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his friend, nor
takes up reproach against his neighbor. In whose eyes a vile person is
despised, but he who honors those who fear the Lord, who revere and
worship Him; who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
He who does not put out his money for interest, to one of his own people,
and will not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these
things shall never be moved."
(Psalm 15)
When I was a girl at home, my father came in from the harvest field one day
at noon and with great glee told what had befallen my cousin, Charley.
Father and Uncle Henry were harvesting a field of wheat in the old-
fashioned way, cutting it by hand with cradles, and Charley, who was
about ten years old, followed them around the field for play.
He lagged behind until the men were ahead of him and then began to scream,
jumping up and down and throwing his arms around. Father and Uncle Henry
dropped their cradles and ran to him thinking a snake had bitten him or
something in the woods close by was frightening him; but when they came
to Charley, he stopped screaming and laughed at them.
Charley fooled them this way three times, but they grew tired and warm
and had been deceived so many times that when, for the fourth time, he
began to scream, they looked back at him as he jumped up and down,
then turned away and went on with their work.
But Charley kept on screaming and there seemed to be a new note in
his voice, so finally they walked back to where he was and found that he
was in a yellow jackets' nest; and the more he jumped and threw and
screamed the more came to sting him.
"I'd like to have the training of that young man for a little while,"
said father, "but I don't believe I could have thought of a better way
to punish him for his meanness."
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1953 Edition)
Illustration by Garth Williams
Boys or men or nations, it seems to be the same, if they prove themselves
liars time enough, nobody will believe them when they do tell the truth.
"Getting down to first causes, what makes a nation choose the high way
and another nation choose the low way? What produces character and
conscience in a nation anyhow? What produces the other thing?
asks a writer in an article in The Saturday Evening Post.
And the question is left unanswered.
In a country ruled as Germany* has been, there is no doubt the character
of the nation received the impress of the rulers, coming from them
down to the people.
In a country such as ours, the national character is also like that of the rulers;
but in this case the rulers are the people, and it is they who impress themselves
upon it. The character of each individual one of us affects our
national character for good or bad.
Getting down to first causes, what forms the character of individuals?
Training! School training; home training; mother's training!
And there you are back to the first causes in the making of an honorable,
truthful, upright individual, the kind of citizen who collectively makes an
honorable, treaty-keeping nation, a nation that chooses the
high way instead of the low.
"Getting Down To First Causes"
(June 1919)
An excerpt from an essay written by
Laura Ingalls Wilder
From the book, Little House In The Ozarks
A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler
The Rediscovered Writings
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Edited by Stephen W. Hines
(1991) Guideposts Edition
* This essay was written the year after WWI ended.
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