Sarah Binks

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35Sleep, my precious, close your eyes, Mother's sold on plates for pies, And to-morrow � go to sleep � Daddy goes to town with sheep, Better count them while you're able, When they're gone they'll lock the stable, So we'll count them, you and me, Four o'clock comes after three � Count the hours, count the sheep � Sleep, you little nuisance, sleep.In CHRISTMAS EVE we find Sarah singing the joys of the wedding day with a full throat:CHRISTMAS EVE.When birthday comes on Christmas Eve, And Christmas Eve is bridal night, The maiden's heart is filled with joy, She bounces with delight; For wedding day at last is here, And Christmas comes but once a year.And at her hand the bashful groomIs happy in her pledge,He plucks the fairest flowers that bloom, Prom off the window ledge; With joy he lays them at her feet, And gazes loving, long, and sweet.oh, may that day be bright and gay, With laughter loud and chuckle, 1.0 evil unkind fate hold sway To rend the veil and buckle; Each wedding and each birthday leave A kindly thought for Christmas Eve!In this poem Sarah undoubtedly anticipates events.Several Christmas Eves and more than one birthday were topass for Mathilda before the "wedding day at last is here".The short poem beginning,Soon old Steve will have to build a Two room shanty for Mathilda ...is not indicative of the actual events, and, moreover, hasnever been admitted as one of Sarah's works, but has beenvariously ascribed to Ole, or to any one if the thirteen
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36Schwantsshacker sisters. It was found written one one of the buildings of the Binks' farm. The original manuscript was carefully sawn off and through the kindness of the Rack Loan and Holding Company, owners of the original mortgage on N.W. 1/4 Sec. 37, T 21, R. 9,W., in charging only for the actual material and labor and cartage, found its way into the collection of Binksiana, but it was inadvertently removed from its glass case and used for kindling by the curator when he was making the morning fire in the adjoining rest room.The cause of the break between Steve and Mathilda which delayed their union by so many years is not definitely known. Various hypotheses have been advanced, one of the most ingenious of which1)is that Steve in his new found happiness took to drinking heavily. But this hypothesis is not in keeping with the character of Mathilda, nor of the countryside. One need only to read Sarah's THE PLEDGE to realise that Steve's well known fondness for the wines native to willows enhanced him in Mathilda's eyes. Professor Marrowfat, in laborious preparation for a brochure on the native wines and cheeses of Saskatchewan has made a very exhaustive study of the particular wine mentioned as "apple jack" in THE PLEDGE and gives several recipes for its preparation. He points out, however, that the name "apple jack" is really a misnomer, in that the wine is not made from apples hut from potatoes, and derives its flavor from the addition of a pound of evaporated apples to each ten gallons of mash. Sometimes a few sprigs of dill and a very small quantity of rough-on-rats was added when a liqueur and tonic for the aged was required. The poet, however, speaks always in1) Marrowfat - "Native Wines and Cheeses of the American North-West", Bull. Ed. Sask. No) 10, 1936
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the language of the people, and although THE PLEDGE is written in the heroic manner, Sarah is too much the voice of Saskatchewan not to call it applejack,THE PLEDGE tells in language ever new; the age-long story of a young man (Steve) taking leave of his "beloved on the eve of "battle.THE PLEDGE.Mathilda, fair, to thee I pledge This cup of apple jack; I drink � end should I fall to-night, Weep not, nor hold me back.Weep not, my cwn, Though mine own eyes May fail, my footsteps falter, weep not, I rise again and sing To tambour sound find psalter;Like others sang, and others tried, With flowing bowl to grapple � Theirs was the song of purple grape,Mine the song of apple.Mathilda, mine, to thee this cup, And once again I pledge And still again � this night may see Me lie beneath the hedge.Beneath the hedge and open sky,And oh, the dawn's bright breaking May find me in stentorious sleepUntil that long sleep's waking.A. S. Toreador, writing in a recent issue of THE BOOKWORM says of this poem: "The soil of Saskatchewan has been enriched and fertilized by this song. It is the very breath of the people..."
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38CHAPTER V.William Greenglow.To William Greenglow, geologist and educationalist,goes the honor and credit of introducing Sarah Binks to the great science of geology. No less a person than the HonorableA.E. Windheaver, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Grasshopper Control, speaking before an audience of almost three hundred people, pays him tribute. The closing lines of his peroration, as reported by the special correspondent of the Pelvis, Sask.,BANKER, run as follows:"Literary movements grow, fashions change, oil booms come and go and people leave the country. But geology is founded upon a rock. The great Liberal party, which I have the honor to represent and which is responsible for these roads, may some day pass away. But when that day comes, and I say it advisedly, when that day comes, the price of wheat will be down to twenty cents, F.O.B. Fort William, the fodder crops will rot in the fields, and these here roads will be the home of the rearing cactus and the gopher. The Liberal party has always fought against that type of thing. But when that day comes, I want to say that geology will still be geology. The big interests of Ontario and Quebec that are trying to run this great country of yours and are keeping down the price of steers, will bump against the rock of geology. We've got the whole north country unexplored and undeveloped. Think of it: Over four million square miles of solid rock. And we are going to use that mone;y to put agriculture of Saskatchewan on a solid footing. We, who have gathered here to-day to honor the memory of Sarah
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Binks, your local girl, the light of whose gem shines "brightest in the diadem of this City of Willows, and of whom the Government is so justly proud, we must never forget that geology played a part in her life also, and that William Greenglow, who first taught her the rudiments of this science, was at the same time the first practical geologist of this great Province".This tribute to Greenglow, coming as it does from so eminent a statesman as the Hon. Windheaver, himself no mean geologist, as his armorial hearings of pick, shovel and salt shaker upon the engraved stock certificates show, and uttered upon the occasion of the Sarah Festival and basket picnic at illow View Park, shows how profoundly Greenglow's influence extends, and how deeply Sarah penetrates into the soil of Saskatchewan. "She expresses", according to the Literary Editor of the HORSEEREEDER'S GAZETTE, "not only the soul of Saskatchewan, but its very bones; the Jurassic, Triassic, or the plain Assic, are all there. She puts the Carboniferous up to us".It is not the intention of the Author of this study � to go into the geology of Saskatchewan. The Author has agreed to stick to literature. But no one can understand Sara 's poems in their deeper meaning, and in particular her later poems, without some knowledge of that geological wave of activity which swept the Willows district during the summer in which William Greenglow taught at the Willowview School.Of William Greenglow's antecedents we know; surprisingly little. Manitoba has claimed him as a native son but has also disclaimed him. It is difficult to decide. That he was a student at the College of St. Midget's is known, but
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40owing to the fact that his fees at that institution have not been completely paid, hie academic record is not available. According to hie own records, in which he tended to become confused and which tend accordingly to be unreliable, he had obtained a total of ten and a half units, fourteen credits, eleven and five sixteenth pundits during the first term of the second half of the first division, and that by transferring three digits from the diploma course to the degree course of the second division, he would have a total of twenty three half-credits, which would entitle him to the degree of Jack of Arts, leaving six marklets, or one semi microbe, which could later be counted towards the degree of Bachelor of Arts. There is, however, no record of his having obtained either of these degrees although on the prospectuses of various companies with which he has been associated he appears with the letters J.A. after his name. Perhaps, if he had not been conditioned in elementary geology and load pa d his fees he would have received his degree at least extramurally. "What a pity" writes Dean Tweezer, "that a man like him has to go through life without an educationThe Senate would finally have passed him in geology if he had only paid his fees."But St Midget's loss was Sarah's gain. It was this verycondition in geology which brought Greenglow to Saskatchewan.Having written it twice and been thrown for a greater loss ofhalf-credits on each occasion, not to mention the greater loss of complete credit with his landlady, he had obtained through the medium of his uncle and an application to the Minister of Education, a temporary permit to teach school in either the"unorganised" or "disorganised" schools of Saskatchewan.
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And being resolved to repair his mental as well as his financial standing, he had brought with him only his textbook in geology, putting, as he himself admitted, "all other books out of temptation".The result of this singular concentration of effort was to shed a greater flood of geological light into the community of Willows than into the community of William Greenglow's mind. In this respect he must "be regarded as a true educator if not a great one, for he had the educator's peculiar genius for imparting knowledge without himself A assimilating it. Few teachers in the history of education in Saskatchewan have excelled him in this respect. Information flowed from him, to use the apt phrasing of Jacob Binks, "like beer from a spigot," and like a spigot he could turn it off at four o'clock without permitting any inertial flow to carry him beyond his duties. It is true that he frequently kept Mathilda after school, but this, as he explained to the school board, was because he was "not satisfied with her progress", and could hardly be regarded as violating the wishes of the school board against the too zealous enthusiasm for mere book learning.William Greenglow's educational policy was to teach his class geology and at the same time have them teach it to him. That he failed in the latter respect was not due so much to his pedagogical method (attended with so much success elsewhere) as to the feet that only one copy of the text was available for the use of the school. If two copies of Warden and Rockbuster's "First Steps in Geology" had been available, one for the teacher and one for the class, Greenglow would
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have been able to follow the recitations and the lessons in reading with greater accuracy. Always an educator first* he felt that his first duty was towards his class and consequently he had little time during school hours to peruse the volume himself. But in spite of the handicap of the teacher it was a golden age for the pupils. Greenglow himself characterises the happy combination of geological and pedagogical methods as one of outstanding success: "They are drilled but never bored" he writes in one of his letters, "and" a good time is had by all. They take to geology like the Board of Trade. I have divided the school into a .Junior Division and a Senior Division. At present the Junior Division is out on practical work, classifying the field boulders into igneous* carboniferous and pestiferous , thereby earning unit and credits. Only half of the Senior Division is present this afternoon and there wouldn't even be that if I hadn't promoted her from Junior to Senior Division last week. That's Mathilda. And boy, oh boy, does that baby know her geology:The other half of the Senior Division is the Binks girl. She is probably helping her old man with the haying these days, or off writing another poem. I lent her my copy of Warden and Rockbuster the other day to take home. Never again. She lent it to Ole, who took it into the field, and two of the pages are missing, fortunately not the ones containing my lastyear's notes. She offered to pay for them on a pro rata basis, but there are two hundred pages in the book, so I said I would let her have th whole thing for fifty cents if she would let us use it in the school until the fall. Old Sage, her grandfather, came round last night ani closed the deal".
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43It is apparent that the personal influence of William Greenglow upon Sarah, the poetess, was by no means as great as upon Mathilda. But his literary influence through the medium af his teaching can hardly he overestimated. She strikes at once the new note. One moment she is lyrical, gay, as in her SONG TO THE FOUR SEASONS, the next moment she is deep in the fossil beds of the Ordovician or the Preluvian. One moment she sings the joy of the farmer's life, catches in her web of poesy the ephemeral dust storm and imprints it indelibly upon the hearts of men, the next moment she is down to hard-pan, struggling with new forms, mastering new material. Early in June she wrote those two flawless gems SONG TO THE FOUR SEASONS and THE FARMER AND THE FARMER'S WIFE. Two weeks later she began that great Epic, or Super Poem, which she later revised and enlarged and finally completed under the title UP FROM THE MAGMA AND BACK AGAIN. Strictly speaking this great opus belongs to a later period of her life. It is not suggested that the thirteen cantos or even the Prologue were completed at this period. But they were conceived and began to take form. We know for certain that the linesShould maddened pterodactyl chance to meet With raging crocodile. Then crocodile the pterodactyl eat, Or pterodactyl eat the crocodile.lines which occur in the first, second and thirteenth Canto,as well as in the Epilogue, were written around this time.Moreover the quatrainMan, who is creature of thye moment jist, Is yet a fossil in micaceous schist, Tomorrow's day, his bones are bleached and bent, A something for the archeologist.
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were written the same summer, although it was not until some years later, in fact after she had "been to Begina, that she was to add those famous lines which gave the verse its completeness:Man who has spurned and made my heart to hurt, Is but a creature and a thing of dirt, A thing of mud, of clay, volcanic ash, Old brick, cinders, broken cement, chert.The geological motive is very strong here. It was to follow her all her life. Not only in her poems, but her very conversation takes on the geological flavour. She refers to her grandfather as "sedimentary" in his habits; Ole's expression is affectionately described on one occasion as being somewhat "palaeozoic" in character, and she refers to the first glacial period as if it were the winter before last. She sends a message to the Schwantzhacker sisters in which they are aptly and picturesquely addressed as "trilobites". Sarah was never at a loss for the correct word.But in spite of this strong geological influence which had entered her life and through her the literature of Saskatchewan, she never loses her Joy in the sweet simplicity of the Saskatchewan scene. The pastoral influence was too strong. Hearken to Sarah as she sings her SONG TO THE FOUR SEASONS:
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45Spring is here, the breezes blowing, Four inches of top-soil going, going; Farm ducks rolling across the prairie � Spring is here � how nice and airy:Summer has come, the hoppers are back, The sun shines bright, the fields shine black, Cloudlets gather, it looks like rain � Ah, the patter of hail on the window panelBounteous harvest, we'll sell at cost � To-morrow we'll have an early frost; Glorious autumn, red with rust � We'll live on the general store on trust,A long, quiet winter with plenty of snow, And plenty of barley; it's eighty below, Barley in the heater, salt pork in the pantry � _ How nice that you never feel cold in this country.1)Greenglow mentions in his letter that Sarah was probablyhelping her father with the haying or "off writing another poem''.Probably she was doing both with her chief attention on thepoem. We know from Ole's account of an Incident that one dayshe buried grandfather Thurnow so deeply in the hay that hemight conceivably be there yet had she not been fortunateenough to discover him while pressing down the hay with thepitchfork. The incident may have wearied her of haying.Certainly it is with relief that she lays down the tool onSaturday night and expresses the joy of girlhood set free inthose lines TOMORROW IS SUNDAY.Hang up the pitchfork, another week over � The weeks all end, and they all begin; But to-morrow for me, and for Ole and Rover, It's Sunday � and Sunday we all sleep in.Tonight we go shopping, we'll bring home some butter Canned milk and eggs from the general store. Visitors coming to-morrow � it's Sunday, And Sunday an extra hour to snore.1) It is in rhymes such as these, "country" made to rhyme with "pantry" that Sarah reveals herself as a Daughter of the Old South.
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To-morrow is Sunday � bright and breezy, We'll cook four meals to keep alive. And do the chores, hut we*11 take it easy, For to-morrow is Sunday � we'll sleep Hill five*.Another week's ploughing and haying and seeding, Another wash-day has come and gone,Another day's sewing and "baking and weeding �.But to-morrow is Sunday � we'll sleep '.til dawn.By Monday she is hard at it again; it may have been that the Sunday visitors intruding into her dreams and her solitude wearied her more than the haying, at least we find her once hyming the praises of the pastoral life. Before midsummer she had completed THE FARMER AND THE FARMER'S WIFE. It is one of her greatest of the short poems. It was first published in the Piecemeal EXCELSIOR, but was immediately copied by the TIMES of Protuberance, Sask., and the BEAM, of Vigil, N.W.T. She received no royalties from this piracy of an author's rights, but she expected none at this stage of her career. Hers were still the pleasures of giving. She did however, write to the manager of the Lax Cosmetics Company at Saskatoon, who had used the third line of the second verse, and the second line of the fourth verse of this poem in one of their advertisements, calling attention to the fact that her name was spelled with an I instead of a U, but received no reply.* These lines were recently quoted with telling effect by. Agustus Windheaver, Jr., heading the usual delegation to the Dominion Government with the petition to have the Willows-Quagmire district formed into a separate province. He declared, "Daylight saving means seccession!"

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