GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER A. T. WHITE “He is a Plant Doctor!” people said of the little boy who could make anything grow. “He is a wizard!” they said of the scientist who made such marvelous discoveries in his laboratory. For George Washington Carver made marble from sawdust, dyes from clay, paper from peanut shell. From the peanut and the sweet potato he made more than 400 new products” He spent his life overcoming obstacles that would have discouraged most men. But before he died, people all over the world honored the work of the great scientist who was born in slavery. 1 A Race Horse for a Baby WINTERS ABE COLD in the foothills of the Ozarks. In January of 1861 the ground was frozen a foot down. Day and night in Moses Carver’s one-room farmhouse a great log was kept burning on the hearth. Susan Carver sat strangely idle by it on a bitter night after the hard day’s work was done. Though a half-finished sock was in her lap, for once her fingers were still. In the far corner of die room Moses Carver lay abed. The farm wife glanced now and then at her husband’s pale face, lit up by a tallow dip, but neither of them spoke. For both were thinking anxious thoughts. Suddenly the crunch of footsteps outside and a loud knocking sent the woman hurrying to open up. “Who is it, Sue?” The farmer raised himself painfully on his elbow and peered around the post of the wide wooden bed. By the open door his wife stood holding the candle high. She was talking to someone, but who it was he couldn’t make out. The howling January wind that sent the smoke billowing from the fireplace nearly blew the flame out and drowned the voices. The door slammed. Susan Carver clattered across the rough wooden floor to the bed. “It’s that bushwhacker you sent to steal our Mary back,” she said in a choked voice as she set the candle down. “Has he got her?” Moses Carver demanded. “No! Just the baby,” his wife answered. “He’s got him out there tied to his saddle. How the poor . . .” She broke off as again the crunch of footsteps sounded on the frozen ground. Running to the door, she flung it open. Again smoke from the fireplace swirled into the room. Through the haze Moses Carver could see his wife take a bundle over to the other bed, where little Jim was sleeping. “Well, Bentley?” the farmer called out impatiently. The visitor had taken off his visored cap and stood twirling it in his hands. His long, unkempt hair fell about his face. “Ain’t seen no trace of your slave girl, Carver,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “I been fifty mile down into Arkansas. Couldn’t come up with them raiders.” “But you said ...” “Take it any way you like, Carver,” Bentley broke in. “I ain’t found her. Some told me she’s been sent down river. One said he’d seen her go north with soldiers. Most folks thinks as she’s dead.” “Seems like if you found her baby ...” Carver began again and stopped. Bentley shrugged his shoulders. “The raiders must’ve got tired bothering with him and left him behind,” he said. “A couple of women had him.” Over on the other bed Susan Carver had been strug-gling meantime to undo the man’s rough coat in which the baby was bundled. A smothered coughing came from inside. “Reckon he’s alive yet,” Bentley said and walked over A cry escaped the honest farm wife as the puny black baby came to view. He lay there choking, gasping for breath. His matchstick arms beat the air weakly. “Awful small,” Bentley commented. “All head. How old do you reckon he is?” “A year—just,” Susan Carver answered promptly. “He was born 1860, year ago this month.” She had wrapped the baby warm in her shawl and now held the little creature upright against herself. “There, there, George,” she crooned to comfort it. “There, baby, there.” The men looked on in silence. “It’s whooping cough,” Susan Carver explained. “Remember, Mose? I mixed honey with tansy for him the day they carried Mary off. The cup’s down there in her cabin yet.” Bentley jerked his thumb toward the handsome three-year-old Negro child asleep in the second bed. “I see you got the older boy in here with you,” he remarked. “Yes, we’ve got Jim safe in here with us,” Susan Carver repeated. Her free hand drew the covers close about the sleeping boy. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll not forget that night. Soon as we heard the raiders, my man made for the cabin. ‘Run, Mary!’ he says. Then he snatches the boy out of his trundle bed, and off to the woods. But Mary! Before she could no more than scream, they had her and the baby on a horse.” Bentley shook his head. “These is bad times,” he said. “I seen a lot of things in this here State of Mis-souri, bushwhacking, fighting them Kansas raiders. Pretty near had my bellyful. Guess you’ve had yours, too, Carver,” he added with a grin. “Ain’t many took what you took.” Everybody in Diamond Grove and even up to Neosho, eight miles away, knew the raiders hadn’t been satisfied to steal Moses Carver’s slave girl. They, or others like them, had come again a few days later to get the thrifty German’s money. All the German immi-grants from Illinois were doing well. But Moses Carver was especially marked out for plunder. A man who bred race horses was sure to have silver stowed away. “Where’s your money? Tell us where you got it hid!” the raiders had demanded. Moses Carver hadn’t opened his mouth. They had strung him up by his thumbs to his own walnut tree that grew by the house. They’d taken burning coals from the fireplace and put them to his feet. But even then the sturdy farmer hadn’t revealed where his money was hid. “It won’t be long before I’m up and about again,” he said to Bentley. “My wife’s been putting plantain leaves to my feet—don’t hurt as much any more.” Then in a different tone he added, “Well, Bentley, what you want to take for George? I haven’t as much as people think, but I mean to pay you well for Mary’s baby. My wife’s done nothing but cry since we lost the girl.” The bushwhacker stopped twirling His cap. He stood shifting his weight from foot to foot while he considered the question. “I ain’t brought back your girl,” he said after a mo-ment, “so I can’t take that forty acre of timberland you promised me. But if you say its fair, Carver, I’ll take that race horse you said you’d give me over and above. I’ll take the race horse for my trouble, Carver.” “It’s fair,” Moses Carver declared. “Take the race horse and welcome. ... But I want you to know,” he added, “you’re getting three hundred dollars for the baby—that’s what Pacer’s worth. Sue, you set George down here by me. My wife will show you, Bentley, where we’ve got the horse hid.” Susan Carver threw her husband’s coat about her shoulders. “You have to go a ways into the woods,” she said. The wild winter wind almost tore the door from her hand. The fire smoked and billowed, then shot roaring up into the chimney. Shadows danced on the walls of the bare, one-room house. 2 Pioneer Farm MOSES CARVER didn’t begrudge the three-hundred-dollar race horse the baby had cost him; for George was Mary’s child, and Mary had been almost a member of the family. But there was another and stronger reason. The farmer’s conscience bothered him. Here he was, a man who didn’t believe in slavery, and what had he done? He had himself owned a hu-man being as one owns a horse or ox. To be sure, in the thirty-odd years he had lived in Missouri he had bought just the one slave. But one was as bad as a hundred—wasn’t the principle the same? Moses Carver had tried hard to still his conscience at the time. Hewing a home out of the wilderness was killing work, he told himself. For five and twenty years he and Sue had toiled and toiled, doing alone everything that had to be done on the one hundred and forty-acre farm. But finally Sue was no longer able to keep up with the work. What with the spinning and weaving and curing and churning and the thousand other endless tasks, she was getting worn out. And there was no servant to be hired. So Moses had weakened. “The girl will be better off with us than with another,” he had said to Susan that time six years ago. And he had gone to his neighbor, Colonel Grant. Moses had gone, still fighting with himself. He had put down seven hundred dollars and he had returned with thirteen-year-old Mary. In his pocket was a paper that warranted the girl to be “sound in body and mind and a slave for life.” Sound in body and mind. Certainly Mary had been that. She had been bright and quick and clever with her hands—and gay, too. She had gone singing about her work—that is, till just lately. That was when word came from the Grant place that the father of her chil-dren had been killed. “Hauling wood,” they said, “a heavy log...” No. Pacer was not too much to give for Mary’s baby. Peace of mind was worth three hundred dollars. Mary’s boy would have a chance to grow into a decent man. But there were times when Sue and Moses wondered whether George would grow up at all. He was so thin, so delicate, always down with croup or one thing and another. When he could walk once across the room without falling, it was a victory. Talk? It seemed he’d never learn to talk. And after he did, he stammered so that half the time you couldn’t make out what he was saying in that high, piping, birdlike voice of his. Altogether he looked like a baby bird, all head and mouth. Beside sturdy, handsome Jim, George with his spindly arms and legs felt decidedly at a disad-vantage. He couldn’t do any of the hard outside work that made Jim feel so important. George couldn’t lift, couldn’t push, and couldn’t drag. Jim followed Uncle Mose around and helped in all the things the farmer was doing. George stayed close to Aunt Sue. One thing only consoled him for that comical body of his—his wonderfully long, slim fin-gers. His fingers seemed to have magic in them. They could do anything George wanted them to. The boy saw Aunt Sue knitting, “Why can’t I do that with my hands?” he thought. Coming close, he watched how she moved her fingers. There were tur-key feathers out in the yard. George ran out and stripped some, leaving just a little tuft at the end— and there were needles for him. He unraveled the top of an old stocking and a mitten—and there was wool for him. He learned to knit. He saw Aunt Sue crocheting. “Why can’t I do that with my hands?” he said. He borrowed her hook and made patterns of his own, patterns of ferns and flowers and birds. He was always at Aunt Sue’s elbow when he was in the house, always learning to do things with his hands. He learned bits of cooking. Until they got the parlor cook stove years later, all the cooking had to be done in the fireplace. George learned to mix the corn batter. He’d pour it in the skillet, fit on a tight lid, and set it on the coals. Then he would pile more coals on the lid. And soon the savory smell of fatty corn bread would fill the room. There was plenty of work on the Carver farm-more work than all of them could do— and, sick or well, George did his share. On their one hundred and forty acres Uncle Mose and Aunt Sue “lived at home”—they grew and made practically everything they used. Only coffee and sugar came from outside. And even these they got by exchanging produce for them. Four o’clock in the morning summer and winter everybody was up. The horses had to be tended, the cows milked, the poultry fed. There were sheep to shear, and wool and flax to spin, and cloth to weave, and deerskins to tan and shoes to make. There were trees to cut down, and wood to saw and split and stack and carry in. Cora and flax and hemp had to be planted and cared for. Vegetables needed to be weeded and picked and stored. Apples and peaches and pears and blackberries had to be dried in the sun. From the woods hazelnuts and pecans and walnuts and butternuts must be brought in. There were the eggs to find and the butter to churn and the cheese to make and the beehives to care for. There were bacon and ham and venison to cure, lard and soap to make. Was someone in the family sick? Did a horse have the botts? Run, George, cut bark from the north side of the tree. Dig roots, gather herbs. Was there cloth to be dyed? Get oak bark for black, hickory for yellow, chestnut for brown. Yes, there was plenty of work for all. But there was good living for all, too. Only once did George remember a time when there wasn’t enough to eat. Or perhaps he didn’t remember at all but only remembered their telling him about it. The Civil War was still raging then, and lawless bands roamed Missouri. Again raiders came to Moses Carver’s farm. This time they tipped over his beehives one by one and found his money hidden under one. But the farmer’s spirit hadn’t been broken. He had worked all the harder after that— and the hungry times had passed. Again there was plenty for all. That’s how George always remembered his years with Aunt Sue and Uncle Mose— plenty for all, every-thing used, nothing wasted. 3 The Plant Doctor I DON’T KNOW what’s the matter with that fern, George. It used to fill this whole corner.” Mrs. Baynham threw the last drops of her dishwater into the garden and wiped her hands on her apron. She sighed. Colonel Grant’s place, which she had bought a few years back, was too much for her. Before the war, big gardens like this were all right—you had slaves to care for them. But now the war was over, the slaves were free, and you had to tend your garden yourself. Colonel Grant hadn’t been able to handle it, and neither could she. George crouched down to look. A few green fronds still stood upright in the center of the fern, but all the outer leaves were brown and dry. A great circle of brown lay on the ground. The boy passed his fingers gently over a stalk, and then felt the earth about the plant. He thought a moment, then said confidently, “I c-c-can make your f-f-fem well for you. L-l-let me take it away.” “Will you be sure to bring it back?” “I’ll bring it back.” George got a piece of sacking. He dug the plant up, set it on the sacking, and tied the ends tight. “I’ll b-b-bring it back in the fall,” he said. He loved to help plants grow. Perhaps it was because George was so often sick himself that sick plants spoke to him. He would nurse a dying plant as Aunt Sue nursed him when he was down—with the same watchfulness, with the same tenderness. He had a secret plot in the woods. He would take the sick plants there and doctor them. This one needed shade. That one needed new soil. The neighbors called him the Plant Doctor. They had learned that, small as he was, the little black boy knew what to do for sick plants. “George, what’s happening to my roses? The leaves are getting yellow and spotted.” “You have to give them s-s-sun, Mrs. Selby. Roses want sun,” he would say. “George, something’s killing my lilies.” George would dig around and bring up grubs. “That’s what’s doing it, Mrs. Swan.” If a plant was too far gone, he would dig it up and carry it to his forest greenhouse. He would bring water from the stream below his mother’s cabin. Then he would shake the soil from the roots and bury them in fresh earth. He never lost a plant. The women talked to Aunt Sue about him. “How did your George get to know so much about plants? He’s a regular little Plant Doctor,” they said. Aunt Sue was pleased to hear nice things about her George. “Land only knows,” she answered. “That boy has been asking questions about growing things since he could ask anything at all. It’s always been ‘Why, why?” with him.” Yes, always it had been that way. And before he learned to speak, it had been that way. George had wondered and silently asked why. Why are sunflowers yellow and wild roses pink? Why is some rose moss part one color, part another, some striped, some spotted? If I plant a pink flower by a yellow one, will the colors mix? Why do morning glories close so early? Why do leaves on one and the same sassafras have different shapes? Why do gourds grow on vines and pears on trees? He wanted to know the name of everything that grew. If no one could tell him, he made up a name himself. He felt he did not know a plant unless he could call it by name. As soon as the weather permitted, George spent his Sundays in the woods. Uncle Mose and Aunt Sue didn’t go to church; so the boy had the whole day to do with as he pleased. Often he left before it was light. At four o’clock in the morning the woods had things to say to him. What did he do there in the woods alone? George watched the wild creatures stirring; he lis-tened to the early din the birds made. He lifted the dead, brown leaves to see the jack-in-the-pulpits coming up. He raised up bits of dead bark and watched the insects crawl. He broke off bits of fungus from a rot-ting stump. Sometimes he just sat on a tree root and listened to the rustling of the leaves. There was something in the woods that carried George out of and beyond himself. There was a spirit there—something big, something he couldn’t touch or name, something he could only feel. A voice seemed to say to him, “You are not alone, George. I am with you, you belong to me.” He never felt frightened in the woods—the woods were more his home than his house was. With a couple of corn dodgers in his pocket he could stay away the whole day. And at suppertime he came home with pockets full of rocks and mica and acorns, feathers and leaves and grasses—and a frog perhaps. Aunt Sue called it all “trash” and wouldn’t let him take his “foolishness” into the house. Yes, Jim may have been the one that chopped wood. But the woods belonged to George. To make things and to make things grow—these were the weekday occupations that kept George happy. But the Sunday spirit of the woods never quite left him. It was as though George carried a wonderful secret about with him, a secret about a very special friend who loved and understood and watched over him. One day George had a dream. He dreamed that out in a cornfield he saw a watermelon lying. The water-melon had been cut open and partly eaten. The rind was lying on the ground. He could see just where it lay against a corn hill out of which three stalks were growing. But that was not the important part of the dream. The important part was that right beside the water-melon rind a knife was lying. It was a lady’s knife, not much broader than a pencil. It had a black handle and two blades. Now of all things the one George wanted most was a knife. Though he could always borrow one of Uncle Mose’s hunting knives, that wasn’t at all the same thing as having a knife of your own. So he clung to his dream. Uncle Mose had often told him that a hungry chick-en dreamed of grain. But George didn’t want to believe that you dreamed about the things you were hungry for. He thought the dream was a special mes-sage to him. As soon as he could get away from the breakfast table, he made off over the fences. The cornfield of his dream wasn’t one of their own. He knew exactly which one of their neighbors the dream cornfield be-longed to, and even while he ran he knew he was going to the very spot. Sure enough, there were the three cornstalks and the half-eaten watermelon and the rinds. And there was the knife! What would Uncle Mose say to that? Wasn’t this proof positive that someone was watching over him? 4 Out into the Wide World NOW THAT GEORGE had a knife of his own, there were more things his hands could do. He made himself a cornstalk fiddle. With some hair from a horse’s tail, he strung a bow. And he made music. All the little white boys and girls with whom he played came around to hear him make music. None of them could play a cornstalk fiddle the way he could. Then in a wonderful sort of adventure George dis-covered painting. He was up at the Baynham place one day where, ever since the healing of the fern, he was a welcome visitor. Mrs. Baynham had taken him into the kitchen for a treat. Somehow he had been left alone, and for once he got up enough courage to try and see what the rest of the big brick and frame house looked like. His mother and father had both been slaves on the old Grant place, and George was very curious about it. He stole out into the hall, opened a big white door, and found himself in the parlor. There was a rug on the floor. Big, soft-looking chairs covered with cloth stood on it. Then George looked up at the walls and for a minute his heart stopped beating. A whole row of people was staring down at him. He wanted to run but was frozen to the spot. Then he realized that the people weren’t real. He had never seen portraits before. So here was something else people did with their hands. Well, if others could do it, he could, too.