CONFESSIONS OF BOYHOOD

By JOHN ALBEE

BOSTONRICHARD G. BADGERTHE GORHAM PRESS1910

Copyright 1920 by John AlbeeAll Rights ReservedThe Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Walls of the World

Shadows and Echoes

Holidays

The Amputation

Country Funerals

My Mother's Red Cloak

My Uncle Lyman

The Dorr War and Millerism

Woods and Pastures

Apprenticeships

 Home and Homesickness

 The Saw Mill

 Bootmaking

 Love and Luxury

 Shop Boy

 Pistol Maker

 The Awakening

 Student Life

 School Master

 Farm Hand

Conclusion

Ave Atgue Vale

INTRODUCTION

For so many years Bellingham has had its abode in my fancy that I findit hard to associate the town with a definite geographical location. Iconnect it rather with the places of dreams and wonderland; the lostcities of the Oxus and Hydaspes, the Hesperian Gardens and thosevisionary realms visited and named by poets. My birthplace growsunfamiliar when I take down an atlas and run my finger over theparti-colored divisions of the Norfolk County of Massachusetts and tracethe perimeter which confines Bellingham to its oblong precinct, surrounded by those mythical lands of Mendon, Milford and Medway. Theywear an authoritative appearance on the map; but for me they occupied nosuch positions in my childhood and stand as stubborn realities hinderingmy feet when I wish to return to the Red House of my fathers. Oncethere, memory and fact are no longer conflicting. I find, as of old, thegently undulating hills, the gently loitering stream. 

The legends concerning the founding of Bellingham are missing. I amsorry; for I could believe the most extravagant, feeling with Plutarch, that fortune, in the history of any town, often shows herself a poet. The Delphian Pythoness advised Theseus to found a city wherever in astrange land he was most sorrowful and afflicted. There at length hewould find repose and happiness. Thus it happened when the wanderersfrom Braintree settled on the shores of the upper Charles. They broughttheir unhappy fortunes so far, and there, in due time, found comfort andcontentment. 

The traveller, journeying through the highways of Bellingham, would seenothing to attract his attention or interest. It has no monuments, ruinsnor historic associations; no mountain, nor hill even. The Charles riverhas travelled so little way from its source as hardly yet to be a river. The soil is stony and pays back not much more than is put into it. Thefine forests of white oak have been mostly reduced to ashes in thestoves of Milford, and their oracles have ceased. My father, who couldcut as clean a scarf as any man of his day, helped to fell them. Scruboak and gray birch have taken their places, but do not fill them. Onegreat elm remains; it seemed to me the largest and oldest tree in theworld. My mother nursed her children in its shade; under it my worldbegan. In its top lived the wind and from the longest spray of itslongest limb the oriole hung her artistic basket and brooded her goldenbabies. Like many another ancient dooryard tree it carried back itstraditional origin to a staff stuck in the ground and left to its fate. 

Bellingham was incorporated in 1719 by yeoman farmers, and later settledlargely by Revolutionary soldiers from neighboring communities on theeast, particularly from old Braintree. On the Mendon tablet placed inmemory of the founders of the town appears the name of my earliestancestor. He was a surveyor and plotted the land and built the firstmill, being called from Braintree for that purpose. Permit me to takepride in my learned ancestor, especially in his talent for figures--thedistress of my life. The most interesting periods in the annals of theNew England people are when they began to organize themselves intocommunities for the promotion of law, learning and piety. Their effortswere primitive yet affecting. Their language halted, but they knew whatthey wanted and meant to have. 

Such are the records of Bellingham. And other history it has little outof the common incidents of humanity. No eminent sons have as yetremembered it with noble benefactions. It has had no poet and no mentionin literature. The reporters pass it by. It is not even a suburb, lastsad fate of many towns and villages. This is one of the reasons for myattachment--its unchangeableness, its entire satisfaction of sentiment. 

Yet such is the charm of one's native soil that he is able to find in itthe most wonderful of all the beautiful things of the soul, namely, those which no one else can see or believe. After long years of absence, on returning to Bellingham, my memory sees more than my eyes. She whoaccompanies me in my rambles over the town often takes photographs ofthe places dearest to me; but her pictures show not what I behold, andshe wonders what it can be that so infatuates me. I see a hand shecannot see--forms, faces, happenings not registered on the camera;places where linger the invisible spirits of joyful or painfulexperiences; playmates, companions, whole families now dust, a thousandevents recalled only when time begins to obliterate those of the presentmoment. 

Although the sun went down over venerable Mendon town, it lingeredlonger over Bellingham in summer days than in any place I have known. There was hardly any night; just a few attic stairs, a dream, and thesun and I were again at play. Nor elsewhere were ever the summer cloudsso high, so near the blue, so impetuous in the constant west wind tofollow each other into the unknown, mysterious east. 

Fortunate is the town with a river flowing through its whole length andboys and girls to accompany its unhasting waters. It was made for them, also for the little fish and the white scented lilies. For a few hoursof the day the great floats of the mill wheel drank of it, sending itonward in the only agitation it ever permitted itself. Then there wasBear Hill, though never a bear in the oldest memory, yet the name wasominous to children. I feared it and liked to visualize its terrors froma safe distance in the blackberry field behind the Red House. To kill abear or an Indian was the very limit of imaginative prowess. It was tooeasy, and in an hour, tiresome, to kill birds, snakes and anything onechanced upon that had life. Only the grasshopper could escape with theransom of some molasses from the jug he carries hidden, no one knowswhere. You never knew a grasshopper was provisioned with a molasses jug?Well then you have never studied the boy's traditional natural history. Therein are recorded things unknown to science; discoveries neverdivulged, secrets more deep than the Elusinian, passed on from initiateto initiate for countless generations. Nature has told them only tochildren, and when grown to manhood, seals their lips with that impiousinjunction to put away childish things. 

It is not a river nor a landscape that gives to a town its realimportance; it is the character of its men and women. That is thepinnacle from which to view its landscape. Before cities and factorieshad begun to stir the ambition and attract the young by opportunitiesfor fortune and fame, Bellingham was the home of an intelligent, liberty-loving people; a community self-sufficing, sharing its abundancewith those less abounding. It was thus the best place in the world to beborn about the first third of the last century--to be explicit, ineighteen hundred and thirty-three. And I wish that I and the companionsof my childhood could have imitated Plutarch who said "I live in alittle town and choose to live there lest it should become smaller. "

All that is dear remains as it was, and it is my delight to remember andmagnify what it is to me. My friends laugh when I say it is better to beremembered in Bellingham than to be famous in ten cities. It has been mymisfortune never to have lived in any other place that in a few years, did not change and forget itself. I cannot find anything in my laterresidences that continues to connect me with them. They have cut astreet through me, they have torn down and rebuilt my old nests; and Iknow no more melancholy intimation of the small consequence of one'slife and associations than this. Therefore I thank Heaven for a townremoved from the track of progress, uninvaded by summer visitors and allbusiness enterprises; land left sacred to its native inhabitants, asluggish stream, unprofitable earth, huckleberry bushes and theimagination. Since this is so, and there is little fear of intrusion bythe curious or the mercenary, I will confide to my readers the situationof the town with the understanding that they will never attempt toverify my description. 

It lies in the southwestern corner of Norfolk county, is eight mileslong from north to south, from three to four in width. The brooks andponds in the southern part have their outlet into the Blackstone river;those of the north into the Charles, which is the natural but tortuousbound between eighteen towns and cities of the county. It was named forone of the Provincial governors of Massachusetts, Richard Bellingham--afine name. Farming is the chief occupation of the inhabitants at presentas it always has been. In former times there were two or three smallcotton and woollen mills on the river. The oldest of them, on the banksof the Charles, is as picturesque a ruin as time, fire and neglect areable to achieve in a hundred years. The walls of heavy blocks of stone, roofless and broken in outline, are still standing. Great trees havegrown up within them and now overtop them. Here and there a poplar leansforth from a broken window casement, leaving scant room for the ghostsof ancient spinners and weavers to peer into the outer world atmidnight. From a distance it resembles a green, enclosed orchard. Decaymay mantle itself in newest green but cannot obliterate memories offormer generations. On these fallen floors the young women of Bellinghamonce labored and were merry on fifty cents a day, a working day neverless than twelve hours long. They sang at their work, and when the loomwas running in good order, they leaned out of the windows or gossipedwith each other. On Sundays the roads and fields were gay with theserespectable Yankee maidens, becurled and beribboned, philandering withtheir sweethearts or in bevies visiting each other's houses. Every girlhad her album in which her friends wrote their names, and usually theywere able to contribute an original stanza; or, if not, a line from thehymn-book, or a sentiment from the school reader or Bible. They dressedin calico in summer and in winter linsey-woolsey, and wore at their workample aprons of osnaburg, a small checked blue and white cloth. Vice wasunknown; at least the annals record no flagrant examples. 

I fear those who only know the cotton and woollen mills of this daycannot realize or believe what an immense blessing they were to NewEngland when they first began to dot all the streams offering sufficientwater power to operate their machinery. For the first time they opened away for young women to earn money whereby they could assist theirfamilies and promote the improvement of their own condition. Work inthese mills was sought as a temporary employment generally; or for thepurpose of gaining money enough to attend an academy for a few terms, from whence they were graduated qualified to teach a district school. Itis said, that formerly, when the factory girls were all American, fivehundred could have been found at any time in the Lowell mills competentto teach school. What a contrast these girls were in health, beauty andintelligence to the pale, pinched faces and bedraggled dresses now seenhurrying to the Fall River and Manchester mills. The mill girls of 1840were self-respecting, neat in their dress, religious, readers of goodbooks, members of all kinds of clubs for study, and many of them couldwrite excellent English. The _Lowell Offering+, a magazine conducted byfactory girls at the period I have mentioned, now seems very remarkable;not so much perhaps for its contributions, as that it should haveexisted at all. Yet the writing in the _Operatives' Magazine+ and the_Lowell Offering+ was as good as that now appearing in periodicals, insome respects superior, being the free, unpaid and spontaneousutterances of the human heart. It is mentioned with praise in Emerson's_Dial+. One of our sweetest New England poets, Lucy Larcom, began hercareer as a writer in them. I write that name where I can see from mywindow a mountain named in her honor. Although her childhood was widelydifferent from mine in outward circumstances, I find in herautobiography something of her inward experiences that reminds me of myown. 

All the old-time life of farm and factory is gone. It is refreshing toknow a single remnant of it left anywhere; and I was never moresurprised and delighted than to find in Florence, Massachusetts, a fewyears ago, a large class of silk mill girls reading and studying Chaucerunder the direction of a farmer's wife of the same place. Bellinghammill, may you continue to be filled with goodly trees until you canassemble a class in Chaucer!

Near this ruined mill stands a row of tenement houses fast falling topieces and one large house where some of the operatives were boarded. Inthe neighboring hamlet nearly every house is standing that was therefifty years ago, and there are no new ones. There was an ancient law ofSolon that houses in the country should be placed a bowshot apart, andthis regulation seems to have been observed in Bellingham. You could seetheir lights in the evening, hear the dogs bark and the cock crow atdawn. 

Over the Green Store is a hall where formerly Adin Ballou used to preachhis various gospels of Universalism, temperance, peace and abolition onSunday afternoons following the morning services in his neighboringparish, the Hopedale Community. As my family was attached to the Baptistand Methodist persuasions I cannot now imagine what drew them to hearthis famous reformer of society and religion. They must have attended inthis hall, for although I cannot recall anything else, I do remembergoing to sleep there in the hot summer afternoons in my sister's lap. But any kind of a meeting was a temptation not to be resisted in thatlittle community. Adin Ballou was in full sympathy with all the otherreformers and transcendentalists of the Commonwealth, and when I searchmyself for an explanation of my early and intuitive attraction to theirideals I sometimes fancy they must have visited me in my sleep in thatold hall; or perhaps I heard something which lay like a seed in theunconscious, secret recesses of my being until time and favoringcircumstances called it forth. For I find it recorded, that he fired hishearers with aspirations for "grand objects and noble ideas. "

Regarding the topography of Bellingham, the most that can be said is, that it has none, none that distinguishes it either by lakes or hills. The best soil is in the northern and southern parts of the town andalong the valley of the Charles river. The white oaks were once the mostabundant of the deciduous trees. They seem to love a lean and stubbornsoil. I have seen graves laid open to a considerable depth where oakshad once stood, and still uncovering nothing but coarse gravel. I havetalked with ancient well-diggers who declared that the bottom ofBellingham was just like the top and only good for grey birch and beans. Yet they may not have dug after all to the veins which supply the floraland arboreal life of the earth. A poor soil is usually porous, admittingmore wholesome air and sunshine, and it is through these vital forcesthat trees and men grow taller and hardier. Thus do I like to compensatethe sterile fields of my native place by their stalwart, thin, straight-backed citizens, all bone and muscle, living with undimmed eyesand ears to ripe old age, mowing their meadows to the last summer oftheir lives and dying conveniently in some winter month when work wasslack. 

The dial of my childhood marked none but sunny days; the dry air anddrier earth of Bellingham gave me health and strength. I never found anyroad in the town too long for my walking if only the summer afternoonwere as long. I knew the roads and byways foot by foot, and could findmy way, if need were, in the night as well as in the day. All the housesI knew and their occupants; all the good apple trees and whose was everycow grazing in the roadside pastures or resting beneath a tree. If Icould have my will I would spend the remainder of my days rambling oncemore and every day those familiar roads and lanes, like Juno descendingthe Olympian path--

 "Reflecting with rapid thoughts There was I, and there, remembering many things. "

The most perfect picture of contentment is a cow lying in the greengrass under a green tree chewing her cud; and this contentment I couldrealize, give me back the sandy highways and green meadows, my barefeet, idleness and long summer days. 

I was even more familiar with the pastures and the woods than with theroads. The whole surface of my ambit was spread out like a miniature mapin my eye, and continues to be. Especially I knew the convenient ways ofreaching the river and Beaver pond and the brook which connects it withthe river Charles. It grieves me that this stream has never beencelebrated in verse or prose; while the Concord, which rises on the samewater-shed with the Charles and almost from the same spring, has hadseveral famous poets and is historic in Revolutionary annals. Longfellowsang one short song to our river, but he looked out only on the foulmudbanks of its Cambridge course, shut the door, went back to his studyand composed his subjective Charles. 

Slowly did I learn the actual extent and course of the river Charleswhich, in my childhood, rose as a shallow stream in the green depths ofa wood lying to the north of Bellingham, flowing east, then south underthe arched bridge near the school house, emptying somewhere in thesouthern sky; for, in my childish apprehension, I thought it must run upfrom where I was most familiar with it. Its youth and mine werecoincident, and as years were added, the river broadened and lengtheneduntil I found myself one day at its mouth, in reaching which, it hadtouched and watered eighteen towns. It is the father of no considerablestream, but innumerable rivulets add to its waters. It is about thirtymiles from source to mouth in a direct course though it wanders ahundred miles in its efforts to find the ocean. 

 "There runs a shallow brook across our field For twenty miles where the black crow flies five. "

It never has any headlong haste to arrive. It saunters like a schoolboyand stops to visit a thousand recesses and indentations of upland andmeadow. It stays for a cow to drink, or an alder to root itself in thebank, or to explore a swamp, and it rather wriggles than runs throughits eighteen townships. It is likely to stop at any one of them and giveup the effort to reach the sea. For my part I wish it had, and actually, as in my memory and fancy, ended at the outermost shores of Bellingham. 

The revolution of the earth can only account for the flow of the Charlesfor there is no perceptible descent of the land. I like to think it isruled by the stars and not by the configuration of the earth's surface. It is vagrant and nomadic in its habits, moving on a little, returning, winding and doubling, uncertain of its own intentions, a brother of theEnglish Wye, said to derive its name from _Vaga_, the wanderer, orvagabond. Since its waters sprang from their fountain head and learnedthat their destiny was to become a river, they have never been in hasteto reach its turbid outlet, but go reluctantly from town to town withwhole days before them, yes, perhaps, it was an age in making its firstjourney. It loses its way often, but cares not so there be a pleasantmeadow to meander through or a contemplative fisherman to companion itscourse. The Charles has never gained force, as man is said to do, byhaving obstacles to overcome. It treats all the dams which intercept itscurrent with a lenient benevolence, never having been known to carry oneaway. Meeting a dam, it turns the other cheek; in other words itpatiently retires into its higher channels and fountains, filling andstilling the little babbling brooks by its backward impulse, contentedto be a pond when it cannot be a river. It scarcely resisted theancients of Dedham, when they attempted to steal it. Having no water-shedof its own, the Charles is not subject to those floods and frenzieswhich make so many other streams dangerous. Sedges and flags, the skunkcabbage and marsh marigold, grape vines, alders, willows and button bushabound along its shores. White and yellow lilies and the pickerel weedalmost choke its course in many places. Under the leaves of these hideshimself that fish which old anglers named the water-wolf, the pickerel, who preys upon his smaller brothers and sisters. All is fish that comesinto his net. There was no more exciting moment in my boyhood than whena pickerel swallowed the frog's leg on my hook and began to retreat withit under the lily pads. In the stream also were horned pouts, perch, shiners and that silly little fish we called "kivers, " for which myearliest fishing was done with a bent pin. I was naturally capacitatedfor fishing by my fondness for silence and solitude. The mystery ofwater drew me from one pool to another and a constant expectancy of alarger fish than had ever been caught. I was not aware that words couldmake him as big as one chose; but I had pictured him in my mind in allhis immense and shining length. What I most wished to catch was aleviathan; my mother when reading the word in the Bible had told me itmeant some kind of great fish, the largest in the world. Once indeed Ithought I had him on my hook, but it proved only a sunken log. Ofstillness and solitude I had my fill strolling along the banks of theriver. It seemed like Sunday without the requirements imposed upon me bythat day, stiff shoes and Sunday-school. I became as still as the naturearound me, stepping softly and almost hushing my breath. If I mightdescribe in one word the sensation which I commonly experienced in myearliest lonely intercourse with stream and forest it was a breathlessexpectation, made up in part of fear, in part of a vague hope ofdiscovering something wonderful. This quest never wearied nordisheartened me; I only became more eager in its pursuit the more itevaded me; another search, another day and it would be revealed. Whatwould be revealed? There are no words given to man in which he canclearly portray the striving of the spirit for that which shall resembleand satisfy its visions and aspirations. The child sees these visionsand feels these aspirations and strives to put his finger upon them;they exist for him as physical objects which he wishes to capture andcarry home to his mother with a proud consciousness of his valor. Assoon as she had praised my handful of flowers, my pocketful of nuts, orlittle string of fish they palled upon me and I began immediately tofeel an uneasy sense of disappointment, of disillusion, knowing I hadmiserably failed. The bombastic brag to my mother and her praise were akind of mockery and falsehood. Illusion followed illusion, defeatfollowed defeat, yet the morrow was ever to be their healer andcompensation. How often have I been soothed by the waveless waters ofthe Charles river, its whispering ripples scarcely reaching the shoresand making no impression upon it. But on my ear they sounded like wordsinterjected with soft laughter. There I made acquaintance with theearth, the waters, the shadows of the sky, trying often to sink my hookto the edge of a cloud. It was not in the heavens that I first noticedthe stars, but their trembling images in water. 

Thus by the humble and narrow environment of my childhood was it madedoubly dear to me; the very limitations themselves enforcing andpromoting the growth of wonder and healthy imagination. It is this whichhas kept alive my early memories and made them pleasant and suggestivethroughout my life. Nor do I think my experiences peculiar. Sir HenryWotton in the last years of his life happily expressed the feelingcommon to men. "Seeing that very place where I sat when I was a boyoccasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth which thenpossessed me; sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing yearsnumerous pleasures without mixture of cares; and those to be enjoyedwhen time, which I therefore thought slow-paced had changed my youthinto manhood". 

As I have already said unchangeableness is the characteristic ofBellingham, and I repeat it, that I may add that it is the counterpartof something in myself. I have been swept on with my race and my timeand while sharing all their tendencies, at heart what I value most, thatwhich is most native and dearest to me is the simple undisturbed life, full of friendliness, piety and humble amusements into which I was born. What this life was, as reflected in a happy childhood, a neglected youthand idealised by its irrecoverable loss the following pages attempt toportray. 

THE WALLS OF THE WORLD

A one-storied house was lofty and convenient enough in a land where Godhad planted a community of his common people. That was the height of thetemple of the Greeks, which was only the enlarged form of the hut or thehouse of their Pelasgian ancestors. It was built low in due reverence toits origin and to their gods. No other architecture has ever surpassedits beauty and sublimity. The earth is ours to build upon and over, normuch above. The early New England farmhouse was as beautiful in itsplace as the Greek temple. Sometimes it was set directly on the highway;sometimes in the middle of a field or on the side of rising ground, andnot infrequently on the top of a hill, where it shared withoutdeforming, the natural elevation of the earth. It was usually square, but sheds and outbuildings lengthened its appearance and these latteradded a comfortable and homelike aspect and were a larger sort of windowthrough which the wayfarer seemed to behold the life of the family moreintimately. The pitch of the roof was flattened, the better to resistwind and storm, and through it arose the chimney stack. On either sideof the front door were the parlor and living room; the former seldomopened, and the latter rarely occupied until afternoon and evening. Theback door was the most in use at all times, and it was through it thatone came nearest to the hearts and homelife of the inmates. The kitchenwas where the meals were cooked and eaten, the Bible read at morning andevening and pipes lighted by a live coal from the hearth. This live coalwas sometimes lost and the tinderbox missing; then the man of the familywould travel to the nearest house for a spark with which to kindle hislost fire. The methods of carrying and keeping it alive were numerousand ingenious; a warming pan or iron pot would answer, if the distancewas not too great. One of my forefathers awoke on a winter morning tofind the ashes in the fireplace cold, and the nearest neighbor eightmiles away. It was an impossible undertaking to keep a coal alive on awalk of eight miles. Wrapping a piece of cotton cloth tightly about asmall stick he ignited one end at his neighbor's hearth, and like anhumble Prometheus carried the smouldering gift to his little world andits belated breakfast. 

The kitchen was the favorite gathering place of humble New Englandfamilies and it was there they were best seen and understood; there thespinning wheel hummed while the pot was boiling or the bannock baking;there stockings and boots were dried by the open fire and the latterdaily greased. With what pride did I see my first pair standing thereshining in their coat of pig's scrotum, this being thought invulnerableto wet, especially snow water. Hardly could I go to bed for longing tolook at them and to try them on for I know not how many times. By thewide hearth of stone or brick, one could whittle with impunity. Dirt isnot common dirt in front of an open fire. Charles Lamb's clean hearth orthat of the too fastidious modern house robs it of half its comfort andattractiveness. A little matter out of place, somebody's definition ofdirt, is one of the most hospitable and cordial things I ever meet inthe houses of my friends. A room with evidences of being lived in by thefamily invites me to share the intimacy of that life for the time being;but a too carefully garnished room, which my host occupies only while aguest is present, relegates me to my proper place--a stranger within thegates. It was with difficulty the family could be driven into thesitting room in the evening. The men preferred to stretch out on thesettle and smoke another pipe; the boys had a little more whittling todo and loved to hear their elders talk. Rarely was an outer garment puton by men during the week days of winter except on Sundays when ridingcloaks were the common wear for women, surtouts for men. These were handwoven, or if purchased, were of camlet. It was said of a certain familythat a drop of its blood was as good as a great coat, so hardy andhealthy were its sons. 

Among such farmers and manners and customs was I born, in a red houseunder the great elm. In its shade the old doctor waited and talked withthe expectant father until called into the house by the women whopresided at such functions in the neighborhood. My memory does not reachback to the "trailing clouds of glory", but doubtless it was these whichobscured the April sun that afternoon, so that the new baby could becarried out under the elm tree and there rocked to his first sleep. Mynext excursion, so the family traditions aver, was to Uncle Peter's, thenearest neighbor, the oracle of the community for all signs, omens andcountry folk-lore, who, taking me in his arms, carried me to the atticof his house and touched my head to the ridgepole: "What did you do thatfor?" my mother asked. "Oh, that's the way to make him a great mansometime. I does it to all the boy babies. There's luck in it. " In thosedays there were great hopes, and prophecies had not ceased. Many a sweetsleep did I have under the elm tree's shade later on; and many atiresome hour turning the grindstone for the long bladed sythes. In thetrunk of the tree were stuck many worn out blades, their points imbeddedby the tree's growth from year to year. Thus they became tallies markingthe past seasons of haying. Under the tree was the afternoon parlor ofthe family throughout the summer; there all the feminine industries wenton, braiding straw, knitting and mending, or a letter was added to thesampler. Often some neighbor came bringing her work, for nobody could beidle for a moment. I do not know what they talked about, but I canguess. However the picture is faithful and attractive, though for us, silent now. I find as few representatives of the ideal common people asof the nobility or of genius. So let them remain a picture, and do notask for their conversation, neither for their grammar norpronunciation. Cannot a Dorian speak Doric? Kindly and helpfulneighbors can live together without the correctness and elegancies ofeither. To me it is hateful to see them caricatured and made literarymerchandise. Not so were the classic idyls and pastorals of Theocritus, Virgil, Spenser and Saint Pierre composed. Is there nothing but badgrammar, mispronunciation and provincialisms in the heart of therustic? Must he be forever misrepresented by his speech that he may besaved by his virtues? The closer a picture is drawn to the outwardcircumstance the more transient it will be. Ideals alone survive in artand literature. I should like to have the Theban law reenacted, whichrequired the imitation in art of the beautiful and forbade therepresentation of the deformed and grotesque. 

Four summers had passed before I knew of any world beyond the walls ofthe Red House, the dooryard and the shade of the elm tree. I did notfeel their confinement. There seemed to be boundless liberty, and thedelusion is complete when there is no sense of limitation. The goldfishin his glass prison no doubt supposes himself swimming in an infinitesea. When the boy's growth can be still measured by his mother'syardstick his outlook is restricted correspondingly. He climbs upon achair with difficulty and cannot see over the table. This being, solately from heaven, creeps upon the earth, and his first experiences arewith the feet and under side of things. Ask the creeper how the humanface, a room and its furniture appear to him. My father's face as Ilooked up to him seemed to be very narrow and a yard long. A face therewas not. Nor had my mother's round table any top; but its two crossbarsbeneath, screws and catch and three feet belonged to my under world. Icould explore the floor from corner to corner; the mantel-shelf, windowsand ceiling were worlds and worlds above me. Lifted on some one'sshoulder I touched the ceiling with my finger and knew no greater joynor anything more wonderful. 

At length the creeper raises himself to his feet. He walks, he can sitin a chair, but will not. If he only would, what care and trouble mightbe taken from his protectors. But he has found the door open and thealluring dangers beyond; he has found a new realm which he hears calledin the homely country speech out-of-doors. There is where he now livesand finds his liveliest interests. As he is no longer a creeper but abeing of importance to himself he deserves a name, and it shall behenceforth I--my own small, as yet uncapitalized i. 

The walls of my newly extended world are the low enchanted hills ofMendon. There the sky seems to curve down, to rest and to end. It takesa long time to remove that horizon line; even when one is six feet, itoften remains in its accustomed place. I shall pass beyond it, yetreturn again. My vision will be often contracted; I shall see what Ionce saw, become what I once was; shadowy memories become bright by thetouch of hand and foot, and even the sense of smell shall guide methrough many a path and restore many a room, many a threshing floor andcorn crib. When thrust back upon myself, defeated, hopeless, I haveretreated to the scenes of my childhood where I could be triumphant andhappy in possessions, of which I cannot be deprived, and that are beyondmy own power to alienate. But that time is far in the future and I amcontented with the walls of my present world now expanded to the hillsof Mendon. Between them and me flows the Charles stream. It isimpassible as far as I can see, yet I have heard and been warned of abridge full of peril. It is, however, an incredible distance to thatbridge--as much as a quarter of a mile. When there, I dare not goforward lest I might be lost. I tremble with desire and apprehension. Ireturn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until, breaking into arun, I reach my mother's yard, where agitated but safe, I seem to haveescaped some fearful thing. This risk gives me joy. So I go again, andthis time I shall pass over the bridge and beyond into the unknown thateludes me. Adding to danger the temptation to disobedience, I go to thebridge oftener and oftener, sometimes leaning over the rail to watch fora while the chips and straws floating along the surface of the slowstream. They are moving in a direction of which I know nothing. Thedepth of the water at the bridge is not great, yet deep enough to bemysterious and it hypnotises me. It draws me into it and I lose myself. North and south, east and west, in the water and in the skies all ismystery which I am trying every moment to penetrate. As to myself I knownothing. Reflection, melancholy introspection, that sweet disease ofyouth, from which it is so difficult to escape, have not yet found me. There is as yet little consciousness of any thing beyond external andmaterial things save a faint incommunicable magic which hangs like aveil over the bounds of a small farm. From those bounds my feet will notdisengage me. On very still days I hear sounds far away and feelsomething within me that wishes to follow them, does indeed follow overa great space and leaves my body behind. As I hang far over the rail ofthe bridge I see my face in the water and become absorbed in itsdistorted reflections. I amuse myself exaggerating them by variousgrimaces, swelling out and drawing in my fat cheeks. I dare the image tobattle with my little fists; it accepts the challenge and returns blowfor blow. 

The hither side of the bridge became more and more familiar, the fartherside more and more desired. I knew the road to the school-house and toour three neighbors, all of whom I was accustomed to address as unclesand aunts. There was a fourth neighbor and nearer, yet there was adistance of some social kind. They were spoken of as Captain andMistress Barber. To this house, a great Colonial mansion, with windowsas large as those of the meeting-house, I was often sent on errands. Nomatter how often, I could not deliver my message, or note or borrowedsalt without the greatest confusion. I felt my breath give way, something fill my throat. It was the words I was told to say over andover, repeated all the way until I was too full for utterance. MistressBarber looked down upon me with her long white face and was able toguess the purpose of the boy's mission through his stammering andembarrassment. In her gentle, affable voice, as I now recall it, Irecognise the tone of a lady. She would inquire when the errand was doneif the little boy would like an apple or a cake. The question was toodifficult; so she gave him both. As I turned away I passed under thegreat pine tree standing a little way from the mansion. It stood aloneand it still stands two centuries old, in ample space and in consequencehas grown symmetrical in form and luxuriant with foliage. It hadrealised the promise of its youth, a fate which happens to few trees ina forest. From its first majestic upward sweeping limbs to its tuftedtop reigned solemn and perpetual night. The wind scarcely swayed itsdense and plumy branches. It merely turned up the silvery sides of thefive-fingered clusters of needles which responded with a low melancholyvoice like an aeolian harp, or those minor chords composed under itsshade by my friend the Flute Player of Bellingham. In the woods when thepines sing it is not these I hear but the lone tree by the Barbermansion. It was the only tree in my reach I had never climbed. I wasafraid of its dark mysterious recesses--also of Captain Barber. 

I grew old enough to do errands at longer and longer distances. It wasin doing them that I at length crossed the bridge, an event as importantto the child as the Rubicon to Caesar. I began the conquest of newworlds and to beat down the Mendon ramparts. I was despatched to a moredistant neighbor, the great and wealthy house of the Pennimans. In aclean frock and Sunday shoes, my face freshly washed, and with thelargess of one cent with which to buy candy at the Green Store Ideparted full of anticipation, fear and excitement. To the bridge it wasa familiar way; beyond that half a mile, never before travelled by me. Icrossed the bridge with three skips and a jump; never had it seemed sonarrow; but once beyond I was assailed with a thousand frights. Thestone walls rose up to an intolerable height; behind them lurkedinnumerable wicked men and bears. There was terror in everything, and Ilooked back continually to see if the way of retreat remained open. Whenat last I lost sight of my mother's cottage my heart almost stoppedbeating. Should I ever find my way back? Should I ever see my homeagain? I hurried forward without turning my head as if the only safetynow was in reaching my journey's end. Soon I climbed the eminence onwhich stood the Penniman mansion. Its vast size astonished me. It wastwo storied with a high gambrel roof making in effect a third story. Through the gambrel peaks rose two great chimneys, and I wondered whattwo chimneys could be for. Elaborate cornices surmounted the doors andwindows; the doors were all closed, the windows draped; there was nosign of life anywhere. High shrubbery in bloom surrounded the house onthree sides. There was not even a wood pile in sight, that most commonaccompaniment of every door yard I had ever seen. The barn and other outbuildings were at some distance from the house--another strange thing. From the eminence of the Penniman mansion I could overlook the Mendonhills and to my surprise there was something beyond, indistinct, agreater distance than I had ever looked into, and there vague forms roseup, whether clouds or other hills I could not tell. My errand called meaway. I lifted the heavy brass knocker of the green double door and letit fall once. It was opened and I acquitted myself very well as I didnot have to speak; I had only to deliver a parcel with a note. Whetherit was a lordly Penniman or only a servant who met me I knew not, as Ifeared to raise my eyes from under my wide brimmed straw hat, I held outthe parcel, felt it taken and rushed away. Then my own importantbusiness began, the spending of my cent. The doors of the Green Storewere wide open; a dog lay stretched on the platform in front; the sunpoured his full rays over everything and an aspect of sleepy quietpervaded the outside and inside of the building. There were no customersto be seen, nor sound to be heard save the buzzing of flies about themolasses measures at the farther end of the room. The store-keeperhimself was fast asleep in a chair tilted against the counter. I steppedsoftly half fearing to awaken him. My Sunday shoes squeaked a little andthe sound aroused him, though not entirely. He slowly opened his eyes, looking at me fixedly as if uncertain of any presence. Then, at length, he tilted his chair forward with a bang, put a hand on each knee, raisedhimself, stretched, yawned and scowled upon me as a disturber of hispeace. However the trader also awoke in him and he went behind hiscounter. I had not yet spoken a word. Words were not necessary, for thecountry store-keeper knows without being told what the small urchin withone hand clutched tightly wants of him. He took down a glass jar with abright brass cover full of sticks of candy. There was only one shortquestion to be asked and answered, "what color"? The boy, savage that heis, knows and delights in but one, and he said "red", a word he canspell also; blue has a twist he cannot yet master. Sometime Launa's eyesare going to teach him. In the shop, as he hurried out, his eyes sawmany things never seen before. He coveted them all, especially such asshone in steel or brass or bright new wood. He hardly knew their names;but what beautiful playthings they would make. All movable objects arepotential playthings to him. He makes them also, like the Creator, outof nothing; if he wants a horse he has it on the instant by straddling astick or tying a string to a companion. He has epic uses for hisfather's tools, his mother's knitting needles; they can slay a thousandfoes at one stroke and the button bag contains them alive and dead. Sixmarching clothes-pins are his army and conquer the world in anafternoon. 

The dog still slept as I left the store, the merchant returned to hischair, the sun shone on in noontide splendor. No shadow fell from thePenniman mansion; it looked more lifeless and larger than ever. Itseemed too large to me to live in and like a meeting-house. Not a leafstirred on the great elm; the trim spires of the Lombardy poplars hadfolded their limbs upward to rest, as sometimes one does his arms. Thegrasshopper began with a sudden shrill note which grew drowsy toward theclose as if he were too lazy and hot to complete it. Over the sunburntfields shimmered the heated air. I seemed to be the only living, movingthing; the intense hush, the high noon of the midsummer day interfusedmy whole being so that I hardly dared to step for fear of disturbing theuniversal repose. It oppressed me with a sense of loneliness. A wagoncoming along the road broke the spell and all things were restored tolife. 

Before returning homeward I gazed once more over the Mendon hills and Iwonder where and what that new looming world is. It is not many yearsbefore I know. My legs grow longer, the heart braver. I cross the bridgefearless and careless. Stone walls conceal neither friend nor foe. Theforests contain only trees. I look down upon small boys; they are now mynatural prey. I throw stones at them and make them cry, which gives meunspeakable delight. I am proud, restless, agitated by namelesslongings. The walls of my world oppress me. Destiny has determined thatI shall not be disenchanted before that world is entirely exhausted sothat after many years I may recover its earliest charm. Nothinginterests me more than a moment. I have become acquainted with MistressBarber, the aristocratic Pennimans and Dr. Thurber, the poet--forBellingham has a small poet, though I was like to forget it. He nods tome from his sulky. They say he writes his prescriptions in rhyme. Healso composes epitaphs for his patients when his boluses fail to savethem, and divides the glory with the local Fourth of July orators with asuitable poem. His _magnum opus_ is an elementary chemistry in verse foruse in schools. He had a chubby, rubicund face and a head of iron greycurls which shook as he laughed. 

The Barbers and Pennimans are kind to me, but they no longer offer me anapple and a cake. Perhaps they like me and think they can make somethingof me. Or it may be on my mother's account, whose kind heart and sweet, winning face every body knows except herself, for she is as humble andmodest as she is good. Admitted to their houses I discover new manners;their clothing is different and their rooms have unfamiliar furnishingsthat show no sign of usage. I sit very straight in a soft-seated chairas I have been instructed, but do not know what to do with my hands andcan hardly keep them out of my pockets. My heels secretly feel for therung of the chair; it has none, which seems curious, and it is a puzzleI take home with me. These superior neighbors of ours speak of books, ofmusic and persons and places unknown to me. They have been as far asMendon, beyond I imagine, for I hear the names Boston and Providence. Itincites me to know all that they know, and I begin to make comparisons, to find that one house differs from another, that one person differsfrom another and to choose between them. All things draw or repel me. Ihave glimmerings of an ideal, of something less or more than is presentand actual. A cent, that formerly made me rich, now makes me poor. I amnot so eager for playmates; there are moments when they seem merebabies, and our sports dull and trivial. The sweet child whose frockfalls only to her knees, whose wide white pantalets almost touch her redshoes, with whom I have romped for three summers alternately teasing andcaressing, yet always with the lofty port of protection and superiority, no longer satisfies my heart or gratifies my pride. I try to avoid her. She follows me about meekly, confused by my coldness. Her long-lashedeyes look at me distrustfully and are suffused with tears when I declineto play. What do I care? My heart is harder than a stone. Moreover, Ihave transferred my affections; I am in love with a woman oftwenty-three, seventeen years older than myself. To be with her makes meperfectly happy; I am transformed, I am humble to slavishness and mymanner toward this enchanting being is precisely like that of mydiscarded maid toward me. Thus is she avenged, for I too have to sufferwhen unnoticed. My new love's smile, (for she only deigns to smile uponme and seldom speaks), enthralls me, I cannot express myself; I followher about like a dog. 

There is a plant called Boy Love because it never comes to fruition, seldom blooms. It is almost extinct save in old neglected house-yards. My gardener allows me to cultivate it in an uncherished corner of one ofher beds. I can never pass it without plucking a spray of its fragrantleaves. Its very smell is of other days and ancient gardens. Thefashionable rose cannot endure it. I mean sometime to disprove itsimpotence and entice it into flowering for the encouragement of littleboy lovers that they be not ashamed of their infantile, ardentattachments but bravely confess them as I do. 

This phase of young life passes like so many others. How swiftly theypass! and must, since we have in ten years to rehearse all the parts forthe next fifty. In due time my girl playmate and also the young womanwere married, and meeting long afterward we found nothing in common, noteven a memory. One had forgotten that we ever played together; the otherlaughed incredulously at the boyish attachment. At length I too forgetthese mere matrons; I remember only the little maid and the coquette oftwenty-three. 

As one climbs the sides of a mountain it lowers its crest, but the viewbecomes extended. The hills of Mendon diminished as often as I climbedother hills or succeeded in reaching the topmost spires of taller trees. They were no longer so lofty, so distant, so infatuating. The walls ofmy world were expanded on two sides, the south and the west. All unknownlands were on the north. China was there, which to me was a place wherethey did nothing but fly kites; so much I remembered from my geographybook; there too was Boston, merely a place where we sold ourhuckleberries in summer. I had been as far as Mendon and found that theworld did not end there, nor were there any hills even. They had movedthemselves to the next horizon whitherto my fancies had flown. Disillusions increased with my height. A yardstick no longer measured tothe top of my head; the score is now marked upon the jambs of the cellardoor, and sometimes I cheat with yarn balls in the heels of my boots. Icannot grow fast enough to keep pace with my ambition. When I am larger, when I am a man, then I shall--could one but recover the predicate ofthose phrases! There is a cell in my brain as yet filled with nothing;but there is commotion, an eddy, like that of the vorticel which isdrawing thither its destined deposits. The things that draw me are alsothemselves moving toward me. The cell is in time filled, emptied andfilled again and again. Particles of this and that remain. Who canpredict what will be the permanent deposit?

The Mendon hills and those, rising continually beyond, caused me many aheart break, many disillusions, journeyings, pathless and lampless, manyapprenticeships to unprofitable masters. I explored the unknown becauseit was unknown and because I knew not what I wanted. There wasdisappointment wherever the pursuit ended. I would go on--neverarriving. "Stay, thou art so fair", is not the wish of boys. Themountains were not so high, the ocean not so vast, the cities not soimmense, no good so good as anticipated. My heart hungered for theimpossible before it had attained the possible; for the fruitage ofthings before the plough and the hardened hand; in fine, beforereckoning with those forces which determine the happiness and miseriesof life. But there is compensation for every disappointment and mistakendream of childhood and youth. I cherish them fondly as the early dramaof my life, in which, now a spectator, I see the small actor performinghis mimic part with mingled feelings of amusement, censure or sympathy. When the curtain rises I am once more on my own side of the Mendonhills; the walls of that first world enclose and protect me. Here Iagain recover my first sense of nature and the existence of otherbeings; here I discern the inward foreshadowings of what was to attractand mould me through life. 

SHADOWS AND ECHOES

Two things in nature impressed me more than any others in my childhood. One was the apparent motion of the moon, when I tried to walk or runaway from it. To see it keep an equal pace with me, moving when I moved, stopping when I stopped, sometimes vexed me and more often amused me. The heavens are young when we are, close and companionable; they comedown to the earth not more than two miles from where we stand. I triedmany experiments with the moon, when it was full, to see if I could notoutrun the bright and tricksy traveller. My efforts were vain and onlyincreased my wonder. I never spoke of it nor required an explanationfrom my elders. Children ask no questions regarding those simpleoperations of nature which they first observe. They remain deep in theirsilent consciousness. Such as they do ask are superficial, and areeither a passing impulse of a dawning social nature or are inspired byparents and teachers. I have observed that when they ask these questionsthey care nothing and remember naught of the answers. What is deepest inthem is growing in silence; it is not yet formed into conceptions, andhas no language. The difference between the spoken questions of childrenand their impressions, as yet so undefined, is like that betweenpictures of the snapshot camera and the astronomer's plates which, forhours, gather and develop the figure of some distant, unseen star. 

My other childish observation was of shadows, especially my own, castupon the ground by a low afternoon sun. This never vexed or puzzled meas did the outfooting moon. An old play says that the shadows of thingsare better than the things themselves; and Pindar places man at tworemoves from them. But indeed shadows pleased me before I knew of thehumiliating comparisons poets and prophets had made; and sometimes morethan the real substances with which I was familiar--trees, brooks andpastures. In the shadow of myself were the flattering length and sizewhich I coveted, the huge man; for I wished above all other things tobecome a man as fast as possible that I might do and have the thingswhich men do and have. These as I remember were trousers, long-leggedboots, two pieces of pie, to sit up in the evening and never to go toschool again; for I was always driven to bed and went unwillingly to mybooks. Many were the subterfuges by which I escaped my lessons, a lostbook or a headache; and how I rejoiced in the storms which made itimpossible to send me the long mile through snow or rain. I rememberonly one evening when I was allowed to sit up as long as I wished, myparents, having gone to see a man hung in Dedham, one of the festiveoccasions in old Norfolk County, the boy was left in charge of a sister. I remember it chiefly because my sister read to me that evening JohnGilpin's Ride. It was the first, and for a long time, the only poem inwhich I took any interest. Gilpin on his horse, his cloak and bottlestwain visualized themselves before me so clearly that they still remainmore vivid than what I read yesterday. 

But my shadow, ah, that was quite enough to satisfy my most ardentlongings. Moreover I seemed able to step on it, to lengthen or shortenit, to make it assume strange grotesque shapes; in a word I could playwith it. This I could not do with such objects as trees, house, barn andfences; or rather there was no such response from them as from theshadow. 

Echo was the only other direct responsive thing I found in nature asyet. Echo is the shadow of sound. Echo and shadow are brother andsister; irresponsible children of nature who love to sport and playpranks with matter and make men doubt their own senses. I knew severalof the dwelling places of echo; one in chief was between a large barnand a deep wood, and others at different points on Beaver Pond. Neverwould they return the individual voice; all came reflected back asecho's own, neither mine nor that of my companions; only now louder orless, more distinct or faint. It had a lonely, plaintive, evenmelancholy tone, which the Greeks explained was in consequence of anunfortunate love affair with the beautiful Narcissus. It sulked, andhiding in a cave, never spoke again unless first spoken to. I couldhardly believe that echo was not the voice of a human being. To satisfymyself I examined the barn and forest for some mocking man or boy. Wasnot this better than the explanations which never explain to children?And who can expound a shadow? When I once heard a minister exclaim thatman is but a shadow I understood him literally and was glad in my littleheart thinking only of its size and nimble movements. 

Echo and shadow hint of other things in nature besides solid matter andthat which can be appropriated by any machinery or resolved by anychemical yet discovered. These and sounds and perfumes also remind usthat the world was made for admiration and amusement as well as for use. I believe that the Creator was thinking, when He planned it, as much oflittle boys and girls and poets as of the husbandman and craftsman. Echoloves to imitate our voice as much as we love to hear it; and shadowslove to caricature our forms that we may laugh and even assist them; forif you stretch an arm between the sun and a snowbank shadow aids youwith its comic pencil. It is no wonder the sad ghosts throw no shadow;there must be sunshine, life and joy or you cannot even living cast apleasant one. I sometimes more admire the shadows in a painting than thefigures or the scene. The imperfect landscape of the Greeks excuseditself from observing none in the sacred enclosures of the temples ofZeus. The light must find no impediment in the unsubstantial matter ofdivine beings. 

It was pleasant in my afternoon rambles to see my form projected overplaces where I could not follow; on the other shore of a stream andalong stony fields good for nothing but a crop of shadows. Thus by myshadow I triumphed over space, and when it came to a vanishing point, Iimagined it still extending itself to some neighbor's door or into thenext town. My eyes could not follow it nor my feet; yet something in meaccompanied it and gave me a sense of magic power. An unconsciousfeeling for beauty in things of earth began to draw me away from housesand children and to make me lonely. I found playthings I could not carryin my pocket. These have remained with me all my life. The path we leavebehind us is the one we oftenest tread. One little brook still flowsthrough my heart. I feel it, I hear its smothered ripple, not meant forhearing, and I smell its meadowy fragrance. 

I treated matter with the perfect frankness and credulity which passesaway with childhood; and she rewarded me with visions and illusions thatare withheld from self-guarded and discreet manhood. I knew not thenthat shadows were the scoffing synonym for all unsubstantial vanitiesand day-dreams, or that other mystic conception that substance itself isbut the shadow and reflection of the power which created it, or thatlight itself is but the adumbration of God. How good it is that thechild is ignorant of so many things. It leaves room for the existenceand growth of a mind, of an imagination which, in time, shall leadrather than follow the processes of reason; which shall leap before itlooks, conscious of prescience before proof, arriving on wings while theshoestrings are being tied. Blessed are the ignorance, the beliefs andthe innocency of the country boy. For if he can maintain a remnant ofthese into maturity the world will be more beautiful; he will idealizehis friends and lovers, and never be conquered by the untowardcircumstances and events of his life. The child is a plant that blossomsfirst at the root underground, like the fringed polygala, and only aftera free and natural nurture, again blossoms at the top with the samecolor, the same modest beauty. Let the child pursue shadows and believethem real; let him discover their unreality and suffer defeats; but heshall not know when he is defeated, for still other shadows shall allurehim to the end of his days. The pursuit, not the attainment, is the truejoy of living. Perilous are the conditions of attainment. The goal isseldom in sight. We are driven on from dream to dream, and to awake isto lose the charm of existence. No pearl grows in the shell without thepressure of some irritating substance; and no boy becomes a man until hehas felt the sting of opposition, discouragement, defeat, and haspursued shadows with an unfaltering faith. 

SHADOWS

 Phantom of being, Protean face, Parasite of rock, of towers and man Since sun and matter erst began, Fleet vanisher from our embrace, Thy fairy forms the faithful ape Of substance; all the landscape In thy mimic loom mere woven air Where naught is real yet all is fair; Taunting us with bold mockeries And willing cheats and splendid lies, Deceiving all sense save the eyes. Flying without wings Gigantic o'er the mountain's knees; Or of tiniest things Etching their wavy images; Or playing some fantastic trick To please the fancy of a child; Or tireless watcher of the sick When others are by sleep beguiled. Thou follower of sun and moon, Gatherer of the undulating mass Through which no light may pass, Over the whole world darkening soon, Or standing steadfast all an afternoon Behind some oak tree's ancient crown Until the lingered sun goes down-- Give to the weary traveller repose In thy cool umbrageous tent, And to the husbandman, who goes To thee by heat and toil forespent, Give sleep, and let thy veil his limbs enclose. 

ECHO

 Echo is mate of shadow and of shade, Saying only what is given it to say; Hiding in wall or cave or wooded glade, Without ideas, sound with sound at play. 

 But thou, sweet echo, art my faithful friend; For when my simple songs on all ears die Thou art responsive to the very end, And answerest them with perfect flattery. 

HOLIDAYS

In the small towns of Norfolk County, even as late as the middle of thenineteenth century, Christmas was not kept as a holiday. The peopleadhered mainly to the Congregational and Baptist faiths. Christmas wasin some way associated with Popish superstitions. The Woman in Scarletwas still preached against and feared as became the sons and daughtersof the Puritans. I have never forgotten my childish vision of thiswonderful creature, a vision that connected itself with a neighbor'sdaughter who dressed in bright red mousseline-delaine and wore animmense hoop, played the fiddle and scandalized the community by hermanners, music and muslin. But the young men were all in love with herand she held a nightly court in a little brown house in that part of thetown called Hard Scrabble. She took the pick of her admirers, wasmarried at eighteen, bore what Aeschylus calls the "divine load" infifteen travails, fourteen sons and one daughter, and lived to play herfiddle to more than thirty grandchildren. The community at length becamereconciled to her, although she continued to wear to the end of her lifered gowns and a bulging hoop--the women gossips now said to conceal herusual condition. To me she was and is the Scarlet Woman, an inhabitantnot of Rome or Babylon, but of a town where I am the supreme pontiff, atown not made of galvanized iron nor stone nor brick, butweather-stained boards with sometimes a touch of red paint. 

Doubtless many people sigh for the days when Christmas was not, for ithas become a burden in its secular observances, a game of give and take. I never heard of the day in my childhood. Scarcely will this bebelieved, so difficult is it to realise that a present universal custom, and one so linked with religious sentiment, has not always existed;nevertheless it is true. If I were relating something that happenedyesterday, or the day before, I should not be much chagrined to bedisputed and to find myself in error; but the memory of the events ofchildhood is authentic and indisputable. There was no Christmas forchildren in Bellingham, or I should remember it as vividly as I do FastDay, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and Town Meeting Day. The last namedwas the first holiday of the year for the male population, occurring onthe first Tuesday in March. It was a day when the solid men of the towncame to the front and sat in high seats, dignified and important; whenthe less solid or more gay got drunk, and the boys played games aboutthe town-house, and ate as many buns as they had cents to buy. Thetown-house of Bellingham was an old Universalist church whose societyhad been uprooted and driven away by the sermons, prayers andpersecutions of the Baptist brethren and sisters. It must have been anancient building as it had a high pulpit, a sounding board still higherand square pews. I used to go in when hungry to buy the buns, which wereon sale in one of these square pews fitted up as a small shop, boardsbeing laid on the top rail, and the high seats forming shelves for thedisplay of eatables. I recall only the buns with distinctness, buns withthree large plums sticking out of their shiny red tops, which affordedthe greatest return to a hungry boy for the trifling sum he had toexpend. These plums deceived me into the belief that there were moreinside and sometimes I did find one lost in the air holes of thesponge-like cake. But the bun was sweet and that was enough, sweetenedwith white sugar too, a rare flavor in those days. I write white sugarbut its current name was loaf sugar. It came in cone-shaped packageswrapped in heavy chocolate colored paper, and this paper was used bywomen for dyeing. These packages were hung up over the counters of allcountry stores. The sale was small as it was expensive and limited inuse, chiefly to the sick room, wedding and funeral feasts. A traderwould buy enough to last him for a long time; consequently the packageshung in their places year after year, becoming dirty and fly specked. But the inside was well protected with soft white paper, and, whenopened, revealed its dazzling crystals. I liked it almost as much ascandy and I rarely had a bit of the precious article. Brown sugar andmolasses were the common household sweets; bread and molasses anexcellent lunch for hungry boys always crying for something to eat andnever filled. 

The town meeting bun is a thing of the past. When I ventured into thetown house I stepped very softly and felt an exceeding awe. It was astrange sensation to be moving about among men whose legs were as longas I was tall, and, generally, as unnoticed as if I did not exist. Sometimes a kindly old man would look down, put his hand on my head andsay: "You'll be a man before you know it;" or another would vary theexpression with, "you'll be a man before your mother. " Both meant theboy had grown since the last town meeting. I have, since those days, known town meetings from the standpoint of a man and voter and have eventaken part in their counsels; yet I have had always more interest inthem as an observer than as an active participant. Perhaps this wasbecause I was not an office seeker. I have revolved schemes for townimprovements a whole year and taken them into the March meeting only tohave them smashed in a moment. In general at the meetings in ruraldistricts, where there is little business to transact and the day isbefore them, the citizens like to hear discussion, especially if thedisputants get into a passion or interject a little fun. Then everybodytakes a hand and the main question is so confused and lost that even themoderator cannot restate it. Party spirit rages, old feuds come to lifeand men remember all the ugly doings and sayings of their neighbors andare hot to pay off old scores and get even, as they say. Suddenly, atthe height of the wrangle, the whole matter is dropped, peace reigns andthe regular business is resumed as if nothing had happened. Thesetempests clear the air for a year, and everybody is in better humorhaving discharged his accumulation of grudges and animosities. I haveheard closer speech, more sententious, more convincing and in moredirect and forcible language in town meeting than from any other forum. Men are not so much ambitious of eloquence as they are to carry theirpoint. There is often more fun, wit and sarcasm as well as logic thangoes with more pretentious and popular rostrums. When the town-meetingis abolished freedom will have lost her humble but most powerful ally. When the town grows to a city all is lost; for our freedom andindividual rights depend on direct and individual participation inpublic affairs. Otherwise, all is compromise, averages, irresponsibilityand mere chance how affairs turn out. The larger the city, the easier itis for rascals to rule. 

The town meeting was succeeded in April by Fast Day, appointed alwaysfor a Thursday. For some unknown reason Thursday in New England was analmost sacred day, a sort of secular Sabbath. Thanksgiving wasinvariably on that day of the week; also evening prayer meetings andusually religious conventions, quarterly meetings, Sunday-schoolconferences and weddings. There is an ancient proverb which says"Thursday come, the week is gone;" for farmers and laboring people itwas uphill to that day, and an easy and quick descent to the end of theweek. By Friday, or, at least, Saturday we could go a-fishing orvisiting; or to the store for some Sunday snuff, tobacco or "West Injy"goods. Work relaxed a little, the strain to finish a job was less, wewent to bed and arose somewhat later. Boys were not generally compelledto attend the Fast Day religious service. It had ceased to be asstrictly kept as formerly. In villages and centers of towns there wascustomarily a match game of ball, very unlike the present base ball. Boys played with boys and men with men. The New England bootmakers, ofwhom there were some in most villages, were the leaders in these games. Fast Day was above all days the established one for shooting and burningpowder. Why, it would be hard to discover, as it was too late for wintergame and too early for any other. However, it was fun and made men andboys jolly and important to roam through the woods and fields with a gunover the shoulder, for that was still the soldiery way of carrying it. It was more often fired at a mark than at bird or beast. Powder had tobe exploded to give expression to the holiday exuberance and a noisemade, game or no game. I suffered dreadfully for several years in notbeing able to have a gun, and my misery grew acute at the approach ofFast Day. I had to content myself with percussion caps, powder and leadcannon. The latter I made myself and when I had no lead I made them ofwood. These I fired as long as the ammunition held out and then with onemighty charge I would burst them into fragments, and Fast Day was overfor me. 

As Fourth of July approached, my chief concern was to get possession oftwenty-five cents. This was the traditional limit of a boy's spendingmoney for that day. He must save or earn it, or expect a miracle. How tosave on nothing a year was an early problem of mine; and as to earning, my services, even then, were not in demand, and I cannot remember everto have been hired to be a good boy. My mother had a cheaper way and amore effectual. Such is the miserable history of poor boys and poormothers. Thus it was that I rarely had the twenty-five cents; it wasoftener a dime. Even that seemed large enough to fill one pocket and buya world of things. To think over all the single articles that it wouldpurchase was to possess them for that moment, and I never had a truerownership in my life than that which was enjoyed in these imaginarypossessions. Strangely enough, I could so feel my own what I knew thedime or the quarter would purchase, that I was content not to spend itat all. Yet a day would come when some sudden impulse or appetite wouldsnatch it away from me; then with what penitence was I overcome; for, assoon as I had a thing in my hand it ceased to have the least value; ifeaten, it did not fill me; if a plaything, I soon tired and then hatedit; and only its destruction gave me one passing moment of joy. 

Occasionally Fourth of July was celebrated in military fashion; thetrain-band marched to the music of drum and fife accompanied by aprocession of urchins. The crowning exercise was the firing of a saluteby the whole company. It made every boy wish to be a soldier as soon aspossible. Then the muskets were stacked under a great elm tree from alimb of which swung the sign, "E. Thayer, Inn" and we all took a freedrink, in consideration of the dinner which was to follow at a shillinga head. 

The more common observance of the day was of a much milder character, Sunday-school picnics, in which the churches of towns near each otherunited. We went to Mendon, and next year Mendon came to us. Thesepicnics consisted of a little religion, much lemonade and cake, followednext day by headache. The day ended with a thunderstorm when the picnicwas in Mendon; such was the common saying. Thunder storms in the nightwere the dread of my mother's household, especially on the Fourth ofJuly when already excited by the day's events. We invariably expectedthe end of the world so much prophesied by neighbor White. If the stormcame on in the daytime the whole family went to bed and covered up theirheads. For my part, I longed to be out of doors in the rain, and enjoyednothing so much as the drops falling on my bare head, and in splashingabout through the puddles with bare feet. I was exhilarated by the soundof thunder, but lightning terrified me and seemed to throw me down. Itwas in an August thunderstorm that my father lost his life in an attemptto save his shocks of rye from ruin, which was indeed the end of theworld for his family. It was no wonder that my mother and sisters werealarmed when the black clouds and sultry air came over the Mendon hills. I was too young to heed the menace or to be reminded of the domesticcatastrophe and sorrow. Nature, rain or shine, winter or summer, river, pasture, clouds, woods, flowers, berries, apples, birds, were myplaythings from which I was learning to find the images and equivalentsin myself. Lying on my back and watching the summer clouds race acrossthe sky gave me my first comparison and attachment of a natural objectto a conscious mental conception. I arrested those clouds in theirflight across the blue, and whether they went sailing on or sank belowthe horizon I still saw them, and their images remained firmly fixed inmy mind. 

It was a rare chance when I was allowed to spend Fourth of July inMilford, the little metropolis of our region. There the celebrationswere on a grander scale; the local militia company gathered to itselfothers from the border towns, and besides fife and drum, a whole band ofmusic marched at the head of the companies, and a cannon on the towncommon saluted the Fourth of July rising and setting sun and the noon ofthe day. There was probably an oration in the church but I had no earfor speech when my eyes were filled with seeing; for there were shows ofvarious kinds in booths about the common and in the town hall. How tomake twenty-five cents take me into all was beyond my arithmetic; so Icontented myself with spending ten cents on an exhibition of Albinochildren, white-haired, ivory-skinned and pink-eyed. Another ten centsadmitted me to a collection of dwarfs and giants, the dwarfs mounted onthe shoulders or heads of the giants. The remaining five cents let meinto the best show of all, a learned pig that played cards and performedamusing tricks. For a good while I wished for nothing so much as alearned pig. But now my money was gone, and I was hungry as only a boyon a holiday can be. I had walked three miles to the town, and therewere three miles now between me and my mother's cupboard. When I arrivedthere I feasted for the remainder of the day and went to bed stillhungry. The next few days were flat and languid. In all my boyhoodpleasures and excitements I suffered intensely from these reactions. Itormented the family by persistent teasings to go somewhere, or to dosomething. "Go play, go read your book, go see what Aunt Chloe isdoing, " they would say. How could I fill the void with such trivialpastimes with a Fourth of July cannon ringing in my ears and the learnedpig's red eyes following me? I wanted all days to be Fourth of July, andfor a while I made them so with a wooden gun, a General Washington paperchapeau and a tin pan for a brass band. At length the days graduallyfell into their usual tenor and I became reconciled to such amusementsand mischiefs as my two playmates, George Jennison and Harry Thurber, and myself could invent. 

We now began to look forward to the time of ice and snow. MeanwhileThanksgiving day is near. Little as it meant to me, it was neverthelessa break in the usual order of the days. I have read many cheerfulaccounts of the Thanksgiving home gatherings--the feastings and thefrolic in which the turkey and plum pudding appeared to be treatedalmost like divinities. But never did I know, in boyhood, the familyreunion, the turkey or the pudding, so that these gatherings and dinnersare to me pictures and I regard them as I do the feasts of Homer'sheroes, pleasant to read of and to imagine. Some of our neighborscelebrated the day in the customary manner and no doubt acknowledged thegoodness of the Divine Providence as enjoined by the Governor'sproclamation. But the bounty of the Divine Providence never travelled byour lonely road, nor left a turkey or pudding at the door of the littleRed House. Saddest of all her sad days I think my mother felt it to be, seeing the bounties and friends at the tables of others and unable tomake her own worthy of the occasion. She sometimes spared an aged andunprofitable hen from her scanty flock and made us each a custard in anearthen cup. For that day she brought out her only silver, six teaspoons, and spread on her round table her only table cloth, hand-wovenand white as snow. In the evening we parched corn over the hearth fire. My mother sat at one corner of the fireplace and by her side a talllight stand, her candle, her Bible and her knitting. At bedtime she reada chapter aloud, and kneeling, made a low, plaintive prayer, the burdenof which was always thankfulness and trust. I remember not the words, but the tone still sounds in my ear. Thus returned from year to year myfour holidays until I was old enough to find the road that led from thetown and on which I now love to travel back and indulge a holiday ofmemories. 

THE AMPUTATION

Aside from the formal and appointed holidays, the events and days that acountry community most enjoyed were not numerous; yet their infrequencyand unexpectedness added a certain amount of zest to its monotonousannals. A fire, an accident, a death, a raising, an engagement, a fight, a new minister, even Miss Penniman's new style of gown from Boston werenot unwelcome excitements. They furnished food for talk, for wonder, discussion and scandal. 

Although there was a certain terror connected with the unusual event Iam about to describe, yet this did not deter me from looking forward toit as a kind of holiday. 

For a long time it had been rumored that our neighbor, Amos Partridge, would have to lose his leg. He had what was called a white swelling onhis knee. Besides his house, Amos Partridge had a large barn and a shop, where, in winter, he bottomed boots. The bottomer of boots sat on a lowbench and did most of his work on his lap and knee. It was thought thatthe primary cause of Amos' trouble arose from a slight blow upon hisknee as he sat at his work, increased by subsequent constant pressureupon the spot by the strap which held the boot in place. He worked aslong as he was able, and for some time before the operation, he wasobliged to use a crutch in passing from his shop to his house. Theswelling grew steadily in size, and became more and more troublesomealthough every remedy then known to New England therapeutics had beentried, including all the nostrums of the neighborhood, plasters, poultices, washes and prayers; for Amos was much beloved by hisneighbors, mostly Methodists, to which sect he himself belonged. He wasabout thirty-five years old, tall and large-framed, light-haired, full-bearded and with blue eyes, a pure Saxon type of a man. Hisforehead was high and narrow and much work and suffering had plougheduntimely furrows upon it. His house stood close by the roadside, in afield between two pieces of woodland. It was small, one-storied, theonly unusual thing about it being that it was painted white, as was alsothe neat fence which enclosed a tiny space in front almost touching theroad. This enclosure was in summer a tangle of cinnamon roses, lilacs, sweet-william, bouncing-Bet and other common flowers which propagate andharvest themselves. A narrow gravelled walk, upon which the flowersconstantly encroached, led to the front door--a useless door, generally, as no one ever thought of entering it. There were two rooms on eitherside of this door; one, the family sitting room, the other, the sacredcountry parlor with the usual hair-cloth covered furniture and home-maderugs in bright colors and quaint patterns. There was a gilt mirror too, the upper third of which was opaque, and upon it was painted aone-masted vessel with impossible sails set straight from stem to stern, which helps me to recall the room and much of the interior of the house. I had never seen so fine a picture; nor had I ever seen a vessel of anykind. It was wonderful. I never tired of looking at it although I hadseen it many times as the room was opened for prayer meetings, which mymother attended regularly, taking me with her. How well I recall thosemeetings, which sobered me for life. Not that any spoken words impressedme, for I understood nothing of what was said or sung; but there was asadness, a suppression in the air, as of the valley of Jehosaphat. Thestillness too, that intense hush which often occurred between theremarks and prayers of the brethren and sisters, filled me with anameless, shrinking fear. Had I been old enough, conversion would havebeen easy as the only means of escape from those terrible silences. Myusual relief was in clinging to my mother's hand which gave me a senseof protection from I knew not what; or in looking at the vessel in themirror and sailing away to other worlds. Under that sail I visited allthe neighboring inland towns whose names and nothing more Iknew--Milford, Medway, Mendon and Hopkinton, the utmost bound of mylittle world--beyond Hopkinton, nothing. 

At length there came a day when Amos Partridge could work no longer; thepain in his knee became too excruciating to be endured. The surgeon wassummoned and a date determined for an amputation. The neighborhood wasinformed and nothing else was talked or thought of during the precedingdays. The chances of Amos surviving the operation were discussed; for itwas before the days of anaesthetics and the science of surgery had notthen made the removal of a limb the least of its triumphs. Most of theneighbors, especially the women, took a hopeless view of the result. Preparations were made much resembling those for a funeral. My mothertold me she was going to the amputation, and as she never left me athome when she went abroad, I knew I should go too. But this did notoppress me, not nearly as much as the thought of a prayer meeting. A dimsensation of something extraordinary about to happen filled me withexcitement. Yet, on the whole, it was an emotion of joy. 

The momentous day of the amputation arrived. I could hardly restrain myimpatience. It was a calm, soft afternoon in early spring when my motherand I set out for the house of Amos Partridge; not however, before mymother had been to her chamber, and, on her knees, offered a silentprayer. She appeared very serious and silent on the way. Could she beignorant of the pleasure I was anticipating? I danced along by her side;hardly feeling the earth beneath my feet; I was already at the scene ofexpected festivity. I noticed that my mother carried a fan. It was not ahot day and I wondered much what the fan was for. We arrived at thehouse where there was already a considerable assemblage of the neighborsand friends from a distance. Horses were fastened to trees, fences andthe sides of the barn, just as on Sunday at the meeting-house or at theannual town-meeting. The small boy was there in numbers, but only a fewgirls. Alas, for the small boy! He was not permitted to play near thehouse nor to make the least noise. Instead of a holiday, for him, itturned out a more serious affair than the usual Puritan Sabbath. Bitterwas my disappointment. My mother, as she left me to go into the house, warned me to keep very still and be a good boy. Accordingly I remainedunder the window of the room in which the operation was to be performed. The windows were wide open, and I could see and hear all that was saidand done. I had a view of my mother and two other women standing by thebedside of Amos, fanning him. I could see the face of the sufferer, pale, emaciated and troubled. Presently I heard the voice of theminister, and looking toward the foot of the bed, I saw opened beforehim the great family Bible from which he was reading. From the frequentrecurrence of the words boils and afflictions I think it must have beensome chapter in Job that he had selected as suitable for the occasion. After the Scriptures the minister made a long prayer. 

Then the dreadful preparations began. I saw the bed-clothing pulled backand the diseased limb exposed; it was twice its natural size. Thesurgeon was the once famous Dr. Miller, of Franklin, reputed the seventhson of a seventh son, some extraordinary gift in surgery being creditedto such a descent. In his day he performed all the surgical operationsin that part of Massachusetts and the bordering towns of Rhode Island. Spread out on a small table at his right hand were his instruments, whose names I did not know, but they interested me immensely. What wouldI not have given for one of those dainty polished saws or keen kniveswith handsome handles! The room was partly filled with neighbors, mostlywomen, ready to lend their aid to the surgeon and to comfort thepatient, whose family sat weeping in an adjoining room. Amos' eyes werenow closed and his mouth set firm. As the tourniquet was twisted tighterand tighter the lines in his brow grew deeper. He breathed hard and amoan, the only one, escaped him as the knife went through the outerskin. It was not long before the sound of the saw came through the openwindow. The operation was over and the leg had taken its last step withits fellow. It was carried away into the barn for dissection; we heardwith awe that Amos felt a faint sensation of pain when the knives andprobes were searching for the hidden disease, as if the severed limbstill remembered its possessor. 

Subsequently the remains of the leg were buried in Amos' garden, whichgave rise to some questionings in this pious and scrupulous community asto whether it ought not to have been placed in the graveyard. But Amossaid that he did not own a lot yet, and when he died, he should not needhis old leg to welcome him to his grave. 

The operation proved successful. In a short time Amos was up with theempty pantaloon fastened back and the stump of the leg encased in athick leather protector. As he had used crutches for some time beforethe amputation he soon learned to accommodate himself to their new use. He could not now walk long distances, so the weekly prayer meetings weregenerally appointed at his house. He became what was called amongMethodists a class-leader; he took the leading part in all the privatereligious gatherings and never failed in his opening prayer to thank theLord for bringing him safely through his peril. "It was Thy hand thatheld the knife", he would exclaim, "yea, it was"; and all the brethrensaid, amen. 

There was, in the little community of which Amos Partridge was thecentral and pathetic figure, a sincere belief in the nearness andactivity of Heaven in its every day affairs. It rendered them serious, careful and slightly superstitious. It was also true, however, thatthese tendencies sometimes seemed to create antagonism and a rebelliousspirit in the young men. We children, from the same causes, were timid, afraid of the dark, afraid of everything; or, it may be, these very, nameless terrors of the night, of wild beasts and the forests, togetherwith reactions from fancied escapes were the best stimulants and rusticguardians of the imagination--the primitive Muses of the Bellingham boy. 

COUNTRY FUNERALS

If a surgical operation brought with it a country lad's holiday, afuneral may also be reckoned among the events which varied his life, ifnot with gaiety, at least with pleasing diversion. As a very young childI was present at two funerals which for special reasons have impressedthemselves upon my memory. I had heard much of a widowed sister of myfather, supposed to be rich; this proved to be a fable. Her husband hadleft the bulk of his estate to foreign missions, and only a bare supportto his wife. As he had acquired his property by selling liquor it wasbut natural he should wish to make a restitution in the land of theheathen. The widow, my aunt, lived to an advanced age. When she died Iaccompanied my family to her obsequies. There I met her other youngnephews and nieces besides the children of the neighborhood. We had amerry time together all day except for the hour of the services. Therewas a general feast served for everybody. The children were served at asecond table, but there was a plentiful supply of goodies reserved forus and no tears to check our appetites. At the table we were told thatour aunt had left us each fifty dollars. I had never heard of, least ofall, seen such a sum of money and I conjectured it was enough to lastthe remainder of our lives. 

A great deal takes place at a country funeral characteristic of thekindly as well as the weaker side of rustic men and women. There is muchbustle and subdued cheerfulness mingled with awe; conversation iscarried on in whispers. The chief mourners are permitted to be ashelpless as they please; everything is done for them; they are treatedas automatons. They are arranged in ranks next to the corpse accordingto consanguinity. Then come the neighbors and those persons who love toattend funerals. Children bring up the rear and in the hall and doorwaylean a few men who seem to have no particular relation to the occasion. The important personage, not excepting the minister, is the volunteerundertaker, who for some unknown reason, has become the man usuallycalled upon to officiate at the exercises. He knows his business, andfor an hour feels himself a man of consequence. He is impartial in hisattentions; be the dead old or young, saint or sinner, he is equallyanxious that the ceremonies shall be conducted with proper decency andorder. The rich give him a little more care, as they, perhaps, haverendered unto their dead a handsomer outfit for their last appearanceand farewell journey; such I think may have been the case when ourdistinguished neighbors, the Scammels and Pennimans passed away. Whenthe minister has concluded his remarks and his prayer, generally in themost lugubrious words and scriptural phrases he can muster, the man incharge of the funeral, (for country people knew no such professionalname as undertaker), comes briskly forward, and, with much ceremony, lifts the lid of the coffin, rearranges some portion of the dress aboutthe face of the dead, gives a searching glance over the coffin and thenannounces: "The friends and all those who desire, may now view the'remains'". This is the most affecting moment in the ceremony; the lastparting look which wrings the heart of the stoutest, when the womenbreak down and are led away blinded by their tears. It is then that themost indifferent spectator pays that beautiful tribute of weeping forthose he may not have loved, nay, hated or despised. All the ill isforgotten, the good alone remembered. A hearse was hardly known in theold days. The coffin was placed on a bier of home construction andcarried to the graveyard on the shoulders of four men. The sad funeralprocession followed behind, the mourners walking two and two and therear made up of a straggling company of men, women and children. Theminister offered a farewell prayer at the grave, and in summer time, anappropriate hymn was sung, its appropriateness consisting mostly in itsdismal words and tune. Then the terrible moment arrived, the lowering ofthe coffin and the sound of the first earth upon it; for, formerly thecompany awaited this last act. This was not the formal dust to dust, averbal and figurative act, but some shovelfuls of real earth that for afew moments rattled and pounded the top of the coffin with aheart-rending sound. The minister shook hands with the chief mourners, every one took his way home, the bier was placed under a tree and leftto the elements and to be the plaything of boys until the feet of them, that await at the door to carry out the dead, are heard again. 

The next funeral of which I have a recollection came into my own home. My father was dead, dead in the prime of his life, his labors and hishopes. Of this event I recall only two things, being taken from myplaythings under an apple tree to the grave, and the hard pressure of myhand by my sister as the coffin was lowered. This became in after yearsmy most pathetic memory as I grew to realize what it meant. In thatgrave all our hopes were buried; that I was unconscious of it must havemade the grief of my family only the more poignant. At the same time Ibecame the object of their greater solicitude and affection, and it wasa miracle that, in a family of women only, I was not spoilt by too muchindulgence. But while my sisters petted and pampered me, my mother'sgraver manners and prayers doubtless saved me from being too selfish andeffeminate. Boys, however, owe chiefly to each other their escape fromthe apron string and the softness of nursery manners. 

How empty now seemed the house whence the dear father had gone forever. The problems of life offered themselves to my mother and sisters with aterrible and crushing reality. My sisters were old enough and hadsufficient education to teach the summer terms of district schools. Mymother boarded the winter schoolmaster and planted and cared for hergarden with her own hands. There was a pig in the pen and a flock ofhens in the sod house. Most of my father's tools were sold at publicvendue, which brought in a little ready money. There was straw to bebraided at one and a half, sometimes two cents per yard; in summerhuckleberries were picked and sold for three and four cents a quart. There was a peddler who made his rounds monthly and always put up forthe night at my mother's house, paying his score with a liberal barterof such articles as he carried, dry goods, women's shoes and smallwares. Dresses were made over and over, were darned and patched as longas the cloth would hold the stitches. My father's clothes were cut downfor me and I wore the last of them in my sixteenth year. My straw hatsand winter caps were home-made. Every year a cousin in business inWoonsocket Falls presented me with a pair of new boots. There was nowant in the household because wants were few and had been reduced to thelast limit. I am sure I never went cold or hungry although I never had aboughten plaything or any of those delicacies which are more necessaryto children than necessities. 

It is in such circumstances that the friendliness of country neighborsappears in its most beautiful light. There is no thought of almsgivingon their part, nor a sense of accepting charity on the part of therecipients. Benevolence and gratitude were not called upon to exchangecompliments. Farmer Bosworth is going our way and leaves a jug of milk;he stops to chat a while and relight his pipe with a coal from thehearth. Would you see him do it with a boy's eyes? The tongs are toolong and heavy to bring around to his pipe; but with them he pulls out acoal of the right size, picks it up between thumb and finger and puts itinto his pipe bowl. I stand close beside him, and although he doesn'tcringe, I do, and almost feel my fingers burn. He winks out of thecorner of his eye at me and says, 'Your old daddy is tough isn't he?'and shows me the end of his thumb calloused and hard as the knurl ofwhite oak; only fire could clean it to the original skin. He shakes outhis blue frock for fear of fire in it, and goes his way. There is alwayssomething to spare by those who have more, to those who have less. Whoever kills a fatted cow or a pig in early winter sends a portion tothe Red House; and a load of wood is left in the night by some farmerwho does not wish his right hand to know what his left doeth. Money isscarce; but everything else is shared with those in distress or insickness. This is so much a matter of course that no one thinks ofcredit or reward. 

In such ways as I have described were the widow and her fatherlesschildren saved from destitution or loss of their respectable position inthe little community. I am sure my mother relied with complete trust onthe scriptural promises made to those in her difficult circumstances. Ifthey were fulfilled by human agencies, that, also, was the doing of theDivine Director of the affairs of the poor. In those days men and womenwere good and simple, obedient, not only unto the commands and examplesof their Bible, but also to the impulses of their own kind hearts. 

Yet the household never again felt the highest happiness of domesticlife. A soft and tranquil resignation took its place. They moved aboutwith a gentler step, speaking in subdued tones, more often not at all. They had to live out their lives, although it now seemed hardly worththe struggle. Tears were in their eyes at the table, and one or anotherwould arise before the meal was half finished. I heard suppressed sobsas I went to sleep on a truckle-bed beside my mother, who during the daywas more composed than her daughters. Neighbors soon began to call;there was then a hearty cry in which everybody in the room joined. Nothing so relieves the pent-up feeling as this, if only a littlesympathy is present, as it were, to receive and consecrate the preciousand sacred tribute of tears. 

As for me when I returned from the grave of my father, unconscious ofwhat had happened, I resumed my interrupted play under the apple tree. Ihad never as yet wept for anything except the crossing of my will--Apriltears, soon dried. 

MY MOTHER'S RED CLOAK

My mother was a silent woman, seldom speaking unless first addressed, and she never asked questions of callers beyond what an extreme courtesyrequired. I noticed the latter trait when a child, in contrast to thecustom of most people; for to ask questions seemed to be the usual andalmost only manner of carrying on conversation among the neighbors. Moreover, I was myself pestered beyond endurance by a fire of questionswhenever I went anywhere, or anybody came to us. I inherit from mymother a great reserve in speech and fondness for silence; and, as thelatter can only be purchased by retirement, I have added to silence alove of solitude in which I have doubtless too much indulged myself. Allsorts of suppositions follow a man who retires and declines theambitions of his contemporaries. By some he is thought a coward oreccentric; by others he is believed to be a philosopher. Those of a moreindulgent temper guess that delicate health or some disappointment inlove, in business or profession has driven him away from his kind. Noneof these solutions hits the marks. And although I have no wish torelieve myself of responsibility for my course of life, still less toapologize for it, destiny, in form of a woman, my mother, has directedmy life in spite of reason, the persuasion of friends or the allurementsof the world--the world which inflicts its just penalties upon him whorefrains from becoming an actor, who persists in being a spectator. Theparadox of my nature is that I love my kind as much as I love solitudeand silence. My friendships are now sixty years old. My mother alsoenjoyed society although she never sought it. She was easily amused, butI never heard her laugh aloud; her whole face smiled and it was morecontagious than the outbursts of more demonstrative persons. Shelistened apparently with all her senses and faculties. It was thischaracteristic I imagine, that, when outward voices were withdrawn, madepossible the turning of an inward ear to the responses of her soul. Inno other way can I account for the fact that without education oropportunities she became a refined gentle-woman, became intelligentwithout books and had an insight and judgment in all matters within hersphere, much depended upon by her family and acquaintances. She wasfeminine to the tips of her fingers, and sympathetic with distress andmisfortune. From her scanty cupboard she fed all who asked for food. Shebelieved and often said that the loaf which is divided is neverconsumed. Wandering beggars knew her door and were never turned away. But, as her house was small, and without a man, if they asked forshelter, she sent them to the next neighbor. 

Bred in such a quiet atmosphere I was usually very silent in my mother'spresence. When alone on the road, or in the fields, or with myplaythings I talked to myself a great deal; or rather I addressedinanimate objects as if they were living beings, a habit which stillclings to me, although the voice is no longer needed. My days were full;I found everywhere enough to keep my feet moving and my hands busy. Iwas completely filled and satisfied with the earth just as I found it inthe town of Bellingham. When, however, evening came on and I had to gointo the house, everything shrank to the size of the room. I becamerestless and fretful. Having exhausted every amusement which the houseafforded and, however sleepy, unwilling to go to bed, I sat down upon acricket at my mother's knee and kept saying, "tell me one little story. "

One such evening I recall when the days were growing short and shorterand the candle was lighted at half past four o'clock. It was a privilegealways granted me to light the candle. If no one happened to be lookingI blew it out for the pleasure of relighting it; for, like otherchildren I loved to play with fire and the candles and the open hearthgave me ample opportunities. The bellows and I were intimate andconstant playmates. We played many a trick together; sometimes stealingup behind one of my sisters and blowing into her ear, or going somedistance away from the candle I made a current of air which would swaythe candle flame, when my mother would exclaim, "how the wind does blow;some door must be open. " Then my titter would reveal the rogue, who wasreminded that it was his bedtime. 

But, on the evening to which I have referred, I was a good boy havingexpended my naughtiness during the day. There was a still calmthroughout the house and the intense cold had hushed the air over fieldand wood. The candle was alight on the three-footed stand and my motherwas counting the stitches in the setting of a new stocking. As usual Iwas coaxing for a story. Perhaps it was the red yarn which reminded mymother of her red cloak, or some sudden flash of tender memories. Whenshe had fairly started the stocking so that she could knit withoutcounting or looking at her work she said, "I had a red cloak once; wouldyou like to hear about it?"

"Oh yes, and tell it long, long, mother. "

"I was a little girl then, so the cloak was short, and so the story. Redwas the color I most admired when I was ten years old. It became me, soI thought, for I was almost as dark skinned as an Indian. Folks calledme Widow Thayer's red-winged blackbird when I wore my cloak, of which Iwas very proud. It had no sleeves and came down to my feet and wasclosed at the neck with a fastening of silk cord braided in a prettypattern. 

"I went to meeting in it all one winter, proud and gay, but never wore iton any other day except the Sabbath. At the end of winter it was packedaway in a great chest where our winter clothing was kept in summer withtansy laid among the garments to prevent moths. My red cloak was placedat the bottom of the chest and I myself spread an unnecessary number ofgreen tansy sprays over it. I never thought of the cloak again until thenext winter. When it was taken out for me to wear one cold NovemberSabbath, what was my grief to see the cloak, as I thought, ruined. Thetansy leaves had printed their exact shapes in a dark brown color allover the back, which had lain uppermost in the bottom of the chest. Thepressure and the heat had acted like a dye. I cried my eyes red andwould not go to meeting. Every one thought the cloak was spoilt. But oneday the minister's wife called at our house, and the sad tale of thecloak was related to her, and asking to see it she said, "Why, if itwasn't pretty before--and I never liked red for little girls--itcertainly is now. It is beautiful with those brown leaves; it looksalmost like a palm-leaf cashmere shawl. " Now a palm-leaf cashmere shawlwas the finest and most costly outer garment a woman could possess inthose days. My mother and sisters agreed with the minister's wife, asher opinion about all women's concerns was as much respected as was herhusband's on religious matters. So I began to wear the cloak again, andpeople thought it was a new one, and wondered how my mother could be soextravagant when she was so poor. But the cloak was much admired andthought to become me more than the last year's red one. The secret wasnot kept long for the minister's wife explained it to someone to free mymother from the charge of extravagance. Soon everybody knew it and manyinquiries were made how it happened. Some of our neighbor's daughterseven tried to produce the same effects on their dresses and cloaks bypressing green leaves on them with hot flatirons. But it did notsucceed. You cannot imitate accidents; they just happen once; the nextone is something different. So all the girls envied me my cloak. Itlasted me ten years, for I was not much taller at twenty than at ten. "

My mother was silent again and I exclaimed "is that all, mother? Tellsome more, do. "

"Stories, my son, must have an end or you would not like them--but therewould never be another. I have heard of a book that had a thousand, butit took a thousand evenings to tell them. So one an evening ought to beenough, and it is your bedtime. "

Here my youngest sister, Harriet, who was fifteen years old, said, "Mother, why don't you tell him the other part of the cloak story?"

"Yes, tell it, " I entreated. 

My mother appeared to be wholly absorbed in her stocking; she haddropped a stitch and was working her needles painfully, trying torecover it. A half sad smile, half pleased expression came into her faceand a faint blush upon her brown cheek. 

"Well, I suppose the journey I took in the red cloak with the tansyfigures is what your sister wants me to tell you about. My mother, yourgrandmother, was a widow. I never saw my own father, for I was bornwhile he was away fighting in the battles of the Revolution and he neverreturned; he was killed at Yorktown. When I was about ten years old mymother had an offer of marriage from a farmer in Medway who had lost hiswife; his children had grown up, married and settled excepting one sontwenty years old. It was a matter of convenience on both sides; mymother needed a home and he needed a housekeeper. The marriage tookplace in her own house. But she did not go immediately to her new home;she had a little property to dispose of and other small affairs toarrange. When she had sold everything but her old white mare she set outfor Medway upon the mare's back, taking me with her on a pillion behind. It was a day in Spring, and although not cold, I wore my cloak as theeasiest way of carrying it. No doubt it was a queer spectacle we made;yet, not as queer then as it would seem now--the old white mare amblingalong, head down, and feet hardly clearing the ground under the heavyload, for your grandmother was a large, stout woman and we had a numberof bags and bundles fastened onto the saddle, and I almost hidden amongthem, was quite covered by my cloak so that I might have been mistakenfor another parcel hanging behind my mother's broad back. She wore animmense bonnet flaring wide in front and big bowed silver spectacles. Ihad on a small tightly-fitting bright yellow cap tied under my chin withblue ribbon. It was not a long journey from Bellingham to Medway, but itwas the first I had ever taken, and it seemed to me it would never end. I was much subdued and even frightened on the way. It was all so strangeand perplexing to me this marriage of my mother to a strange man, givingup my childhood home and going to another of which I knew nothing. Little did I imagine the destiny that awaited me there. 

"At last we turned into a long lane and came to a large rambling farmhouse with barns all about it. A young man came to the doorstep to meetus. I was not in the habit of taking much notice of boys and young men, but I could not help seeing that he was a handsome youth, tall, fairhaired and blue eyed. He helped my mother to dismount, and then liftedme in his arms from the pillion. That young man, my son, was yourfather, and I have heard him say he that moment fell in love with thelittle girl in the red cloak. He seemed never so much pleased as whenwinter came round and I began to wear it again. He waited and served tenyears for me, and when I was twenty and he thirty we were married. Wewent back to Bellingham to be married by my mother's minister, an oldfriend. We went on horseback, I on a pillion behind your father just asI had left the town and wearing still my red cloak, but almost for thelast time, for it was thought no longer suitable for a married woman. Itwas hung away in a closet; your father would not have it made over intoany other kind of a garment, as was the thrifty custom of allhouseholds, although I much wanted to make it into a petticoat. Yourfather prized it more than any of my newer clothes, and it hung in thecloset for many a year. Sometimes in the long winter evenings when wewould be talking of old times and the ten tedious years of his waiting, he would make me take out the cloak and parade around the room. Itseemed to make him happy and more affectionate. "

MY UNCLE LYMAN

As I shall often allude to my Uncle Lyman in these pages, I will sketchas much of his character and his ways as I can now recall, and that mayinterest the reader. He was a farmer of the old style and I love toremember him. To hear of great men and great events is stimulating, aseven the sound of fire is warming; yet the memory of those who have beennear and dear to us brings a deeper glow into the heart. 

Uncle Lyman's farm supplied nearly every one of his needs except whatwere called in his day West India goods. He believed with Cato that thefather of a family ought always to sell and never to buy. He strictlyfollowed his advice in selling his old cattle, his old carts and used uptools and everything which he did not want. This was why his yards andbuildings were unincumbered with the trumpery which so often disfiguresNew England farms. West India goods were the luxuries of his time. Thesegoods were chiefly rum, sugar and molasses. Tea and spices were evengreater luxuries. The strange marks on tea chests were a cipher no onehad unravelled. On his farm were raised corn, wheat and always rye, forrye and not wheat was in Bellingham the staff of life. Eggs, cheese, butter and pork were bartered at the country stores for West Indiagoods. Work, incessant work was the prime necessity on the farm and inthe house, and Uncle Lyman and his wife never knew an idle day. Thisfixed upon him a serious and preoccupied air. He began the day early andleft off late. The sun was his fellow traveller and laborer to and froin the furrow, the corn rows and the swath. But it was hard for him toleave his work at sundown; darkness alone sometimes compelled him toquit the field. After supper, which was at five o'clock, the year round, is half and the better half of the day in summer, he used to say. OurBellingham neighbors were humble, hard working people, but they taughtme "the great art of cheerful poverty. " I was early cured of severalfollies by standing under the shadow of rustic wise men. I drove theiroxen to the plow, and often fell behind alongside the ploughman andpicked up the scattered seeds of old, traditional wisdom in his furrows. With these the sagacious urchin sometimes astonished his little mother. Visitors, a cloudy day, a gentle rain did not prevent Uncle Lyman fromhis labors. "Let us keep ahead of the weather, " he would say, "and thenwe can go a-fishing. " No weeds grew in his corn or rye; and his made hayseldom was wet. He scented a shower from as far away as the Mendonhills. He first taught me to notice the sweet perfume which a summershower drives before it from afar, the combined perfume of wild flowers, trees and new mown grass. 

There was always the promise held out that, after haying or the firsthoeing, we should go a-fishing on Beaver Pond, and sometimes the promisewas kept. He was a masterful trailer for pickerel; he put into it thesame energy as into his axe and scythe. In the same way that I wasallowed to drive his mare Nancy by holding the slack of the reins, did Ihave my part in the fishing excursions. I held a line over the edge ofthe boat until the fish bit, then another hand took it and drew it in. Perch or pout it was mine, and credit and praise were duly given. "Whata smart boy!" words that made me more proud than any commendations Ihave heard since. When they were cooked I wanted my own catch to eat andwas humored. And in general that is the boy's disposition; whatever hecaptures or finds on trees or on the earth he wishes to eat. No doubt agreen apple and the buds of trees, and all kinds of sweet or pepperyroots give him that wild and strenuous virtue which enables him toresist pampering and effeminating influences. 

Although Uncle Lyman seldom allowed himself a holiday, I believe heenjoyed it as much as I did. He was simply an older boy; that was thesecret of our sympathy and my admiration for him. He knew so many morethings than I, could do so many more, yet when with me, all in a playfulway as if they were of no account, and only for fun. He was my model andmy ideal of a man in everything that made for me the world. I felt aninward, irresistible impulsion to do all that he did, just as we areinclined to beat time to the music that we love. Thus was I taught tolabor and enslaved to it before I knew it; for a boy wants to do what hesees men do; he must handle the hoe, the rake, the axe and the scythe, and these are often made to suit his size and strength in order to tempthim still further on. Thus does he forge his own chains; he is caught inhis own net and his plaything tools become his masters. Now he must mowand hoe in earnest, however hot the sun, however much he hates to work. Yet I have never felt any distinction between work and play when theformer was to my liking. 

Uncle Lyman's wisdom had been handed down to him by his fathers, and hehad improved it by observation. He added a new touch to the wrinkledface of ancient use. He knew the properties of all trees, weeds andherbs. Ash and hornbeam were his most precious woods. Ash served everypurpose this side of iron; it was as good as a rope, for was not theGordion knot tied with it? and could be whittled down as fine as aknitting needle without breaking, and still keeping its strength; itcould be pounded into basket stuff, separating the layers to almost anydegree of thinness. It handled every tool, from a pitchfork to an awl, and made the whole of a rake, the bows, teeth, head and staff. Besides, it had medicinal virtues; it was good for nose-bleed ever since itstaunched the royal nose of King James, the Second. Although the mostelastic of wood it never grew crooked, but shot up a trunk as straightas an arrow. It is a tree prophetic of archery. Uncle Lyman made me manya bow from a selected piece of ash, each year of my age a little longerand stouter. He measured the length the bow should be by my height. Whata joy it was at length to shoot an arrow almost out of sight! "Now", said Uncle Lyman, "you are almost big enough for a gun". Alas, I mightas well have wished for a kingdom. A wooden gun for awhile satisfied myambition. With that, however, I shot many an Indian, and the little boysand girls who teased and provoked me. But I soon tired of theseimaginary foes and marksmanship. With bow and arrow I could hit thetrunk of a tree, the house door, and by accident a pane of glass. Bestof all I liked to shoot over Uncle Lyman's dooryard elm, or try for theclouds. Often I lost my arrow in them; so I bragged and believed. 

The hornbeam was much less common than the ash and was saved withparticular care. It was mainly used for stanchions in the tie-ups ofcows and oxen, for stakes on sleds and carts, and for levers. It is noteasily bent and is almost impossible to break; it is the steel of theforest. Its foliage resembles that of the elm, but is finer and denser. It has no insect enemies and minds not the fiercest tempests. UncleLyman said only lightning could rive it, that the hornbeam drew firefrom the clouds, and one should never go near it in a thunder storm. This was only when it was alive. 

His various speculations about natural objects and phenomena, werealways in the way of contraries and offsets. Good weather was enough toensure forthcoming bad; a full crop this year meant a poor one nextyear. If every kernel of corn sprouted, look out for plenty of crows anda poor yield. Thus he comforted himself in every reverse and humbledhimself in good fortune. In good years he was more saving, and in bad, less so than most of his neighbors. Now he had a fear ahead and now ahope. Thus he balanced both; yet the balance so inclined that the yearsincreased his store, and thrift, industry and honesty brought him honoramong his neighbors. He helped the widow and the orphan and loaned moneywithout a mortgage. His debts and credits were obligations of honor; ashe paid, so he was paid. 

Uncle Lyman admired trees as the most wonderful things that God had madegrow out of the earth. He could hardly bring himself to chop them down. The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, madehim sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an oldfriend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from asapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the old man of Verona, "A neighboring wood, born with himself, he sees, And loves his old contemporary trees". 

The trees I loved and played with most in my boyhood, the white birches, for which I still have more fondness than any other in our northernforests, Uncle Lyman cared for not at all. Although he had a sense ofbeauty, and long association with an object affected him with a tinge ofromance and secret sentiment, yet utility was the chief criterion in hisestimate of trees and men. Could you do a good day's work, it wasenough; it filled the measure of a man and the promise of a boy. Auseful tree was therefore the best tree. He had no use for white or graybirches, for they were neither timber nor vendible firewood. He oftenridiculed them, and if there was a worthless fellow in town, he was, inhis comparison, a gray birch, good for nothing but to hoop the ciderbarrels, of which the fellow was too fond; if a too gay girl, she was awhite birch, dressed in satin, frizzled and beribboned, dress over dressof the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in thebirch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred usesfor the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spooland bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch barkbooks, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs--and, envied man, is able to sell them. 

But all these useful, playful and poetic uses are nothing to me incomparison to the birchen bower wherein I spent entrancing summer dayswith Launa Probana. 

Having been my father's most intimate friend, when he died in the midstof his years, he became my mother's adviser and helper, and to me asecond father. I loved him well, and I believe he reciprocated thisboyish affection. His eyes twinkled and the wrinkles on hisweather-beaten face ran together when I approached him in the field, orwhen we talked together beside the hearth fire or under the elm treewhen the day's work was done. For some reason I cannot now fathom, unless it were the ambitious desire to put myself on a footing with hisyears and wisdom, I would assume with him an unnatural gravity. Mywisdom consisted in asking him questions, any that happened to come intomy head. I took for granted that he knew everything. Had he not been toBoston, and more than once? Yet little would he say about that town. Heliked much better to talk of places he had never seen, especially Londonand London Bridge. I only learned that people in Boston dressed everyday in the week in their best clothes; that was what made the deepestimpression upon me; for our best clothes hung in the closet untilSunday. Uncle Lyman and I went barefooted and shirtsleeved all summer. He never had a linen shirt or collar; but how fine he looked in a snowywhite cotton shirt and broad collar, a blue coat and tall bell-shapedhat, a hat he had worn all his life on the Sabbath and at funerals. Nordo I think he had, during his manhood, more than one best suit ofclothing. In winter he always wore a long woolen frock made by his wife, and a cap of woodchuck skin. Folks said it was like to be a hard winterwhen he put on his overcoat. His complexion was as dark as an Indian's;eyes as black as night, and he had straight raven hair. He used muchtobacco, always a quid in his mouth except when it was a pipe. He mostlyrefrained on the Sabbath until the evening when a long quiet smokecompensated him for abstinence during two sermons. His voice was richand seemed to come from deep down in his chest. When he was a bitpuzzled, he scratched his head with one finger. He was scrupulously neatin his person and orderly in his yard and buildings. No chips, nobroken-down carts nor tools disfigured his premises. His was almost theonly barn of a working farmer I ever saw that was kept clean andneat--except my own. He did not belong to any church; but he had a wholepew in the body of the meeting-house and contributed his full share tothe support of the Gospel. Moreover he gave of the produce of his farmevery year something to the minister's woodshed or cellar. I never heardhim but once make any comment on the sermons he had heard, which weremore than five thousand according to his figures. "My boy", he said tome one Sunday evening, "if you should ever be a parson, try to make yoursermons different every time. It seems to me as though I had heard thesame sermon all my life". On the Sabbath day, after the chores weredone, there were shaving and dressing, the fires to be put out and thewindows to be made fast with a button or a nail. Then the carryall wasbrought out, a high narrow vehicle difficult to get into, and still moredifficult to get out of. The mare, Nancy, was called white, but she hadpatches of brown along her expansive sides and was, with much effort, squeezed between the fills, and the straps made tight in their buckles. Nancy winced at this tightening. She did not like her Sunday harnesswhich had grown hard and stiff from infrequent use and too small, havingbeen made for her when she was younger. I also felt most uncomfortablein my good clothes, which were ever outgrown and held me like acorselet. At last the house door was locked and we drove the two milesto the church, silent and serious as became our Sunday clothes and ourequipage. We felt strange to ourselves and not at ease. When the meetingwas over I had a sudden overpowering revulsion in my spirits. I wantedto shout, to run, to jump over something and a hitching post as high asmy head offered the nearest opportunity. I forgot the Sunday schoollesson in a moment; I had not understood a word of it. On the way homewe became very cheerful. There was comment on the wayside farms andgossip of the doings of the neighbors. We compared the height of theircorn with our own field, and always found it a little less than ours. Aheavy load of something seemed lifted from our hearts on returning frommeeting. Uncle Lyman slyly put his quid back into his mouth which atonce made him happier. There was a faint remonstrance from the backseat, which he pretended not to hear; or he would rejoin, "mother, haveyou munched all those caraway seeds you took along to meeting?" Mydriving on the way home was much like the illusion which follows usthrough life. Hands in front of ours direct our actions and our affairs. We hold but the slack of the reins, and the driven imagines himself thedriver. There was a short whip in the socket, which was never taken outin the summer, and in sleighing disappeared altogether; it was onlyornamental. "Hudup" and a flap of the reins were enough for theencouragement of Nancy. A switch of her tail and a laying back of herears showed that she understood. If a letter must be written, it wasdone after meeting. Uncle Lyman seldom touched pen and paper except whenan item was to be set down in his account book. Paper was scarce andcostly and postage six good cents; and the pen, a quill, was usuallydried up, and the nib opened too wide to hold the ink, and had to besoaked a good while before it would write. There was always some excusefor not answering a letter. But nothing pleased him more than to receiveone. It was read slowly and with great attention, stuck behind the clockand reread for a week. The Sabbath ended with an early supper and earlysleep, for Monday was always a busy day. Corn and potatoes did not reston the Sabbath, neither did weeds. 

At last for Uncle Lyman there came the eternal Sabbath day. He liftedthe latch of his house door for the last time, smoked his last pipe, andlaid down willingly to sleep. Other feet now traverse his lands; thereis new paint over the ancient red house walls, and new labor savingtools; they and hired menials do the work, but no more than his twohands in proud industrious independence were wont to accomplish. He isforgotten by those who now possess what he made worth possessing. But Ihave not forgotten him, and little do the present owners of his housesand lands imagine that there is a title back of theirs, registered inthe court of memory which no mere occupation and ownership caninvalidate. 

THE ANCIENT NEW ENGLAND FARMER

 How pleasant o'er the still autumnal vale From his great timbered barn's wide open door The muffled sound of his unresting flail In rhythmic swing upon the threshing floor!

 How straight their tasselled tops his corn upreared! Straight were the rows, no weed dared raise its head; How golden gleamed their opening sheaths well eared Whose inner husks stuffed out his bulging bed!

 Full many a field of dewy grass breast-high His long sharp scythe ere breakfast time did lay; Full many a hurrying shower came by, But to the mow still faster went the hay. 

 To him as inward fires were ice and snow, They urged his pulse with warm vivacious blood; How made his furrowed cheeks in winter glow With ruddy health and iron hardihood!

 Superfluous to him was coat or vest, Let blow hot or cold or stormiest weather; He, as his hardy fathers, liked the best His shirt sleeves free and brimless cap of leather. 

 Few were his books, his learning was but small; He boasted not of thoughts beyond his speech; Some few and simple maxims bounded all That he had learned, or wished to teach. 

 He loved his home, his farm, his native town; These were the walls his happy world confined; And heaven with unaccustomed joy looked down To see fulfilled a life itself designed. 

 Sadly his neighbors bore him to his grave Beneath the old perpetual mourning pine, Where honest tears and praise they duly gave, For all he was, the immemorial sign. 

THE DORR WAR AND MILLERISM

There was trouble enough in Bellingham in 1840. The sleepy old town inits previous existence had never felt a ripple of excitement more movingthan a sewing bee, a travelling phrenologist or temperance lecturer, asummer picnic or a winter revival. Now it was invaded on one hand byMillerism and on the other by the Dorr War. The seat of the latter wasin Rhode Island; but Bellingham, being a border town, was in danger of araid. The Dorrites did, in fact, advance as far as Crook's Tavern on thesouthern boundary of the town, where, having drunk up what rum theycould find, and hearing that the other tavern in the center of the townwas kept on teetotal principles, they at once retreated. Not, however, before an alarm had been rung out by the church bell and the militiacompany called to arms. Great was the fright of the women and children. There was no sleeping in any house, no working and little eating forseveral days. My mother took her family to the top of a neighboring hillto reconnoitre and was prepared to run for the woods in case the enemyappeared. She was in great distress, having no man to care for andprotect her little brood. She was a small, delicate and timid woman, extremely unfitted to play the heroine, and only used to suffering, which she bore like a saint. On the contrary I aged seven, armed with along fishpole, threatened the advance of the rebels, and was eager tohave them come on. I did not go far from my mother and sisters however. I enjoyed the situation, for I loved danger, with plenty of protectionand means of escape. I loved fire, deep and threatening water, the roofsof houses, high, dangerous places, thin ice and a bull in the pasture. These tempted me to trials of boyish bravery. At heart, a little coward, I brandished my fishpole and clung to my mother's dress. We could seeour soldiers with their high hats surmounted by pompons, parading infront of the town house and could hear the snare drum beat the time oftheir movement. Nothing came of the affair beyond great excitement andtown talk. The Dorrites retreated to Smithfield, the militia men wentback to their farms and the town was saved. I was terribly disappointed, and the succeeding days were too flat and dull to be endured. I gotthrough them by playing at soldiering for the remainder of the summer, making forts and wooden guns and gay uniforms out of bright bits ofcalico, cocked hats of paper stuck full of cock tail feathers. I hadalso a long-handled lance which had come down in the family fromRevolutionary times with which I charged the woodpile and the hen house, made of sods, at an angle in the orchard wall. Through this I thrust sofiercely one day that I killed our only rooster, to the consternation ofmy mother and sisters. As I was much in need of more tail feathers formy military hat, it did not seem to me such a tragedy. I was punished bynot getting the drumstick and wishing bone when he was cooked, and thetail feathers, to my chagrin, were made into a hearth duster. 

The Dorr Rebellion was not long past when the terrifying prophecies ofRev. William Miller began to be preached. He had figured out by Biblicaland historical dates that the world was to last six thousand years, andthat era would be reached about 1843. The Dorr scare was a triflecompared to the panic which now seized upon many people in the countrytowns of New England. Even those who disbelieved or scoffed could notconceal their dread. It sobered everybody and banished all joy andgaiety. A sad expectancy and presentiment of impending disasteroppressed whole communities. Church members and serious minded personsthought it as well to be prepared and to be on the safe side, in casethe end should come. Revivals were going on everywhere and the churcheswere refilled. What impression did this talk and excitement make onchildren? I can say for one that I enjoyed it almost as much as the DorrWar. I comprehended nothing of what it meant. I never thought ofanything happening to myself, to the house or my dog and kites. Thegeneral agitation filled me inwardly with a lively joy; the dangerseemed to threaten only our neighbors, that is, such as were Millerites. I reasoned that they and their houses would somehow disappear while weshould remain. So every morning I climbed a little hill to see ifSylvanus White's house was standing. He was the leading believer in theend of the world among our neighbors, a prosperous farmer living in alarge, frame house. I heard my mother say that he had no children, andit did not make much difference to him what happened. I pondered thisremark of my mother trying to think what she meant. I got no fartherthan the curious conclusion that all the Millerites were grown up peoplewithout children, and, by a natural deduction, that my mother andsisters and myself were safe from the end of the world. But I was notaltogether satisfied. In my heart, so much did I delight in havingsomething going on, that I wanted to see the great event, which Ipictured to myself, remembering the words, flame, smoke and thunder, assomething like the mimic Indian fights I had once seen represented onthe annual training day of the militia men; only this promised to be ona grander scale. 

It is well known that children play at death and funerals withoutsorrow; so I played the destruction of the world with great delight. Imade my world of small boxes for houses, one over the other, and on topof all, a crippled kite which represented Farmer White, as I had heardthat he had prepared a white robe in which to ascend. I wanted of coursesome people in my doomed world besides Farmer White. I manufacturedquite an assemblage out of one thing and another and gave them names, mostly of older boys whom I disliked, my Sunday-school teacher, who gaveme a bad half hour every week, and my uncle Slocomb who was alwaystelling my mother I would never be a man if she did not stop indulgingme so much. I added a few pretended animals of corn cobs, a dead snake, a live frog; and, as these did not seem the real thing, I tied my dogand cat and a lame chicken close to the sacrificial heap. I surroundedthe whole with sticks, paper and pine cones and then came the excitingmoment when I "touched her off, " as boys say. What fun, what glee Iexperienced at that moment, no one can know, who does not keep in hisbosom a fragment of his boyish heart. Creation may please the gods, butit cannot equal the boy's pleasure in destruction, especially by fire. Ionly needed a few spectators and I soon had them. The flames began tosinge the dog and cat, and fricassee the chicken. Their howling andscreaming brought the family upon the scene, and none too soon to savethe lives of my pets. I was shut in a dark closet on bread and water forthe remainder of the day and left to meditate, as my mother charged me, when I confessed my intentions, on "the naughtiness of mocking seriousthings. " Thus did I innocently anticipate in my own person that _diesirae_ which I had prepared for my imaginary town. I took no furtherinterest in Millerism and in neighbor White's big house and ascensionrobe. After this I made new and less destructible worlds which continueto this day. 

But the delusion did not expire by my neglect. It is still cherished asthe candid faith of many readers of scriptural oracles. And now they arecomforted by the astronomers who terrify us with their calculations onthe inexorable cataclysm impending over our trusty and splendid earth. Never mind; we shall not be at the exit. To the vast future belong allthese disconcerting predictions--and welcome. Time has already inscribedour urns, and, without mathematics, appointed for each one his separateand appropriate catastrophe. We who have lived fifteen lustrums havealready witnessed the dissolution of our world. What more could the Rev. William Miller do for us?

WOODS AND PASTURES

There are many matters in the recollections of our earliest years sominute that to speak of them is only becoming to second childhood. "Thesoul discovers great things from casual circumstances", says Porphory. Providence provides temporary bridges through life which commonly fallto pieces after we pass over them and are forgotten. It is not so withme; one bridge remains whole and more beautified by time--that on whichI return to my native town. I require no daylight or lantern for thejourney. Some men can number their happy days; I more often count myhappy nights, when I soothe myself to repose by recalling the sweet andtender joys of childhood. I travel the roads and pastures or wade thebrook hand in hand with Launa Probana. 

There was no gate out of Bellingham in my childhood. Its confines Inever thought to question, or to suspect that there was anything beyond. It had its own sun, moon and stars, its river, its pond, its pasturesand woods as full of interests and resources and as exhilarating as anyplace discovered later on the map of the world. This concentration andlimitation give to children experiences and illusions which color thewhole subsequent life. They are implicit in that soil where we find theroots of our being. They are what make us good citizens, steadfastfriends, true lovers, observers of nature, disciples of the poets. They, whose early life is diffused over too many objects, with too manyopportunities, have only a temporary and incomplete hold and delight inany of the advantages of their superior fortune. What is the good ofhowever large a circle, if it have no center?

The lean and hungry pastures of Bellingham were prolific ininexhaustible harvests; what they bore on their surface may hint ofsomething deeper and more perennial. The pastures and borders of thewoods were covered with patches of huckleberry and blue-berry bushes, and over every stone heap clambered the low blackberry vines withracemes of luscious fruit. The pastures were named from one or the otherof these berries, and their owners never claimed private right to them. To put up the bars as we entered and left the field, was the onlyobligation expected of us. Seldom were they taken down; the womencrawled through, the boys leaped over, the small girls squeezed inbetween the posts and the wall. Our forefathers left the turnstilebehind them in their English meadows, but not the short-cut from houseto house, from field to field or from village to village. There isalways a shorter way than the crowd travels. Boys and animals, thoseuntaught explorers and surveyors, are the first to find it. Once withinthe pasture, a hundred short paths led hither and thither wherein grew alittle low, sweet grass which the red cows grazed and sheep nibbled; andas they sauntered along they paid behind for their food in front. Then awarning voice would be raised telling us to be careful where we stepped. In these mazy pathways we were always returning upon our tracks andfinding the bushes we had already stripped. Children were crying out toeach other that the bottom of their pails was covered, or that they hada pint or quart, and generally as many went into the mouth as into thepail. The days when we went berrying were holidays, although the berrieswere picked for market and added a mite to the year's supply of silvermoney. Bank bills and gold we never saw, only silver and copper, and ofthese, silver was the money of men and women and huge copper cents andhalf cents of boys. I can remember a time when one cent was richesunspeakable, treasured for months and often displayed in triumph topenniless companions. Poor indeed are they who have never known the dayof small things and the size of a cent. It is said money is only goodfor what it will buy, and the miser who hoards is the scoff of mankind. I must have been a descendant of Shylock for I loved cents forthemselves and the feeling of importance they gave me. I polished themuntil they shone like gold and the face of the Father of his Countrygleamed with irridescent benignity. Some were hopelessly worn andbattered; some had a hole in them or a piece nicked out of the rim. These I exchanged with my mother for more perfect ones which I couldburnish. 

For children, berrying was play, pure pastime; it brought no money totheir pockets. For the first hour it was infinitely exciting; by thenext, we wanted something else, and it was difficult to keep us inorder. What to do next is an eternal question that has followed bothchildren and man from Eden. It is usually resolved by doing the samething over again. 

A little boy once sat discontentedly on the bank of a river. A travellerasked him what was the matter. He answered "I want to be on the otherside of the stream. " "What for?" inquired the traveller. "So that Icould come back here, " said the restless boy. 

To hide and play games was one means of escape from the fatigue of theslow filling berry pails. Then such quiet fell over the pasture that ourelders knew some mischief was afoot. We were promptly discovered, scolded and warned that we must fill our pails before we could play. 

As milking time approached we gathered up stray hats, aprons andhandkerchiefs and prepared to go home. We painted each others' cheekswith the red blood of huckleberries and crowned our heads with leaves ofthe birch and oak, stalks of indigo weed or broad fern fronds that hungdown over the face like green veils. Thus freaked and marked, walking insingle file, our mothers and elder sisters behind us, shouting, leapingand laughing, we presented something as near a Bacchic procession ascould be found in a community enshrouded in the black cloak of JohnCalvin. What a good time it was to be alive, and never is a boy so youngas in the berry pasture, nor any place so full of enchantments. She--forit was never a boy--who had picked the most berries that day, headed theband and was a proud and envied person. Our elders cherished thisemulation. I was always thinking that the next time we went berrying, Ishould try for the head of the procession; but the fun was too much forme; I could not hold to my resolution above a half hour; I wasexcessively fond of praise but averse to the ways of meriting it. Theonly long word I brought away from childhood was approbativeness. Inever used the word, nor knew its meaning, and, least of all, could havepronounced it. I heard it once only, together with another word, editor, which I understood as little, from the lips of a travellingphrenologist. It happened that my mother lodged and fed him for a nightand he paid his score by examining the heads of all the family. I wasgreatly impressed when he remarked that I had a large bump ofapprobativeness and would sometime be an editor. As to the bump, feelingover my own head, I never could find it. My mother said it was insideand that the phrenologist meant I must be a good boy. I was quite usedto that interpretation of everything concerning myself. A great manyyears after, when I became editor of an obscure newspaper, so littlecomfort, reputation or profit did I find in it, that I amused myself inthinking of it as the fulfillment of the phrenologist's prophecy. 

The Bacchic procession dropped its members here and there along the roadand we got to our own cottage tired, sunburnt and hungry. We ate oursuppers of berries and milk out of pewter porringers with pewter spoonsand went to bed at dark. The next day we fed on berry pies, and all theneighborhood during the berry season bore the marks of pies in blackenedteeth and lips, except a few fastidious young women who cleaned theirswith vinegar. Tooth brushes were as unknown as rouge and powder. EverySaturday night the children were scrubbed in a wash tub in front of thefire place in winter, and at the door in summer. During the session ofschool my mother washed my ears and face every day, pinned my collar, kissed me, and always her tedious parting injunction was, mind yourteacher, study your lesson and be a good boy. Then away with flying feetI overtake my companions, whom no sooner met, than we loitered along theroad, hand in hand, or arms around another's neck, merry and playful, quite unmindful of nine o'clock and the hateful lesson. There were noprecocious and wonderful children in our red school house. Even I didnot begin to write poetry until I was eighteen or nineteen! The onlyliterary prodigy among our neighbors was a maiden lady who wroteobituary verses on the death of her pious friends. 

The berry season lasted several weeks, and toward its close prudenthousewives dried some for winter use or preserved them in molasses. Thelast we gathered were the swamp, or high-bush blueberries. These had asub-acid, delicious flavor, not unlike the smell of the swamp pink, whichgrew in the same spot. The black raspberry, which we called thimbleberry, was found along the stone walls, but was not abundant. I knew afew bushes and kept it secret, for if I found a saucerful I was sure ofa small pie baked by my mother, and all my own. If I could not findenough for a pie I strung such as I gathered on long spears of grass. Asthey were shaped like little thimbles, I fitted them on the grass stemsone over the other like a nest of cups, reversing them at intervals, tomake a pattern, which showed the young savage, generally intent only onsomething to eat or to play with, to have a slight artistic instinct. AsI now recall those strings of thimble berries, I think they would makean humble ornamental border to a picture of a New England roadside withits crooked and tumbled stone walls. No road to me is attractive that isnot bounded by such walls and fringed with berry bushes, brush and wildapple trees, from among which peer forth the cymes of the wayfaring bushand sweet scented clusters of the traveller's joy. Let England have hertrim, hawthorne lanes and pleached gardens of fruit and flower, andItaly her olive and orange; for me the New England wilding roadside, interrupted only now and then by a farmhouse and littered yard, isdearer. 

I have not yet mentioned other berries that used to make a country boy'slife so full of interest. There was the cranberry, not yet exploited bycultivation and proprietorship. In Bellingham the cranberry meadows werestill wild and free. The farmer who claimed an exclusive right to themhad no standing in the community and was universally denounced as meanand stingy. No one wanted many, as they were not bought at countrystores, and, required as much sugar in the cooking as there wereberries; so cranberry sauce was a luxury rarely indulged. Like most wildfruits they were never picked clean. When the spring thaws flooded themeadows and washed them in windrows on the shore we gathered them to eatraw and also for paint. Having been frozen and a little sweetened intheir winter and watery wanderings, we found them more palatable thanwhen cooked. I know not why, yet a country boy prefers the raw and wildflavor far more than the condiments and seasonings of cookery. The chiefuse of the spring cranberries was as a paint; the thin juice made apretty, pink color on white paper, or added an admirable touch to arusset, red cheek, such as commonly beautified Bellingham boys andgirls, nurtured on milk, apples and brown bread, open air and unfinishedattic chambers. 

I dwell much on the recollections of the doings of the day, but thenights had also their joys, none greater than the rain on the roof andthe exquisite, semi-conscious moments when sleep began to overtake bodyand soul, gently extinguishing them in a soothing, delicious languor. The low country attic is the true house of dreams, where the good, thestrange or the fearful spirits play over the subjected and helplesswill. Long time I remembered some of those dreams which visited mytruckle bed, placed on rollers a foot from the floor and thrice as manyfrom the ridge pole. In winter, tightly tucked in by a loving mother, the cold without only made me feel the more snug and warm within. Thesnow sifted through the chinks in the loose shingles, making littlewhite hillocks on the floor, and often I found enough on my pillow inthe morning to press into a snowball and pelt my sister, who slept atthe other end of the attic. 

I follow no order in my narrative: I wander; but how can one go far inthe small and circumscribed region of earliest memories, bound each toeach by some inwardly felt affinity, which neither time nor worldwanderings can dissever? One thing suggests another and the connectionmust be found in the things themselves. Cranberry picking carried meforward into springtime; now I return to the autumn, the harvest season, when although not old enough to dig my mother's small patch of potatoes, I could pick them up in a basket. She herself handled the hoe uncoveringthe long reds and the white Chenangos. I liked better to shake downapples than to gather things from the ground; for to climb trees is asmuch a boy's as a monkey's instinct. That was my first thought when Ihappened to observe any kind of tree, could I climb it? The wild grapeswhich grew in profusion along the banks of our river clambering over thetall grey birches gave me glorious opportunities for climbing, as thesweetest and largest clusters were always at the very top of the trees. The limbs of the grey birch, although small, are very elastic and tough, making a sure footing for the climber. The danger was, that, as heapproached the slender spire of the tree, it would suddenly bend orbreak and drop him into the water. This was all the more fun, if hecould swim. When he reached home he was liable to have his jacket notonly dried but "warmed, " which was the colloquial for a thrashing. Iusually sold grapes enough during the day of the Fall militia trainingto keep me in pocket money through the winter. This was my first effortat any kind of trading and, I think, spoilt me for a commercial career;for there was no cost, no capital, no loss; all was profit; and eversince that day it has seemed to me the only manner of doing businessworth while. There are, or were, other compensations in a life of trade, which might fire the ambition of a strenuous youth. I remember threevoyages made the merchant a Thane in ancient England. 

When frost began to brown the grass and brighten the trees, the woodswere full of boys, partridges and squirrels. The boys and squirrels, much alike in their appetites and ability to climb trees, were intent ongathering a store of nuts for winter. In early morning after a sharpfrost, the chestnut burrs opened and the nuts dropped out, falling andhiding among the leaves. There we hunted for them; the squirrels did notappear to have to hunt, but put their intelligent paws under the leaveswith an infallible instinct. They were always on the ground earlier thanwe, and filled their cheeks before we had filled our bags and pockets. What extraordinary care the chestnut takes of herself; a rough outergarment bristling with sharp needles, and within, the whitest, silkiestlining fit for the cradle of a baby queen. To prevent accidents and amore easy delivery from the burr, the nut is annointed with a slightexudation of oil, which gives a soft, agreeable feeling as you hold itin your hand. Doubtless it acts as a preservative also keeping the nutfrom becoming too soon dry and hard. Chestnuts were laid away for futureuse, to be brought out on winter evenings with cider and apples. Nobodythought of going to bed without first eating something. Sometimes thechestnuts were roasted in the ashes on the hearth, and less oftenboiled. Of all places to warm them, a boy's pocket was the best; therethey were handiest to eat on the road, or at school, when the teacherwas not looking. If caught in the act, you were called up to her deskand forfeited the contents of your pocket. It might be returned to youif you had behaved yourself meanwhile and had not whispered, thrown spitballs, or pinched the little girl who sat next to you. There were twokinds of walnut trees in the neighborhood; the common name of one wasshagbark, of the other pignut. The shagbark was the walnut of themarket, a nut with a rich, oily kernel; the pignut was smaller with avery thick shell and correspondingly small meat, hard to separate fromthe shell. They were of little worth, not salable and we gathered themonly when the other kind was scarce. It took a hard frost, several timesrepeated, to loosen them from the tree. We often clubbed them down. Itwas a perilous undertaking to climb a walnut tree, for the limbs beganto grow high up and the trunk was covered with a rough bark, hence thename shagbark; to shin up, and still more to descend, was apt to makepatches or a new seat to your trousers your mother's evening work afteryou had gone to bed. Where grew anything good to eat and free to all, aboy was sure to have it, although it cost him subsequent patches, whippings and tears. Shall the squirrel hunt for nuts and the littlesons of men be forbidden, just to save a new pair of breeches, or an oldjacket? But the woes of country boyhood are naught in comparison to itsjoys, and a day in a berry field, or a morning among the chestnut trees, under the blue sky and a west wind, with merry companions, is a memorythat outshines all the purchased pleasures of later life. Confess to me, ye humble and trivial things, confess what charms were yours, whichnever the flood of years submerges. Alas, they have no speech. I hearbut a strain of imperishable music. 

APPRENTICESHIPS

HOME AND HOMESICKNESS

It was thought best in New England country towns that boys, who were notneeded on the farm and were not to be educated beyond the common school, should learn some trade. As my mother possessed no land nor any means tosend me to academy and college, it was early decided to apprentice me toa trade with some good master. There was another reason; she did notfeel able nor competent to manage me when I should be older. She had apresentiment that it would require a stronger hand than her own gentleone to guide me in a straight path. Always after the death of herhusband, her only means of meeting her difficulties and perplexities wasby prayer. Three times each day, after the morning, noon and eveningmeals she retired to her own chamber to pray. She read none butreligious books and the Bible. Her Bible was the wedding gift of herhusband--that and one silver spoon marked with his and her initials J. A. And E. T. Intertwined after the manner of silversmiths. My fatherappears to have been the owner of but one book, Cotton Mather's, "Essaysto do Good, " which I still possess and, alas, could never read through. Of course the title of the volume at the date of its republication, 1808, had been greatly reduced. No Mather would be satisfied with atitle much less expansive than the contents, nor wanting some Latininterlardings. The original title was "Benifacias, " followed by tenlines of sub-titles. This was unusual reserve for one of Cotton Mather'sproductions. In its day it was as popular as is the worst novel of ours, and was continually being republished. Even Dr. Franklin read andpraised it and professed that it had influenced his whole life. Thepreface is a fine specimen of the manner in which a popular Bostonpreacher at the beginning of the eighteenth century expressed himselfwhen he appeared in print. It has all the airs and attudinizing of afull dress ball-room. He says that a passage in the speech of a Britishenvoy suggested the book and declares of it, "Ink were too vile a liquorto write that passage. Letters of gold were too mean to be thepreservers of it. Paper of Amyanthus would not be precious and perennousenough to perpetuate it. "

A prayerful mother, the Bible and the Rev. Cotton Mather ought to havebeen sufficient to turn out good boys from any household. Then there wasSunday-school where we were much instructed about the nature andconsequences of sin and the end that awaited bad boys. Notwithstanding, some closer and more practical guidance was needed for a growing lad;something to put him in the way of preparing to earn his living. Accordingly in my eighth year I was turned over to an uncle, my father'sonly brother, who lived in the next town. He was a boot maker with foursons of his own. At once I found myself cut off from all the objects andpersons I had ever known, thrown into a strange world, my own lost ascompletely as if I had gone to another. I found myself introduced to asmall room up a flight of stairs at the end of the shed of my uncle'shouse. The room was full of windows, all of which looked in thedirection of my lost home; it had a number of low shoemaker's benchesranged along three of its sides. Here my uncle and two of his sons madeboots. I was directed to one of the benches and began by being taughthow to use a waxed end and stitch the counters of bootlegs. Never in mylife before had I been pinned to one spot for any length of time save ona school bench; never before set at any work that was not or that couldnot be made half play. A deadly home-sickness at once seized upon me, ofwhich I could not be cured by all the kindness and encouragement of myuncle and aunt. I was constantly looking out of the shop windows, expecting some one to come and rescue me. Constantly I wept and couldnot swallow my food for the lump in my throat; at last food wasloathsome and my eyes became so swollen with continual tears that Icould scarcely see to thread my needle. Thus I suffered for three weeksand my young heart was wounded and broken past all cure. My nature waschanged from that time; a kind of depression and melancholy, took theplace of my natural gaiety. I can readily believe, such were my miseryand agony, that one might die of home-sickness. I recall it so well thatI can diagnose its symptoms which are like those of a fever. It comesover one in paroxysms, followed by a great calm as from sudden cessationof acute pain, then by a choking sensation, a terrible sinking of theheart, down, down, all things swim in the convulsion of lost sensesuntil tears once more relieve the overwrought soul. To add to my miserymy two young cousins would have nothing to do with me. For the entirethree weeks I never spoke a word; the moment I tried I choked and burstinto tears. No wonder my cousins and other boys avoided me. Such a babywas past their comprehension or tolerance. In my own natural place Ishould have had no more mercy on such an one. It is remarkable how earlyboys begin to trim each other into manly character; they instantlydiscover and attack any little weakness, and with rough and ready handor tongue make the weakling or the upstart ashamed of himself. But notreatment harsh or kind could cure a homesick child, and one day myuncle said he was going to see my mother, and that I was to go with him. Oh, how my spirits recovered themselves! I never thought of the return;only to go, to be once more in my own home, with my own river, fieldsand companions, filled me with ecstacy. I went and I did not return. Idid not know what was said between my mother and uncle; I saw him driveaway and leave me behind with unspeakable joy. For many subsequent daysI observed my mother's sorrowful eyes when she spoke to me. Her firstexperiment, which promised so well, had failed. If she was disappointed, I was sobered and much easier to manage from that time forth: I tried toplease my mother. Our old way of life went on its usual round. Again thelittle Red House was happy. I resumed my play under the garden appletree or on the great rock in the corner of the orchard. That year Imastered the alphabet, and I was given a slate and pencil for thepurpose of keeping me still when not saying my letters. The school daysof that period are memorable to me, chiefly from the recesses and thenoon intermission an hour long. It was in that hour I became intimatewith some little girls, and found that I liked them as well as boyplaymates. How we choose our favorite companions, no man is wise enoughto know; yet choice there certainly was, with no formality or effort. How could it be otherwise? From the troop by the door or the roadside, eating their dinner from basket or pail or playing games, somepredestined affinity drew away a boy and maid to the birchen bower, where with one mind they set up mimic housekeeping and forbade theentrance of strange children. There one cloak covered them both. Or theyrambled hand in hand through the woods, or waded in the shallow water ofBeaver brook down to the stone arch bridge where the confined streamletgurgled softly over the slimy pebbles, and the arch echoed to the soundof their voices. What matter though pantalets and little breeches, pulled up as high as they could be, were wet with jumping and splashing;hot sun and warm blood would soon dry them. Wrinkles and limpness mightbetray them when they returned to the mother's fold at night, but herreproaches had no terror nor any restraint for happy children, who aloneknow the secrets of their own pleasures and have no remembrance ofinterference with them. With boy and boy there is a perfect equality; nopretentions are allowed, except those of age. With maid and boy it isdifferent. With my companion, I wished to appear superior, to show herthings, even to attempt to explain them; and thus I myself learned toobserve natural objects and to love them. She was my teacher, although Ibelieved myself hers. She listened, she looked up at me and askedanother question, and so I see her to this day. How should I not becomewise? If not, it is no fault of hers. My Launa, whom I led through thewoods, along the water courses, and to whom I promised, that some day wewould catch a cloud and ride around the sky visiting the moon and stars, yes, it was Launa to whom I promised everything, and promised becauseshe wished it, and I felt it my business to seem able to gratify all herdesires. She already led me captive; well she knew it, and loved to testme with impossible demands. She dared me to do a hundred things, whichattempting and failing, I boldly declared I had done. Just as willing tobe deceived as I to deceive, she never questioned my lie, but led me onto some fresh feat, some brook or fence to leap, or inaccessible floweror berry to bring her. Already I got out of difficulties by changing thesubject, by evading the challenge and diverting her to some otherobject, play or plan to which she as readily listened. How proud, howimportant and superior I felt and with what trust the little sirenpermitted it. Among all my apprenticeships this to Launa Probana wasthat which taught me most and is most ineffaceable. 

THE SAW-MILL

The next effort to make a craftsman of me was in my tenth year. I wasput under the hands of a mill-wright. He set up the machinery of saw andgrist mills and repaired them when out of order. He had a saw mill andshingle mill of his own, but he was often away from home, especially inwinter, and then I ran the saw mill alone. Its machinery was oldfashioned and now obsolete, an upright saw, a carriage for the logssomewhat like that now in use, but much heavier and more clumsy. To setthe logs to the required width of boards or other lumber we used inchrules, a bar made on purpose for the work and dogs to hold the logs inplace. The power was water turned upon the floats of a large wheel. Nolarge timber was left in the neighborhood, otherwise a boy of ten couldnot have run the mill alone; but with a cant-hook I could usually manageto roll the log upon the carriage and put it in position. We ran off theslabs first and these were the perquisites of the mill owner. They wereused in his own family and some were sold or given to poor widows andothers. The saw mill was run only in winter time; the water of the millpond was drawn off in early spring, and where it had flooded the land, grass grew in summer. While the log was running through the saw, it wasmy never ending delight to lean out of an opening in the side of themill and watch the tailrace rush from under the building. All winter Ilooked forward to the day when the great gates of the dam would beraised and the pond disappear in a few hours. I cannot exactly describethe feeling with which, after a few days of sunshine, I walked over theground where the water had stood; a strange commingling of awe andcuriosity, especially as I threaded the now dry, narrow and deep canal, which led the water of the pond to the mill. There I often walked justto enjoy in imagination the thought, what if the water should suddenlycome pouring down upon me! I even selected the best places to escape upthe rough stone walls of the canal. All my boyhood I enjoyed thrillingimaginary perils, and the planning means of escape. The walls of thiscanal were made of irregular stones from the field. Alternately wet anddry they had taken on beautiful colors, variegated according to thecharacter of the stone, and between them in summer, and quite coveringthem in places, grew many kinds of wild flowers, mosses and ferns, and, most splendid of all, the cardinal flower. The canal was always damp, and a few frogs and green snakes made it their summer home. Do notimagine I made any such observations as these at the time, least of allthat I then knew the cardinal flower by its correct name. I saw, I felt, I dreamed; now I remember and know a little more. I lacked the rightname and reason for most things, but knowing nothing, I named everythingafter my own fancy and found the creation as good and sweet as theCreator at the end of his week's work. Every boy is a new Adam, andchristens the world of his senses in the most primitive figure oflanguage, metonomy. 

The terms of my apprenticeship included a new suit of clothes each year, and that I should be sent to school in the summer. The clothes werenever forthcoming and my mother had to furnish them. My master gave memy boots for winter and shoes for summer, but I went barefooted sevenmonths of the year. This was no hardship. How I hated to wear shoes onthe only day when it was compulsory, Sunday. It cost me tears to learnto tie a double bow knot with my shoestring, as my master insisted uponmy doing, and this was the only thing during my apprenticeship that hetook pains to teach me--to tie a shoestring. He was a silent, self-absorbed man with a stern manner, a square set jaw, wide mouth andponderous ears. He was very fond of his two little girls, three and fouryears old; but he never had a kind word for me. However, he was notpeculiar in this respect. Boys were not cosseted in those days, but madeto feel the rod and keep their place. It seems to me now that I musthave been to him a necessary nuisance, tolerated for what service Icould render, yet I was not unhappy. My mother lived across the road andI could see her every day. I had some time for play; the mills, thetools, the dam and canals interested me and beyond all, I fished to myheart's content. There was an old mongrel dog at my heels wherever Iwent, and together we hunted woodchucks and squirrels without a gun. Inthe evening, by the stove, he still hunted them in his dreams, whimpering and barking as soon as he was sound asleep, and I myselfoften had the same dream when I had been unusually excited by the sport. In the autumn I set snares for partridges which I sold to the Bostonstage drivers for nine-pence apiece. Well do I remember the high hopewith which I entered the silent wood in early morning to examine mysnares, the exhilaration when I found a poor partridge in the noose, limp and dead, with a white film drawn over her eyes. Pity for bird orbeast or human beings was an unknown feeling then: I liked to tormentsuch life as I had power over, to see it suffer. The sale of partridgesfurnished me with considerable spending money; for what I spent it, Iknow not. I am only certain I did not hoard it, as I have never foundany ancient silver pieces in my purse or pockets. I can think of no moreentertaining account book than one which should show the acquisition andoutlay of a boy's money; his financial statement from his fifth to hisfifteenth year. I should like to audit such an account and, however, itcame out I would agree to find it correctly cast, balanced and properlyvouched; for a boy always gets his money's worth and thinks he has whathe wants. In his trades with other boys, money seldom plays any part, and the little swindler always believes he has got the best of thebargain. And why? Because he has what he coveted, and what wasanother's. Somehow the other fellow's knife is a little better than hisown, it is three blades to his two. When he finds the cheat he has onlyto swap again. In this way I traded a dozen times in one summer and cameout with one blade, but a bright brass haft. 

By this time I could read and even imitate the copies set in the writingbooks. This, however, was not the real method by which I had learned touse the pen or rather pencil. Much more skill was acquired in littlenotes to Launa Probana during school hours, passed furtively under thedesks and benches or hidden in a book which I was suddenly anxious toborrow or lend. What nothings we wrote! With what pains and searchingsof the brain for words! Still I filled my bit of paper while Launa wroteonly three words, yet her name signed in the tiniest letters satisfiedme. With that name in my vest pocket I felt her near me, fixed myattention upon my book again, and learned my lessons more easily. I wasconscious that she watched all my movements out of the corner of hereye, and at recitations it was she, who, when I hesitated and was lost, bending her head down so as not to be observed by the teacher, whisperedsoftly the right word and saved me from shame. Thus in a thousand waysshe repaid the boy's devotion, and however out-spelt or out-grammared hemight be, where he stood, was for her the head of the class. Whatlessons we learned, not in any book nor taught by any teacher! After ayear or two more of winter saw-mill and summer school my teacher thoughtI was old enough to write compositions, an exercise usual in all NewEngland common schools. Long before this I thought myself competent andwas ambitious to begin. It seemed too much a school exercise to beundertaken out of it. I saw the older pupils on appointed afternoonsstand up in their places and read from their slates the compositionsthey had written. It fired my ambition beyond any of the other exercisesor lessons. It seemed to me the very pinnacle of greatness to stand upand read a composition before the whole school. How I labored over myfirst little essay, not being able to think of anything, or to findlanguage; how I began without any real beginning sentences that had noend; how I strung together words without connection or sense, how thewhole school tittered and made faces as I read, how I sat down flushed, trembling, completely overwhelmed with mortification, it pains me evento remember. What would Launa care for me now! Without seeming to noticeher I looked over to where she sat and saw that she was weeping. I didnot speak to her for a whole week. Thus I punished myself, and all theweek pondered how I could write something which should make her againproud of me and reinstate myself with my teacher and schoolmates. Suddenly it occurred to me that next time I would choose a subject ofwhich I knew something. Wonderful discovery, which has been of use to meever since; a bit as well as reins--this is the reason why I have notbeen a prolific writer. Between one book and the next I am totallyforgotten. I found also thus early that one needs a muse. I had made ablunder in not taking Launa into my counsels, say rather into my mind, for I had never once thought of her while writing, nor that she would bemy audience. No, I thought only of myself, and the distinction I shouldwin all for myself. Thus experienced, I did not repeat my mistake. Whenwe were next called upon for compositions, I coaxed Launa to go with meat the nooning to the shade of the old blacksmith shop, where I proposedthat we should write them together. There sentence by sentence I made mylittle essay, covering one side of my slate, with Launa for inspirer andcritic. My subject was the saw-mill, that one I knew best. There was apricking of ears in the school-room when I named my humble subject, andan elder boy by my side whispered, "Now, give us some sawdust. " Iprospered this time and won a smile from Launa. Had I helped her at allin her own composition? I know not; yet when she read, it seemed to me Ihad written it myself. Such has always been my experience in regard towriting which I have admired, and thought I could do as well--until Itried. 

Thus passed two happy summers and two lonely impatient winters; then Iwas ill with a fever and came to the doors of death. I never resumed myapprenticeship to the mill-wright. For some years succeeding my illnessI suffered from periodical sick headache which, before and after, wasaccompanied by a dreadful depression, an indescribable apathy, adistaste for food, for play, for everything: I wished myself dead. Mymother and sisters were very tender to me at this time; they amused me, they petted me, and in the evening read to me stories out of Merry'sMuseum and from the school readers. It was at this time I was sent on avisit to Boston, perhaps for my health and spirits. I say sent, for Iwent alone in a stage coach the thirty miles. Much preparation was madefor my journey and many letters passed to relatives in Boston concerningit. I had a new cloak lined with bright red flannel, home-made, and acap with an extremely flat crown and a tassel that fell upon myshoulder. These were the first articles of clothing that made me feelthat everybody was looking at me, a feeling something between vanity andembarrassment. My cousin met me in Boston at the stage office and tookme to his house in the old West End, at that time the residence of therespectable middle class, with here and there some more wealthycitizens. There were a few shops at the corners of the streets; but Idid not venture beyond the street where my cousin lived and saw nothingat all of the city. I was taken to church on Sunday and once to theMuseum, where I saw the elder Booth in Shylock. The only scene that madean impression upon me was that where Shylock is about to take his poundof flesh. He squatted upon the floor, his wild and terrible face turneddirectly upon me, as it seemed, while he sharpened his knife upon hisrusty shoe. I was filled with terror and began to cry and begged to betaken away. Quite angry, yet pitying me, too, I suppose, my cousin ledme out and home where I went at once to bed, covering my head tightly, unable to sleep for apprehension lest I should be discovered by Shylock. At the Players' Club, in New York City, in the last winter of EdwinBooth's life, I related this incident to him as a childish tribute tohis father's power. "Yes, " he said, "that was my father, and such thingsoften happened among women and children when he was playing thatcharacter. He was dangerous at times, not to his audiences, butoccasionally to his fellow actors. "

I returned from Boston not much wiser nor more travelled than when Iwent. I found nothing there that gave me so much pleasure as the freedomof my own field, my sports and my companions. When asked what I hadseen, what I had done, I candidly confessed, nothing; yet among boys Idid feel a certain pride because I was the only one among them who hadbeen to Boston. And I have found the result of nearly all travel islittle more than the cheap avenue to conversation between those who havetravelled over the same ground, or the feeling of superiority that onehas wandered farther. 

Although I was more active and restless than most boys, ever longing, yet with no definite object, I believe I should always have remained inthe place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had noambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. When I reflect onthe futility of literature without genius, or the miserly rewards ofscholarship, or the disastrous conclusion in a majority of businessenterprises, I confess the life of a New England farmer is to bepreferred. It was so ordered that opportunities, which I never couldhave made for myself, came to me unsought and without effort. Sucheducation as I have, a miscellany of odds and ends of learning, and suchthings as I have accomplished, are the chance results of various anddisconnected impulses; and God himself has given me my beautifulfriends. I have found them waiting for me all along my path, and theirattachment has always filled me with astonishment and gratitude; for Icannot think it is anything I have done that should deserve it. So Irelegate it to that indefinable, unconscious self which is hidden fromour own knowledge. On the whole, who is he, that would not rather beloved for himself than for his book, his horses or his honors? He, whois capable of friendship, and inspires it, is happier than Alexanderwith worlds conquered and to be conquered. 

After much counselling and agitating of the change, my mother moved fromBellingham, which was her native place, to Hopkinton; and, from thistime forth to the end of her life, she continued to change her residencefrom town to town as work, cheaper rent, or the persuasion of friendsinduced her. My eldest sister and I went with her. The change filled mewith a pleasant excitement, although we were going to the same place andthe very same house where I had suffered so much from home-sickness. Idid not then know that in leaving my birthplace I left behind me thefountain head of half my later musings, regrets and imaginings. Inreturning now, I find naught but the graves of my family, the elm of mychildhood, fallen to the ground, its bleached trunk and larger limbsreminding me of a skeleton, the well filled with stones, and the RedHouse converted into a woodshed. The river still flows by; one greatpine still murmurs and wonders what has become of the children onceplaying in its shade; the pond, the arched bridge which spanned itsoutflow are unchanged. And Launa, I fear to inquire what has become ofher, though I never lost her. She followed and reappeared in all mywanderings. 

BOOTMAKING

In Hopkinton I began to feel myself too old to play with girls. Boyswere numerous and knew more than those I had met before. I soon caughtup with their manners and customs, and in some respects bettered them. Ioutdid them in mischief, looted the best apple trees, beat them at balland managed to escape my tasks oftener. My work was stitching thecounters of boots; my mother and sister filled their spare time with thesame employment. Indeed, at this period it was our sole means ofsupport. The making of boots, pegged boots, double soled and welted, with legs treed until they were as stiff and hard as boards, was thechief occupation of all that portion of the town called Hayden Row. Fora mile or more up and down this street were the houses of thebootmakers, each with its little shop, either attached to the house, orbuilt in the yard. Each had from two to six workers. Generally everypart of the boot was made in these shops; the stock was cut anddistributed from some larger shop to which the finished boots werereturned to be put in cases and shipped. The smaller shops were thecenters for the gossip, rumors and discussions which agitated thecommunity. There men sharpened their wits upon each other, playedpractical jokes, sang, argued the questions of that day, especiallyslavery, and arranged every week from early spring to late autumn amatch game of ball either among themselves or the bootmakers ofneighboring towns for Saturday afternoon, which was their half holiday. All this was possible where the men sat on low benches, making scarcelyany noise, and doing work which did not often require concentratedattention. My uncle was a stern abolitionist, as were the otherbootmakers; and before I knew it, I was one; nor did I know at that timethat there was any other opinion in the world. Little did I understandor care for the subject. My uncle took the Liberator, and it wassometimes read aloud in the shop, and I can remember feeling angry atsome of the stories of cruelty to slaves. I am glad I was brought up insuch an atmosphere, for I have not changed on this point, as I have inso many other of my beliefs. The only church in the place was theMethodist, and my mother had, almost for the first time since herconversion at the age of fourteen, an opportunity of mingling with thebrethren and sisters of her own faith. The chief financial pillar of theMethodists of New England, Lee Claflin, was a citizen of Hopkinton, although his place of business was Boston. He was, when I knew him, arather short, fat man with a large head and a face beaming withbenevolence and good will. To be noticed, to be spoken to by him was agreat honor, so that when he laid his hand upon my head and inquired ifI were a child of grace, although I had not the least idea what hemeant, I was equal to the occasion and said, "Yes, sir. " My mothersmiled at my confession and I have no doubt her heart was made glad; forthough she was not at all rigid in the religious discipline of herchildren, the great desire of her life was that they should be convertedand saved from the toils of Satan. I had, as early as I had anyconception of my own, a certain image of Satan as something huge, anaggregation of all the largest objects with which I was most familiar, arms and legs as long as the tallest trees and church steeples, and itwas of his size that I was afraid, rather than of his temptations andtorments, which I heard thundered from the pulpit. I had a fear, born ofsundry rough encounters with larger boys, of that which was superior instrength, and to me Satan was as a big and ugly boy, whom I sometimeslooked for along the road, expecting him to dart out from behind thestone walls, or clumps of bushes. Many writers have said harsh thingsabout the former religious creeds and preaching of our New Englandforefathers, especially in their effects upon children. I do not agreewith them. It did often save the wayward from peril, and offered a richfield for the imaginative interpretations of children. What does themodern child find in a modern sermon to give him any sort of quickening?Yes, my dear pulpit orators, with no wing left to imp your eloquence, recover Satan in all his immense, Miltonic grandeur and energy. 

Those happy Hopkinton days were filled with many new and fascinatingobjects and boyish pursuits to which I gave an undivided heart. Ilearned all the tricks and sleight-of-hand with which the bootmakersamused themselves and puzzled each other in their shops. I was long indiscovering the secret of the best trick of all, which was making namesand pictures appear on the bare plaster of the shop walls by striking onthem with a woolen cap such as we all wore. Then there were all sorts ofstring, button and ball tricks, and my pockets were full of articleswith which to astonish the uninitiated. He, who introduced or invented anew trick or puzzle, was the hero of the shops for a day; and for manydays after, as soon as learned, the men and boys were confounding eachother by its performance. In those days Signor Blitz was travelling thecountry, giving his necromantic shows, and left behind him everywhere ataste for his wonderful performances. Our ingenuity was exercised inweaving watch chains in various patterns with silk twist; in makinghandsome bats for ball, and in making the balls themselves with theravelled yarn of old stockings, winding it over a bit of rubber, and insewing on a cover of fine thin calf skin. This ball did not kill as itstruck one, and, instead of being thrown to the man on the base, wasmore usually thrown at the man running between them. He who could make agood shot of that kind was much applauded, and he who was hit waslaughed at and felt very sheepish. That was true sport, plenty of funand excitement, yet not too serious and severe. The issue of the gamewas talked over for a week. I did my daily stint of stitching with onlyone thing in mind, to play ball when through; for the boys played everyafternoon. When there was to be an important match game the menpractised after the day's work was done. 

Meanwhile my education was entirely neglected. I attended no school atthis time, either summer or winter, and came as near acquiring a tradeas I have ever done. In fact I longed to be able to make the whole of aboot, to last, peg, trim, gum, blackball and stone it, all processes ofthe craft as then practised. But how does one know when he is learning?I was laying up a good store of things more valuable than any in books, whilst the free life I led was preparing in me the soft andimpressionable tablets on which could be traced future experiences andacquisitions of a more intellectual kind. Tomorrow would come and thiswas its preparation. Yet not consciously can one prepare for it all thatit is to hold. I became a graduate of the shops of the bootmakers beforeacquiring the whole of their trade, but not before absorbing most ofthat which constituted the overflow of their lives. I began to imitatethe manners and conversation of men. Ridiculed for this, I retreatedinto myself and became more observant and more silent. A small, very dimyet new light appeared to me--reflection, silent thoughts at night, andwhen alone; questionings with no least effort at answers. My new worldas yet was not much more than a mile square, as in my native town;within that mile I knew every natural object and all the people. Everybody called me by my first name, prefixing, usually, "little curly"or "snub-nose, " and my companions gave me nicknames according to theirlikes or dislikes. I much affected the company of boys older thanmyself, especially my cousins, whom I naturally looked up to and verymuch admired. They would have none of me, called me "nuisance" and"tag-tail. " This last epithet wounded me sorely and made me slink awaylike a whipped cur. Added to my mile-square world, I had now also thegerms of memory. Faintly and at long intervals I remembered my life inBellingham; but it seemed another planet, far off, indistinct, and I hadas yet no desire to return to it. 

LOVE AND LUXURY

My mother had three daughters, one had died within a year of my father'sdeath. She was the belle of the neighborhood, fair-haired and blue-eyed, not very tall, graceful and attractive. Every one admired her and herfriends loved her ardently. She had already ventured into verse, religious in tone, and affectionate effusions to her girl friends. Witha little education she had begun to teach school. She was my firstteacher and the school her first. We were very fond of each other. Herkiss was the only one I did not shrink from and try to escape. She tookmost of the care of me, and I always slept in the same room with her. Usually I went to sleep in her bed, and in the morning crept back intoit. When death came and took her away from me, when I found, in thedarkened room to which my mother led me where she lay in a white dress, that she did not kiss me nor even speak, I was frightened and awed. In ashort time I forgot her; but before I grew to be a man I recovered her, and shed the tears long due her love and loss. Another older sister wasalready a successful teacher in the district schools of the region, sosuccessful indeed, that she taught winters as well as summers, which wasunusual for women teachers to attempt. Several winters she hadundertaken schools, the pupils of which were so unruly that no man couldbe found who was able to control them. At length, through friends whoknew her success and abilities, she was invited to take charge of aprivate school in Norwich, Connecticut. Her pupils were from the wealthyand influential families of the upper, the aristocratic part of thecity, round about Savin Hill and along the Yantic riverside. After shehad become established there, she took me back with her at the end of aspring vacation. I found myself among a very different class of childrenfrom any I had ever known, highbred, well-mannered and well-dressed, Ifelt at first abashed and suppressed; but as we were all children, moreor less unconscious of distinctions in rank, democrats at heart, I sooncame to terms with them; if there were any barriers, they were brokendown as soon as we began to play together. There is no realm of equalitylike that of the playground; there you are estimated on your merits, your skill, your honor and good nature. In two weeks I felt perfectly athome, and already had two or three cronies to whom I was devoted. Idreaded the hour of my return to my mother. It came; I found myselfagain among men in shirtsleeves, and boys in blue jean overalls; mymother's oven no more busy than of old, my hands black with leather andsticky with wax, I, who had been eating the fine fare of rich men'stables with silver forks and knives that shone like mirrors. The worldhad been changed in a few weeks and fifty miles of travel. I felt myselfno part of anything around me; I loathed it and longed to return to mysister. I had had a taste of better things, or so they seemed, or was ittheir novelty? I began to look down with shame and disgust at the humblelife around me. Above all I wanted to escape my task and wondered how Ihad ever wished to be a bootmaker. 

Norwich was a small and beautiful city, well planted with trees, thehouses large and set in ample ground. Two riven meet there to form athird, the Thames, at the head of which is the port or Landing as it iscalled. At the port of the city I had for the first time seen steamersand sailing vessels. Strange and wonderful creatures they were to me, and I asked a thousand questions about them without comprehending in theleast the answers. I was told they sailed down the river with the tide, past New London, then out upon the sea, and at once and ever since Ialways behold vessels, as it were, double, one near and another faraway, disappearing on some vast level plain. Here was water enough, water, the most fascinating thing in nature, tempting by its dangers toboyish adventures, and I determined to be a sailor as soon as I was oldenough and could get back to Norwich. How to get back was the problem Ivexed myself over day and night for weeks and months. My sisterreturning home for her summer vacation, I continued to tease and coaxuntil she consented to my wishes. My small trunk, covered with hairy cowhide, was packed with my few belongings, and with a gay heart I left thetown and my mother's door never to return permanently, and as blind as astone to what I was going away for; I was going--that was all thatconcerned me. There was no future; time does not exist for children;yesterdays are faint, tomorrows undreamed, today endless. Arriving inNorwich, at once, I felt at home. I met my former playmates without agreeting, and just as if we had not been separated for half a year. Nothing was changed; we resumed our sports, and every afternoon at theclose of school, in which I was now a pupil, we played among the cedarsof Savin Hill; or else we paired off and spent our time with the dogs, rabbits and pigeons and other pets owned by my different companions. Ihad myself one hen which the good dame, with whom my sister and Iboarded, allowed me to keep in a large box in her yard. I spent much ofmy time, when without companions, with my hen. I made her many nests inhopes of enticing her to lay eggs, for which I was promised a centapiece by dame Onion. I cannot recall how I came by this hen, nor whatwas her final fate. What trifles we pursue! What trifles connect theseven ages of life, more often remembered than the real steps of ourcareer. So let biddy spread her wing as wide as Jove's eagle, and eatgravel with Juno's peacock; and in this narration I keep company with mybetters, who have not lowered their dignity by confessing theirobligations to the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and to allthose friendly creatures which dwell in the shelter of the house and thebarnyard. So, little red hen, I leave thee here on the road by which Istrayed, playing and singing, into the fearful arena of life, walled andthousand-eyed; whether we fall or triumph, the spectacle and the wonderof an hour. 

Whether it were better to be the limpet fixed to its rock, forever freefrom change, or the wild gull soaring over shores and sea, now wading inthe mud, now riding gloriously on the crest of the billows, is a querywhich has often agitated me since the time I abandoned the home of mychildhood. For me there was no return now to the rock. I thought of myhome with a gloomy dread lest I should have to return to it. Suchforebodings, however, were rare and did not interfere with my completeenjoyment of present pleasures. Along with them I caught the manners ofthe little aristocrats of my sister's school. It was an ideal company ofboys and girls, handsome, refined and innocent. My sister herself was anatural lady and rigorous in her demands for perfect conduct on the partof her pupils. She spared me least of all, as more needing suchdiscipline, and also, I suppose, that she might escape any suspicion ofsisterly partiality. I have ever been extremely open to personalinfluences and environment, and apt to take on the customs and opinionsof those with whom I mingle. What one gains so is a part of hiseducation. It is true there is a lurking danger as well as advantage, and we may be wrecked or carried into a safe harbor according to theaccidents of life and the power or feebleness of the will. My goodfortune was seemingly great at this time, having such a sister to watchover me and such influences around me. On the other hand I wasdisqualified by it for living the life of a poor man which circumstanceshave made imperative; and it required many years to reconcile me to mylot and to discover other riches by which a man might make his lifehonorable and happy. My sister's pupils were affectionately attached toher and this feeling was soon shared by their parents. She visited amongthem continually, and always took me with her. I saw the inside of thehouses of the rich, the leading citizens of Norwich, governors andex-governors of the state, senators, the Rockwells, Greens, Tylers, Williams, Backuses, Lusks, and others, and became used to the eleganciesand luxuries of their households. My sister seemed to be recognized astheir equal, as well she might be. She was a woman to win her wayanywhere; distinguished looking, full of tact and efficiency. She wastall, with a perfect figure and graceful movement. Her eyes were largeand dark, her hair black and abundant, in this being the only one of mymother's children who resembled her, as she did also in the contour ofher face and nose. She was of a hopeful and joyous temperament and fullof energy; by this latter gift she had raised herself from the humblestposition to one of influence and acquired in no long time muchreputation as a remarkably successful teacher, and her services were inconstant demand. She was also a favorite in all classes of society andknew how to adjust herself to the humblest and the highest of her fellowcreatures. From the time of her father's death she had been the prop ofthe family, the mover in all their plans and the provider of theirneeds. Over me she had a special charge and a sacred duty, for myfather, conscious of the too gentle nature of his wife and the povertyin which he was about to leave her, had on his deathbed, committed, hadindeed made a solemn gift of his little boy to the daughter whom hetrusted most; and for fifty years did she fulfil that trust. On hertombstone are engraved these brief but true words: "Faithful daughter, sister, friend, teacher. " New England has been full of such devoted, self-sacrificing daughters and sisters, and still is. I do not singleher out as exceptional, but to give her the tribute she merits, and thatshe may not be among the uncounted and unremembered where these pagesshall be read. 

In my sister's school besides good manners, which now seem to me thebest part of my education, I learned to draw and to sing; and in which Idelighted most, it were hard to say. Never before had I heard any music, except that of the doleful and droning church choir. We sang simplesongs about nature, conduct, duties to the Heavenly Father, to parentsand teacher. Their notes lingered in my ears for a great many years, andI can still hum some of them. We drew plain figures, blocks, cones, thesides and roofs of buildings and outlines of trees. In penmanship I madeno progress, and it was always unformed and illiterate until I was aman, and took it in hand without a teacher. My two years' detention fromschool did not seem to put me into classes below me in age. I could readand spell very well. There were other longer or shorter periods when myeducation was entirely interrupted; yet I did not have to begin mystudies exactly where I had left off. Something carries us alongunconsciously and a natural intelligence bridges over the superficialdifferences between ourselves and our associates. How often have Ideceived myself into thinking I knew something when it was merely aborrowed acquirement, as it were, a cuticular absorption from atransient environment or interest, from classmates, social circles, clubs and books. Great books are the most flattering deceivers of all. Inever read one that did not touch me nearly in this way. The fall to myown proper level is painful, but has been somewhat stayed and alleviatedby reading another. Being of this plastic, imitative nature, I soon tookon the manners and childish ideas of my companions in my sister'sschool. I was already aristocrat enough to look down with indifferenceupon the boys of the Landing and other parts of the town, and at a goodsafe distance, to call them by some insulting name. We never came toblows, nor ever nearer than a stone's throw. By the natural electiveaffinities, which seem to be more marked among boys and girls than amongmen and women, I formed the closest intimacy with two brothers about myown age. They belonged to the leading family among my sister's patrons. Their father was a wealthy, retired manufacturer who had held everyhonor Norwich had to bestow. The boys were indulged in all their wishes, in every kind of pet animal that walks or flies, a menagerie of smallcreatures in cages, ponies for the saddle and dogs to follow. In these Iwas allowed to share as if my own, and their house was as much mine astheirs, more often taking supper in it than at my boarding place. Thusbecoming familiar with and possessing the pleasures which wealth canfurnish a boy, I knew not what a fall I was preparing for myself whenthe thread of my destiny should lead me back into its narrow andtortuous path. How is any one responsible for such passages in his lifewhich carry him into situations and form in him tastes and propensitiesthat must be relinquished with much sorrow or maintained with peril? Butthe hour of doom was not yet, and my pleasant days had no omen thattheir sun would ever set. In truth that sun has never set on the dayswhen I was in the company and close beside the one girl in my sister'sschool with whom I felt the passionless, but none the less ardentdelight. Laugh who will--"Her sweet smile haunts me still. " Never wassweeter or more captivating on the face of a girl or woman, and it wasperpetually there, whether she spoke or only looked in your eyes. By itI should even now recognize her among a thousand. If I had then knownthat souls are reincarnated, I should have known by her smile that shewas the Launa Probana of my earliest awakening. I never played with her, but I was in the same class; she was at the head of it in spellingexercises, where, in the then customary manner, we went up when wemastered a word missed by the pupil below. I was always struggling tostand next to her, and when I did, I was happy. That is how I learned tospell so well! I had become diffident with girls and as much more sowith her as I was fond of being with her. Consequently we spoke to eachother but little. To be where she was was enough. Those inclinations andawkward attentions, which betray the situation to the onlooker, Imanifested always in her presence without suspicion of being observed. Iwas alert to win her notice by any sort of indirection, and embarrassedto speechlessness when I had won it. There were certain occasions when Icould count on having her for my companion, when we found ourselvestogether by some inevitable attraction. These were on the excursionswhich my sister was fond of taking with her whole school to places ofinterest in the vicinity of Norwich. The holiday freedom, theexcitement, made it easier for me to be more demonstrative than usualtoward the new-found Launa. Yet we were still too young and sensitivefor indulgence in the physical tokens of affection. We often walked handin hand, yet under cover of that which was a permissible and usualgallantry among all the children of the school, the secret attachment ofany pair was pleasantly and sufficiently hidden even from themselves. Wondrous were the places we visited; places of historic or naturalinterest; to Groton by steamboat, where we saw Fort Griswold and itsmonument to the heroes of the Revolutionary fight, and its stillsurviving heroine, Mother Bailey, who tore up her petticoat to makecartridges for the gunners. We called upon the venerable woman in herneat, little cottage. She was very proud of her fame. She related thestory of the fight, not omitting her part in it. "Do you think I am avery old woman?" she said to us. "Well, see, " and in an instant she waswhirling around the room in an old fashioned jig. Then we returned tothe Fort, and in its enclosure we opened our baskets and ate our cakesand apples. I sometimes think that was the happiest day of my life. Certainly it was the very beginning of what is called seeing the world. What, is not the first steamboat ride, and with your sweetheart, thefirst fort, the scene of a battle and the most celebrated heroine of theRevolution something? My sweetheart was the only thing not entirelynovel; her smiles ever recalled the memory of Launa Probana. All the wayhome we stood on deck, leaning over the rail, watching the swirl andfoam from the paddle wheels, and our tongues were loosened. As usual, inmy attempts at seeming superior to girl companions, I undertook toexplain things about which I knew nothing. Now, any boy could put medown in a minute with, "how big you talk;" but my gentler hearer led meon with her acquiescence and her trusting, wondering eyes. The teacher'sbrother was somebody in her estimation; he was a new kind of boy. Theother boys she had known all her life, commonplace, tiresome teasers orclowns. That awkward impediment, a rival, I had not to contest or fear. All went well with us until I fell from the ranks of the aristocracy andbecame a menial shop boy in a store. But before that eclipse there wereother happy days and joyous experiences. Together we visited the graveof the Indian Uncas, and the remnant of his tribe at Montville; we droveoften to Fishville, where was an estate laid out in a foreign fashionwith grottoes, mazes, fountains, strange trees and shrubbery and amuseum of curiosities. 

Doubtless it was not the intention of my sister at this time to educateme. Perhaps she saw nothing in me worthy of it. I do not much wonder ather conviction, if such it was, as I look at a daguerreotype of myselftaken about that period, a round head, mostly hair, a low forehead, apair of round eyes, thick nose and lips and short neck, altogether justsuch a solid, stolid child as one would expect to see from the country, bred in the sun and cold, and fed on brown bread and milk. My being withmy sister, and a pupil in her school was a temporary expedient until aplace could be found for me. At length it was found, a situation in adry goods store, where I could earn my board and clothing. Thus withoutwarning I fell completely out of the ranks of the elect and againreturned to servitude as a shop boy, a runner of errands, a builder offires and floor-sweeper. 

SHOP BOY

In country stores the man or boy behind the counter was an enviableperson. Many boys had no higher ambition than to be a store-keeper. I wasnow behind the counter, and although there was nothing in a dry goodsshop to interest me as in the country store, with its varied assortmentof goods, tools, crockery and candies, I felt rather proud of myposition, especially when permitted to wait on a customer. He seemed aninferior sort of a person, and I had no idea at first of conciliatinghim and making a sale. It was not then the custom to observe a fixedprice and simply show the goods; but clerks were expected and instructedto use persuasion, to expatiate on quality and beauty, and to take lessthan they first asked. The cost price was marked with secret characters;the selling price was variable. The more you could get out of a gulliblecustomer, the better; and he who could get the most was the smartestclerk. A thrifty purchaser would beat down the price little by little, the sharp clerk yielding with many protestations until a last offer wasmade, when, with feigned hesitation, the clerk would wrap up the goods. One thinks he has bought a cheap bargain, the other figures the profitand laughs in his sleeve. It was not my particular duty to wait uponcustomers except in a rush of trade, or early in the day before theother clerks had arrived. I opened the store in the morning, swept thefloors and sidewalk, dusted the counters, filled the lamps, and inwinter built the fire. During the day I ran on errands, delivered goodsand was the fag of the proprietor and his two clerks. I soon chafedunder the confinement, and when sent out of the store I made no haste toreturn; the farther away the bundle was to be delivered the better Iliked it, and I always took the longest way, loitering about, makingacquaintance with strange boys, dogs and any wayside apple or pear tree. If possible I skirted the region of the wharves and the rivers, where Ialways found something interesting going on, a vessel arriving orleaving, sailors chaffing and fighting. Sometimes I received a small feefor delivering the bundle at the door of a lady, but this happenedrarely; it was not the custom, and seldom was I even thanked. I had onlytwo memorable adventures on my travels; one was an attack on my breechesby a savage dog, and the other--shall I confess it--almost asdisagreeable. A young and handsome woman, whom I had often seen in thestore, and knew me, I imagine, better than I knew her, called me intothe house with my package, set me on her knees, petted and kissed me, and asked me a lot of questions about one of the clerks. I have reasonto believe her tender behavior was meant rather for her beloved clerkthan for me. I reported nothing on my return, only, on being reprovedfor my long absence, I said, "Miss--had kept me, " which made the clerklook sheepish. I was not sent to her house again. The clerks, however, did use me a good deal as an innocent pander in their various intrigueswith the pretty and fast girls of the town. I carried notes, concealedin dry goods bundles, and brought back answers in my jacket pocket, which I was instructed to deliver on the sly. 

The proprietor of the store to whom I was bound, and in whose family Ilived, was a tall, thin, sallow-faced man. He had a nervous manner, buthe was not unkind to me. He clothed and fed me well. He chewed tobaccoand was brimming over with funny stories, funny and usually indelicate. I heard much swearing, too, and I began to think it the proper thing totry to be wicked myself. I was greatly attached to the two clerks, andthey were my models in everything. One of them was also the bookkeeperof the establishment as well as a salesman. He dressed after the mode intrig, close-fitting suits; his pantaloons were like tights, and onlykept on his legs by straps under his boots. He played and fooled with mein idle hours. The other clerk was exceedingly sober, often melancholy, seldom smiled and had nothing to do with me, rarely speaking to me. Istood in awe and admiration of him. He wrote poetry for the localnewspaper, and I think he felt above us all, and above his position. Hebelonged to a distinguished family, and why he happened to be a drygoods clerk I never knew. He seemed as much out of his natural place asI. How restless and penned up I felt at times no words can tell. Thelean dog with freedom, is much more to be envied than the chained dogwith a golden collar. It was a small store of only three counters, andduring unoccupied hours there was nothing on the shelves or in drawerswith which I could amuse myself. In mere desperation for something tooccupy myself I counted spools of cotton and silk, unrolled and rolledagain pieces of goods, and many a hot summer afternoon, when both theshops and the streets were deserted, I caught flies and put them in abottle, and then smoked them to death. 

I now seldom saw my former playmates. Their families traded at a muchlarger and more fashionable store. Our customers were of an humblerclass, mainly from the suburbs and adjoining villages. But a boy doesnot long remain companionless, be there another boy within reach. Ibecame intimate first with a lad in a grocery store, whereby there wasconsiderable access to sugar, raisins and other sweets; through him, together with others in similar situations, I was made a member of theirsecret society, having been tested as to strength, reliability and otherqualifications. Our badge was a red morocco star, worn under the leftlappet of the vest. The only purpose of the club that I could everdiscover, was to lick every boy who did not belong to it! I was expectedto celebrate my initiation by challenging three non-members, which Iproceeded to do, licked two and met my match in the third. Then I waswarned to attack only boys smaller than myself. The morals of the clubwere meant to be on a par with those of much older boys, but signallyfailed. We were as bad as we knew how to be; none of us had the courageor the enterprise to do the naughty things which so excited ouremulation in our elders. However, we insulted and beat all thegoody-good boys in our way, swore small oaths, smoked and swaggereduntil sick with nausea, and crowning achievement, learned what a Tom andJerry tasted like, enticed merely by the name. It was not until we hadIke Bromley for a leader, that we fairly succeeded in being as bad as wewished. He had an instinct for mischief and deviltry, and a way with himthat led captive the heart and devotion of all boys. Daring and cool, hecould carry a sober, innocent face which would disarm a detective andcharm a deacon. Whoever got caught or punished, he always escaped. Noone could have guessed at this time that he would become one of the mostbrilliant journalists of his day, the wittiest and most engaging of menat a dinner table, a boon companion, and beloved friend. Money was veryscarce with us; what little we had we earned in various outside ways, indoing extra errands or selling old rubbers, old boots, copper and brass. In fact we were the scavengers of the town, and had the run of all thecellars. We managed to sneak or steal our way into most of the showsthat visited the town. For some reason, now quite incomprehensible, thewharves were our most common rendezvous. And for what object we spentour small funds on raw clams, eaten out of the shell, and doused withpepper sauce, (which, for my part, I could with the greatest difficultyswallow, bringing tears to my eyes, and burning in my throat for a weekafter), I as little know, but now suppose it was in imitation of therough men and sailors about the piers with whom we consorted, and whomwe wished to impress with our manliness. Indeed, with all the roughcharacters about the streets we made friends and aped their manners asmuch as we could, two or three notoriously fast, rich young men beingour particular heroes. Nothing saved us from the realization of ourideals but our extreme youth and native innocence, and perhaps somelurking sense that we were playing at vice, with fire that would notburn and water that would not drown. There was one thing we wereambitious to do, yet could not screw our courage to the sticking point;we wanted to get drunk to see how it felt. Either a Tom and Jerry hadnot sufficient potency, or we could never find the bottom of the glassbefore our stomachs rebelled, for we only paid the penalty in apenitential headache without the fun of the debauch. 

I realized all the while the peril of my ways in case they should cometo light, which only served to increase the excitement, though now andthen I had some serious moments. Several times I barely escapeddiscovery, and our pranks often defied punishment because of our numberand the ease with which we could shoulder off the blame on one another. I now thought of the children of my sister's school, with whom I hadrecently been so intimate, with contempt as far beneath me in knowinghow to have real sport. 

Although I continued to be the menial of the store, I had acquired someknowledge of the business; could snap a piece of broadcloth to show itsfirm quality and nap, hang dress goods in proper folds over my arm togive an idea how they would look when made up, and talk quite glibly onthe cheapness of our wares in comparison with those of our competitors. I could see that the small boy in a jacket, and only two heads higherthan the counter, amused the men customers with his brag attempt atbeing a salesman, and that the women smiled down upon himapprovingly--all of which he took as a compliment to his success; forsuccessful he often was, to the surprise of the older clerks. With whatpride did I enter my sales on a slate kept for the purpose under thecash drawer. I surmised that the women sometimes bought goods just toencourage the boy. The clerks laughed and made fun of me telling me itwas my rosy cheeks that sold the goods. Young ladies frequented the shopfor no other purpose than to chat and flirt with the clerks, and one Iremember always kissed me at any favorable chance. How I hated my redchecks, and tried my best to rub out the color. It was a comfort to betold I should outgrow it, and then the girls would not care for me. Fortwo long years I had ceased to care for them. It was even with someshame that I thought of my Launas, they, who later in life, have formedmany an ideal of loveliness. 

It is said the child in the womb passes through all animal forms in itsgrowth from the germ to birth. Whether any incipient wings have beenobserved I have not heard. In much the same way the boy represents inhis growth the different stages of civilization from the savage to thecivilized man. Some time the average boy typifies the Indian, thecowboy, prizefighter, pirate, sailor, soldier; and all classes of rough, wild men are wonderfully attractive to him. He wishes to be like themand plays at being one of them. For more than a year I was greatlyattached to the ruffians on the wharves, and to such of the MontvilleIndians as I could make friends with. A wandering party of Indians fromthe Penobscot tribe had their tents pitched for a whole summer justoutside the city, with whom I became intimate, and spent my leisure timewith them. I made my errands go their way, however long the circuit. Ishould have gone away with them, would they have had me. To live in atent and shoot with a bow became to me the ideal of life. Strange it isthat the most vivid memory of that episode remaining with me is thepeculiar smell of the Indians; but it was not then offensive to me. 

All these propensities were greatly stimulated by reading at this timethe Wandering Jew of Eugene Sue. I had found the volume, a paper coveredpamphlet edition, in a drawer in the store. I carried it home secretlyand read it at night. After I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, andthe house still, I used to get up, partly dress, light my lamp and readoften until midnight or as long as the oil held out. I doubt if any oneknows the supreme pleasure and excitement of reading, who has not read abook surreptitiously. All the mysteries and horrors of the Wandering Jewentered into my soul, and while it opened a scene and actions utterlynew to me, it sobered me far beyond anything that had ever happened tome. About the same time I had many gloomy days and nights of terror fromhaving seen the bodies of twenty-five drowned passengers from the wreckof a steamboat which plied between Norwich and New York City. Our poetclerk took me with him to see them the morning they were brought to thedock on another steamboat of the same line. They were laid out in rowson the main deck, frozen stiff, for it was the winter season, coveredwith sand and particles of ice, their flesh dreadfully lacerated andblue, their features contorted into ghastly shapes. Among them were twomen whom we knew well, frequenters of our store. I clung to the hand ofthe clerk, and should have fainted, had he not taken me awayimmediately. He himself was overcome, and his sad face was sadder andlonger for many days. The whole city was in gloom and mourning. Arevival, which was in progress in one of the Baptist churches, addedgreatly to its converts in consequence of the accident, and the presenceof death in such near and fearful form. 

PISTOL MAKER

At length Fortune took a new turn at her wheel. Suddenly the store doorclosed behind me; broom, oil can, coal hod and scissors knew me no more. I rejoiced in my release and in the prospect of new scenes, new facesand pleasures. What was to be my occupation did not give me one thought;I had as yet no choice, no preference. Wherever there were boys was myworld and my trade. 

Two of my sister's influential patrons, who had been instrumental inbringing her to Norwich, removed their business to Worcester, Mass. Shefollowed them, and, as usual, I followed her. The business of herpatrons was the manufacture of pistols, a patented, six-barrelled, self-cocking revolver, the first of its kind, I believe, ever invented, and a wonder in its day. The whole six barrels revolved on a rod runningthrough their center, and by one and the same ratchet movement thehammer was raised and the chambers of the barrel thrown into position toreceive the discharge from a percussion cap. There was a great demandfor these pistols in the South and West. It was, I suppose, on accountof my sister's intimacy with the families of these manufacturers that aplace was found for me in their works. 

See me now no longer in a linen shirt and brown broadcloth jacket, butagain in blue jean overalls, with grimy, oily hands and dirty face, shutin walls from which was no escape for ten hours each day. The lathes, hand tools, forges and engine which operated the machinery were noveland interesting to me at first. I was the only boy in the establishment. The workmen, all skilled mechanics, were a remarkably fine body of men. They earned large wages, lived quite comfortably, and were prominent intheir several circles and churches. One of them became Lieut. Gov. OfMass. I was placed under the charge of the foreman of the first floorwhere the heavier part of the material of the pistol was prepared. I didthe odd jobs of the room, worked a punching machine and managed thelathe that turned the rough outside of the pistol barrel. My master tookan active personal interest in me and was very minute and painstaking inhis instructions. He was a very pious man and lost no opportunity ofexhorting me to seek religion and become converted. It made noimpression on me; I understood no word he said. Besides, just the samewords had always been familiar to me and had never conveyed any meaningto my simple ears. It did not trouble me to be called a sinner; it neveroccurred to me to question whether I was or not. In short in myinnocence and indifference, I was a perfect type of the thing itself, asunderstood by the church. But when my master invited me to go a-fishingon some half holiday, that was a very different sort of a text, which Iwell understood. Alas, when the fish did not bite, it gave anuncomfortable opportunity for a little exhortation. In addition to thework in the shop I spent much time in the office, where I was employedin putting the last touches to the pistols before being packed fordelivery. I burnished the silver plates, set in the handles, cleaned andoiled the chambers, hammers and nipples, and polished the whole withfine chamois skin. Thus I had a hand in the beginning and completion ofthe construction of a pistol, and knew pretty well all the intermediateoperations. I also obtained an inkling of the way the business wasconducted by hearing the conversation and discussions of theproprietors. I heard many secrets. Some of them confused my smallglimmerings of moral sense. It seemed to me that I had known the samesort of obliquities among boys in the swapping of jacknives. I heard thebookkeeper say one day, "business is business; this is no Sundayschool. " I had bewildering thoughts. Was it possible these pistols werenot what they seemed and would not kill a man? For I knew they were soldmostly in the South for the fighting of duels. I longed to try one on acat. The sun rose and set on my suspicions, with never a solution. Tothis day I cannot rid myself of an innate doubt when I make a purchase. I expect to be cheated. 

I seemed in a fair way at last of acquiring a trade, and it might havebeen, except for the accident of my boarding place. For there I firstcame in contact with books and students. It was not a regular boardinghouse, save for three months in the winter. I was taken into the familyon account of its association with mine long before in Bellingham. Themaster of the house had formerly been the clergyman of that town, butwas now a botanic-eclectic physician and general medical professor of aschool, which held one winter session in his house. It was attended byonly a dozen students. Lobelia was Prof. ----'s strong point. Everybodyin the house was put through a course of lobelia with a heavy sweat, sometimes to cure a slight indisposition, but more often as anexperiment. My only escape from the drudgery of the workshop was infeigning sickness and undergoing the Professor's panacea. This confinedme to the bed for a day and gave me another day for recovery, when Icould be about and enjoy myself. These sweatings and retchings took thecolor out of my cheeks so that when I returned to the shop it was easilybelieved that I had been ill, and, with considerable sympathy, my masteralso warned me of the brevity and uncertainty of life and the necessityof preparing for the day of wrath. Little did he know how all this couldbe escaped by a good dose of lobelia. 

It was a curious life I led at this time between my regular occupation, lobelia, the dissecting room of the professor and frequent religiousexhortations. I was immensely delighted by the secrets of the basementcellar, where, in winter, the cadavers were kept I became accustomed tothe sight of them, and frequently inspected them when alone, curious tosee the internal structure of a human body, for until that time I wasnot conscious of any internal structure of the human body. Hands andfeet were the epitome of my physiology. The whole business of dissectionwas conducted in the most clandestine manner, although the subjects wereobtained from Boston and were, no doubt, honestly procured. There wasprobably some professional reason for their being all women. I know notwhy, but I seemed to be trusted by the Professor and his little band ofstudents, and when cadavers arrived at the railroad station by express, I was often sent to watch them until they could be removed. They came inlarge casks packed in oats. 

I had little time to make acquaintance with boys, as I was not allowedon the street in the evening, and Sunday was strictly observed. Nor didI know any girls of my own age. With the pretty waitress of theProfessor's dining-room, some years older than myself, I had occasionalardent encounters on back stairs and in dark entries. I was lessembarrassed by them than formerly and began to play the beau. As usual, only girls much older than myself attracted me. I began to have the sameexperience with regard to men. There were even some moments when I dimlyrealized why some men were respected and honored. For the proprietors ofthe pistol factory I had a deep reverence. One of them, the inventor ofthe self-cocking pistol, was the model of a reserved, dignifiedgentleman. I saw much of him in the office attending to his business, deciding and despatching it with few words. The other member of the firmwas in complete contrast to his partner. His round, jolly face wasalways wreathed in smiles, a joke, a pun, or story always forthcoming, and business the last thing to be considered. He was a college graduateand a poet of local reputation. It is singular in my boyhood how often Ihappened to be dropped in the vicinity of small poets. This gentlemanwas, like myself, a native of Bellingham, and on that account hesometimes noticed me and made inquiries after my well-being. He seemedto me a very great man, chiefly because he wrote poetry and had itprinted in books. I imagine that he expected me to remain a mechanic, and had little thought of the influence he was unconsciously exertingover the future. Nor did I myself recognize it, until years later whenmy first article appeared in a magazine; feeling some pride in thisgrand, world-moving effort, I sent it to him as a lawful tribute. Timehad not been kind to him; he had almost lost the use of his hand forwriting and was using some sort of mechanical contrivance for thatpurpose. But the fire of the proselyter still burned in him, and heended his note of acknowledgment with the old familiar query about thesalvation of my soul. 

THE AWAKENING

Having no boy associates I began to cultivate the Professor's students. I spent my leisure time with them, and, through their conversation, entered a new world. Words are too cold a medium to convey the changethat came over me, for at the same time that I began in some measure toappreciate the learning and general knowledge of these young men I beganto be conscious of my own ignorance, I became aware that I knew nothing, never had, and probably never should. Consequently I was more depressedthan stimulated. I reflected on the conversations I heard among thestudents, and the pithy, sententious sayings of the Professor at thetable. He usually settled all discussions and table talk with awitticism or apt quotation, I was about to say with a toothpick; for hehad a curious habit of digging his thumb and finger into his vest pocketand fumbling for one, jabbing it into one side of his mouth anddelivering his wisdom from the other side. His wife who sat opposite tohim, tall, lean and prim always frowned on any levity at the table. Itwas her opinion that we should eat our food in silence and as quickly aspossible, so that, as she often remarked, the table could be cleared andthe kitchen work not be delayed. To her great distress the conversationoften became so lively that the meal dragged, and various were herdevices for bringing back our attention to the business at hand. I hadsome sense of the humor of the situation, and as I never took part inthe talk, I amused myself by exchanging winks with the pretty waitress. She was the only person in the house near my own age. We were very goodfriends; she cut me a little larger piece of pie than she served to theothers, darned my socks and called me "Sonny, " and "curly head. " She wasnot averse to an arm around her waist, and I repaid her kindness in theonly currency I had--a kiss. However, I more enjoyed the society of thestudents than I did hers. I could be in their company without beingnoticed. No word escaped me and slowly, then, at length, overwhelmingly, there was borne in upon me the crushing sense of the difference betweenthese young men and myself, their interests, expectations, futurecareers and mine. Yet I saw no way out of my present situation. Thebitter seeds of unrest, and ambitions without opportunities, were at thesame time planted in a fruitful soil. When the soul of man is awakened, not one but all its faculties awaken together. Hitherto the memory of mypast life had no existence and no interest. It was a blank page. 

All at once, when most cast down and discouraged in my thought of thefuture, that blank page of the past became illuminated and full ofdelightful pictures and memories. I was entirely overcome by them. Theyall pointed back to Bellingham, which I had not thought of since leavingit. The attraction to the place became irresistible. It seemed as ifthere I could recover myself and begin my life over again, continuingall its joys, reuniting all its companionships. It is obvious to me nowthat this was an evasive yet ingenuous effort to escape from myself, anawakening that had come to me, which I knew not how to meet. I revolvedseveral plans for getting back to my native place and becoming a farmer. None of these were practicable, and I determined to go, trusting tochance to make the way plain. But even the going had difficulties. Isolved them by setting out. I crossed the bridge before I came to it, and all the way was easy. I could take no scrip for the journey, for Ihad none; neither two coats, for I had but one; nor yet could I take theblessing of any one, for to no one save the waitress did I entrust myintentions. I set out on foot, and once on the road, I felt as free andjoyous as a bird. There were twenty-five miles to cover, and I expectedto do them from sun to sun of a late April day. Sometimes I ran for amile or two from sheer eagerness to arrive. Most of the way I saunteredalong thinking of nothing, overflowing with animal spirits. Enough thefreedom, the open sky, the earth, which had been lost to me for threeyears. It did not occur to me that I was running away, not from outwardconditions, but from myself; that at last I had come to the not unusualcrisis in the life of boys. However, it was a very mild form of runaway, twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of thesea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in thehay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, animpulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from afuture, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which Ishrank in fear and despair. 

At noon I was half way between Grafton and Upton and I rested on a highbank with my back against a stone wall. There I could see the churchspires of Milford town, and beyond, the land fell away towardBellingham. I ate some food that the waitress had given me for thejourney, and took the road again. Soon I was in Milford. The remainderof the way was very familiar. I knew every house, rock and tree; yeteverything looked smaller than I anticipated. I hurried on as I wishedto arrive at Uncle Lyman's before his supper time, which I knew wasinvariably at five o'clock the year round. Uncle Lyman's house, to whichI was going, was the house in which I was born. He had been my father'smost intimate friend. The house had always been like a home to me, evenafter my family had one of their own. As I hurried along I saw again thehouse, one-storied, and the elm tree, with its branches extending overthe roof, and arching the highway. I suddenly remembered the flat stonethat had been set in its bole for a seat, which the tree had soovergrown that, as a child, I could sit there and be almost hidden fromsight; and the brook which flowed through the fields near the house, where the grass was always a darker green along its course, even when itdried up; and the windings so many and sharp that they seemed to writeletters when one looked down upon them from a little elevation. I havesat in a tree and fancied I spelled out words in the green grass. 

As I came nearer the house I became more and more agitated about thewelcome that awaited me. It was friendly, yet surprised, and not as warmas I had expected. Had they changed? Or was it I? Certainly I did notfeel at home. This was the house most dear to me, this the settle whereI had sat when my legs did not reach the floor. How familiar sounded thevoices I now heard, one deep and penetrating, the other a thin falsetto;yet I did not feel the comfort I had imagined that I should. At thetable were the same dishes I remembered; the taste was gone. Aftersupper I went out and tried to sit in my old seat in the elm. It was toosmall for me now; alas, it seemed to disown me, to have cast me out. Thebarn which once looked so enormous appeared insignificant. I went to bedunreconciled and unhappy. Yet how can a healthy boy awake in the morningdejected? Night, pitying night, which knows how the evil days succeedeach other, hinders their sad return and hides in her oblivious mantletheir weariness, their sorrows and their disappointments. I was awake atdawn, and yesterday was forgotten. The sun shone across the tops of theforest oaks just beginning to show their red buds. There was dew on thegrass and a sweet, earthy smell in the air. Robins were callingeverywhere and blue birds flying low from fence to fence. The littlebrook was full to the brim; the lush grass laid flat along its borders. I found the places where I used to erect my miniature mill wheels, andthe remains of the little dam. Here was already antiquity. I did notneed Egypt or Greece. Childhood contains their whole story. The seasonwas unusually early; the great elm was becoming misty with the rufflededges of its unfolding leaves. The outermost sprays began to drop fromincreasing weight of sap and leaf bud. Catkins hung on birch and willowand alder and the ancient bed of tansy had a new growth of three inches. Down the hill toward Beaver Pond, and along the meadow clusters of fernswere leading up their brides and bridegrooms in opposite pairs withbowed heads. It was twenty days before the usual pasturing time; butUncle Lyman was turning his cattle out for half a day to keep the grassfrom becoming too rank and sour. I helped him drive the cows, oxen andheifers to the pasture. How they gamboled, kicked up their heels andtossed their heads. No more bow and stanchion, no more dry hay andconfinement for them. I shared in their exhilaration, having been myselfa prisoner for the past six months, and as we drove them afield, couldhardly keep from dancing and shouting. "There, my son, " said UncleLyman, "let me see if you have forgotten how to put up the bars. "

I lifted them into place with a will, and thought, this is the life forme. Emboldened by his question I opened my mind in a roundabout way asto helping him all summer on the farm. He saw my drift at once and toldme he could not hire me, nor any other boy; he must have a man ifanybody, and that I must stick to my trade. 

"You can stay a few days, " he continued, "and then you had better goback to it, " and as if to soften his advice he added, "The first cloudyday we will try for pickerel, though it is rather too early. "

This might have been discouraging and a dreadful check to my plans, butby some sudden transition wholly inexplicable, I had already half giventhem up. My discontent and melancholy had been exhausted in the runningaway; and a few hours experience of disenchantment reconciled me to mylot. 

There is no human experience more acutely painful than when one awakensto the fact that he is a person, an ego, unrelated to people or things, with no real claim to assert save that of habit or associations. Thesense of isolation and loneliness is at first overpowering, and vainlydoes he try to attach himself to former objects and environment. Theawakening may come in mature years, it may come in youth; but at whattime it appears, the old heavens and the old earth crumble and the soulfaces its own destiny and recognizes that it must walk alone. 

I was surprised to see how the face of things had altered, when, in thecourse of the day, I hunted up the two playmates with whom I hadformerly been most intimate. I met a cold reception. We could not findour way back to the old ground, the old innocent relation. As for LaunaProbana, I did not so much as inquire for her. Time and change had notyet made her distinct and dear. After this I enjoyed myself very wellfor a few days, excusing my prank with the notion that it was avacation. We went fishing, but the pickerel would not come from theirhiding places. In the evenings Uncle Lyman and his wife at their severalsides of the fireplace, she with her knitting, and he with his pipe, andI in a corner of the settle, talked of the days when my father wasalive, and of the labors they underwent to make a good farm, clearingthe brush and stones and building the fences. They told me of my birthand my father's joy at having a son. Then when I inquired for Nahum, their son, whom I remembered as a young man, when I was a child, asudden silence fell over the great kitchen. There was no reply and themother's head drooped over her work and tears fell upon it. I wondered, but did not dare to speak, and shortly I climbed the attic stairs to mybed. The next day Uncle Lyman cautioned me not to mention Nahum againbefore his wife. He said he had run away, and they knew not where hewas. A guilty pang struck my heart; I became conscious of what I haddone, and thought perhaps at that very moment my sister might be weepingfor me. 

Nothing was now wanting to complete the failure of my escapade, and Iwas as eager to run back as I had been to run away. Memories, touched byimagination, had come to naught in contact with reality. I learned myfirst lesson in keeping it and ideals in their proper place. A bird inthe bush is worth two in the hand! Utopia is a far country, toward whichto travel is better than to arrive. It was some years before I restoredthe Bellingham of my imagination. If experience be nothing but sufferingthen I had experienced; over this transaction therefore I grant an actof oblivion. 

The return to Worcester was tedious. I was in no hurry, dreading myreception; what should I say, what should I answer? I revolved manyexplanations, but each I could think of contained a falsehood. With allmy waywardness I was never a good liar; the lie was manifest in my faceand I could feel it there as something not myself. I concluded to saynothing and not attempt any apology. This proved the wiser plan. Fewquestions were asked; reproachful looks were to be expected. Somepenalty I paid in the shop also; harder tasks were set for me and I waskept more strictly to my work. The students of Prof. Lobelia were nowgone, the sessions of his medical school closing in April, and the houseseemed lonesome. In the course of the summer there came into the familya young man who was preparing himself to be a missionary. For the firsttime I heard of Greek and Latin books. The young man was studying both;it excited my curiosity. Here were other things of which I knew nothing, and I began at this period to be oppressed continually by the more andmore frequent discovery of the extent of my ignorance. Luckily I knewhow to read. My rustic mentors had warned me against girls, but never ofbooks. I found in the Professor's library a queer assortment of odds andends of learned works. There was a shelf of theology and missionaryrecords, doubtless collected when he was a minister; many shelves ofmedical books, and a small number of miscellaneous works, histories andcyclopaedias. Among these latter I chanced one day to take downWhelpley's Compend of History. All that I can remember of it now are itsstories of ancient heroes, Alexander, Caesar, the greater and lesser menof Greek and Roman annals. That of Alexander made the deepest impressionupon me; I know not why, perhaps his conquests, his glory, his youth. Iscarcely knew before what the word hero meant. It was a mark of utterinexperience and a visionary temperament that my ambition should havebeen so aroused by the career of an ancient hero instead of the man whohad invented a self-cocking pistol. It was to be two thousand yearsbehind the times, in an age when half a generation is sufficient towrite you down as belated and not wanted. However, it is well to have ahero in youth, an example, a spur, a Bucephalus, although one gets manya fall before he reaches the goal, and I can date my desire to know moreand to achieve something from the reading of that brief compend ofancient history. 

If ever a man finds a path to the true life, he experiences twoawakenings, the intellectual and the spiritual, and it matters littlewhich is first. In Worcester I stumbled upon the two books in the spaceof three years, which led me from darkness to day. The first was that Ihave just described; the other was of somewhat the same character, Emerson's Representative Men. 

The beech at last divides the rock in whose invisible seam its tiny seedwas sown. I now began to spend all my leisure time in reading, and to bemore and more aware of my unprofitable and aimless life. Books carriedme this way and that. I was wholly overcome by them as by a strongpersonal influence, especially when I read Byron. The student whom Ihave mentioned had a few books of poetry, and among them the completeworks of Byron in one thick volume bound in calf, and printed on cheap, thin paper. He himself had written verses before his conversion. He nowlooked upon his poets as witnesses of his former sinful state. He wantedto sell them to me with all their sins, and eventually I did buy hiscopy of Byron for fifty cents, after borrowing and becoming so enamouredof it that I felt I could not live without the book. The Byronic moodsand fashion I imitated to the best of my ability. I began to turn downmy Sunday linen collar which had stood up to my ears, and to wear myhair long and careless; whereas formerly, I had brushed it back andupward as straight as possible, after the manner of ministers andschool-masters, now I let it hang as it would over my forehead and neck. Melancholy was the wear, and for this, in my present temper, not mucheffort was required. I did not, as Alexander and Chrysostom had done, put my favorite author under my pillow; but often having to sleep on thefloor, this volume of Byron served as my pillow. In turn one book afteranother held me like a captive lover, and I endeavored to conform mylife to what I read, no sooner enthralled by one than I found anothermore enchanting. I formed a taste for reading that has lasted all mylife, in which, if there be any education, any mental discipline, is theonly consistent part of my development. Our critics and literary mentorsextol such books as are fit to be read a second time. I have a stillbetter reason for a second reading, because I forget the first. When Istrictly examine myself I cannot say that the contents of any bookremain long with me, not even the Greek and Latin grammars over which Ispent years of terrible toil. Somewhat survives the years, vague, inexact and never at hand when wanted. Enough for me that I know prettywell where to find what I have once read. I have been drawn to theauthors, who have written especially for me, by a certain, recurrentimpulse and appetite. Then I can go to the shelf in the dark. I findthat memory is a faculty over which we cannot use the whip and spur tomuch purpose. It goes its own gait through barren or fertile fields, gathering many a weed with its flowers. How many trifles one carriesthrough life from childhood days, by no effort of his own, things of thesenses mostly, when these were unwritten tablets and blank for the firstimpressions. Upon these tablets are indelibly retained a certain box, aspool, a pair of stairs, the smell of a neighbor's house, when, with allmy efforts, I cannot recover my father's voice and countenance, nor manyanother thing that would make a golden treasury of memory. Instead, itis more like the lumber of an old attic, or the contents of a boy'spocket. From much reading I began to observe the difference betweenwritten and spoken languages, and to single out the people who used thebest speech in their common conversation. I tried myself to talk likethe books I read. Never before had I noticed any difference between menas to education. All were on the same plane, only separable by somepersonal relation to myself. Little by little they became distinct sothat I attempted to classify them in a crude and bookish way. Characterand the moral point of view, with their manifold applications to life, were as yet hidden from me. I judged men and women by their speech, evenby their pronunciation, and thought that I could detect the accent ofthe educated. In short, education became all in all to my mind; the onedesirable possession, and its end the writing of books, its reward fame. As was natural I tried to write, but my rude penmanship, my inability tospell the words, which I was ambitious to use, the difficulty ofbeginning a sentence, and still greater perplexity of ending it, completely disgusted me and filled me with despair. It was more evidentthan ever that education was the ladder for my enterprise. There was, atthat time, in Worcester a learned blacksmith, who knew fifty languages;he might have been an example to me; yet I had never heard of him. Iknew only the great men of Whelpley's ancient history, and the poetByron. Schools and colleges assumed great and greater importance. I sawno way of educating myself: I expected it to be done for me, aseverything thus far had been. I was nearly sixteen years old, barelyable to read and write, but no more advanced than the average boy of tenor twelve. 

STUDENT LIFE

After much solicitation I persuaded my sister to send me for one term tothe Worcester Academy. This was a school then in the suburbs of the cityunder the patronage of the Baptists. It had formerly been a manual laborschool; that is, students could pay their expenses by labor on a farmbelonging to the institution. This feature had been given up, and it wasconducted like other institutions of a similar character. It wasessentially a country academy, intended primarily for youths who, havinggone through the common schools, desired some further education at smallexpense. One or two terms were considered sufficient to round off theculture of farmers' sons. The school pretended to teach Latin and Greek, and occasionally sent a student to college. A few, having acquired ataste for study, remained long enough to fit themselves to becometeachers of common schools, or to enter one of the professions, which atthat time did not place so much importance as at present upon lengthypreparation and a degree. The expenses were as light as was the fare. The rooms were scantily furnished; chairs, tables and beds were in thelast stages of dilapidation from the rough usage of a generation ofstudents. No one felt or was held responsible for their condition. Someof the students boarded themselves in the dormitory, which did not addto the tidiness and order of their rooms. Books, clothing, plates andpots, wood and food were scattered about promiscuously. Each room was acitadel, neither teachers nor steward ever entered it; a servant made upthe bed, and that was the extent of her function. We filled our ownwater pails, cut our own wood and swept the room when we happened tothink of it, and could borrow a broom. As I have said, the common tablewas meagerly kept. How could it have been otherwise at the rate of onedollar per week? We often rose in rebellion at the cooking, when wedrove the waitress from the room, hurling the food, and after it, thedishes, upon the floor. No punishments ever followed these out-breaks, nor any of our pranks with the bell, the steward's horse and cow and theprincipal's desk. The discipline was mild; or rather there was none. Andyet there were many diligent students and a few who distinguishedthemselves in later life. The best features of the institution were itsunbounded freedom, the close democratic companionship of the students, the affectionate attachments formed, and the tremendous interest we tookin the meetings of the Philomathean society for debates, and the readingof essays and poetry, exhibited also in a lesser degree in the Saturdaydeclamations and compositions. How deep and real were our personalattachments I may illustrate in mentioning that I have maintained two ofthem for fifty years. Others that faded out of my life I still rememberwith grateful and tender feelings, especially a young man considerablyolder than myself, to whom I was passionately devoted. He was ahandsome, reserved fellow with the eyes and lips of genius. He playedthe violin, and well do I recall the sensitive twitchings of his mouthat any strain of unusual thrilling sweetness. It made my heart beatfaster when he spoke to me, which was rarely; and never before had Ifelt such a deep emotion as when coming from the city one evening heasked me to take his arm. It was the common custom with all of us whenwalking or strolling about the grounds to lock arms or put them abouteach other's necks. Only with him, the violinist, it was less usual thanwith the others. How often have I wondered what was the subsequentcareer of him whom we thought the greatest man among us. 

With such freedom, such slight discipline, and so little pressure in theclassroom, it was nevertheless the best arena for the development of thewhole man which I have ever known. Our debates were exciting, oftenfierce; sometimes we almost came to blows, and instead of being merelypractice and forensics, they were very real and vital, so much so, thatwe generally resumed them when two or three met in their rooms or ontheir walks. They were sure to continue until the next meeting, when anew question would be proposed. Usually the topics for debate and theprincipal disputants were selected a week in advance. Much time wasgiven to preparation, to the complete neglect of our studies. Thedebates were extemporaneous, and after the preliminary speeches, thequestion was open to all. The topics of debate were generally on thesocial and political issues of the time; anti-slavery, temperance, women's rights; these questions often led into religious and theologicalcontroversies. Not who was the better scholar, but who was the betterspeaker, and next the better writer, was the popular estimate ofreputation and settlement of rank in school. We strove above everythingto be eloquent, to become orators; that being at the time the aim setbefore us by ambitious public men, inspired by the examples of Webster, Clay, Calhoun and others. It is my belief that, at this period, one ofthe great public prizes of glory, which young students set beforethemselves, was to deliver a Fourth of July oration. Meanwhile noinstruction was given in elocution, rhetoric or composition. Therequired exercises in declamation and writing were conducted with almostno criticism. They neither added nor subtracted from our standing withthe teachers by any sign known to us. We were left to our ownself-instruction, which, on account of our enthusiasm, emulation andrivalries, was the very best of school-masters. We studied parliamentarylaw from a little volume called Cushing's manual; for who could tellwhen he might be called upon to be an officer of the club, or at whatpoint he could with safety move the previous question? Very amusing weresome of the attempts of the students to speak extemporaneously; thestammering, the hesitation, the confusion and final flunk; theconfidence with which some one would spring to his feet, as if full tothe muzzle, and the entire inconsequence and futility of his words, ending in apparent abject paralysis of speech. We dealt liberally injeers at any exhibition of bathos or fustian; in laughter and applauseat any touch of eloquence or wit. What better training was there thanthis? I have always had a fond lingering desire to be an orator, butwhen before an audience found myself as cold as a clod. Toward essaywriting and reading our attitude was somewhat different. Yet here welooked for and were only satisfied with eloquence--good, resoundingperiods with plentiful classical allusion and quotations of poetry. Wealways expected at least one apostrophe to "Science Hill, " which was theconsecrated name of the eminence on which the academy building stood. Progress, liberty, the Fathers of the Republic and other patrioticthemes were those on which we sharpened our pens. For purely literarysubjects there was no interest whatever; and, because of thisindifference, occurred what was, to me, one of the most mortifyingepisodes of my youth. I had come into the possession of Milton's poetry, and though untouched by his Paradise Lost, his Lycidas was a revelationto me of the music and rhythm and allusions possible to poetry. Icommitted it to memory and startled my class one day by reciting it as apart of the regular exercises. It was customary for some criticism tofollow such exercises; but, to my distress, my beautiful poem, that hadfilled me with delight, was received in absolute silence. It had fallenlike a bolt from heaven on those young wights. Covered with confusion, Iwent to my seat feeling that I had committed the unpardonable sin ofattempting to do something beyond my capacity. No comment on my effortwas made at the time; I was not even rallied about it outside the classroom; and only after fifty years had passed did I learn the reason ofthe extraordinary silence that had followed my rhetorical outbreak. Saidone of my classmates at a reunion, "I shall never forget the day yourecited Lycidas; none of the fellows had ever done such a thing; theyneither knew nor cared for poetry, and your recitation was a revelationto us all. It came like a shock and thrilled us to bigger things. Wenever forgot it. "

So impressionable and plastic is youth in its formative period that itonly takes one great poem to unlock for it the higher mysteries. 

We taught ourselves patriotism in season, and before the days ofattenuated and hypersensitive politics. Rough fellows were we, dressedin cheap coats, eating coarse food, sleeping on hard beds in cold rooms, and I fear the well was not much called upon for baths. We read butlittle. There was not a newspaper nor magazine taken in the wholeestablishment, and how we knew what was going on in the world I cannottell; yet in some way it penetrated our seclusion. In such a small andsocially affiliated school, what one knew, all the others soon imbibed. We were every one of us Yankee boys, acquisitive and resolved to makethe most of ourselves and our small opportunities. The library of theinstitution contained about a hundred volumes, and of these some werereligious books. There was a ragged, greasy Shakespeare in eight volumeswhich I tried to read through, but found the task too much for me. However, I did have a glimpse of something for which I found myselfunprepared; and such is the constitution of my mind, that I have seldombeen able to grasp dramatic writing with complete enjoyment; I am apt todwell too long on its beauty spots. For this reason I prefer the Greekdrama, because of the simplicity of its construction. The characters arefewer, and, I may say, not so personal, and there are not so manythreads to keep in hand. I am in no perplexity when I begin Agamemnonand Antigone; there is a clear, simple and straight path for action. Theone book which we all read with greatest diligence was Todd's Student'sManual. As we did not really study much, it seemed best to know allabout the methods and rules for study. The book was stuffed full ofsound advice in regard to the regulations of the student's time, diet, sleep and exercise; in short, what may, without offense, be called themechanical apparatus for the acquirement of education and character. Iam sure I profited much from this manual, although I could never observea tithe of its instructions. It was something to know there was a pathespecially laid out for the student, if he could not always keep it. Itprompted the searching of one's self, and in consequence, many of usbegan to keep a diary, which, I think in my own case, stimulatedobservation and reflection. Feeble as the young child's first effort towalk were my entries in my first diary. How is one to write without adefinite subject, or one selected for him? But with each day's practiceit became easier, and at last a pleasure to hold a silent intercoursewith myself, to recover and merely to catalogue the day's doings and tryto discriminate them. In vain thus far were my attempts at logic in thedebating club, and the sentences in my diary seemed even more wanting inconnection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores andwherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verbin the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed toknow what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, andwhat I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I haveheard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know ofnothing so dead and so precipitating as the look into an early youthfuldiary. Not much more encouraging is the book one has written andpublished, and some time after has the temerity to open. 

SCHOOLMASTER

After a few terms at Worcester Academy, during which I contrived indifferent ways to support myself on a single meal a day, at one time byringing the bell for morning prayers and sweeping the general recitationroom, at another by delivering a daily newspaper, the _Worcester Spy_, to one hundred and twenty-five subscribers, I thought myself competentto teach a common school, by which I hoped to earn enough to carry methrough another year of study. I was examined as to my qualificationsfor teaching by the chairman of the school committee of the town ofGrafton, having applied for one of the district schools. Between frightand incompetency I passed a most inadequate examination. What little Idid know deserted me at the pinch. The reverend gentleman, who conductedme through questions in the various common school studies, was one ofthe most amiable souls in the world, as I had many subsequentopportunities of knowing, for he continued my friend as long as helived. He told me frankly that he was hardly warranted in giving me acertificate, but would allow me to make a trial of the school, and, asmy sister had such a high reputation as a teacher, he had no doubt Iwould succeed if I was in earnest and studied diligently. The schoolconsisted of fifty pupils of all ages; some were just learning to read, others had been through again and again all the text books in use andwent to school in winter for fun, and because they had nothing else todo. There were six young men four years older than myself. These olderpupils thought they knew their school books well enough, and had nooccasion to study them again. They were much inclined to match theirproficiency with that of their teacher, which was a good way of puttinghim on his mettle. A few appeared to be present only to make trouble, and to try their pugilism against that of the master. I was notespecially athletic; yet, when my temper was up, I was a dangerousantagonist. I soon discovered the work cut out for me. I spent everyevening in preparation for the next day's lessons, and I introduced somenew exercises for those older boys and girls whose familiarity withtheir books gave them little to do. My troubles began soon enough, notin the school, but among the parents, which was shortly reflected intheir children. In every New England school district there are generallyfactions and parties as in larger political divisions; it divides on allkinds of issues, political, religious or social. I am giving myexperience, not for its personal value, but as the average picture ofthe average school district. This particular district was sharply splitby the temperance party and the rummies. It so happened that theprudential committeeman, as he was called, that is, the agent whoseoffice it was to hire a teacher and have the general care of all thebusiness concerns of the school for the year, was an ardent temperanceworker, and I boarded with him. This was reason enough for the otherparty to stir up antagonism against the teacher. It was not long beforeI became aware of the situation, and learned to my surprise andamusement that I was a strong temperance man, and in the habit of makingtemperance speeches. The rummies, I found, were men addicted only totheir cider barrels; hard working citizens with red faces and ratherlurid speech. On the whole, I thought them much more interestingcharacters than the faction to which I was supposed to belong. But theywould have none of me, and I had not sufficient tact to win them tomyself. The crisis came when I thrashed the son of one of them, my firstand last experiment in corporal punishment. The boy's father threatenedand sent me word that the first time he met me I might look out for hishorse whip. I fully expected it, and carried a stick on my way to andfrom school. He turned out to be a great coward, for one day we met onthe road and he slunk the other side of his load of wood as we cameopposite each other. He took his boy out of school, and several othersfollowed him, complaining that I did not know enough arithmetic to teachthem, which was quite true, only I was learning; and gladly would Ilearn and gladly teach, if they could have had patience. I think my mostsuccessful teaching has been with those with whom I was also studyingand learning, having a double incitement and interest. The teacher whoknows it all beforehand, and rests in his knowledge is soon dulled andwearied. 

This incident, the thrashing of one boy and the withdrawal of severalothers, brought peace and good will into the school-room, and I becameon intimate and even affectionate terms with the remainder of thepupils, and on the last day of the term, examination day it was called, we were all much lauded and flattered by the school committee andassembled friends. It was my first experience of responsibility, andsettled some matters with me for life, chief of which was that the onlyauthority and influence of value are those that are gained by love. Themore friendly and intimate my relation with any pupil the more pleasantwas my task, the more easy his lesson, the more rapid his progress. Ialso learned that all effort is lost on a stupid mind, and that it isbetter to wait upon its awakening. In this I had my own experience tosupport me, for I never learned anything until aroused from within; allelse is but untempered plaster that falls away as soon as it ceases tobe fresh. Outside of my school and its duties I found considerableopportunity for improving myself. The couple, with whom I boarded, weregood souls, and, having no children of their own, showed me much kindlyattention. The table was plentiful; we had pumpkin pie three timesdaily, baked in oblong tins, and the corner piece was the favorite cut. My room was large and pleasant, and better furnished than any I had everoccupied. My host always wore a cheerful smile and seemed the happiestof men, although he never joked; his conversation was serious andreligious, in striking contrast to his manner and usual countenance. Hespoke of heaven and hell with the same merry twinkle in his eye, thesame smiling face. His speech was accompanied by a sort of low, halfaudible whistle. He encouraged me through all my troubles, and told menot to worry about the old cider-drinking farmers, as there were morehorsewhips than one in the "deestrict. " His wife's chief dread in thismortal life was fire. She expected the house would burn up every night. I can see now her painful look of alarm when there was news of aconflagration anywhere; she would immediately leave her chair, look atthe stove, examine the stovepipe and peer out into the kitchen. Then itwas not unusual for dissolute, drinking men to take revenge on the totalabstainers by setting fire to their barns. There was only one family inthe district with whom I became intimate, and whose friendship acrossthe continent I still keep. This was the family of a retiredUniversalist clergyman. They lived in a large farmhouse, and theclergyman was engaged in reclaiming an immense bog, and occasionallysupplying some vacant neighboring pulpit. He was a visionary of aperfect kind. All bogs were to him prospective gardens of Eden;impossibilities to him the only things worth attempting; all men saintsand angels. He had inherited a considerable fortune, which had mostlydisappeared in the fathomless swamps of the different towns where he hadsojourned as a clergyman. His wife was a lineal descendant of one of theheroes of Concord Bridge; a beautiful, domestic woman full of prudentand wise counsels, which had saved the family from being swallowed up inher husband's Utopias. Three of their younger children were among thebrightest of my pupils; three grown up sons were still at home, workingon the land a part of the year, and in winter they made boots in alittle shop attached to the house. As formerly in Hopkinton, so here inthis shop, but with more intelligence and learning, I heard and now tookpart in the discussion of all sorts of questions. Their minds seemed tohave been trained in more philosophical directions than any I had met. Here I had some new insights which helped me forward, and I heard muchof the worthlessness of religious dogmas. It was, however, with a tinpedler, a friend and distant relative of this family, that I turned thenewest leaf in my mental progress. He usually travelled through Graftontwice a month, and made it his convenience to put up over night with hisfriends. It was there I used to meet him. His name was Daboll, and heclaimed to be descended from that ancient Connecticut maker ofarithmetics and almanacs, Nathan Daboll. He said that was why he becamea pedler--he was born to calculate. Yet his occupation sat very lightlyupon him. It gave him abundant opportunities for reflection andconversation. In the latter he took delight, and lost no chance ofdisplaying his skill in setting forth his own ideas and drawing outthose of his customers. If he sold a pan or a broom it was accompaniedby some bit of philosophy that he had evolved on the lonesome stretchesof road between farmhouse and farmhouse. I write evolved; but that wasnot his own word, nor his theory of the origin of his ideas. He claimedthat they came to him when he escaped his own control. I have forgottenmany of the details and examples which he used to give in explanation ofhis doctrine, and should not remember them at all after so many years, save that at various times I have had similar experiences, and that Ihave been often reminded of them by the modern discussions ofpsychology, and especially of the operations of the subjective mind. Hesaid that he was led into his view from thinking about his dreams whichwere beyond control of the will. His next step was to observe that hesometimes dreamed when awake; that is, thoughts came into his mindwithout conscious effort, and at times when his head was wholly vacantor wholly occupied with his business. Many things were made clear to himin this manner, and he had come to the conclusion that the best way toget the wisdom enjoined by the Bible and learned men, was to escape fromyourself, in short, to become passive. In long summer days, slowlytravelling his circuit of some forty miles, calling at every house wherehe was well known, and must needs be in no haste to trade, (for countrypeople were never sure of what they wanted until they looked the cartover), he had plenty of time to resign himself to the involuntary anddreamlike states of mind, which solved for him the questions in which hewas most interested. I was not so much impressed that such notionsshould come from a tin pedler as by the notions themselves; for at thatperiod the democracy of our New England towns considered and treated apedler as a man and a brother. His business was not regarded asdemeaning, and frequently was an apprenticeship to that of a storekeeper, and he might, and sometimes did, become the rich merchant of agreat city. Many young men peddled small wares, books and picturesbetween terms to help themselves in paying for their education. SoReuben Daboll was no phenomenon; but his philosophy was phenomenal, atleast to me, and kept me awake on the nights when the evening had beenspent with him. It kept me awake, I say, for I never could reason far, and trying to think gave me a headache. I was perplexed by a thousandproblems, my own, and those propounded by my companions and elders, andothers suggested in books; and I wondered if Daboll's way was not aneasier and shorter method of answer than the pros and cons of argument. It is interesting now for me to reflect upon the two influencesfollowing each other so closely, that were quickening my own faculties;for they were in direct contrast with each other; one, the animateddebates and attempted logical presentation of a subject with its relatedfacts, as presented at the Worcester Academy; and this new method ofpassive receptivity, this opening of the inner eye of the mind toreceive impressions. It was a long time before I could experiment withany success in this new direction, for I was of an active and impatienttemperament, longing to hurry to an end that I might begin somethingnew, and wishing to arrive rather than to profit by each day's march. AsI grew to maturity, the latter method was more congenial and became ofmore practical use to me, and one of my favorite mottoes has been, "Ourthoughts are a pious reception. "

The winter school being over in the spring, I returned to WorcesterAcademy feeling older and more sobered. I began Latin with a dim idea ofgoing to college, how and when, I did not dare to forecast. I was not ashappy as formerly in the school. The debates, compositions anddeclamations interested me less, and I should have been quite dullexcept for some young girls at the Oread Institute. This institution hadjust been opened on the hill, directly opposite our academy. It was notwithin speaking distance, but was within writing and signallingdistance. All intercourse between the girl students and ourselves wasprohibited. I have frequently noticed this juxtaposition of schools forthe sexes, and also that laws of non-intercourse are enacted for noother purpose than to make their infringement the more tempting anddelightful. My chum knew one of the Oreads, a girl from his own village;with this key we carried the citadel. We established a post office inthe neighboring stone wall and arranged many a clandestine meeting, walkor drive. The girl whom I had chosen for my devotions was from the WhiteMountains of New Hampshire. She wore her hair in long curls, that fellover her neck and shoulders, and were constantly straggling over herface. Then with a toss of her comely head and a pretty gesture of herhand she would throw them back. This little trick captivated me andfixed my fate. She constantly came between me and the Latin declensionsand conjugations that I was trying to memorize. However, I was savedfrom anything like a formal attachment by her early announcement to methat she was engaged to the son of an ex-governor of New Hampshire. Ihad reason to suspect afterward that this was a subterfuge to forestallany serious consequences from our intercourse. If so, she was a wisemaiden, and whatever claims we men may arrogate to ourselves, women arebetter tacticians than we in their personal relations. With thisbarrier, thus timely erected, I was kept on my good behavior and weamused ourselves with each other's company in many a stolen woodlandwalk, and in a frequent defrauding of the Worcester post-office of itsrevenues. She wrote a tiny hand and could crowd more upon a page than Icould upon four. I treasured her notes in my inmost pocket, and oursecret correspondence gave me almost as deep a joy as did ourcompanionship. 

It was at this time I began to make verses, as much from an imitativeinstinct as from my sentimental relation with the pretty Oread; forthere was now in the school a young man who set up for a poet and wasmuch admired by us all. It seems to me he must have had a sense ofmusical rhythm, for there has remained in my ear ever since a stanza ofhis which I caught as he read it to a little coterie of students. Thereis nothing in it save its melody. 

 "The while amid the greenwood Whistled the summer breeze Fair Mantua's maiden swore to wed Her loving Genoese. "

Those two names, Mantua and Genoese, had a wonderful, farawayimaginative association for me, and still have. Matthew Arnold's magicof poetry, magical words and lines, explain all its charm for me. Afeeling beyond the words or the sense is what I require in poetry. Invain did I try to express in rhyme what I felt. The lines halted for thelast word. I never ventured to read them to my Oread or fellow students. Thus I cherished two secrets and discovered that the private indulgenceof verse-making is almost as sweet as a hidden love. The terms of theAcademy and the Oread Institute ended on the same day, and I parted frommy sweetheart never to meet again. 

FARM HAND

What to do with myself during the long summer vacation was the nextquestion. My money was fast wasting in spite of my economies. There wereno country schools open to male teachers in summer. My sister advised meto find employment on a farm. I thought at once of Bellingham, and mydear Uncle Lyman. He did not want help and eventually I hired myself toanother uncle who lived in the extreme southern part of the town, closeupon the boundary of Rhode Island. My wages were to be twelve dollarsper month with board. My uncle's wife was my father's only survivingsister. Their children were married and settled elsewhere. All that wasleft to them was a large farm and old age. The one made them ratherpoorer than richer; the other brought upon them a growing habit ofpenuriousness, gloom and irritability. I was expected to do all theheavy work and most of the chores, except the milking; that, they wouldallow no one to do, for fear of not squeezing out the last drop. My auntstill made butter and cheese to sell, and in this work I usually helpedher the first thing in the morning before the regular day's work. We hadbreakfast at sunrise, often before. After breakfast my uncle went intothe sitting-room where:

 "He waled a portion with judicious care, 'And let us worship God, ' he says, with solemn air. "

I suppose that is what he did, for I could hear the low mumble of hisvoice and occasionally catch a scriptural phrase, but neither my auntnor myself participated in this mockery of family prayers. She said shehad too much to do, and she could not spare me from the cheese tub andthe churn. She scolded her husband for his contributions to the church, and begrudged every cent that was spent. She had Franklin's prudentialmaxims at her tongue's end, besides many another gathered in the courseof her long life of thrift and hard work. She never rested from herlabors until the Sabbath. Our food was of the coarsest kind, but wellcooked, and work and hunger were sauce enough. She baked once a week ina great brick oven; her other daily cooking was done by an open fire. Brown bread and cheese were the staff of our life, and I became morefond of them than of any viands I have since eaten. In vain have Ibesought my household to discover the recipe of my aunt's brown loaves. Who can recover for me the relish that went with them? With this agedcouple I led a lonely yet healthful life. I came nearer to the earththan ever before; I mean her dirt, her stones, her odors and dews aswell as to cows, sheep and horses, whose closer relation to the soilinsensibly affects those who have the care of them. I felt myself abrother to the ox that I yoked and guided along the furrow. My nigh oxcame from the pasture at my call and would lick my hand and stretch outhis neck to be stroked. The whole barnyard was friendly, and I tookpleasure, having none other, in the signs of it. The neighbors were fewand I saw nothing of them. One young man sometimes called, but as hisinterest in me appeared to consist in a desire to save my soul hisvisits distressed me. It was my singular fortune through my childhoodand early youth, to have been followed by soul savers. At last indesperation I told him that I was not sure as yet that I had a soul tosave; when I had, I would consider his propositions. Whereupon he wenthis way and reported that I was a Universalist, that being in Bellinghamthe most opprobrious of names, in consequence of an ancient feud betweenthe Baptist and Universalist churches. The Baptists had come offconquerers; the name, however, remained; and an indefinable name ofreproach is a convenient thing to have in a country neighborhood. 

I have mentioned the penuriousness of my employers. In the case of myuncle it was exhibited in the most extraordinary, amusing, yet harmlessways. He never could pass by an old, bent, used-up nail, bit of string, pin or a straight stick without picking it up and putting it away. Thecollar of his coat and front of his gaudy flannel vest were stuck fullof pointless pins and eyeless needles. The shed opposite the house was amuseum of rubbish, odds and ends of the most worthless articles neatlysorted, tied up in small bundles and hung about the sides of thebuilding. It was a well-developed mania with him, having acquired itthrough his long years of money getting and saving, and in largermatters, which had made him a well-to-do farmer. Although now old, hewas a well-preserved man; there was still a wholesome red spot in hischeek, and a gleam of youth in his eye. His movements were so deliberateand slow that it was impossible that he could ever have worn himself outwith work. He would pause between every hill that he hoed and make someremark, or look up at the sun for the time of the day. He could not mowa straight swath because he was always nicking in and out for some strawleft by other mowers. When he harnessed his aged horse, as reliable asan ox to drive, and not much faster, he would go over and over everybuckle and strap to make sure that all was safe, in the meantime talkingto him in a soothing voice as if he expected every moment that he wouldrun away. If Jim had a strong point it was in standing still. When hesneezed he used to say, "I guess I am good for another day, " and likehis wife he had a ready proverb for everything. Seldom could I catch thewhole of it, for he sputtered in his speech and had a falsetto voice. Itwas evident that he had acquired his property by exceeding thrift, rather than labor, by that ancient all-pervading custom of the NewEngland farmer of doing without and making things last another year. 

I had promised myself to do some studying during the summer, but foundthat the long hours of labor and fatigue at their end unfitted me foranything save rest and sleep. I scarcely opened a book of any kind. Ihad a volume of Macauly's Essays with me in which I read a little on theSabbath. On rainy days I stole away to the hay mow and read one of JanePorter's novels which I found in the house. I attempted to commit tomemory the whole of the Lady of the Lake, but got no farther than thefirst canto, and the songs interspersed through the others. These songsI recited in the field, and they were a great comfort to me. Little dothe poets know in what strange, obscure places, and in what lonely, unknown hearts their verses find lodgment. It is not necessary that oneshould contend that Scott is the greatest of poets, who thought so for asingle summer. 

With thirty dollars in my purse and a blue camlet suit made of a cloak, which had been my father's best outer garment, I returned to WorcesterAcademy. I made a resolution, which I kept, to have no more intimacieswith the Oreads, and to devote myself to study. I still cherished theidea of college, although it seemed as distant as ever. I began to beinterested in public affairs and attended the first convention of theFree Soil party which was held in Worcester. I heard Charles Sumner andCharles Allen speak. Sumner appealed to my sympathies, Allen to myreason. Allen argued, Sumner was eloquent. Most young men in New Englandhad hitherto been admirers of Webster and Clay, and termed themselvesWhigs. The truth was they were called to whatever was eloquence. Theyworshipped the greatness of sounding, patriotic periods. How we admiredKossuth, and immediately paid him the shallow compliment of wearing aKossuth hat. I also thought I was a Whig, much to the sorrow of mymother, whose sympathies were with the Abolitionists. After the FreeSoil convention I was a Free Soiler, and such I continued, casting myfirst vote for John C. Fremont. At this time Worcester was the favoriteplace for every kind of convention of the friends of progress. Anti-slavery, Non-resistance and Women's Rights. I heard all the strangeand strong speakers and advocates on those free and lively platforms. Iheard Garrison, Phillips, May, Quincy, Pillsbury, the Fosters, SojournerTruth, Burleigh, Lucretia Mott, and Ernestine Rose. The last speaker, ahandsome, modishly dressed New York Jewess, converted me to the cause ofwoman. In a short time I was an enthusiastic reformer all along theline. Probably there has been no period in our history so charged withnew and revolutionary ideas as that from 1835 to 1850. It was a goodtime to be alive and to be near the center of agitation inMassachusetts. I heard both church and state and the whole structure ofsociety attacked. Whatever other reform might be under discussion thesewere sure to receive the hardest blows; strike, and spare not, was thewatchword. For me the great event in my personal experience andawakening at this period, was not especially connected with the reformsthat I have named. One small book very much in common with my formerlimited reading and enthusiasms for celebrated men, shook me to thecenter of my being. It was Emerson's Representative Men, recentlypublished. Carelessly looking over the volumes on Mr. Grout's counter inWorcester, I took it up, attracted by its title, for I was alwayshungering for stories of eminent men, always hoping to find the secretof their greatness, that I might use it for my own advancement. I stoodand read a few pages, laid down the book, but felt that I must read itthrough. After some battling between my purse and desire, desire won, and I bought the precious volume at the cost of my breakfast for severalweeks, so slender were my resources. In the course of three or fouryears I added to my library Milton's poems, a volume of Tennyson andthree of Potter's translation of Euripides; the latter, not because Iwanted it, but because I happened to have made the final bid at a bookauction. In Representative Men I found the meat my nature craved. In allprevious histories and biographies that I had read, there was much goinground and about poets and heroes, an external, academic treatment; withEmerson I seemed to come nearer the possible ideal which was alreadyvaguely outlined in my mind. Besides there was much else than Napoleonand Shakespeare in the pages. There were the moral and poetic insights, and, moreover, there was the style, the vital and penetratingEmersonianism, which aroused, and no doubt, dazzled the youthful andimpressionable reader. Emerson's terse epigrammatic method of writingwas congenial to my inability to follow difficult logic. His styleseemed to me the poetical foil of all the prosers of all time. Throughthe reading of this book eventually I became acquainted with Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau. They became my teachers; I followed them until, bytheir guidance, I was enlarged enough to find my own way intocompanionship with those poets and thinkers, who have endured throughthe ages. May I never forget to acknowledge my debt to those men ofConcord, my earliest masters in fidelity to ideals and the inward light. 

CONCLUSION

I began to write these confidences of boyhood for my own pleasure. If Iwere to continue them into manhood I could not find nor distinguishmyself. It would be like emerging suddenly from solitude into a crowd. The bright days of childhood easily separate themselves from all latertime, and are painted with the free pencil of the imagination. I havenow come almost to the wide gateways of the world where I must join theindistinguishable procession and begin to forget myself in its alluringenchantments. 

With the discovery of certain books of ancient history, Plutarch, Euripides and Emerson's Essays there came an unexpected close to mystudent life at the Worcester Academy. Several of my classmates andmyself agreed that we could be better fitted for college at PhillipsAcademy, Andover, than where we were, and accordingly we put ourselvesunder the tuition of Dr. Samuel H. Taylor, at that time the most eminentschool and drill-master in New England. Under him I just escapedbecoming a classical scholar and also nearly lost the chance of everacquiring a love for the classics; for it was drill, paradigms, rules, exceptions, scansion, in short, all that pertains to the externalapparatus of the Greek and Latin tongues. Often we spent two hours oneight lines of Homer. The father of literature became a Procrustean, grammatical bed on which we were to be stretched, and it did nearlyexterminate every one of us. For my own part, I was possessed with anintemperate haste to read Homer straight through as fast as I could; forI felt, without exactly knowing, that there was something in the epic Iwanted, yes, I needed and must have. Checked in this by the rigors ofthe recitation room I lost much of my interest in study, and spent thetime which was supposed to be given to text books in reading all theclassic and English poetry I could find, and in valorous attempts atcomposition, both prose and verse. This I by no means now regret, andrejoice that my tuition escaped the Spartan discipline no less than thepresent pragmatical curricula. 

At length I was fitted for college and admitted to Harvard. Misfortunesculminated at the same moment. I did not remain. I was too ill forstudy, and suddenly the bottom of my perfidious purse dropped out. Bitter was my disappointment. But in another year I began a new careerwhich brought me happiness, new opportunities, new friends and dividendsfrom Utopian investments. Health and hope, my natural inheritance, returned. Boyhood was gone, but not the invincible boy. 

As in the Parable I had traveled far, uncertain of the road. My diet hadbeen mostly husks, but how sweet! Arriving at last at hospitable doors, I could receive without penitence, without tears the welcome longprepared for me. Thenceforth I submitted myself with more patience andtrust to the destiny which had been awaiting me throughout myapprenticeships. My destiny became my choice. 

AVE ATGUE VALE

 I shall not pass this way again; But near by is the town where I was born; I loved it well. 

 And near my heart my mother State; She wreathed her sword with freedom, learning, law When tyrants fell. 

 Three words from Athens held me long; Nothing-too-much, proportion, harmony; By these excel. 

 I never hurried for the goal, But like the tortoise travelled steadily, Sans band, sans bell. 

 Born when the star of Spring arose, Haply my auspices were cast for calm Of wood and dell. 

 Form I admired and sounds and scents; Motion of waters, silences of stars-- Mighty their spell!

 No senate called me from the plow; No hundred thousand readers read my books-- They did not sell. 

 Many the friends when life was new Heaven sent to me, but now, alas, reclaimed; Sound, Muse, their knell. 

 You, who hereafter pass this way, Remember him who made this simple book And say farewell.