Like everything else in my early life, my Aunt Mary is a memory that is shrouded in mist. I have no idea when I first heard of her or first saw her, but both events were while I was very young. Neither can I now separate my earlier impressions of Aunt Mary from those that must have been formed when I had grown into my boyhood. It was some time after she was fixed in my mind before I knew that there was an Uncle Ezra, and that he was Aunt Mary’s husband. They had never had any children, and had always lived alone. Whenever either one was spoken of, or any event or affair connected with their lives was referred to, it was always Aunt Mary instead of Uncle Ezra.
When I first remember them, they were old, or at least they seemed old to me. They had a little farm not far from our home; and I 221sometimes used to go down the dusty road to their house for eggs, butter, and buttermilk. Aunt Mary was famed throughout the region for the fine butter she made; and, either from taste or imagination, I was so fond of it that I would eat no other kind.
Aunt Mary lived in a two-story white house with a wing on one side. In front was a picket fence, whitewashed so often that it fairly shone. Two large elm-trees stood just outside the fence, and a little gate opened for the footpath from the road, and next to this were bars that could be taken down to let teams drive in and out. In the front yard were a number of evergreen trees trimmed in such a way as to leave a large green ball on top. A door and several windows were in the front of the house, and another door and more windows on the side next the wing, which was mainly used for a woodshed and summer kitchen. A little path ran from the gate to the side door, and this was covered with large flat stones, which were kept so clean that they were almost spotless. There was no path running to the front door, although two stone steps led down to the ground. The house was always white, as if freshly painted the day before. Each of the windows had outside shutters (which we called blinds), and these were painted blue. I well remember these shutters, for all the others that I had ever seen were painted green, and I wondered why everyone did not know that blue was much the most beautiful color for blinds. The front door was never opened, and the front shutters were always tightly closed. Whenever any of us went to the house, we knew that we must go to the side door. If perchance a stranger knocked at the front door, Aunt Mary would come around the corner of the house and ask him to come to the kitchen.
Through all the country Aunt Mary was known for her “neatness.” This had grown to a disease, the ruling passion of her life. It was never easy to get any of the other boys to go with me to Aunt Mary’s when I went for butter. None of them liked her, and they all knew that she did not care for them. I remember that when I first used to go there she would meet me at the side door and ask me to stay out in the yard or go into the woodshed while she got the butter or eggs. Then she would bring me a lump of sugar or a fried cake 223(which she called a nut-cake) made from dough boiled in lard, and which was very fine, especially when fresh and hot, and tell me not to get any crumbs on the stone steps or on the woodshed floor. Sometimes Uncle Ezra would come in from the barn or fields while I was there, and he always seemed to be kind and friendly, and would take me out to the pigpen while he poured the pails of swill into the trough. I used to think it great sport to see the grunting hogs rushing and shoving and tumbling over each other, and standing in the trough to get all the swill they could. None of them ever seemed to have enough, or to care whether the others had their share of swill or not. I shall always feel that I learned a great deal about human nature by helping Uncle Ezra feed his hogs.
Uncle Ezra was a man who said but little. I never found him in the house; he was always out on the farm, or in the barn, or sometimes in the woodshed. This seemed the nearest that he ever came to the house. Uncle Ezra was a short man with a bald head and a round face. He had white whiskers and a little fringe of white hair around his head. He had no teeth, at least none that I can remember to have seen. He was slightly stooping, and was lame from rheumatism; and he wore a round black hat, and a brown coat buttoned tightly around his waist, and trousers made of some sort of brown drilling, and almost always rubber boots. In the woodshed he kept another pair of trousers and clean boots, which he put on when he went into the house to get his meals, or after it was too late to stay outside. I never heard him joke or laugh, or say anything angry or unkind. He always spoke of Aunt Mary as “the old woman,” and showed no feeling or emotion of any sort in connection with her. Whenever he was asked about any kind of business, he directed inquirers to “the old woman.”
Aunt Mary was tall and thin and very straight. Her hair was white, and done up in a knot on the back of her head. It seems as if she wore a sort of striped calico dress, and an apron over this. No doubt she sometimes wore other clothes; but she has made her impression on my memory in this way. Poor thing! like all the rest of the mortals who ever lived and died, she doubtless tried to make the best impression she could, and at some fateful time this image was cast upon my mind, and there it stayed forever, and gets printed in a book,—the only one that ever held her name. The real person may have been very different indeed, and the fault have been not at all with her, but with the poor substance on which the shadow fell.
I can remember Aunt Mary only in one particular way; and when her name is called, and she steps out from the dim, almost forgotten past, I see the tall, spare old woman, with two or three long teeth and a wisp of snow-white hair, and a dress with stripes running up and down, making her seem even taller and thinner than she really was. I see her, through the side door which opened from the room which was kitchen, dining-room, and living-room combined. I am a barefooted child standing on the stone steps outside, and looking in through the open door. I am nibbling slowly and prudently at a delicious nut-cake, and wondering if there are any more where that one came from, and if she will bring me another when this is eaten up, and thinking that if I really knew she would I need not make this one last so long. Almost opposite the door 226stands the cooking-stove. I can see it now, with its two short legs in front, and its two tall ones in the back. There is the sliding hearth, used to regulate the draught. Back of this, and above the hearth, is the little square iron box where wood is put in; over this are the holes for pots and kettles; and farther back, and above all, is the tall oven almost on a level with Aunt Mary’s shoulders. On the oven is a pan of dish-water, and she is wringing out a rag and for the thousandth time wiping the spotless oven. When this is done, she goes downstairs to the cellar, and gets the butter in the little tin pail, then goes to the cupboard and finds another nut-cake and brings them to the door. Then she looks carefully down to the stone steps to see if I have left any crumbs, and puts the pail and the nut-cake into my waiting hands. Before I go, she asks me about my father and mother, my brothers and sisters; whether the washing has been done this week; whether my sister is going to take music-lessons this fall; whether there is water enough in the dam to run the mill; and then she bids me hurry home lest the butter should melt on the way.
Aunt Mary did not live in the kitchen because there was no other room. After a time I learned that there were a parlor and a spare bedroom on the lower floor, and that the front door opened into a hall that led to the parlor and then on to the kitchen at the back. As I grew older and gained her confidence, she told me that if I would go out in the tall grass by the pump and wipe my feet carefully she would let me come into the house. As I came up to the door, she looked at me suspiciously, to see that there was no dirt on my feet or clothes, and set me down in a straight wooden chair; then she kept on with her dish-rag, and plied me with questions as to the health of the various members of the family, and how they were progressing with their work. She never left the high oven, with its everlasting dish-pan, except to wipe imaginary dirt from some piece of furniture, and then go back to wring the cloth from the water once again. Although she almost always gave me a nut-cake or a piece of pie, she never invited me to dinner, and always asked me to go outside to eat.
By slow degrees she told me about her parlor and spare bedroom. And one day, 228after watching me wipe my feet with special care, she took me into the hall, cautiously opened the parlor door, and let me into the forbidden room. As we went into the hall and the parlor, she took pains that no flies should follow through the doors; and then, when these were closed and we were safely inside the cool dark room, she slowly and cautiously pushed back the curtains, raised the window just enough to put through her long thin hand and turn the little blue slats of the window-blinds to let in some timid rays of light. Then she pointed out the various pieces of furniture in the parlor, with all the pride of possession and detail of description of a lackey who shows wandering Americans the belongings of an old English castle or country seat. On the floor was a real Brussels carpet, with great red and black flower figures. A set of cane-seated chairs—six in all—were placed by twos against the different sides of the walls; while a large rocking-chair was near the spare bedroom, and in the corner a walnut whatnot on which were arranged shells and stones. Near the centre was a real marble-top table, with a great Bible and a red plush album in the middle. 229A square box sheet-iron stove, with black glistening pipe, stood on one side of the room on a round zinc base. On the walls were many pictures hung with big red cord on large glass-headed nails. There was a crayon portrait of her father, a once famous preacher, and also one of her mother; two or three yarn mottoes in black walnut frames hung above the doors, and some chromos, which she said had come with tea, completed the adornment of the walls. The elegance of all I saw made the deepest impression on my childish mind. Not a fly was in sight, and everything was without blemish or spot. I could not refrain from expressing my admiration and surprise, and my regret that everyone in town could not see this beautiful parlor. Then Aunt Mary confided to me that sometime she was going to have a party and invite all her friends. Then she began looking doubtfully at the streaks of sunlight in the room, and casting her eyes around the ceiling and the walls to see if perchance a stray fly might have come through the door; and then she went to the window and pushed back the long stiff lace curtains, and closed the blinds, leaving us once more in 230the dark. Of course I never could forget that parlor, though Aunt Mary did not take me there again.
Sometime afterwards, when I went for butter, I missed her at the high oven where she always stood with the dish-cloth in her hand. When I knocked, Uncle Ezra let me in. The big rocker had been drawn out into the kitchen, near the stove; and Aunt Mary, looking very white, sat in the chair propped up with pillows. I asked her if she was sick, and she answered no, but that she had been “feeling poorly” for some time past.
Of course I must have heard all about her illness at the time, but this has faded from my mind. I remember only that Uncle Ezra came to the house one day, looking very sad, and when he spoke he simply said, “The old woman is dead.”
We children were all taken to the funeral. I shall always remember this event, for when we went through the little gate there stood the front door wide open, and we went in through the hall. Aunt Mary was lying peacefully in her coffin in the front parlor. All the chairs in the house had been brought in. Uncle Ezra sat with downcast head near the spare bedroom door, a few neighbors and relatives were seated in chairs around the room, and overhead, on the white ceiling, the flies were buzzing and swarming as if in glee. The old preacher was there, and I remember that in his sermon he referred to Aunt Mary’s “neatness”; and here I know that Uncle Ezra groaned.
The day was rainy, and the neighbors had tracked mud on the nice Brussels carpet. I looked around the room that Aunt Mary had shown me with such pride and care. The muddy shoes of the neighbors who had gathered about the coffin were making great spots on the floor; the ceiling was growing blacker each minute with the gathering flies. A great bluebottle, larger than the rest, was buzzing on the glass above Aunt Mary’s head, trying to get inside the lid. The windows were wide open, the curtains drawn aside, and the blinds thrown back. Slowly I looked at the muddy floor, the swarming flies, and the people gathered in Aunt Mary’s parlor; and then I thought of the party that she had told me she was going to give.
It was when I began to go to the district school that I first heard of Ferman Henry and his house. Just after we had waded through the little stream that ran across the road, we came in full sight of the place. The house stood about half-way up the hill that rose gently from the little creek, and in front of it was a large oak-tree that spread its branches out over the porch and almost to the road. There were alder-bushes and burdocks along the fence,—or, rather, where the fence was meant to be; for when I first knew the place almost half of it was gone, and the remaining half was never in repair. On one side of the house was a well, and in this was a wooden pump. We used often to stop here to get a drink,—for there never yet was a boy that could pass by water without stopping for a drink. I remember that the pump always had to be primed, the 233valves were so old and worn; and when we poured water in at the top to start it, we had to work the handle very hard and fast, until we got quite red in the face, before the water came, and then we had to keep the handle going, for if we stopped a single moment the water would run down again and leave the pump quite dry. I never knew the time when the pump was in repair, and I do not know why it was that we boys spent our breath in priming it and getting water from the well. Perhaps it was because we had always heard that the water was so very cold; and perhaps, too, because we liked to stop a moment at the house,—for Ferman Henry and his family were the “cleverest” people we knew. City people may not know that in Farmington we used the word “clever” to mean kind or obliging,—as when we spoke of a boy who would give us a part of his apple, or a neighbor who would lend us his tools or do an errand for us when he went to town.
I had always been told that Ferman Henry was a very shiftless man. The neighbors knew that he would leave his buggy or his harness out of doors under the apple-trees all summer long, 234exposed to sun and rain; and that he did not like to work. Our people thought that everyone should not only work, but also like to work simply for the pleasure it brought. I recall that our copy-books and readers said something of this sort when I went to school; and I know that the people of Farmington believed, or thought they believed, that this was true.
Ferman Henry was a carpenter, and a good one, everybody said, although it was not easy to get him to undertake a job of work; and if he began to build something, he would never finish it, but leave it for someone else when it was partly done. He was a large, fat man, and when I first knew him he wore a colored shirt, and trousers made of blue drilling with wide suspenders passing over his great shoulders; sometimes one of these was broken, and he often fastened the end to his trousers with a nail that slipped through a hole in the suspender and in the cloth, where a button was torn off. He often wore cowhide boots, with his trousers legs sometimes inside and sometimes outside; but generally he was barefoot when we went past the house. I do not remember 235seeing him in winter-time, perhaps because then he was not out of doors under the big oak-tree. At any rate, my memory pictures him only as I have described him.
When I first heard of Ferman Henry, I was told about his house. This was begun before the war, and he was building it himself. He began it so that he might be busy when he had no other work to do; and then too his family was always getting larger, and he needed a new home. He had worked occasionally upon the house for six or seven years, and then he went out as a soldier with the three-months’ men. This absence hindered him seriously with his work; but before he went away he managed to inclose enough of the house so that he was able to move his family in, intending to finish the building as soon as he got back.
The house was not a large affair,—an upright part with three rooms above and three below, and a one-story kitchen in the shape of an L running from the side. But it was really to be a good house, for Ferman Henry was a good carpenter and was building it for a home.
After he got back from the war he would 236take little jobs of work from the neighbors now and then, but still tinkered at his house. When any work of special importance or profit came along, he refused it, saying he must first “finish up” his house.
I can just remember the building as it appeared when I commenced going to the district school. The clapboards had begun to brown with age and wind and rain. The front room was done, excepting as to paint. The back room below and the rooms upstairs were still unfinished, and the L was little more than a skeleton waiting for its bones to be covered up. The front doors and windows had been put in, but the side and back windows were boarded up, and no shutters had appeared. Back of the house was a little barn with a hen-house on one side, and on the other was a pen full of grunting pigs, drinking swill, growing fat, climbing into the trough, and running their long snouts up through the pen to see what we children had brought for them to eat.
I remember Ferman Henry from the time when I first began to go to school. He was fat and “clever,” and always ready to talk with any of the boys; and he would tell us to come 237into the yard and take the dipper and prime the pump, whenever we stopped to get a drink. He generally sat outside, under the big oak-tree, on the bench that stood by the fence, where he could see all who passed his door.
Mrs. Henry was almost as large and fat as he, and she too was “clever” to the boys. She wore a gray dress that was alike from head to foot, and she never seemed to change it or get anything new. They had a number of children, though I cannot tell now how many. The boys were always falling out of the big oak-tree and breaking their arms and carrying them in a sling. Two or three of those I knew went to school, and I believe that some were large enough to work out. The children who went to school never seemed to learn anything from their books, but they were pleasant and “clever” with their dinners or their marbles, or anything they had. We boys managed to have more or less sport at their expense. The fact that they were “clever” and cheerful never seemed to make the least difference to us, unless to give the chance to make more fun of them on that account. They never seemed to bring much dinner to school, excepting 238bread-and-butter, and the bread was cut in great thick slices, and the butter never seemed very nice. I know it was none of Aunt Mary’s.
We boys could tell whether folks were rich or poor by the dinners the children brought to school. If they had pie and cheese and cake and frosted cookies, with now and then a nice ripe apple, we knew that they were rich. We thought bread-and-butter the poorest kind of a lunch; and sometimes we would stop on the way and open our dinner-pails and throw it out.
We always knew the Henrys were poor. They had no farm, only a bit of land along the road that ran a little way up the hill. They kept one cow, and sometimes a horse, and two or three long-eared hounds that used to hunt at night, their deep howls filling the valley with doleful sounds.
Everyone said that Ferman Henry would work only when his money was all gone, and that when he had enough ahead for a few weeks he would give up his job. Sometimes he would work at the saw-mill and get a few more boards for his house, or at the country store and get nails or glass. After he came back from his three-months’ service he was 239given a small pension, and for a few days after every quarterly payment the family lived as well as the best, and sometimes even bought a little more material for the house.
Year after year, as the family grew, he added to the building, sometimes plastering a room, sometimes putting in a window or a door; and he always said it would be finished soon.
But however poor they were, every time a circus came near the town the whole family would go. The richest people in the village had never been to as many circuses as the Henry boys; and even if they knew nothing about the Romans or the Greeks, they could tell all about the latest feats of skill and strength.
I often saw Ferman Henry tinkering around the mill, where he came to do some odd job to get a sack of meal or flour. Once I well remember that the water-wheel had broken down and we had to stop the mill for several days; my father tried to get him to come and fix the wheel, but he said he really had not the time,—that he must finish up his house before cold weather set in.
As long as I went up and down the country road to school, I saw Ferman Henry’s unfinished 240house. We boys used to speculate and wonder as to when it would be done, and how it would look when it finally should be finished. Our elders always told us that Ferman Henry was too shiftless and lazy ever to complete his house, and warned us by his example. When we left our task undone, or made excuses for our idleness, they asked us if we wanted to grow up as shiftless and lazy as Ferman Henry.
After I left the district school, and went the other way to the Academy in the town, I still used to hear about Ferman Henry’s house. The people at the stores would ask him how the work was coming on; and he always answered that he would plaster his house in the fall, or paint it in the spring, or finish it next year.
Before I left Farmington, the growing Henry family seemed to fill every crack and crevice of the house. The kitchen had been inclosed, but the porch was not yet done. The shutters were still wanting, the plastering was not complete, and the outside was yet unpainted; but he always said that he would go at it in a few days and get it done.
The last time I went to Farmington I drove past the house. Ferman Henry sat upon the little bench under the big oak-tree. A pail of water, with a dipper in it, stood by the pump. Mrs. Henry came out to see if I had grown. A group of children were grubbing dirt in the front yard. I drew up for a moment under the old tree, in the spot where I had so often rested when a child. Ferman Henry seemed little changed. The years had slipped over him like days or weeks, and scarcely left a furrow on his face or whitened a single hair. At my questioning surprise, he told me that the small children in the yard belonged to his sons who lived upstairs. I looked at the house, now falling to decay. The roof was badly patched, the weather-boards were loose; the porch had not been finished, and the building had never seen a coat of paint. I asked after his health and prosperity. He told me that all the family were well, and that he was getting on all right, and expected to finish his house that fall and paint it in the spring. Out in the back yard I heard the hogs grunting in the pen, as in the old-time days. I saw the laughing children 242playing in the dirt. Mrs. Henry stood on the porch outside, and Ferman sat on the old bench and smiled benignly on me as I drove away. Then I fell to musing as to who was the wiser,—he or I.
If I had only known, when I opened the long-closed door of the past, how fondly I should linger around the old familiar haunts, I am sure that I never should have taken a look back. I intended only to set down the few events that connect me with to-day. I did not know that the child was alien to the man, and that the world in which he lived was not the gray old world I know, but a bright green spot where the sun shone and the birds sang all day long, and the passing cloud left its shower only to make the landscape fairer and brighter than before.
And here, once more, while all reluctantly I was about to turn the bolt on that other world, comes a long-forgotten scene, and a host of memories that clamor for a place in the pages of my book. I cannot imagine why they come, or what relation they bear to the important 244events of a living world. I had thought them as dead as the tenants of the oldest and most forgotten grave that had long since lost its headstone and was only a sunken spot in the old churchyard.
But there is the picture on my mind,—so clear and strong that I can hardly think the scientists tell the truth when they say that our bodies are made entirely new every seven years. I am still a child at the district school. The day is over, and I have come back down the long white country road to the little home. My older brother and sister have come from school with me. As we open the front gate we have an instinct that there is “company in the house”; how we know, I cannot tell,—but our childish vision has caught some sign that tells us the family is not alone.
“Company” always brought mixed emotions to the boy. We never were quite sure whether we liked it or not. We had more and better things for supper than when we were alone; we had more things like pie and cake and preserves and cheese, and we did not have to eat so much of the things we liked less, such as bread-and-butter and potatoes and mush and milk. Then, too, we were not so likely to get scolded when strangers were around. I remember that I used to get some of the boys to go home with me, when I had done something wrong that I feared had been found out and would get me into trouble; and we often took some of the children home with us when we wanted to ask permission to do something or go somewhere,—or, better still, we got them to ask for us. These things, of course, were set down on the good side of having company.
But, on the other hand, we always had a clean tablecloth, and had to be much more particular about the way we ate. We had to make more use of our knives and forks and spoons, and less of our fingers; and we always had to put on our boots, and wash our faces and hands, and have our hair combed before we could go in to supper, or even into the front room where the company was. And when we spoke we had to say “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am.” And we were not supposed to ask for anything at the table a second time; and if anything was passed around the second time and came to us, we were not to take it, but pass it on as 246though we already had enough. And we were always to say “Please” and “Thank you,” and such useless words,—just as though we said them every day of our lives. Sometimes, of course, we would forget, and ask for something without stopping to say “Please,” and then our mother would look sharply at us, as if she would do something to us when the company was gone, and then she would ask us in the sweetest way if we had not forgotten something, and we would have to begin all over and say “Please.”
Well, I remember that on this particular evening we all went round to the back door, for we knew there was company in the house; and when we went into the kitchen, our mother told us to be very still, and to wash our feet and put on our stockings and shoes, for Aunt Louisa was there. We asked how long she was going to stay; and she said she was not quite sure, but probably at least until after supper.
None of us liked Aunt Louisa. She was old, and had reddish false hair, and was fat, and took snuff, and talked a great deal. She belonged to the United Presbyterian church, and 247went every Sunday, and sat in a pew clear up in front and a little on one side. Father and mother did not like her, though they were nice to her when she came to visit them, and sometimes they went to visit her. They said she came to see what she could find to talk about and then would go and tell it to the neighbors; and for this reason we must be very careful when she was there.
Aunt Louisa was a “widow woman,” as she always said; her husband had been killed by a horse many years before. She used often to tell us all about how it happened, and it took her a long while to tell it, and my father said that each time it took her longer than before. She had a little house down a lane about three-quarters of a mile away, and a few acres of ground which her husband had left her; and she used to visit a great deal, calling on all the neighbors in regular turn, a good deal like the school-teacher who boarded around.
I remember that we had a nice clean tablecloth and a good supper the night she came, and we all got along well at the table. We said “Please” every time, and our mother never once had to look at us. After supper we went 248into the parlor for a visit with Aunt Louisa. This must have been only a little while before my mother’s death; for I can see her plainer that night than at any other time. I wish I could remember the tones of her voice; but their faintest echo has entirely passed away, and I am not sure I should know them if they were spoken in my ear. Her face, too, seems hidden by a mist, and is faded and indistinct. Yet there she sits in her little sewing-chair, rocking back and forth, with her needle in her hand and her basket on her lap. Poor woman! she was busy every minute, and I suppose she never would have had a chance to rest if she had not gone up to the churchyard for her last long sleep when we were all so young.
Aunt Louisa has brought her work; she is knitting a long woollen stocking, and the yarn is white. She puts on her glasses, unwinds the stocking, pulls her long steel needles out of the ball of yarn and throws it on the floor; then she begins to knit. The knitting seems to help her to talk; for as she moves the needles back and forth, she never for a moment stops talking or lacks a single word. Something is said that reminds her of her husband, and she tells 249us of his death: “It was nearly thirty years ago. He went out to the barn to hitch up the colt. The colt was one that Truman had just got that summer. He traded a pair of oxen for it, to a man over in Johnston, but I disremember his name. It was a tall rangy colt, almost as black as coal, but with a white stripe on its nose and white hind feet. He was going out to draw in a load of hay from the bottom meadow. It was a little late in the season, but the spring had been dry, and it had rained almost all the summer, and he hadn’t had a chance to get in his hay any sooner. He was doing his work that year alone, for his hired man had left because his father died, and it was so late in the season that he thought he would get on alone for the rest of the year.” I do not yet know how her husband was really killed, although she told us about it so many times, stopping often to sigh and take a pinch of snuff, and wipe her nose and eyes with a large red and black handkerchief. She said she had never felt like marrying since, and that she had no consolation but her religion.
After she had finished the story of her husband’s death, she began to tell us about the 250neighbors. She seemed especially interested in some man who lived alone in the village and who had done something terrible; I cannot now tell what it was, and in fact I hardly understood then what she meant. But she said she had been talking with Deacon Cole and with Squire Allen, and they thought it was a burning shame that the men folks didn’t do something about it—that Squire Allen had told her there was no law that could touch him, but she thought if the men had any spirit they would go there some night and rotten-egg him and ride him on a rail and drum him out of town. I cannot remember that my mother said anything about the matter, but she seemed to agree, and Aunt Louisa kept on talking until it was almost nine o’clock; then she said she thought it was about time for her to go home. My mother said a few words about her staying overnight, but Aunt Louisa said she ought to go “so as to be there early in the morning.” I know I thought at the time that my mother did not urge her very much, and that if she had, Aunt Louisa would most likely have stayed. Then my father told my older brother and me to get a lantern and go home with her. Of 251course there was nothing else to do. All along the road she kept talking of the terrible things the man had done, and how she thought the men and boys of the village ought to do something about it.
A few nights afterwards I heard that something was to happen in the town. I cannot now remember how I heard, but at any rate I went to bed, and took care not to go to sleep. About midnight my brother and I got up and went to the public square. Twenty or thirty men and boys had gathered at the flag-pole. I did not know all their names, but I knew there were some of the best people in the place. I am certain I saw Deacon Cole, and I know that we went over to Squire Allen’s carriage-house and got a large plank which he had told the crowd they might have. The men had sticks and stones and eggs, and we all went to the man’s house. When we reached the fence, we opened the gate and went inside and began throwing stones and sticks at the house and through the windows; and we broke in the front door with Squire Allen’s plank. All the men and boys hooted and jeered with the greatest glee. I can still remember seeing a 252half-dressed man run out of the back door of the house, down the garden path, to get away. I can never forget his scared white face as he passed me in the gloom. After breaking all the doors and windows, we went back home and went to bed, thinking we had done something brave and noble, and helped the morals of the town.
The next day little knots of people gathered around the house and in the streets and on the square, to talk about the “raid.” Nearly all of them agreed that we had done exactly right. There were only a few people, and those by no means the best citizens, who raised the faintest objection to what had been done.
Aunt Louisa was radiant. She made her tour of the neighborhood and told how she approved of the bravery of the men and boys. She said that after this everyone would know that Farmington was a moral town.
The hunted man died a year or so afterwards, and someone bought him a lonely grave on the outskirts of the churchyard where he could not possibly harm anyone who lay slumbering there, and then they buried him in the ground without regret. There was much discussion as to whether or not he should have a Christian funeral; but finally the old preacher decided that the ways of the Lord were past finding out, and the question should be left to Him to settle, and that he would preach a regular sermon, just as he did for all the rest.
When it came Aunt Louisa’s turn for a funeral, the whole town was in mourning. The choir practised the night before the funeral, so they might sing their very best, and the preacher never spoke so feelingly before. All the people in the room cried as if she were their dearest friend. Then they took her to the little graveyard and lowered her gently down beside Truman. Everyone said it was a “beautiful funeral.” In a few months a fine monument was placed on the little lot,—one almost as grand as Squire Allen’s. She left no children, and in her will she provided that all the property should be taken for the funeral and for a monument, except a small bequest to foreign missions.
If I were to pick out the happiest time of my life, I should name the first few days of the summer vacation after the district school was out.
In those few rare days all thoughts of restraint were thrown away. For months we had been compelled to get up at a certain time in the morning, do our tasks, and then go to school. Every hour of the day had been laid out with the precision of the clock, and each one had its work to do. Day after day, and week after week, the steady grind went on, until captivity almost seemed our natural state. It was hard enough through the long fall and winter months and in the early spring; but when the warm days came on, and the sun rose high and hot and stayed in the heavens until late at night, when the grass had spread over all the fields and the leaves had covered all the 255twigs and boughs until each tree was one big spot of green, when the birds sang on the branches right under the schoolhouse eaves, and the lazy bee flew droning in through the open door, then the schoolhouse prison was more than any boy could stand.
In the first few days of vacation our freedom was wholly unrestrained. We chased the squirrels and chipmunks into the thickest portions of the woods; we roamed across the fields with the cattle and the sheep; we followed the devious ways of the winding creek, clear to where it joined the river far down below the covered bridge; we looked into every fishing-pool and swimming-hole, and laid our plans for the summer campaign of sports just coming on; we circled the edges of the pond, and lay down on our backs under the shade of the willow-trees and looked up at the chasing clouds, while we listened to the water falling on the wheel and the dozy hum of the grinding mill. In short, we were free children once again, left to roam the fields and woods to suit our whims and wills.
But even our liberty grew monotonous in a little while, as all things will to the very young,—and, for that matter, to the very old, or to anyone who has the chance to gain freedom and monotony. So in a short time we thought we were ready to do some work. We wished to work; for this was new, and therefore not work but play.
When I told my father of my desire to work, he seemed much pleased, and took me to the mill. But I noticed that as we left the house he put a small thin book in the pocket of his coat. Later in the day, I found that this was a Latin grammar, and that he had really taken me to the mill to study Latin instead of work. I protested that I did not want to study Latin; that I wished to work; that school was out, and our vacation-time had come; and that I had studied quite enough until the fall term should begin. But my father insisted that I ought to study at least a portion of the day, and that I really should be making some progress in my Latin grammar. Of course the district school did not teach Latin; the teacher knew nothing about Latin, and, indeed, that study did not belong to district school.
I argued long with my father about the Latin, and begged and protested and cried; 257but it was all of no avail. I can see him now, as he gravely stood by the high white dusty desk in the little office of the mill. Inside the desk were the account-books that were supposed to record the small transactions of the mill; but these were rarely used. The toll was taken from the hopper, and that was all that was required. Even the small amount of book-keeping necessary for the mill, my father scarcely did,—for on the desk and inside were other books more important far to him than the ones which told only of the balancing of accounts.
My father stands beside the dusty desk with the Latin grammar in his hand, and tells me what great service it will be to me in future years if I learn the Latin tongue. And then he tells me how great my advantages are compared with his, and how much he could have done if only his father had been able to teach him Latin while he was yet a child. In vain I say that I do not want to be a scholar; that I never shall have any use for Latin; that it is spoken only by foreigners, anyhow, and they will never come to Farmington, and I shall never go to visit them. I ask my father if 258he has ever seen a Latin, much less talked with one; and when he tells me that the language has been dead for a thousand years, I feel still more certain that I am right. But he persists that I cannot be a scholar unless I master Latin.
It was of no avail to argue with my father; for fathers only argue through courtesy, and when the proper time comes round they cease the argument and say the thing must be done. And so, against my judgment and my will, I climbed upon the high stool in the little office and opened the Latin grammar, while the old miller bent over my shoulder and taught me my first lesson.
Can I ever forget the time I began to study Latin? Outside of the little door stands the hopper full of grain; a tiny stream is running down the centre, like the sands in an hourglass, and slowly and inevitably each kernel is ground fine between the great turning stones. All around, on every bag and bin and chute, on every piece of furniture and on the floor, lies the thick white dust that rises from the new-ground flour. Outside the windows I can see the water running down the mill-race and 259through the flume, before it tumbles on the wheel. The hopper is filled with grain, the wheat is tolled, the water keeps falling over the great wheel, the noise of the turning stones and moving pulleys fills the air with a constant whir. My father leaves the mill at its work, comes into the little office, shuts the door, and tells me that mensa is the Latin word for “table.” This is more important to him than the need of rain, or the growing wheat, or the low water in the pond. Then he tells me how many different cases the Latin language had, and exactly how the Romans spoke the word for “table” in every case; and he bids me decline mensa after him. Slowly and painfully I learn mensa, mensæ, mensæ, mensam, mensa, mensa, and after this I must learn the plural too. And so with the whirring of the mill is mingled my father’s voice, saying slowly over and over again, “mensa, mensæ, mensæ, mensam, mensa, mensa.” I stammer and stutter, and cry and mutter, and think, until I can scarcely distinguish between the whirring of the mill and the measured tones of my father’s voice repeating the various cases of the wondrous Latin word.
Sometimes he lets me leave my lesson and 260go to the great pile of cobs that fall from the corn-sheller, and go over these to take off the kernels that the sheller left. But in a little while my hands are so red and sore that I am glad to go back to my Latin word again. Then he lets me cut the weeds along the edges of the mill-race; but the constant stooping hurts my back, and the sun is hot, and this, too, soon grows to be like work, and no easier than sitting on the high stool with the Latin grammar in my hand. Now and then a farmer drives up to the mill with his team of horses or slow heavy oxen, and I try to make myself useful in helping him to unload the grain. This is easier than shelling corn or cutting weeds or learning Latin; for it is only a little time until the farmer is gone, and then perhaps another takes his place. Somehow I never want these farmers or the boys to know that I am studying Latin at the mill, for they would wonder why my father made me study Latin, and what he could possibly see in me to make him think it worth the while. I wondered, too, when I was young; I could not understand why he should make me study it, as if his life and mine depended on the Latin that I learned. Surely 261he knew that I did not like Latin, and at best learned it slowly and with the greatest pains, and there was little promise in the efforts that he made in my behalf.
I could not then know why my father took all this trouble for me to learn my grammar; but I know to-day. I know that, all unconsciously, it was the blind persistent effort of the parent to resurrect his own buried hopes and dead ambitions in the greater opportunities and broader life that he would give his child. Poor man! I trust the lingering spark of hope for me never left his bosom while he lived, and that he died unconscious that the son on whom he lavished so much precious time and care never learned Latin after all, and never could.
But still, all unconsciously, I did learn something from my lessons at the mill. From the little Latin grammar my father passed to the Roman people, to their struggles and conquests, their triumphs and decline, to the civilization that has ever hovered around the Mediterranean Sea. He, alas! had scarce ever gone outside the walls of Farmington, and had seldom done as much as to peep over the high hills that held the little narrow valley in its 262place. But through his precious books and his still more precious dreams he had sailed the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Sea,—and though since then I have stood upon the deck of a ship that skims along between the blue waters below and the soft blue sky above, and have looked off at the sloping, fertile uplands to the high mountain-tops of Italy, and even over to Africa on the other side, still my Roman empire will ever be the mighty kingdom of which my father talked, and my Mediterranean that far-off blue sea of which he told when he tried so hard to make me study Latin in the little office of the mill; and ever and ever the soft murmur of the blue white-crested waves crawling up the long Italian beach will be mingled with the lazy whir of the turning stones and my father’s gentle eager voice.
The dust and mould of many ages lie over Cæsar and Virgil and Horace and Ovid. The great empire of the Roman world long since passed to ruin and decay. The waves of the blue Mediterranean have sung their requiem over this mighty Mistress of the Sea, and many others, great and small, since then. The Latin 263tongue lives only as a memory of the language of these once proud conquerors of a world. And no less dead and past are the turning wheel, the groaning mill, the crumbling dam, and the kindly voice that told me of the wonders of the Roman world. And as my mind goes back to the Latin grammar and the little dusty office in the mill, I cannot suppress the longing hope that somewhere out beyond the stars my patient father has found a haven where they still can speak the Latin tongue, and where he comes nearer to Cæsar and Virgil and Ovid and to the blue Mediterranean Sea than while the high hills and stern conditions of his life kept him busy grinding corn. At all events, I am sure that when my ears are dulled to all earthly sounds, I shall fancy that I hear the falling water and the turning wheel and the groaning mill, and with them the long-silenced voice repeating, in grave, almost religious tones,—
Mensa, mensæ, mensæ, mensam, mensa, mensa.
Somehow I can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the Academy on the hill. Back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and the little child from whom I grew is only one of the old boyish group for whose sake the sun revolved and the changing seasons came and went.
It must be that for a long time I looked forward to going to the Academy as an event in my boyish life. For I know that when I first went up the hill, I wore a collar and a necktie and shoes,—or, rather, boots. I must have felt then that I was growing to be a man, and that it was almost time to put off childish things. When I went to the Academy, we called the teacher “Professor,” and he in turn no longer called me Johnny, or even John, but spoke to me as “Smith.” A certain dignity 265and individuality had come to me from some source, I knew not where. When we boys came from the playground into the open door, it was not quite the mad rush of noisy and boisterous urchins that carried all before it, like a rushing flood, in the little district school.
Almost unconsciously some new idea of duty and obligation began to dawn upon my mind, and I had even a faint conception that the lessons of the books would be related in some way to my future life. Among us boys, in our relation to each other, the difference was not quite so great as that between the teacher and ourselves; but our bearing toward the girls was still more changed. In the district school they had seemed only different, and rather in the way, or at least of no special interest or importance in the scheme. Now, we stood before them quite abashed and awed. They had put on long dresses, and had taken on a reserved and distant air; and much that we said and did in the Academy was with the conscious thought of how it would look to them. This, too, was a reason why we should wear our collars and our boots, and comb our hair, and not be found always at the bottom of the class.
I began about this time to get letters at the post-office,—letters addressed directly to me, and which I could open first, and show to the others or not as I saw fit. And I began to know about affairs, especially to take an interest in politics, and to know our side—which of course was always beaten. I, like all the rest of the boys, inherited my politics and my religion. I said,—like all the boys; but I should have said like all people, whether boys or men. So little do we have the habit of thought, that our opinions on religion and politics and life are only such as have come down to us from ignorant and remote ancestors, influenced we know not how.
So, too, the same feeling seemed to steal over us at home and in our family group. The old sitting-room was quieter and wore a more serious look as we gathered round the lighted lamp on the great table with our books. The lessons were always tasks, but we tried to get through them for the sake of the magazine or book of travel or adventure that we could read when the work was done. 267My father was as helpful and interested as ever in our studies, and constantly told us how this task and that would affect our future lives. More and more he made clear to us his intense desire that we should reach the things that had been beyond his grasp.
Almost unconsciously I grew into sympathy with his ideals and his life, seeing faintly the grand visions that were always clear to him, and bewailing more and more my own indolence and love of pleasure that made them seem so hard for me to reach. I learned to understand the tragedy of his obscure and hidden life, and the long and bitter contest he had waged within the narrow shadow of the stubborn little town where he had lived and struggled and hoped so long. It was many years before I came to know fully that the smaller the world in which we move, the more impossible it is to break the prejudices and conventions that bind us down. And so it was many, many years before I realized what must have been my father’s life.
As a little child, I heard my father tell of Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, and the rest of that advance army of reformers, black and white, who went up and down the land arousing the dulled conscience of the people to a sense of justice to the slave. They used to make my father’s home their stopping-place, and any sort of vacant room was the forum where they told of the black man’s wrongs. My father lived to see these disturbers canonized by the public opinion that is ever ready to follow in the wake of a battle fought to a successful end. But when his little world was ready to rejoice with him over the freedom of the slave, he had moved his soiled and tattered tent to a new battlefield and was fighting the same stubborn, sullen, threatening public opinion for a new and yet more doubtful cause. The same determined band of agitators used still to come when I had grown to be a youth. These had seen visions of a higher and broader religious life, and a fuller measure of freedom and justice for the poor than the world had ever known. Like the despised tramp, they seemed to have marked my father’s gate-post, and could not pass his door. They were always poor, often ragged, and a far-off look seemed to haunt their eyes, as if gazing into space at something 269beyond the stars. Some little room was always found where a handful of my father’s friends would gather, sometimes coming from miles around to listen to the voices crying in the wilderness, calling the heedless world to repent before it should be too late. I cannot remember when I did not go to these little gatherings of the elect and drink in every word that fell upon my ears. Poor boy! I am almost sorry for myself. I listened so rapturously and believed so strongly, and knew so well that the kingdom of heaven would surely come in a little while. And though almost every night through all these long and weary years I have looked with the same unflagging hope for the promised star that should be rising in the east, still it has not come; but no matter how great the trial and disappointment and delay, I am sure I shall always peer out into the darkness for this belated star, until I am so blind that I could not see it if it were really there.
After these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where they told each other of their visions 270and their hopes. Many and many a time, as I lay in my bed, I listened to their words coming through the crack with the streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant rainbow they had painted from their dreams.
After all, I am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed their dreams. I am glad they really lived above the sordid world, in that ethereal realm which none but the blindly devoted ever see; for I know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights where he really lived and died.
And I am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to catch one glimpse of these exalted realms, and to feel one aspiration for the devoted life they lived; for however truly I may know that this ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however I may have clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, I am sure that some part of this feeling abides with me, and that its tender chord of sentiment and memory reaches 271back to that hallowed land of childhood and of youth, and still seeks to draw me toward the heights on which my father lived.
I never knew that I was growing from the child to the youth; that the life and experience and even the boy of the district school was passing forever into the realm of clouds and myth. Neither can I remember when I grew from the youth to the man, nor when the first stoop came to my shoulders, the first glint of white to my hair, or the first crease upon my face. I know that I wear glasses now,—but how did my sight begin to fail, and in what one moment of all the fleeting millions that hurried past did I first need to put glasses on my eyes? How lightly and gently time lays its hand upon all who live! I can dimly remember a period when I was very small, and I can distinctly remember when I went to the Academy on the hill and began to think of maturer things if not to think maturer thoughts. I remember that I began to realize that my father was growing old; he made mistakes in names, and hesitated about those he well knew. Still, this is not a sure sign of growing years, for I find that I am doing this myself, and 272many times lately have determined that I must take more pains about my memory, and cultivate it rather than continue to be as careless as I have always been. And only yesterday around an accustomed table with a few choice friends, I told a long and detailed story that I was sure was very clever and exactly to the point. I had no doubt that the pleasant tale would set the table in a roar. But although all the guests were most considerate and kind and seemed to laugh with the greatest glee, still there was something in their eyes and a certain cadence in their tones that made me sure that sometime and somewhere I had told them this same story at least once before.
I gradually realized that many plans my father seemed to believe he would carry out could never come to pass. I knew that for a long time he had talked of building a new mill. True, he did not say when or how,—but he surely would sometime build the mill. At first I used to think he would; and we often talked of the mill, and just where it would stand, and how many run of stones the trade demanded, and whether we should have an engine to use when there was no water in 273the dam. But gradually I came to realize that my father never would live to build another mill, and that doubtless no one else would replace the one he had run so long. Yet he kept talking of the mill, as if it would surely come. Nature, after all, is not quite so brutal as she might be. However old and gray and feeble her children grow, she never lets them give up hope until the last spark of life has flown.
Even when my father talked with less confidence of the mill, he was sure to build a new water-wheel, for the old one had turned over and over so many times that there was scarce a sound place no matter where it turned. But this, too, I slowly found would never be; yet after a while I grew to encouraging him in his illusions of what he would sometime do, and even in his wilder and fonder illusions of what I would sometime do. Gradually I knew that he stooped more and rested oftener, and that his face was whiter; and I forgot his age, and never under any circumstances would let anyone tell me how old he was.
As I myself grew older, I came to have a stricter feeling of right and wrong,—to see 274clearly the sharp lines that separate the good and the bad, to grow hard and unforgiving and more intolerant of sin. But this, like the measles, whooping-cough, and other childish complaints, I luckily lived through. It is one of the errors of childhood to believe in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and, strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the young. It is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right and wrong. It is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate that overrides all earthly schemes. It is only life that makes us know that pity and charity and love are the chief virtues, and cruelty and hardness and selfishness the greatest sins.
As I grew older, one characteristic of my childhood clung about me still. My plans never came out as I expected, and none of the visions of my brain grew into the perfect thing of which I hoped and dreamed. I never seemed able to finish any work that I began; some more alluring prospect ever beckoned 275me toward achievements grander than my brain had conceived before. The work was contrived, the plan was formed, the material prepared,—but the structure was only just begun.
And so this poor book but illustrates my life. Long I had hoped to write my tale, much I had planned to tell my story; and here, after all my hopes and plans, I have gone off in quite another way, babbling of the schemes of my boyhood days, the thoughts and desires, the hopes and feelings, of a little child. So long and so fondly have I lingered in this fairy-land that now it is too late, and I must close the book before my story really has begun.
That fatal trip back to my old home was the cause of my undoing, and has robbed me of the fame that I had hoped to win. But I felt that I could not write the story unless I went back once more to visit the town of my childhood, and to see again the companions of my early life. But what a revelation came with this simple journey to the little valley where my father lived! I had looked at my face in the glass each day for many years, and never felt that it had changed; but when I went back to my old familiar haunts, and looked into the 276faces of the boys I once knew, I saw scarcely a line to call back their images to my mind. These bashful little boys were bent and gray and old, and had almost reached their journey’s end. And when I asked for familiar names, over and over again I was pointed to the white stones that now covered our old playground and were persistently crawling up the hill beyond the little rivulet that once marked the farthest limits of the yard. So many times was I referred to the graveyard for the answer to the name I called, that finally I did not dare to ask, “Where is John Cole?” or Thomas Clark, but instead of this I would break the news more gently to myself, and say, “Is John Cole living still?” or, “Is Thomas Clark yet dead?”
I am most disconsolate because I could not tell the story that I meant to write, and I can scarce forgive this weird fantastic troop that pushed themselves before my pencil and would not let me tell my tale. Yet, after all,—the everlasting “after all” that excuses all, and in some poor fashion decks even the most worthless life,—yet, after all, there was little that I could have told had I done my very best. Even now I might sum up my story in a few short words.
All my life I have been planning and hoping and thinking and dreaming and loitering and waiting. All my life I have been getting ready to begin to do something worth the while. I have been waiting for the summer and waiting for the fall; I have been waiting for the winter and waiting for the spring; waiting for the night and waiting for the morning; waiting and dawdling and dreaming, until the day is almost spent and the twilight close at hand.