I begin this story with the personal pronoun. To begin it in any other way would be only a commonplace assumption of a modesty that I do not really have. It is most natural that the personal pronoun should stand as the first word of this tale, for I cannot remember a time when my chief thoughts and emotions did not concern myself, or were not in some way related to myself. I look back through the years that have passed, and find that the first consciousness of my being and the hazy indistinct memories of my childhood are all about myself,—what the world, and its men and its women, and its beasts and its plants, meant to me. This feeling is all there is of the past and all there is of the present; and as I look forward on my fast shortening 2path, I am sure that my last emotions, like my first, will come from the impressions that the world is yet able to make upon the failing senses that shall still connect me with mortal life.
So why should I not begin this tale with the personal pronoun? And why should I not use it over and over again, with no effort to disguise the fact that whatever the world may be to you, still to me it is nothing except as it influences and affects my life and me?
I have been told that I was born a long time ago, back in the State of Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of a little struggling town that slept by day and by night along a winding stream, and between two ranges of high hills that stood sentinel on either side. The valley was very narrow, and so too were all the people who lived in the little town. These built their small white frame houses and barns close to the river-side, for it was only near its winding banks that the soil would raise corn, potatoes, and hay,—potatoes for the people, and hay and corn for the other inhabitants, who were almost as important to the landscape and almost as close to my early life as the men 3and women who gathered each Sunday in the large white church, and who had no doubt that they were different from the horses and cattle, and would live in some future world that these other animals would never reach. Even then I felt that perhaps, if this was true, the horses and cattle had the best of the scheme of the universe, for the men and women never seemed to enjoy life very much, excepting here and there some solitary person who was pointed out as a terrible example, who would surely suffer in the next world during the eternity which my long-faced sober neighbors would spend in enjoying the pleasures they had so righteously denied themselves while here on earth.
Of course no one will expect me to tell all my life. In fact, much of the most interesting part must be left out entirely, as is the case with all lives that are really worth the writing; and unless mine is one of these, why bother with the story? Polite society, that buys books and reads them,—at least reads them,—would not tolerate the whole; so this is an expurgated life, or, rather, an expurgated story of a life. Thank God, the life was not expurgated 4any more than absolutely necessary, sometimes not even so much as that. But so far as I can really tell my story, I shall make a brave endeavor to tell it truthfully, at least as near as the truth can be told by one who does not tell the whole truth,—which, after all, is not so very near.
Lest anyone who might borrow this book and read it should think that I am not so very good, and am putting my best foot foremost, let me hasten to say that if I told the whole truth it would be much more favorable to me than this poor expurgated version will make it seem. I have done many very good things which I shall not dare to set down in these pages, for if I should record them some envious and unkind readers might say that I did these things in order to write them in a book and get fame and credit for their doing, and so after all they were not really good. But even the bad things that I leave out were not so very bad,—indeed, they were not bad at all, if one has my point of view of life and knows all the facts. The trouble is, there are so few who have my point of view, and most of those are bound to pretend that they have not. Then, too, no 5one could possibly tell all the facts, for one can write only with pen and ink, and long after everything is past and gone, while one lives with flesh and blood, and sometimes tingling blood at that, and only a single moment at a time. So it may be that no one could write a really truthful story if he would, and perhaps the old fogies are right in fixing the line as to what may be set down and what must be left out. At least, I promise that the reader who proclaims his propriety the loudest, and from the highest house-top, need not have the slightest fear—or hope—about this book, for I shall watch every word with the strictest care, and the moment I find myself wandering from the beaten path I shall fetch myself up with the roundest and the quickest turn. And so, having made myself thus clear as to the plans and purposes of my story, there is no occasion to tarry longer at its threshold.
I have always had the highest regard for integrity, and have ever by precept urged it upon other people; therefore in these pages I shall try, as I have said, to tell the truth; still I am afraid that I shall not succeed, for, after all, I can tell about things only as they seem 6to me,—and I am not in the least sure that my childhood home, and the boys and girls with whom I played, were really like what they seem to have been, when I rub my eyes and awaken in the fairy-land that I left so long ago. So, to be perfectly honest with the reader,—which I am bound to be as long as I can and as far as I can,—I will say that this story is only a story of impressions after all. But this is doubtless the right point of view, for life consists only of impressions, and when the impressions are done the life is done.
I really do not know just why I am telling this story, for it is only fair to let the reader know at the beginning, so that he need not waste his time, that nothing ever happened to me,—that is, nothing has happened yet, and all my life I have been trying hard to keep things from happening. But as nothing ever happened, how can there be any story for me to write? I am unable to weave any plot, because there never were any plots in my life, excepting a few that never came to anything, and so were really no part of my life. What happened to me is nothing more than what 7happens to everyone; so why should I expect people to bother to read my story? Why should they pay money to buy my book, which is not a story after all?
I hardly think I am writing this for fame. If that were the case, I should tell the things that I leave out, for I know that they would be more talked about than the commonplace things that I set down. But I have always wanted to write a book. I remember when I was very small, and used to climb on a chair and look at the rows of books on my father’s shelves, I thought it must be a wonderful being who could write all the pages of a big book, and I would have given all the playthings that I ever hoped to have for the assurance that some day I might possibly write down so many words and have them printed and bound into a book. But my father always told me I could never write a book unless I studied hard,—Latin, Greek, geometry, history, and a lot of things that I knew nothing about then and not much more now. As I grew older, I was too poor and too lazy to learn all the things that my good father said I must know if I should ever write a book, but I never gave up the longing, even when I felt how impossible it would be to realize my dream.
I never studied geometry, or history, or Greek, and I studied scarcely any Latin, and not much arithmetic; and I never did anything with grammar, except to study it,—in fact, I always thought that this was the only purpose for which grammar was invented. But in spite of all this, I wanted to write a book, and resolved that I would write a book. Of course, as I am not a scholar, and have never learned anything out of books to tell about in other books, there was nothing for me to do but tell of the things that had happened to me. So I tell this story because it is the only story I know,—and even this one I do not know so very well. Sometimes I think I am one kind of person, and then sometimes I think I am another kind; and I am never quite sure why I do any particular thing, or why I do not do it, excepting the things I am afraid to do. But there is no reason now why I should not write this book, for I have money enough to get it printed and bound, and even if no one ever buys a copy still I can say that I have written 9a book. I understand that a great many books are published in this way, and I must have read a number that never would have been printed if the author had not been able to pay for them himself.
But I have put off writing this story for many, many years, until at last I am beginning to think of getting old; and if I linger much longer over unimportant excuses and explanations, I fear that I shall die, and future generations will never know that I have lived. For I am quite certain that no one else will ever write my story, and unless I really get to work, even my name will be forgotten excepting by the few who go back to my old-time home, and open the wire gate of the little graveyard, and go down the winding path between the white headstones until they reach my mound. I know that they will find it there, for I have already made my will and provided that I shall be carried back to the little Pennsylvania town beside the winding stream where I used to stone the frogs; and I have written down the exact words that shall be carved upon my marble headstone,—that is, all the words except those that are to tell of the last event, and these we are all of us very willing to leave to someone else.
But this story is about life and action, and boys and girls, and men and women; and I really did not intend to take the reader to my grave in the very first chapter of the book.
I forgot to mention that my name is John Smith. Of course this is a very plebeian name, but I am in no way responsible for it. As long as I can remember, I answered to the call of “John” or “Johnny” many a time in my childhood, and even later, when I would much have preferred not to hear the call. My father’s name was John Smith, too. No doubt he, and his father before him, could see no way to avoid the Smith, and thought it could not make much difference to add the John. The chief trouble that I have experienced from the name has come from getting my letters mixed up with other people’s,—mainly my father’s,—which often caused me embarrassment in my younger days.
I have tried very hard to remember when I first knew my name was John. Indeed, I have often wondered when it was that I first knew that I was I, and how that fact dawned upon my mind. Over and over again I have tried to remember my first thoughts and experiences of life, but have always failed in the attempt. If I could only tell of my first sensations, as I looked at the blue sky, and felt the warm sun, and heard the singing birds in my infancy, I am sure they would interest the reader. But I can give no testimony upon these important points. I have no doubt, however, that when I looked upon the heavens and the earth for the first time I must have felt the same ignorance and awe and wonder that possess my mind to-day when I try to understand the same unexplainable mysteries that have always filled me with queries, doubts, and fears.
Neither can I tell just what I first came to remember; and when I look back to that little home beside the creek I am not quite sure whether the feelings that I have are of things that I actually saw and felt and lived, or whether some imaginings of my young brain have taken the form and semblance of real life.
I was only one of a large family, mostly older than myself; but while I was only one, I was the chief one, and the rest were important only as they affected me. It must have been the rule of our family that each of the children should have the right to give orders to those younger than himself; at any rate, all the older ones told me what to do, and I in turn claimed the same privilege with those younger than myself.
My early remembrances have little sequence or logical connection. I am quite unable to tell which events came first of those that must have happened when I was very young.
Among my earliest impressions is one of a hill in our back yard, and of our going down it to bring water from the well. I am sure that the hill is not a dream, for I have been back since and found it there, although not near as long and steep as it seemed in those far-off years. I remember that we children used to slide down this hill and then walk up again. Even then I was willing to do a great deal of work for a very small amount of fun. Somehow, in looking back, it seems as if I were always sliding downhill and tugging my sled back to the top in the dusk of the evening. I cannot quite understand how it is that I remember the evening best, but there it is as I unroll the scroll,—there are the dents in my memory, and there is the little boy pulling his sled uphill and looking in at the lighted kitchen window at the top. There, too, are the older and wiser members of the family,—those who have learned that the short sensation of sliding down the hill is not worth the long tug up; a lesson which, although I am growing old and gray, I never have been wise enough to learn. There are the older ones gathered around the table with their books, or busy with their household work,—the old family circle that I see so plainly now in the lamplight through the window, perhaps more plainly for the years that lie between. This magic circle was long since broken and scattered, and lives only in the memory of the man-child who knew so little then of what life really meant, and who knows so little now.
It is strange, but somehow I have no such distinct recollection of our home as I have of the other objects that were familiar to my childish mind. I can see the little muddy brook that ran just back of the garden fence. Down the hill on the edge of the stream stood a log cheese-house,—at least, it seems so now,—and 15back of this cheese-house beside the brook must have been a favorite spot for me to wade and fish, although I have no remembrance that I ever caught anything, which fact I am happy to record. Beyond the stream was an orchard. I am uncertain whether or not it belonged to my father, although I rather think it must have been owned by somebody else, the apples always looked so tempting and so red,—which reminds me that all through life it has seemed to me that no fruit was quite so sweet as that which was just beyond my reach. Anyhow, this orchard stands out very plainly in my mind. It was a very large orchard,—in fact, a great forest of trees; and I remember that I always stole over the fence intending to get the apples on the nearest tree, but they did not taste so sweet nor look so red as some others farther on, which in turn were passed by for others yet a little farther off, until I had gone quite through the orchard in my endeavor to get the very best. Although I have been grown up for many a year, somehow this habit of seeing something better further on has clung to me through life. So tenacious is this habit, that I fancy I have missed much that is 16valuable and good in my eager haste to get something better still. I am not quite certain about the orchard, perhaps it was not so very large after all; at least, when I went back a few years ago there was no cheese-house, and no orchard, and even the brook was grown up to grass and weeds. I know that in my childhood my parents moved from the old house to another slightly better, and nearer town; but though I can clearly remember certain incidents of both, still I have no recollection of our moving, and it is utterly impossible to keep the impressions of each separate and distinct.
My first memory of a schoolhouse seems quite clear. It may be that the things I remember never really happened, although the impression of them is very strong upon my mind. I must have been very young, hardly more than three or four years old, and was doubtless taken to school by an elder brother or sister; certainly I was too young to be a pupil. The schoolhouse was a long way from home,—miles and miles it seemed to me. After being in school for hours, I must have grown weary and restless, sitting so motionless and still, for I know that I was boxed on the ears either by the teacher’s hand or with a slate. I ran out of the room sobbing and crying, and went down the long white road to my home. I shall never forget that journey in the heat and dust. It must have been the greatest pain and sorrow I had ever known. Doubtless it was the humiliation of being boxed on the ears before the whole school that broke my heart; at least, I felt as if I never would reach home, and I must have sprinkled every foot of the way with my bitter tears. I remember that teacher’s name to-day, and I never forgave her, until a short time ago, after I read Tolstoi. Now I only realize how stupid and ignorant she was to awaken such hatred in the heart of a little child. In those days whipping was a part, and a very large part, of the regular course of the district school, and I learned in a few years not to mind it very much,—in fact, rather to enjoy it, for it gave me such good standing with the other children of the school.
How full of illusions and delusions we children were! Since I have grown to man’s estate, I have travelled the same road over which I sobbed in that far-off day, and it was really but a very little way,—a short half-mile,—and still, as I look back to that little crying child, it seems as if he must have walked across a desert beneath a tropical sun, and borne all the despair and anguish of the world inside his little jacket.
Another memory that has become a part of my being grows out of the great Civil War. I was probably four or five years old, and was playing under the big maple-trees in our old front yard. The scene all comes back to me as I write. I have a stick or hoop, or perhaps both, in my little hand. No one else is anywhere about. I hear a drum and fife coming over the hill, and I run to the fence and look down the gravelly road. A two-horse wagon loaded with men and boys, whose names and perhaps faces I seem to know, drives past me as I peer through the palings of the fence. They are dressed in uniform, and are proud and gay. In the centre of the wagon is one boy standing up; I see his face plainly, and catch its boyish smile. They drive past the house to the railroad station, on their way to the Southern battle-fields. I must have been told a great deal about these men and about the war, for my people were abolitionists, who looked upon the rebels as some sort of monsters, and had no thought that there could be any side but ours. However, I now remember nothing at all of what was said to me, but I hear the martial music, I see the horses and wagons and men, and clear and distinct from all the rest is this one boy’s face that I knew so well. Even more distinctly do I remember a day some months later. I must then have begun going to the district school, for I remember that there was no school that day. I recall a great throng of people, and among them all the boys and girls from school, and we are gathered inside the burying-ground where they are carrying the young soldier who rode past our house a few months before. I cannot remember what was said at the funeral, but this is the first impression that I can recall of the grim spectre Death. What it meant to my childish mind I cannot now conceive. I remember only the hushed awe and the deep dread that fell upon us all when we realized that they were putting this boy into the ground and that we should never see his face again. Whatever the feeling, I fancy that time and years have not changed or modified it, or made it any easier to reconcile or understand.
But with the memory of the funeral there lingers an impression that we all thought this young man a glorious, brave, and noble boy, and that his widowed mother and brothers and sisters ought to have felt happy and proud that he was buried in the ground. I remembered the mother for many years, and how she always mourned her son; but it was a long, long time before I came to understand that the fact that the boy was killed upon the field of battle really did not make the sorrow any less for the family left behind. And it was still longer before I came to realize that it is no more noble or honorable to die fighting on the field of battle than in any other way.
My earliest recollections that I can feel quite sure are real are about my family and home. My father was a miller, and had a little grist-mill by the side of the creek, just in the shade of some large oak-trees. His mill must have been very small, for I always knew that he was poor. Still, it seemed to me that the mill was a wonderful affair, almost as large as the big white church that stood upon the hill. It was run by water when the creek was not too low, which I am sure was very often, as I think it over now. Above the mill was a great dam, which made an enormous pond, larger than the Atlantic Ocean, and much more dangerous to any of us boys venturesome enough to go out upon it in a boat, or even on skates in the winter time. But the most marvellous part of all was the wonderful water-wheel hidden almost underneath the mill. It seemed as if 22there were a great hollow in the ground, to make room for the wheel; and if I had any opinion on the subject, I must have thought that the wheel grew there, for surely no one could make a monster like that. Often I used to go with my father up to the head of the mill-race, when he lifted the big wooden gate and let the waters come down out of the dam through the race and the wooden flume over the great groaning wheel. I well remember how I used to stand in awe and wonder while my father opened the gate, and then run down the path ahead of the rushing tide and peep through a hole to see the old wheel start. Then I would scamper over the mill, from the cellar with its cogs and pulleys, up to the garret with its white dusty chutes and its incomprehensible machines. Then I played around the great sacks and enormous bins of wheat and corn, and watched the grain as it streamed into the hopper ready to be ground to pieces by the slowly turning stones.
How real, and still how unreal, all this seems to-day! Is it all a dream? and am I writing a fairy-story like “Little Red Riding Hood” or “The Three Black Bears”? Surely all these 23events are as clear and vivid as the theatre party of last week. But while I so plainly see the little, idle, prattling child, looking with wondering eyes at the great turning wheel, and asking his simple questions of the grave, kind old man in the great white coat, somehow there is no relation between that simple child and the man whom the world has buffeted and tossed for so many years, and with such a rough unfriendly hand, that he cannot help the feeling that this far-off child was really someone else.
My father was a just and upright man,—I can see him now dipping his bent wooden measure into the hopper of grain and taking out his toll, never a single kernel more than was his due. No doubt the suspicious farmers who brought their sacks of wheat and corn often thought that he dipped out more grain than he had a right to take; and even many of those who knew that he did not, still thought he was a fool because he failed to make the most of the opportunities he had. As I grew up, I learned that there are all sorts of people in the world, and that selfishness and greed and envy are, to say the least, very common in the 24human heart; but I never could be thankful enough that my father was honest and simple, and that his love of truth and justice had grown into his being as naturally as the oaks were rooted to the earth along the little stream.
The old wheel ceased turning long ago. The last stick of timber in its wondrous mechanism has rotted and decayed; the old mill itself has vanished from the earth. The drying stream and the great mills of the new Northwest long since conspired to destroy my father’s simple trade. Even the dam has been washed away, and a tiny thread of water now trickles down over the hill where the rushing flood fell full upon the great turning wheel. Last summer I went back to linger, like a ghost, around the old familiar spot; and I found that even the great unexplored pond had dried up, and a field of corn was growing peacefully upon the soil that once upheld this treacherous sea. And the old miller too, with his kindly, simple, honest face,—the old miller with his great white coat,—he too is gone, gone as completely as his father and all the other fathers and grandfathers who have come and gone; the dear, kind old miller, who listened to my 25childish questions, and taught me, or rather tried to teach me, what was right and wrong, has grown weary and lain down to rest, and will soon be quite forgotten by the world,—unless this story shall bring his son so much fame that some of the glory shall be reflected back to him.
Somehow the mill seems to have made a stronger impression than the house on my young mind. Perhaps it was because it was the only mill that I had ever seen or known; perhaps because the associations that naturally attached to the mill and its surroundings were such as appeal most to the mind of a little child. Of course, from the very nature of things the home and family must have been among my earliest recollections; yet I cannot help feeling that much of the literature about childhood’s home has been written for effect,—or not to describe home as it really is to the child, but from someone’s ideal of what home ought to be.
I know that my mother was a very energetic, hard-working, and in every way strong woman, although I did not know it or think about it then. I know it now, for as I look back to 26my childhood and see the large family that she cared for, almost without help, I cannot understand how she did it all, especially as she managed to keep well informed on the topics of the day, and found more time for reading and study than any of her neighbors did.
In the main, I think our family was like the other families of the neighborhood, with about the same dispositions, the same ideas and ideals,—if children can be said to have ideals,—that other people had.
There were seven of us children, and we must have crowded the little home, to say nothing of the little income with which my father and mother raised us all. Our family life was not the ideal home-life of which we read in books; the fact is, I have never seen that sort of life amongst children,—or amongst grown people either, for that matter. If we loved each other very dearly, we were all too proud and well-trained to say a word about it, or to make any sign to show that it was true. When a number of us children were together playing the familiar games, we generally quarrelled and fought each other much more than 27was our habit when playing with our neighbors and our friends. In this too we were like all the rest of the families that I knew. It seems to me now that a very small matter was always enough to bring on a fight, and that we quarrelled simply because we liked to hurt each other; at least I can see no other reason why we did.
We children were supposed to help with the chores around the house; but as near as I can remember, each one was always afraid that he would do more than his share. I recall a story in one of our school readers, which I read when very young; it was about two brothers, a large one and a small one, and they were carrying a pail on a pole, and the larger brother deliberately shoved the pail nearer to his end, so that the heavier load would fall on him; but I am sure that this incident never happened in our family, or in any other that I ever knew.
Most home-life necessarily clusters around the mother; and so, of course, it must have been in our family. But my mother died when I was in my earlier teens, and her figure has not that clearness and distinctness that I wish 28it had. She seems now to have been a remarkable combination of energy and industry, of great kindness, and still of strong and controlling will; a woman who, under other conditions of life, and unhampered by so many children and such pressing needs, might have left her mark upon the world. But this was not to be; for she could not overlook the duties that lay nearest her for a broader or more ambitious life.
Both my father and mother must have been kind and gentle and tender to the large family that so sorely taxed their time and strength; and yet, as I look back, I do not have the feeling of closeness that should unite the parent and the child. They were New England people, raised in the Puritan school of life, and I fancy that they would have felt that demonstrations of affection were signs of weakness rather than of love. I have no feeling of a time when either my father or my mother took me, or any other member of our family, in their arms; and the control of the household seemed to be by such fixed rules as are ordinarily followed in family life, with now and then a resort to rather mild corporal punishment 29when they thought the occasion grave enough. Both parents were beyond their neighbors in education, intelligence, and strength of character; and with their breadth of view, I cannot understand how they did not see that even the mild force they used tended to cause bitterness and resentment, and thus defeat the object sought. I well remember that we were all glad if our parents, or either of them, were absent for a day; not that they were unkind, but that with them we felt restraint, and never that spirit of love and trust which ought always to be present between the parent and the child.
While I cannot recall that my mother ever gave me a kiss or a caress, and while I am sure that I should have been embarrassed if she had, still I well remember that when I had a fever, and lay on my bed for what seemed endless weeks, she let no one else come near me by day or night. And although she must have attended to all her household duties, she seemed ever beside me with the tenderest and gentlest touch. I can still less remember any great affection that I had for her, or any effort on my part to make her 30life easier than it was; yet I know that I must have loved her, for I can never forget the bitterness of my despair and grief when they told me she must die. And even now, as I look back after all these weary years, when I think of her lying cold and dead in the still front room I feel almost the same shudder and horror that filled my heart as a little child. And with this shudder comes the endless regret that I did not tell her that I loved her, and did not do more to lighten the burdens of her life.
This family feeling, or lack of it, I think must have come from the Puritanic school in which my father and mother were born and raised. It must be that any intelligent parent who really understands life would be able to make his children feel a companionship greater than any other they could know.
With my brothers and sisters my life was much the same. We never said anything about our love for each other, and our nearness seemed to bring out our antagonism more than our love. Still, I am sure that I really cared for them, for I recall that once when a brother was very ill I was wretched with fear 31and grief. I remember how I went over every circumstance of our relations with each other, and how I vowed that I would always be kind and loving to him if his life were saved. Fortunately, he got well; but I cannot recall that I treated him any better after this sickness than before.
I remember how happy all of us used to be when cousins or friends came to stay a few days in our house, and how much more we liked to be with them than with our own family. I remember, too, that I had the same feeling when I visited other houses; and I have found it so to this day. True it is, that in great trouble or in a crisis of life we seem to cling to our kindred, and stand by them, and expect them to stand by us; and yet, in the little things, day by day, we look for our comradeship and affection somewhere else.
So I think that in all of this neither I nor the rest of my people were different from the other families about us, and that the stories of the ideal life of brothers and sisters, of parents and children, are largely myths.
My father was a great believer in education,—that is, in the learning that is found in books. He was doubtful of any other sort, if indeed he believed there could be any other sort. His strong faith in books, together with the fact that there were so many of us children around the house in my mother’s way, early drove me to the district school.
Before this time I had learned to read simple sentences; for I cannot remember when my father began telling me how important and necessary it was to study books. By some strange trick of fortune, he was born with a quenchless thirst for learning. This love of books was the one great passion of his life; but his large family began to arrive when he was at such an early age that he never had time to prepare himself to make a living from his learning. He always felt the hardship and 33irony of a life of labor to one who loved study and contemplation; so he resolved that his children should have a better chance. Poor man! I can see him now as plainly as if it were yesterday. I can see him with his books,—English, Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew,—carrying them back and forth to the dusty mill, and snatching the smallest chance, even when the water was spilling over the dam, to learn more of the wonders that were held between the covers of these books.
All my life I have felt that Nature had some grudge against my father. If she had made him a simple miller, content when he was grinding corn and dipping the small toll from the farmer’s grist, he might have lived a fairly useful, happy life. But day after day and year after year he was compelled to walk the short and narrow path between the little house and the decaying mill, while his mind was roving over scenes of great battles, decayed empires, dead languages, and the starry heavens above. To his dying day he lived in a walking trance; and his books and their wondrous stories were more real to him than the turning water-wheel, the sacks of wheat and 34corn, and the cunning, soulless farmers who dickered and haggled about his hard-earned toll.
Whether or not my father had strong personal ambitions, I really never knew; no doubt he had, but years of work and resignation had taught him to deny them even to himself, and slowly and pathetically he must have let go his hold upon that hope and ambition which alone make the thoughtful man cling fast to life.
In all the country round, no man knew so much of books as he, and no man knew less of life. The old parson and the doctor were almost the only neighbors who seemed able even to understand the language that he spoke. I remember now, when his work was done, how religiously he went to his little study with his marvellous books, and worked and read far into the night, stopping only to encourage and help his children in the tasks that they were ever anxious to neglect and shirk. My bedroom, with its two beds and generally four occupants, opened directly from his study door; and no matter how often I went to sleep and awakened in the night, I could see a little streak of lamplight at the bottom of the 35door that opened into his room, which showed me that he was still dwelling in the fairy-lands of which his old volumes told. He was no longer there in the morning, and this was usually the first time that I missed him in my waking moments after I had gone to bed. Often, too, he wrote, sometimes night after night for weeks together; but I never knew what it was that he put down,—no doubt his hopes and dreams and loves and doubts and fears, as men have ever done since time began, as they will ever do while time shall last, and as I am doing now; but these poor dreams of his were never destined to see the light of day. Perhaps, with no one to tell him that they were good, he despaired about their worth, as so many other doubting souls have done before and since. It is not likely, indeed, that any publisher could have been found ready to transform his poor cramped writing into print. Whatever may have been the case, if I could only find the pages that he wrote I would print them now with his name upon the title-page, and pay for them myself.
I cannot remember when I learned to read. I seem always to have known how. I am sure 36that I learned my letters from the red and blue blocks that were always scattered on the floor. Of course, I did not know what they meant; I only knew that A was A, and was content with that. Even when I learned my first little words, and put them into simple sentences, I fancy that I knew no more of what they meant than the poor caged parrot that keeps saying over and over again, “Polly wants a cracker,” when he really wants nothing of the kind. I fancy that I knew nothing of what they meant, for as I read to-day many of the brave lessons learned even in my later life I cannot imagine that I had any thought of their meaning such as the language seems now to hold.
But I know that I learned my letters quickly and early,—though not so early as an elder brother who was always kept steadily before my eyes. It must be that my father gave me little chance to tarry long from one simple book to another, for I remember that at a very early age I was told again and again that John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old. I thought then, as I do to-day, that he must have had a cruel father, and 37that this unnatural parent not only made miserable the life of his little boy, but of thousands of other boys whose fathers could see no reason why their sons should be outdone by John Stuart Mill. I have no doubt that my good father thought that all his children ought to be able to do anything that was ever accomplished by John Stuart Mill; and so he did his part, and more, to make us try.
But, after all, I feel to-day just as I did long years ago, when with reluctant ear and rebellious heart I heard of the great achievements of John Stuart Mill. I look back to those early years, and still regret the beautiful play-spells that were broken and the many fond childish schemes for pleasure that were shattered because John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when three years old.
I would often shed bitter tears, and mutter exclamations and protests which no one heard, but which were none the less terrible because they were spoken underneath my breath,—and all on account of John Stuart Mill. It was long before I could forgive my gentle honest father for having tried so hard to make me learn those books. I am sure that no good 38fortune can ever compensate me for the wasted joys, the broken playtimes, the interrupted childish pleasures, which I should have had.
If I were writing this story as I feel to-day, and if I could not recall the little child who had so lately come from the great heart of Nature that he still must have remembered what she felt and thought and knew, I might not regret those broken childish joys. I might rather mourn and lament, with all the teachers and parents and authors, that I was so profligate of my time when I was yet a child, and that I was not more studious in those far-off years. But as I look back to my childhood days, my sluggish heart beats quicker, and I can feel the warm young blood rush to my tingling feet and hands, and I realize once more the strange thrill of delight and joy that life and activity alone bring to all the young. And so I cling to-day to the childish thought that I was right and my poor father wrong. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things,” said the apostle twenty centuries ago. The mistake of maturity and age has ever been that it lives 39so wholly in the present and so completely forgets the childhood that is past. To guard infancy and youth as a precious heritage, to keep them as long as we can, seems to me the true philosophy of life. For, after all, life is mostly illusions, and the illusions of infancy and childhood and youth are more alluring than those of later years.
But I fancy now that I can understand my father’s thoughts. A strange fate had set him down beside the little winding creek and kept him at his humble task of tolling his neighbors’ grist. He looked at the high hills to the east, and at the high hills to the west, and up and down the narrow country road that led to the outside world. He knew that beyond the high hills was a broad inviting plain, with opportunity and plenty, with fortune and fame; but as he looked at the hills he could see no way to pass beyond. It is possible that he could have walked over them, or even around them, had he been alone; but there was the ever-growing brood that held him in the narrow place. No doubt as he grew older he often looked up and down the long dusty road, half expecting some fairy or genie to come along and take him away 40where he might realize his dreams; but of course no such thing ever happened,—for this is a real story,—and so he stayed and ground the grain in the old decaying mill.
My father must have been quite advanced in years before he wholly gave up his ambitions to do something in life besides grinding the farmers’ corn. Indeed, I am not sure that he ever gave them up; but doubtless, as the task seemed more hopeless and the chain grew stronger, he slowly looked to his children to satisfy the dreams that life once held out to him; and so this thought mingled with the rest in his strong endeavor that we should all have the best education he could get for us, so that we need not be millers as he had been. Well, none of us are millers! The old family is scattered far and wide; the last member of the little band long since passed down the narrow road, and out between the great high hills into the far-off land of freedom and opportunity of which my father dreamed. But I should be glad to believe to-day that a single one over whom he watched with such jealous care ever gave as much real service to the world as this simple, kindly man whose name was heard scarcely 41farther than the water that splashed and tumbled on the turning wheel.
I started bravely to tell about my life,—to write my story as it seems to me; and here I am halting and rambling like a garrulous old man over the feelings and remembrances of long ago. By a strange trick of memory I seem to stand for a few moments out in the old front yard, a little barefoot child. The long summer twilight has grown dim, and the quiet country evening is at hand. Beyond the black trees I hear the falling water spilling over the wooden dam; and farther on, around the edges of the pond, the hoarse croak of the frogs sounds clear and harsh in the still night air. Above the little porch that shelters the front door is my father’s study window. I look in and see him sitting at his desk with his shaded lamp; before him is his everlasting book, and his pale face and long white hair bend over the infatuating pages with all the confidence and trust of a little child. For a simple child he always was, from the time when he first saw the light until his friends and comrades lowered him into the sandy loam of the old churchyard. I see him through the little panes of glass, as he bends 42above the book. The chapter is finished and he wakens from his reverie into the world in which he lives and works; he takes off his iron-framed spectacles, lays down his book, comes downstairs and calls me away from my companions with the old story that it is time to come into the house and get my lessons. For the hundredth time I protest that I want to play,—to finish my unending game; and again he tells me no, that John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old. And with heavy heart and muttered imprecations on John Stuart Mill, I am taken away from my companions and my play, and set down beside my father with my book. I can feel even now my sorrow and despair, as I leave my playmates and turn the stupid leaves. But I would give all that I possess to-day to hear my father say again, as in that far-off time, “John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old.”
In the last chapter I intended to write about the district school; but I lingered so long over old remembrances that I could not get to school in time, so now I will go straight there without delay.
The first school that I remember was not in the little town near which we lived, but about half a mile away in the opposite direction. Our house must have stood just outside the limits of the little village; at any rate, I was sent to the country school. Every morning we children were given a dinner-pail packed full of pie and cake, and now and then a piece of bread and butter (which I always let the other children eat), and were sent off to school. As we passed along the road we were joined by other little boys and girls, and by the time we reached the building our party contained nearly all the children on the road travelling 44in the direction from which we came. We were a boisterous, thoughtless crowd,—that is, the boys; the girls were generally quieter and more reserved, which we called “proud.”
Almost as soon as the snow was off the ground in the spring, we boys took off our shoes (or, rather, boots) and went barefooted to the school. It was hard for us to wait until our parents said the ground was warm enough for us to take off our boots; we felt so light and free, and could run so fast barefooted, that we always begged our mother to let us leave them off at the very earliest chance. The chief disadvantage was that we often stubbed our toes. This was sometimes serious, when we were running fast and would bring them full tilt against a stone. Most of the time we managed to have one or more toes tied up in rags; and we always found considerable occupation in comparing our wounds, to see whose were the worst, or which were getting well the fastest. The next most serious trouble connected with going barefoot was the necessity for washing our feet every night before we went to bed. This seemed a grievous hardship; sometimes we would forget it, when we could, 45and I remember now and then being called up out of bed after I thought I had safely escaped and seemed to be sound asleep, and when my feet were clean enough without being washed.
It seemed to us children that our mother was unreasonably particular about this matter of washing our feet before we went to bed. She always required it when we had been barefoot through the day, even though it had been raining and we had wiped our feet in the grass. Still the trouble of washing our feet was partly compensated by our not being obliged to put on or take off our stockings and our boots. This was a great relief, especially in the morning; for this part of our toilet took longer than all the rest, and when the time came around to go barefoot we had only to get up and jump into a few clothes and start away.
In the summer-time it took a long while for us children to travel the short half-mile to the district school. No matter how early we left home, it was nearly always past the hour of nine when we reached the door. For there were always birds in the trees and stones in the road, and no child ever knew any pain except his own. There were little fishes in the creek 46over which we slid in winter and through which we always waded in the summer-time; then there were chipmunks on the fences and woodchucks in the fields, and no boy could ever manage to go straight to school, or straight back home after the day was done. The procession of barefoot urchins laughed and joked, and fought, and ran, and bragged, and gave no thought to study or to books until the bell was rung and they were safely seated in the room. Then we watched and waited eagerly for recess; and after that, still more anxiously for the hour of noon, which was always the best time by far of all the day, not alone because of the pie and cake and apples and cheese which the more prudent and obedient of us saved until this time, but also because of the games, in which we always had enough boys to go around.
In these games the girls did not join to any great extent; in fact, girls seemed of little use to the urchins who claimed everything as their own. In the school they were always seated by themselves on one side of the room, and sometimes when we failed to study as we should we were made to go and sit with them. This was when we were very young. As we grew older, this form of punishment seemed less and less severe, until some other was substituted in its stead. Most of the boys were really rather bashful with the girls,—those who bragged the loudest and fought the readiest somehow never knew just what to say when they were near. We preferred rather to sit and look at them, and wonder how they could be so neat and clean and well “fixed up.” I remember when quite a small boy how I used to look over toward their side of the room, especially at a little girl with golden hair that was always hanging in long curls about her head; and it seemed to me then that nothing could ever be quite so beautiful as this curly head; which may explain the fact that all my life nothing has seemed quite so beguiling as golden hair,—unless it were black, or brown, or some other kind.
To the boys, school had its chief value, in fact its only value, in its games and sports. Of course, our parents and teachers were always urging us to work. In their efforts to make us study, they resorted to every sort of means—headmarks, presents, praise, flattery, 48Christmas cards, staying in at recess, staying after school, corporal punishment, all sorts of persuasion, threats, and even main force—to accomplish this result. No like rewards or punishments were required to make us play; which fact, it seems to me, should have shown our teachers and parents that play, exercise, activity, and change are the law of life, especially the life of a little child; and that study, as we knew it, was unnatural and wrong. Still, nothing of this sort ever dawned upon their minds.
I cannot remember much real kindness between the children of the school; while we had our special chums, we never seemed to care for them, except that boys did not like to be alone. There were few things a boy could do alone, excepting tasks, which of course we avoided if we could. On our way to and from the school, or while together at recess and noon, while we played the ordinary games a very small matter brought on a quarrel, and we always seemed to be watching for a chance to fight. In the matter of our quarrels and fights we showed the greatest impartiality, as boys do in almost all affairs of life.
49While our books were filled with noble precepts, we never seemed to remember them when we got out of doors, or even to think that they had any application to our lives. In this respect the boy and the grown-up man seem wonderfully alike.
But really, school was not all play. Our teachers and parents tried their best to make us learn,—that is, to make us learn the lessons in the books. The outside lessons we always seemed to get without their help,—in fact, in spite of their best endeavors to prevent our knowing what they meant.
The fact that our teachers tried so hard to make us learn was no doubt one of the chief reasons why we looked on them as our natural enemies. We seldom had the same teacher for two terms of school, and we always wondered whether the new one would be worse or better than the old. We always started in prepared to find her worse; and the first kind words we ever had for our teacher were spoken after she was gone and we compared her with the new one in her place. Our teachers seemed to treat us pretty well for the first few days. They were then very kind and sweet; they hardly ever brought switches to the school until the second week, but we were always sure that they would be called into service early in the term. No old-time teacher would have dreamed that she could get through a term of school without a whip, any more than a judge would believe that society could get along without a jail. The methods that were used to make us learn, and the things we were taught, seem very absurd as I look back upon them now; and still, I presume, they were not different from the means employed to-day.
Most of us boys could learn arithmetic fairly well,—in this, indeed, we always beat the girls. Still, some parts of arithmetic were harder than the rest. I remember that I mastered the multiplication-table up to “twelve times twelve,” backwards and forwards and every other way, at a very early age, and I fancy that this knowledge has clung to me through life; but I cannot forget the many weary hours I spent trying to learn the tables of weights and measures, and how much vexation of spirit I endured before my task was done. However, after weary weeks and 51months I learned them so well that I could say them with the greatest ease. This was many, many years ago; since that time I have found my place in the world of active life, but I cannot now remember that even once have I had occasion to know or care about the difference between “Troy weight” and “Apothecaries’ weight,” if, in fact, there was any difference at all. And one day, last week I think it was, for the first time in all these endless years I wished to know how many square rods made an acre, and I tried to call back the table that I learned so long ago at school; but as to this my mind was an utter blank, and all that I could do was to see the little girl with the golden locks sitting at her desk—and, by the way, I wonder where she is to-day. But I took a dictionary from the shelf, and there I found it plain and straight, and I made no effort to keep it in my mind, knowing that if perchance in the uncertain years that may be yet to come I may need to know again, I shall find it there in the dictionary safe and sound.
And all those examples that I learned to cipher out! I am sure I know more to-day 52than the flaxen-haired barefoot boy who used to sit at his little desk at school and only drop his nibbled slate-pencil to drive the flies away from his long bare legs, but I could not do those sums to-day even if one of my old-time teachers should come back from her long-forgotten grave and threaten to keep me in for the rest of my life unless I got the answer right.
And then the geography! How hard they tried to make us learn this book, and how many recesses were denied us because we were not sure just which river in Siberia was the longest! Of course we knew nothing about Siberia, or whether the rivers ran water or blood; but we were forced to know which was the largest and just how long it was. And so all over the great round world we travelled, to find cities, towns, rivers, mountain ranges, peninsulas, oceans, and bays. How important it all was! I remember that one of the ways they took to make us learn this book was to have us sing geography in a chorus of little voices. I can recall to-day how one of those old tunes began, but I remember little beyond the start. The song was about the capitals of 53all the States, and it began, “State of Maine, Augusta, is on the Kennebec River,” and so on through the whole thirty-three or four, or whatever the number was when I was a little child. Well, many, many years have passed away since then, and I have wandered far and wide from my old-time country home. There are few places in the United States that I have not seen, in my quest for activity and change. I have even stood on some of the highest peaks of the Alps, and looked down upon its quiet valleys and its lovely lakes; but I have never yet been to Augusta on the Kennebec River in the State of Maine, and it begins to look as if I never should. Still, if Fortune ever takes me there, I shall be very glad that I learned when yet a child at school that Augusta was the capital of Maine and on the Kennebec River. So, too, I have never been to Siberia, and, not being a Russian, I presume that I shall never go. And in fact, wherever I have wandered on the earth I have had to learn my geography all over new again.
But, really, grammar made me more trouble than any other study. Somehow I never could learn grammar, and it always made me angry 54when I tried. My parents and teachers told me that I could never write or speak unless I learned grammar, and so I tried and tried, but even now I can hardly tell an adverb from an adjective, and I do not know that I care. When a little boy, I used to think that if I really had anything to tell I could make myself understood; and I think so still. The longer I live the surer I am that the chief difficulty of writers and speakers is the lack of interesting thoughts, and not of proper words. Certainly grammar was a hideous nightmare to me when a child at school. Of all the parts of speech the verb was the most impossible to get. I remember now how difficult it was to conjugate the verb “to love,” which the books seemed always to put first. How I stumbled and blundered as I tried to learn that verb! I might possibly have mastered the present tense, but when it came to all the different moods and various tenses it became a hopeless task. I am much older now, but somehow that verb has never grown easier with the fleeting years. The past-perfect tense has always been well-nigh impossible to learn. I never could tell when it left off, or whether 55it ever left off or not. Neither have I been able to keep it separate from the present, or, for that matter, from the future. A few years after the district school, I went for a brief time to the Academy on the hill, where I studied Latin; and I remember that this same verb was there, with all the old complications and many that were new, to greet me when I came. To be sure, it had been changed to “Amo, Amas, Amat,” but it was the old verb just the same, and its various moods and tenses caused me the same trouble that I had experienced as a little child. My worry over this word has made me wonder whether this verb, in all its moods and tenses, was not one of the many causes of the downfall of the Roman Republic, of which we used to hear so much. At any rate, I long since ceased trying to get it straight or keep it straight; indeed, I am quite sure that it was designed only to tangle and ensnare.
If we scholars did not grow up to be exemplary men and women, it surely was not the fault of our teachers or our parents,—or of the schoolbook publishers.
When I look back to those lessons that we learned, I marvel that I ever wandered from the straight path in the smallest possible degree. Whether we were learning to read or write, studying grammar or composition, in whatever book we chanced to take, there was the moral precept plain on every page. Our many transgressions could have come only from the fact that we really did not know what these lessons meant; and doubtless our teachers also never thought they had any sort of relation to our lives.
How these books were crammed with noble thoughts! In them every virtue was extolled and every vice condemned. I wonder now how 57the book publishers could ever have printed such tales, or how they reconciled themselves to the hypocrisy they must have felt when they sold the books.
This moral instruction concerned certain general themes. First of all, temperance was the great lesson taught. I well remember that we children believed that the first taste of liquor was the fatal one; and we never even considered that one drop could be taken without leading us to everlasting ruin and despair. There were the alms-house, the jail, and the penitentiary square, in front of every child who even considered taking the first drink; while all the rewards of this world and the next were freely promised to the noble lad who should resist.
As I look back to-day, it seems as if every moral lesson in the universe must have grown into my being from those books. How could I have ever wandered from the narrow path? I look back to those little freckled, trifling boys and girls, and I hear them read their lessons in their books so long ago. The stories were all the same, from the beginning to the end. We began in the primer, and our instruction in reading and good conduct did 58not end until the covers of the last book were closed.
It seems to me to-day that I can hear those little urchins reading about the idle lazy boy who tried to get the bee and the cow and the horse to play with him,—though what he wanted of the bee I could never understand,—but they were all too busy with their work, and so he ran away from school and had a most miserable day alone. How could we children ever stay away from school after we had read this lesson? And yet, I cannot now recall that it made us love our books, or think one whit less of the free breeze, the waving grass and trees, or the alluring coaxing sun.
We were taught by our books that we must on all accounts speak the truth; that we must learn our lessons; that we must love our parents and our teachers; must enjoy work; must be generous and kind; must despise riches; must avoid ambition; and then, if we did all these things, some fairy godmother would come along at just the darkest hour and give us everything our hearts desired. Not one story in the book told how any good could ever come from wilfulness, or selfishness, 59or greed, or that any possible evil ever grew from thrift, or diligence, or generosity, or kindness. And yet, in spite of all these precepts, we were young savages, always grasping for the best, ever fighting and scheming to get the advantage of our playmates, our teachers, and our tasks.
A quarter of a century seems not to have wrought much change; we still believe in the old moral precepts, and teach them to others, but we still strive to get the best of everything for ourselves.
I wonder if the old school-readers have been changed since I was a boy at school. Are the same lessons there to-day? We were such striking examples of what the books would not do that one would almost think the publishers would drop the lessons out.
I try to recall the feelings of one child who read those stories in the little white schoolhouse by the country road. What did they mean to me? Did I laugh at them, as I do to-day? Or did I really think that they were true, and try and try, and then fail in all I tried, as I do now? I presume the latter was the case; yet for my life I cannot recall the 60thoughts and feelings that these stories brought to me. But I can still recall the stories.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, the story about the poor widow of Pine Cottage, in the winter, with her five ragged children hovering around her little table. Widows usually had large families then, and most of their boys were lame. This poor widow had at last reached the point where starvation faced her little brood. She had tasted no food for twenty-four hours. Her one small herring was roasting on the dying coals. The prospect was certainly very dark; but she had faith, and somehow felt that in the end she would come out all right. A knock is heard at the back door. A ragged stranger enters and asks for food; the poor widow looks at her five starving children, and then she gives the visitor the one last herring; he eats it, and lo and behold! the stranger is her long-lost son,—probably one that was left over from the time when she was a widow before. The long-lost son came in this disguise to find out whether or not his mother really loved him. He was, in fact, rich; but he had borrowed the rags at the tavern, and had just arrived from India with a shipload 61of gold, which he at once divided among his mother and brothers and sisters. How could any child fail to be generous after this? And yet I venture to say that if any of us took a herring to school for dinner the day that we read this story in our class, we clung to it as tenaciously as a miser to his gold.
Then there was the widow with her one lame son, who asks the rich merchant for a little charity. He listens to her pathetic story, and believes she tells the truth. He asks her how much she needs. She tells him that five dollars will be enough. He writes a check, and tells her to go across the street to the bank. She takes it over without reading it. The banker counts out fifty dollars. She says, “There is a mistake; I only asked for five dollars.” The banker goes across the street to find out the truth, and the merchant says: “Yes, there was a mistake, I should have made it five hundred,”—which he straightway does. Thus honesty and virtue are rewarded once again. I have lived many years and travelled in many lands, and have seen more or less of human nature and of suffering and greed; I have seen many poor widows,—but 62have never yet come across the generous merchant.
There was no end to the good diligent boys and girls of whom the readers told; they were on every page we turned, and every one of them received his or her reward and received it right away in cash. There never was the slightest excuse or need for us to be anything but diligent and kind,—and still our young hearts were so perverse and hard that we let the lessons pass unheeded, and clutched at the smallest piece of pie or cake, or the slightest opportunity to deceive some good kind teacher, although we must have known that we missed a golden chance to become President of the United States and have money in the bank besides.
One story of a contented boy stands out so clearly in my mind that I could not refrain from hunting up the old schoolbook and reading it once more. It must have made a wonderful impression on my mind, for there it is, “The Contented Boy.” I cannot recall that I ever was contented in my life, and I am sure that I have never seen a boy like this one in the reader; but it is not possible that I 63knew my schoolbooks were clumsy, stupid lies. After all this time there is the story, clear and distinct; and this is the way it runs:
THE CONTENTED BOY.
Mr. Lenox was riding by himself. He got off from his horse to look at something on the roadside. The horse broke away from him and ran off. Mr. Lenox ran after him, but could not catch him.
A little boy at work in a field, near the road, heard the horse. As soon as he saw him running from his master, the boy ran very quickly to the middle of the road, and catching the horse by the bridle, stopped him till Mr. Lenox came up.
Mr. Lenox. Thank you, my good boy. What shall I give you for your trouble?
Boy. I want nothing, sir.
Mr. L. You want nothing? Few men can say as much. But what were you doing in the field?
Boy. I was rooting up weeds, and tending the sheep that were feeding on turnips.
Mr. L. Do you like to work?
Boy. Yes, sir, very well, this fine weather.
Mr. L. But would you not rather play?
Boy. This is not hard work. It is almost as good as play.
Mr. L. Who set you to work?
64Boy. My father, sir.
Mr. L. What is your name?
Boy. Peter Hurdle, sir.
Mr. L. How old are you?
Boy. Eight years old next June.
Mr. L. How long have you been here?
Boy. Ever since six o’clock this morning.
Mr. L. Are you not hungry?
Boy. Yes, sir, but I shall go to dinner soon.
Mr. L. If you had a dime now, what would you do with it?
Boy. I don’t know, sir. I never had so much.
Mr. L. Have you no playthings?
Boy. Playthings? What are they?
Mr. L. Such things as ninepins, marbles, tops, and wooden horses.
Boy. No, sir. Tom and I play at football in winter, and I have a jumping-rope. I had a hoop, but it is broken.
Mr. L. Do you want nothing else?
Boy. I have hardly time to play with what I have.
Mr. L. You could get apples and cakes if you had money, you know.
Boy. I can have apples at home. As for cake, I don’t want that. My mother makes me a pie now and then, which is as good.
Mr. L. Would you not like a knife to cut sticks?
65Boy. I have one. Here it is. Brother Tom gave it to me.
Mr. L. Your shoes are full of holes. Don’t you want a new pair?
Boy. I have a better pair for Sundays.
Mr. L. But these let in water.
Boy. I do not mind that, sir.
Mr. L. Your hat is all torn, too.
Boy. I have a better one at home.
Mr. L. What do you do if you are hungry before it is time to go home?
Boy. I sometimes eat a raw turnip.
Mr. L. But if there are none?
Boy. Then I do as well as I can without. I work on and never think of it.
Mr. L. I am glad to see that you are so contented. Were you ever at school?
Boy. No, sir. But father means to send me next winter.
Mr. L. You will want books then.
Boy. Yes, sir; each boy has a spelling-book, a reader, and a Testament.
Mr. L. Then I will give them to you. Tell your father so, and that it is because you are an obliging, contented little boy.
Boy. I will, sir. Thank you.
Mr. L. Good-bye, Peter.
Boy. Good-morning, sir.
One other story that has seemed particularly to impress itself upon my mind was about two boys, one named James and the other named John. I believe that these were their names, though possibly one was William and the other Henry. Anyhow, their uncle gave them each a parcel of books. James took out his pocket-knife and cut the fine whipcord that bound his package, but John slowly and patiently untied his string and then rolled it into a nice little ball (the way a nice little boy would do) and carefully put it in his pocket. Some years after, there was a great shooting tournament, and James and John were both there with their bows and arrows; it was late in the game, and so far it was a tie. James seized his last arrow and bent his bow; the string broke and the prize was lost. The book does not tell us that in this emergency John offered his extra piece of whipcord to his brother; instead, the model prudent brother took up his last arrow, bent his bow, when, lo and behold! his string broke too; whereupon John reached into his pocket and pulled out the identical cord that he had untied so long ago, put it on the bow, and of course won the prize!
67That miserable story must have cost me several years of valuable time, for ever since I first read it I have always tried to untie every knot that I could find; and although I have ever carefully tucked away all sorts of odd strings into my pockets, I never attended a shooting-match or won a prize in all my life.
One great beauty of the lessons which our school readers taught was the directness and certainty and promptness of the payment that came as a reward of good conduct. Then, too, the recompense was in no way uncertain or ethereal, but was always paid in cash, or something just as material and good. Neither was any combination of circumstances too remote or troublesome or impossible to be brought about. Everything in the universe seemed always ready to conspire to reward virtue and punish vice.
I well remember one story which thus clearly proved that good deeds must be rewarded, and that however great the trouble the payment would not be postponed even for a day.
It seems that a good boy named Henry—I believe the book did not give his other name—started out one morning to walk about five 68miles away to do an errand for his sick father. I think it was his father, though it may possibly have been his mother or grandmother. Well, Henry had only got fairly started on his journey when he met a half-starved dog; and thereupon the boy shared with the dog the dinner that he was carrying in his little basket. Of course I know now that, however great his kindness, he could not have relieved the dog unless he had happened to be carrying his dinner in a little basket; but my childish mind was not subtle enough to comprehend it then. After relieving the dog, Henry went on his way with a lighter heart and a lighter basket. Soon he came upon a sick horse lying upon the ground. Henry feared that if he stayed to doctor the horse he would not get home until after dark; but this made no sort of difference to him, so he pulled some grass and took it to the horse, and then went to the river and got some water in his hat (it must have been a Panama) and gave this to the horse to drink, and having done his duty went on his way. He had gone only a short distance farther when he saw a blind man standing in a pond of water. (How the blind man got into 69the pond of water the story does not tell,—the business of the story was not getting him in but getting him out.) Thereupon little Henry waded into the pond and led the blind man to the shore. Any other boy would simply have called out to the man, and let him come ashore himself. Of course, if Henry had been a bad boy, and his name had been Tom, he would have been found leading the blind man into the pond instead of out, and then of course he (Tom) would have taken pneumonia and died.
But Henry’s adventures did not end here. He had gone only a little way farther when he met a poor cripple, who had been fighting in some war and who was therefore a hero, and this cripple was very hungry. Henry promptly gave him all the dinner he had saved from his interview with the dog; and having finished this further act of charity, he at last hurried on to do his errand. But he had worked so long in the Good Samaritan business that by the time he started home it began to get dark. Then, of course, he soon reached a great forest, which added to his troubles. After wandering about for a long time in 70the darkness and the woods, he sat down in hunger and despair. Thereupon his old friend the dog came into the wood and up to the tree where Henry sat, and he found that the dog carried some bread and meat nicely pinned up in a napkin in payment for the breakfast given him in the morning. How the dog had managed to pin the napkin, the story does not tell. After eating his supper, Henry got up and wandered farther into the woods. He was just despairing a second time, when by the light of the moon he saw the horse that he had fed in the morning. The horse took him on his back and carried him out of the wood; but the poor boy’s troubles were not yet done. He was passing along a lane, when two robbers seized him and began stripping off his clothes; then the dog came up and bit one robber, who thereupon left Henry and ran after the dog (presumably so that he might get bitten again), and just then some one shouted from the hedge and scared the other robber off. Henry looked toward the hedge in the darkness, and, behold! there was the crippled soldier riding on the back of the blind man,—and in this way they had all come together to save 71Henry and pay him for being such a good little boy.
When such efforts as these could be put forth for the instant reward of virtue, where was there a possible inducement left to tempt the most wayward child to sin?
Not only good conduct, but religion, was taught to us children in the same direct and simple way. Nothing seemed to pay better than Sabbath observance, according to the strict rules that obtained when I was young.
I remember the story of a barber who was doing a “thriving business” in an English city. He was obliged to shave his customers on Sunday morning (possibly in order that they might look well at church). However, one Sunday the barber went to church himself; and, as it so happened, the minister that day preached a sermon about Sabbath observance. This made so deep an impression on the barber’s mind that he straightway refused to do any more shaving on Sunday. Thereupon he was obliged to close his shop in the aristocratic neighborhood where he had lived, and rent a basement amongst the working people who did not go to church and hence had no need of a Sunday shave.
One Saturday night a “pious lawyer” came to town and inquired in great haste where he could find a barber-shop, and was directed to this basement for a shave. The “pious lawyer” told the barber that he must have his work done that night, as he would not be shaved on the Sabbath day. This at once impressed the barber, who was then so poor that he was obliged to borrow a halfpenny from his customer for a candle before he could give him the shave. When the “pious lawyer” learned of the barber’s straits, and what had been the cause, he was so deeply moved that he gave him a half-crown, and asked his name. The barber promptly answered that it was William Reed. At this the lawyer opened his eyes,—doubtless through professional instinct,—and asked from what part of the country the barber had come. When he answered, from Kingston, near Taunton, the lawyer’s eyes were opened wider still. Then he asked the name of the barber’s father, and if he had other relatives. The barber told his father’s name, and said that he once had an “Uncle James,” who had gone to India many years before and had not been heard from since. Then 73the “pious lawyer” answered: “If this is true, I have glorious news for you. Your uncle is dead, and he has left a fortune which comes to you.” It is needless to add that the barber got the money,—and of course the death of the uncle and the good luck of the nephew were entirely due to the fact that the barber would not shave a customer on the Sabbath day.
Well, those were marvellous tales on which our young minds fed. I wonder now which is the more real,—the world outside as it seemed to us in our young school-days, or that same enchanted land our childhood knew, as we look back upon the scene through the gathering haze that the fleeting years have left before our eyes!