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The Baldwin Library
University
Oia
Florida
FISHING ON THE SWIMMING ROCK (page 169)
Being a Boy
by
Charles Dudley
Warner
ete,
Sep
QBYe
With Illustrations
from Photographs
by Clifton Fohnson
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Che Wivergide JBrege, Cambridge
Mdccexevii
COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND CO.
1897, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
1 PAGE
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION . . vii
I. BEING A Boy
Il. THE Boy as A FARMER . ; . . 8
Ill. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING . . eas
IV. No FARMING WITHOUT A Boy . : : 22
V. THE Boy’s SUNDAY ‘i . : . rs 30
VI. THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE Tctcieens 38
VII. FICTION AND SENTIMENT. : . - 47
VIL. THe CoMING oF THANKSGIVING . : 56
IX. THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE . . » 65
X. First EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD . 73
XI. Home INVENTIONS . ‘ 7 ; 5 - 82
XII. THe Lonety FarmM-HousE . : . 92
XIII. Joun’s First PARTY . . . : . Ior
XIV, THE SuGAR CAMP aie Re ave eee LT
XV. THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND . ;: . 123
XVI. Joun’s REVIVAL . . . . enuicas 134
XVII. War . . . . emis . . + 50
XVIII. Country SCENES. . 3 : : : 164
XIX. A ConTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND Boy. 179
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
FISHING ON THE SWIMMING ROCK (see page 169)
Frontispiece.
BEING A Boy. . - . : . : ° : 2
THE FARM OXEN . . . . . . . 4
AT THE PASTURE BARS A . ‘ Shiels 3 8
IN THE CATTLE PASTURE 5 3 : . Io
AFTER A Crow’s NEST 3 : . . ee LO)
A STRING OF SPECKLED TROUT . . . ° 20
WATCHING FOR SUNSET . , a Sie MenieaYottan 2O
RIDING BAREBACK , D . . . ° ° 32
TURNING THE GRINDSTONE Spano se Uen cee eer SO,
SNARING SUCKERS . ° . ° . . ° 44
PICKING UP POTATOES. . 2. « « « «© 48
LEAP-FROG AT RECESS . . e ° ° 50
PouNDING OFF SHUCKS The roe aes maenene eee erat 5O
RUNNING ON THE STONE WALL . . ° ° 74
CoAsTING a arora ane obs TN NG RNS org cee RUSE TALE OD
FINES CHOOL Meseure se salen att oe 88
A REMOTE FARMHOUSE 5 . ° ° ° 2 692
Goinc HoME WITH CYNTHIA. . . ° ° IIo
A YounG SuGAR MaxER ., stators 5 » 18
WATCHING THE KETTLES ° e ° ° . 120
THE VILLAGE FROM THE HILL. : . . + 126
TREEING A WoopcHuCcK. ° . ° . . 132
LooKING FoR Frocs . . ° . 5 «136
TROUT FISHING . ; . . ‘ : . : 140
FORCED TO Go To BED ° s
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SLIPPERY WORK f : i : : 166
RIGGING UP THE Pena Daceen R : , - 168
WATCHING THE FISHES . , My * 170
ENTERING THE OLD BRIDGE 3 3 5 ‘ - 178
THE OLD WATERING TROUGH . : ‘ e 180
THE NEW ENGLAND Boy . . ASS eeaien eee AOA
vi
“PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED
EDITION
Tuis volume was first published over
twenty years ago. If-any of the boys de-
scribed in it were real, they have long since
grown up, got married, gone West, become
selectmen or sheriffs, gone to Congress,
invented an electric churn, become editors
or preachers or commercial travelers, writ-
ten a book, served a term as consul to a
country the language of which they did not
know, or plodded along on a farm, culti-
vating rheumatism and acquiring invalu-
able knowledge of the most fickle weather
known in a region which has all the fasci-
nation and all the power of being disagree-
able belonging to the most accomplished
coquette in the world.
vii
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
The rural life described is that of New
England between 1830 and 1850, in a
period of darkness, before the use of lucifer
matches ; but when, although religion had a
touch of gloom and all pleasure was height-
ened by a timorous apprehension that it
was sin, the sun shone, the woods were full
of pungent scents, nature was strong in its
invitations to cheerfulness, and girls were
as sweet and winsome as they are in the
old ballads.
The object of the papers composing the
volume — though “object†is a strong
word to use about their waywardness —
was to recall scenes in the boy-life of New
England, or the impressions that a boy had
of that life. There was no attempt at the
biography of any particular boy; the expe-
riences given were common to the boyhood
of the time and place. While the book,
therefore, was not consciously biographical,
it was of necessity written out of a personal
viii
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
knowledge. And I may be permitted to
say that, as soon as I became conscious
that I was dealing with a young life of the
past, I tried to be faithful to it, strictly so,
and to import into it nothing of later expe-
rience, either in feeling or performance. I
invented nothing, — not an adventure, not
a scene, not an emotion. I know from
observation how difficult it is for an adult
to write about childhood. Invention is apt
to supply details that memory does not
carry. The knowledge of the man insen-
sibly inflates the boyhood limitations. The
temptation is to make a psychological analy-
sis of the boy’s life and aspirations, and
to interpret them according to the man’s
view of life. It seems comparatively easy
to write stories about boys, and even bio-
graphies ; but it is not easy to resist the
temptation of inventing scenes to make
them interesting, indulging in exaggera-
tions both of adventure and of feeling
ix
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
which: are not true to experience, invent-
ing details impossible to be recalled by
the best memory, and states of mind which
are psychologically untrue to the boy’s con-
sciousness.
How far I succeeded in keeping the man
out of the boy’s life, my readers can judge
better than the writer. The volume origi-
nally made no sensation —how could it,
pitched in such a key?—but it has gone
on peacefully, and, I am glad to acknow-
ledge, has made many valuable friends. It
started a brook, and a brook it has con-
tinued. In sending out this new edition
with Mr. Clifton Johnson’s pictures, lov-
ingly taken from the real life and heart of
New England, I may express the hope
that the boy of the remote generation will
lose no friends.
Cc. D. W.
HARTFORD, May 8, 1897.
x
BEING A BOY
I
BEING A BOY
One of the best things in the world to be
is a boy; it requires no experience, though
it needs some practice to be a good one.
The disadvantage of the position is that it
does not last long enough ; it is soon over;
just as you get used to being a boy, you
have to be something else, with a good deal
more work to do and not half so much fun.
And yet every boy is anxious to be a man,
and is very uneasy with the restrictions that
are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it
is to yoke up the calves and play work, there
is not a boy on a farm but would rather drive
a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glori-
ous feeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for
the first time given the long whip and per-
I
BEING A BOY
mitted to drive the oxen, walking by their
side, swinging the long lash, and shouting
“Gee, Buck!†“Haw, Golden!†“Whoa,
Bright!†and all the rest of that remark-
able language, until he is red in the face,
and all the neighbors for half a mile are
aware that something unusual is going on.
If I were a boy, Iam not sure but I would
rather drive the oxen than have a birthday.
The proudest day of my life was one day
when I rode on the neap of the cart, and
drove the oxen, all alone, with a load of
apples to the cider-mill. I was so little,
that it was a wonder that I didn’t fall off,
and get under the broad wheels. Nothing
could make a boy, who cared anything for
his appearance, feel flatter than to be run
over by the broad tire of a cart-wheel. But
I never heard of one who was, and I don’t
believe one ever will be. As I said, it was
a great day for me, but I don’t remember
that the oxen cared much about it. They
sagged along in their great clumsy way,
switching their tails in my face occasionally,
and now and then giving a lurch to this or
that side of the road, attracted by a choice
2
BEING A BOY
BEING A BOY
tuft of grass. And then I “came the Julius
Czesar†over them, if you will allow me
to use such a slang expression, a liberty
T never should permit you. I don’t know
that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though
he must often have seen the peasants from
the Campagna “haw†and “gee†them
round the Forum (of course in Latin, a lan-
guage that those cattle understood as well
as ours do English) ; but what I mean is,
that I stood up and “hollered†with all my
might, as everybody does with oxen, as if
they were born deaf, and whacked them
with the long lash over the head, just as
the big folks did when they drove. I think
now that it was a cowardly thing to crack
the patient old fellows over the face and
eyes, and make them wink in their meek
manner. If J am ever a boy again on a
farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen, and
not go screaming round the farm like a
crazy man; and I shall not hit them a
cruel cut with the lash every few minutes,
because it looks big to do so and I cannot
think of anything else to do. I never liked
lickings myself, and I don’t know why an
3
BEING A BOY
ox should like them, especially as he cannot
reason about the moral improvement he is
to get out of them.
Speaking of Latin reminds me that I
once taught my cows Latin. I don’t mean
that I taught them to read it, for it is very
difficult to teach a cow to read Latin or any
of the dead languages, — a cow cares more
for her cud than she does for all the classics
put together. But if you begin early you
can teach a cow, or a calf (if you can teach
a calf anything, which I doubt), Latinas
well as English. There were ten cows,
which I had to escort to and from pasture
night and morning. To these cows I gave
the names of the Roman numerals, begin-
ning with Unus and Duo, and going up to
Decem. Decem was of course the biggest
cow of the party, or at least she was the
ruler of the others, and had the place of
honor in the stable and everywhere else.
I admire cows, and especially the exactness
with which they define their social position.
In this case, Decem could “lickâ€â€™ Novem,
and Novem could “lick†Octo, and so on
down to Unus, who could n’t lick anybody,
4
THE FARM OXEN
BEING A BOY
except her own calf. I suppose I ought to
have called the weakest cow Una instead
of Unus, considering her sex; but I didn’t
care much to teach the cows the declen-
sions of adjectives, in which I was not very
well up myself; and besides it would be
of little use to a cow. People who devote
themselves too severely to study of the
classics are apt to become dried up; and
you should never do anything to dry up
a cow. Well, these ten cows knew their
names after a while, at least they appeared
to, and would take their places as I called
them. At least, if Octo attempted to get
before Novem in going through the bars (I
have heard people speak of a “ pair of barsâ€
when there were six or eight of them), or
into the stable, the matter of precedence
was settled then and there, and once settled
there was no dispute about it afterwards.
Novem either put her horns into Octo’s
ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, or
else the two locked horns and tried the
game of push and gore until one gave up.
Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a
party of cows. There is nothing in royal
5
BEING A BOY
courts equal to it; rank is exactly settled,
and the same individuals always have the
precedence. You know that at Windsor
Castle, if the Royal Three-Ply Silver Stick
should happen to get in front of the Most
Royal Double-and- Twisted Golden Rod,
when the court is going in to dinner, some-
thing so dreadful would happen that we
don’t dare to think of it. It is certain that
the soup would get cold while the Golden
Rod was pitching the Silver Stick out of
. the castle window into the moat, and per-
haps the island of Great Britain itself would
split in two. But the people are very care-
ful that it never shall happen, so we shall
probably never know what the effect would
be. Among cows, as I say, the question is
settled in short order, and in a different
manner from what it sometimes is in other
society. It is said that in other society
there is sometimes a great scramble for the
first place, for the leadership as it is called,
and that women, and men too, fight for
what is called position; and in order to be
first they will injure their neighbors by tell-
ing stories about them and by backbiting,
6
BEING A BOY
which is the meanest kind of biting there
is, not excepting the bite of fleas. But in
cow society there is nothing of this detrac-
tion in order to get the first place at the
crib, or the farther stall in the stable. If
the question arises, the cows turn in, horns
and all, and settle it with one square fight,
and that ends it. I have often admired this
trait in cows.
Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the
cows a little poetry, and it is a very good
plan. It does not benefit the cows much,
but it is excellent exercise for a boy farmer.
I used to commit to memory as many short
poems as I could find (the cows liked to
listen to Thanatopsis about as well as any-
thing), and repeat them when I went to the
pasture, and as I drove the cows home
through the sweet ferns and down the rocky
slopes. It improves a boy’s elocution a
great deal more than driving oxen.
It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats
Thanatopsis while he is milking, that opera-
tion acquires a certain dignity.
7
IT
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Boys in general would be very good
farmers if the current notions about farm-
ing were not so very different from those
they entertain. What passes for laziness
is very often an unwillingness to farm in a
particular way. For instance, some morn-
ing in early summer John is told to catch
the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring
wagon, and put in the buffalo and the best
whip, for father is obliged to drive over to the
“Corners, to seeaman’†about some cattle,
or talk with the road commissioner, or go
to the store for the “women folks,†and to
attend to other important business; and
very likely he will not be back till sundown.
It must be very pressing business, for the
old gentleman drives off in this way some-
where almost every pleasant day, and ap-
pears to have a great deal on his mind.
8
AT THE PASTURE BARS
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Meantime, he tells John that he can play
ball after he has done up the chores. As
if the chores could ever be “done up†ona
farm. He is first to clean out the horse-
stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut
down the thistles and weeds from the fence-
corners in the home mowing-lot and along
the road towards the village; to dig up the
docks round the garden patch ; to weed out
the beet-bed ; to hoe the early potatoes ; to
rake the sticks and leaves out of the front
yard; in short, there is work enough laid
out for John to keep him busy, it seems to
him, till he comes of age; and at half an
hour to sundown he is to go for the cows,
and, mind he don’t run ’’em!
“Yes, sir,†says John, “is that all?â€
“Well, if you get through in good sea-
son, you might pick over those potatoes in
the cellar: they are sprouting; they ain’t
fit to eat.â€
John is obliged to his father, for if there
is any sort of chore more cheerful to a boy
than another, on a pleasant day, it is rub-
bing the sprouts off potatoes in a dark
cellar. And the old gentleman mounts his
9
BEING A. BOY
wagon and drives away down the enticing
road, with the dog bounding along beside
the wagon, and refusing to come back at
John’s call.. John half wishes he were the
dog. The dog knows the part of farming
that suits him. He likes to run along the
road and see all the dogs and other people,
and he likes best of all to lie on the store
steps at the Corners — while his master’s
horse is dozing at the post and his master
is talking politics in the store —with the
other dogs of his acquaintance, snapping
at mutually annoying flies and indulging
in that delightful dog gossip which is ex-
pressed by a wag of the tail and a sniff of
the nose. Nobody knows how many dogs’
characters are destroyed in this gossip; or
how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion
by a wag of the tail asa man can by a shrug
of the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a
man can suggest one by raising his eye-
brows.
John looks after the old gentleman driv-
ing off in state, with the odorous buffalo-
robe and the new whip, and he thinks that
is the sort of farming he would like to
Io
IN THE CATTLE PASTURE
THE BOY AS A FARMER
do. And he cries after his departing par-
ent, —
“ Say, father, can’t I go over to the farther
pasture and salt the cattle?†John knows
that he could spend half a day very pleas-
antly in going over to that pasture, looking
for bird’s-nests and shying at red squirrels
on the way, and who knows but he might
“see†a sucker in the meadow brook, and
perhaps get a “jab†at him with a sharp
stick, He knows a hole where there is a
whopper; and one of his plans in life is to
go some day and snare him, and bring him
home in triumph. It therefore is strongly
impressed upon his mind that the cattle
want salting. But his father, without turn-
ing his head, replies, —
“No, they don’t need salting any more’n
you do!†And the old equipage goes rat-
tling down the road, and John whistles his
disappointment. When I was a boy on a
farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were
never salted half enough.
John goes to his chores, and gets through
the stable as soon as he can, for that must
be done; but when it comes to the out-
II
BEING A BOY
door work, that rather drags. There are
so many things to distract the attention, —
a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near
tree, and a hen-hawk circling high in the air
over the barn-yard. John loses a little time
in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes
the sport, and in watching the bird to find
where its nest is; and he convinces him-
self that he ought to watch the hawk, lest
it pounce upon the chickens, and, there-
fore, with an easy conscience, he spends fif-
teen minutes in hallooing to that distant
bird, and follows it away out of sight over
the woods, and then wishes it would come
back again. And then a carriage with
two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes
along the road; and there is a girl in the
carriage who looks out at John, who is sud-
denly aware that his trousers are patched
on each knee and in two places behind ;
and he wonders if she is rich, and whose
name is on the trunk, and how much the
horses cost, and whether that nice-looking
man is the girl’s father, and if that boy on
the seat with the driver is her brother, and
if he has to do chores ; and as the gay sight
12
THE BOY AS A FARMER
disappears John falls to thinking about the
great world beyond the farm, of cities, and
people who are always dressed up, and a
great many other things of which he has a
very dim notion. And then a boy, whom
John knows, rides by in a wagon with his
father, and the boy makes a face at John,
and John returns the greeting with a twist
of his own visage and some symbolic ges-
tures. All these things take time. The
work of cutting down the big weeds gets on
slowly, although it is not very disagreeable,
or would not be if it were play. John im-
agines that yonder big thistle is some whis-
kered villain, of whom he has read in a fairy
book, and he advances on him with “ Die,
ruffian!’’ and slashes off his head with the
bill-hook ; or he charges upon the rows of
mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regi-
mental ranks, and hews them down without °
mercy. What fun it might be if there were
only another boy there to help. But even
war, single-handed, gets to be tiresome.
It is dinner-time before John finishes the
weeds, and it is cow-time before John has
made much impression on the garden,
13
BEING A BOY
This garden John has no fondness for.
He would rather hoe corn all day than work
init. Father seems to think that it is easy
work that John can do, because it is near
the house! John’s continual plan in this
life is to go fishing. When there comes a
rainy day, he attempts to carry it out. But
ten chances to one his father has different
views. As it rains so that work cannot be
done outdoors, it is a good time to work in
the garden. He can run into the house
during the heavy showers. John accord-
ingly detests the garden; and the only
time he works briskly in it is when he has a
stent set, to do so much weeding before the
Fourth of July. If he is spry he can make
an extra holiday the Fourth and the day
after. Two days of gunpowder and _ball-
playing! When I was a boy, I supposed
there was some connection between such
and such an amount of work done on the
farm and our national freedom. I doubted
if there could be any Fourth of July if my
stent was not done. JI, at least, worked for
my Independence.
14
III
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
THERE are so many bright spots in the
life of a farm-boy, that I sometimes think
I should like to live the life over again ;
I should almost be willing to be a girl if it
were not for the chores. There is a great
comfort to a boy in the amount of work
he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes
astonishing how slow he can go on an
errand, he who leads the school in a race.
The world is new and interesting to him,
and there is so much to take his attention
off, when he is sent to do anything. Per-
haps he couldn’t explain, himself, why,
when he is sent to the neighbor’s after
yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is
not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he
can hit em. No other living thing can go
so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His
legs seem to be lead, unless he happens to
15
BEING A BOY
espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when
he gives chase to it like a deer; and it is
a curious fact about boys, that two will be
a great deal slower in doing anything than
one, and that the more you have to help on
a piece of work the less is accomplished.
Boys have a great power of helping each
other to do nothing ; and they are so inno-
cent about it, and unconscious. ‘I went
as quick as ever I could,†says the boy:
his father asks him why he didn’t stay all
night, when he has been absent three hours
‘on aten-minute errand. The sarcasm has
no effect on the boy.
Going after the cows was a serious thing
in my day. I had to climb a hill, which was
covered with wild strawberries in the sea-
son. Could any boy pass by those ripe ber-
ries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture
there were beds of wintergreen with red
berries, tufts of columbine, roots of sassa-
fras to be dug, and dozens of things good
to eat or to smell, that I could not resist.
It sometimes even lay in my way to climb
a tree to look for a crow’s nest, or to swing
in the top, and to try if I could see the
16
AFTER A CROW’S NEST
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
steeple of the village church. It became
very important sometimes for me to see
that steeple; and in the midst of my inves-
tigations the tin horn would blow a great
blast from the farmhouse, which would
send a cold chill down my back in the hot-
test days. I knew what it meant. It had
a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at
all like the sweet note that called us to din-
ner from the hayfield. It said, “Why on
earth doesn’t that boy come home? It is
almost dark, and the cows ain’t milked!â€
And that was the time the cows had to
start into a brisk pace and make up for
lost time. I wonder if any boy ever drove
the cows home late, who did not say that
the cows were at the very farther end of the
pasture, and that “ Old Brindle†was hidden
in the woods, and he could n’t find her for
ever so long! The brindle cow is the boy’s
scapegoat, many a time.
No other boy knows how to appreciate a
holiday as the farm-boy does ; and his best
ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing
is of course one sort. The excitement of
rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and
17
BEING A BOY
the anticipation of great luck, — these are
pure pleasures, enjoyed because they are
rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any time
care but little for it. Tramping all day
through bush and brier, fighting flies and
mosquitoes, and branches that tangle the
line, and snags that break the hook, and re-
turning home late and hungry, with wet feet
and a string of speckled trout on a willow
twig, and having the family crowd out at
the kitchen door to look at ’em, and say,
“Pretty well done for you, bub; did you
catch that big one yourself ?’’ — this is also
pure happiness, the like of which the boy
will never have again, not if he comes to be
selectman and deacon and to “keep store.â€
But the holidays I recall with delight
were the two days in spring and fall, when
we went to the distant pasture-land, in a
neighboring town, may be, to drive thither
the young cattle and colts, and to bring
them back again. It was a wild and rocky
upland where our great pasture was, many
miles from home, the road to it running by
a brawling river, and up a dashing brook-
side among great hills. What a day’s ad-
18
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
venture it was! It was like a journey to
Europe. The night before, I could scarcely
sleep for thinking of it, and there was no
trouble about getting me up at sunrise that
morning. The breakfast was eaten, the
luncheon was packed in a large basket, with
bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel,
which packing I superintended with the
greatest interest; and then the cattle were
to be collected for the march, and. the
horses hitched up. Did I shirk any duty?
Was I slow? I think not. I was willing
to run my legs off after the frisky steers,
who seemed to have an idea they were go-
ing on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing
into all gates, and through all bars except
the right ones; and how cheerfully I did
yell at them; it was a glorious chance to
“holler,†and I have never since heard any
public speaker on the stump or at camp-
meeting who could make more noise. I
have often thought it fortunate that the
amount of noise in a boy does not increase
in proportion to his size; if it te the world
could not contain it.
The whole day was full of excitement
19
BEING A BOY
and of freedom. We were away from the
farm, which to a boy is one of the best
parts of farming; we saw other farms and
other people at work; I had the pleasure
of marching along, arid swinging my whip,
past boys whom I knew, who were picking
up stones. Every turn of the road, every
bend and rapid of the river, the great
boulders by the wayside, the watering-
troughs, the giant pine that had been
struck by lightning, the mysterious covered
bridge over the river where it was most
swift and rocky and foamy, the chance eagle
in the blue sky, the sense of going some-
where, — why, as I recall all these things
I feel that even the Prince Imperial, as he
used to dash on horseback through the
Bois de Boulogne, with fifty mounted hus-
sars clattering at his heels, and crowds of
people cheering, could not have been as
happy as was I, a boy in short jacket and
shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust
that day behind the steers and colts, crack-
ing my black-stock whip.
I wish the journey would never end; but
at last, by noon, we reach the pastures and
20
A STRING OF SPECKLED TROUT
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
turn in the herd; and, after making the tour
of the lots to make sure there are no breaks
in the fences, we take our luncheon from
the wagon and eat it under the trees by the
spring. This is the supreme moment of the
day. This is the way to live; this is like
the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the rest
of my delightful acquaintances in romance.
Baked beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist,
remember), doughnuts and cheese, pie, and
root beer. What richness! You may live
to dine at Delmonico’s, or, if those French-
men do not eat each other up, at Philippe’s,
in the Rue Montorgueil in Paris, where the
dear old Thackeray used to eat as good a
dinner as anybody; but you will get there
neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer,
nor anything so good as that luncheon at
noon in the old pasture, high among the
Massachusetts hills! Nor will you ever,
if you live to be the oldest boy in the world,
have any holiday equal to the one I have
described. But I always regretted that I
did not take along a fish-line, just to “throw
in†the brook we passed. I know there
were trout there.
21
IV
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
Say what you will about the general use-
fulness of boys, it is my impression that a
farm without a boy would very soon come
to grief. What the boy does is the life
of the farm. He is the factotum, always
in demand, always expected to do the
thousand indispensable things that nobody
else will do. Upon him fall all the odds
and ends, the most difficult things. After
everybody else is through, he has to finish
up. His work is like a woman’s, — perpet-
ual waiting on others. Everybody knows
how much easier it is to eat a good dinner
than it is to wash the dishes afterwards.
Consider what a boy on a farm is required
to do; things that must be done, or life
would actually stop.
It is understood, in the first place, that
he is to do all the errands, to go to the
22
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
store, to the post-office, and to carry all
sorts of messages. If he had as many legs
as a centipede, they would tire before night.
His two short limbs seem to him entirely
inadequate to the task. He would like to
have as many legs as a wheel has spokes,
and rotate about in the same way. This
he sometimes tries to do; and people who
have seen him “turning cart-wheels†along
the side of the road have supposed that he
was amusing himself, and idling his time;
he was only trying to invent a new mode of
locomotion, so that he could economize his
legs and do his errands with greater dis-
patch. He practices standing on his head,
in order to accustom himself to any posi-
tion. lLeap-frog is one of his methods of
getting over the ground quickly. He would
willingly go an errand any distance if he
could leap-frog it with a few other boys.
He has a natural genius for combining
pleasure with business. This is the reason
why, when he is sent to the spring for a
pitcher of water, and the family are waiting
at the dinner-table, he is absent so long;
for he stops to poke the frog that sits on
23
BEING A BOY
the stone, or, if there is a penstock, to put
his hand over the spout and squirt the
water a little while. He is the one who
spreads the grass when the men have cut
it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides
the horse to cultivate the corn, up and
down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the
potatoes when they are dug; he drives the
cows night and morning; he brings wood
and water and splits kindling ; he gets up
the horse and puts out the horse; whether
he is in the house or out of it, there is al-
ways something for him to do. Just before
school in winter he shovels paths ; in sum-
mer he turns the grindstone. He knows
where there are lots of wintergreen and
sweet flag root, but instead of going for
them he is to stay indoors and pare apples
and stone raisins and pound something in
a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of
schemes of what he would like to do, and
his hands full of occupations, he is an idle
boy who has nothing to busy himself with
but school and chores! He would gladly
do all the work if somebody else would do
the chores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if
24
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
any boy ever amounted to anything in the
world, or was of much use as a man, who
did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal
education in the way of chores.
A boy ona farm is nothing without his
pets ; at least a dog, and probably rabbits,
chickens, ducks, and guinea hens. A guinea
hen suits a boy. It is entirely useless, and
makes a more disagreeable noise than a
Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young
fox which a neighbor had caught. It isa
mistake to suppose the fox cannot be tamed.
Jacko was a very clever little animal, and
behaved, in all respects, with propriety. He
kept Sunday as well as any day, and all the
ten commandments that he could under-
stand. He was a very graceful playfellow,
and seemed to have an affection for me.
He lived in a woodpile, in the dooryard,
and when I lay down at the entrance to
his house and called him, he would come
out and sit on his tail and lick my face just
like a grown person. I taught him a great
many tricks and all the virtues. That year
I had a large number of hens, and Jacko
went about among them with the most per-
25
BEING A BOY
fect indifference, never looking on them to
lust after them, as I could see, and never
touching an egg or a feather. So excellent
was his reputation that I would have trusted
him in the hen-roost in the dark without
counting the hens. In short, he was do-
mesticated, and I was fond of him and very
proud of him, exhibiting him to all our vis-
itors as an example of what affectionate
treatment would do in subduing the brute
instincts. I preferred him to my dog,
whom I had, with much patience, taught to
go up a long hill alone and surround the
cows, and drive them home from the re
mote pasture. He liked the fun of it at
first, but by and by he seemed to get the
notion that it was a “chore,†and when I
whistled for him to go for the cows, he
would turn tail and run the other way, and
the more I whistled and threw stones at
him the faster he would run. His name
was Turk, and I should have sold him if he
had not been the kind of dog that nobody
will buy. I suppose he was not a cow-dog,
but what they call a sheep-dog. At least,
when he got big enough, he used to get
26
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
into the pasture and chase the sheep to
death. That was the way he got into trou-
ble, and lost his valuable life. A dog is of
great use on a farm, and that is the reason
a boy likes him. He is good to bite ped-
lers and small children, and run out and
yelp at wagons that pass by, and to howl
all night when the moon shines. And yet,
if I were a boy again, the first thing I
would have should be a dog; for dogs are
great companions, and as active and spry
as a boy at doing nothing. They are also
good to bark at woodchuck holes.
A good dog will bark at a woodchuck
hole long after the animal has retired to a
remote part of his residence, and escaped
by another hole. This deceives the wood-
chuck. Some of the most delightful hours
of my life have been spent in hiding and
watching the hole where the dog was not.
What an exquisite thrill ran through my
frame when the timid nose appeared, was
withdrawn, poked out again, and finally fol-
lowed by the entire animal, who looked cau-
tiously about, and then hopped away to feed
on the clover. At that moment I rushed
27
BEING A BOY |
in, occupied the “home base,†yelled to
Turk and then danced with delight at the
combat between the spunky woodchuck and
the dog. They were about the same size,
but science and civilization won the day. I
did not reflect then that it would have been
more in the interest of civilization if the
woodchuck had killed the dog. -I do not
know why it is that boys so like to hunt
and kill animals; but the excuse that I
gave in this case for the murder was, that
the woodchuck ate the clover and trod it
down; and, in fact, was a woodchuck. | It
was not till long after that I learned with
surprise that he is a rodent mammal, of the
species Avctomys monax, is called at the
West a ground-hog, and is eaten by peo-
ple of color with great relish.
But I have forgotten my beautiful fox.
Jacko continued to deport himself well until
the young chickens came; he was actually
cured of the fox vice of chicken-stealing.
He used:to go with me about the coops,
pricking up his ears in an intelligent man-
ner, and with a demure eye and the most
virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox!
28
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
If he had held out a little while longer, I
should have put him into a Sunday-school
book. But I began to miss chickens. They
disappeared mysteriously in the night. I
would not suspect Jacko at first, for he
looked so honest, and in the daytime he
seemed to be as much interested in the
chickens as I was. But one morning, when
I went to call him, I found feathers at the
entrance of his hole, —chicken feathers.
He couldn’t deny it. He was a thief.
His fox nature had come out under severe
temptation. And he died an unnatural
death. He had a thousand virtues and one
crime. But that crime struck at the foun-
dation of society. He deceived and stole ;
he was a liar and a thief, and no pretty
ways could hide the fact. His intelligent,
bright face couldn’t save him. If he had
been honest, he might have grown up to be
a large, ornamental fox.
29
V
THE BOY'S SUNDAY
Sunpay in the New England hill towns
used to begin Saturday night at sundown ;
and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills
there before it has set by the almanac. I
remember that we used to go by the alma-
nac Saturday night and by the visible dis-
appearance Sunday night. On Saturday
night we very slowly yielded to the influ-
ences of the holy time, which were settling
down upon us, and submitted to the ablu-
tions which were as inevitable as Sunday ;
but when the sun (and it never moved so
slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night,
the effect upon the watching boy was like a
shock from a galvanic battery ; something
flashed through all his limbs and set them
in motion, and no “play†ever seemed so
sweet to him as that between sundown
and dark Sunday night. This, however,
30
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
was on the supposition that he had con-
scientiously kept Sunday, and had not gone
in swimming and got drowned. This keep-
ing of Saturday night instead of Sunday
night we did not very well understand ;
but it seemed, on the whole, a good thing
that we should rest Saturday night when
we were tired, and play Sunday night when
we were rested. I supposed, however, that
it was an arrangement made to suit the
big boys who wanted to go “courting†Sun-
day night. Certainly they were not to
be blamed, for Sunday was the day when
pretty girls were most fascinating, and I
have never since seen any so lovely as those
who used to sit in the gallery and in the
singers’ seats in the bare old meeting-
houses.
Sunday to the country farmer-boy was
hardly the relief that it was to the other
members of the family; for the same
chores must be done that day as on others,
and he could not divert his mind with whis-
tling, hand-springs, or sending the dog into
the river after sticks. He had to submit,
in the first place, to the restraint of shoes
31
BEING A BOY
and stockings. He read in the Old Testa-
ment that when Moses came to holy ground
he put off his shoes; but the boy was
obliged to put his on, upon the holy day,
not only to go to meeting, but while he sat
at home. Only the emancipated country-
boy, who is as agile on his bare feet as a
young kid, and rejoices in the pressure of
the warm soft earth, knows what a hard-
ship it is to tie on stiff shoes. The monks
who put peas in their shoes as a penance
do not suffer more than the country-boy in
his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the
celerity with which he used to kick them off
at sundown.
Sunday morning was not an idle one for
the farmer-boy. He must rise tolerably
early, for the cows were to be milked and
driven to pasture; family prayers were a
little longer than on other days ; there were
the Sunday-school verses to be re-learned,
for they did not stay in mind over night;
perhaps the wagon was to be greased before
the neighbors began to drive by; and the
horse was to be caught out of the pasture,
ridden home bareback, and _ harnessed.
32
RIDING BAREBACK
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
This catching the horse, perhaps two of
them, was very good fun usually, and would
have broken the Sunday if the horse had
not been wanted for taking the family to
meeting. It was so peaceful and still in the
pasture on Sunday morning ; but the horses
were never so playful, the colts never so
frisky. Round and round the lot the boy
went, calling, in an entreating Sunday
voice, “Jock, jock, jock, jock,†and shaking
his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads
erect, and shaking tails and flashing heels,
dashed from corner to corner, and gave the
boy a pretty good race before he could coax
the nose of one of them into his dish. The
boy got angry, and came very near saying
“dum it,’ but he rather enjoyed the fun,
after all.
The boy remembers how his mother’s
anxiety was divided between the set of his
turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and
his memory of the Sunday-school verses ;
and what a wild confusion there was
through the house in getting off for meet-
ing, and how he was kept running hither
and thither, to get the hymn-book, or a
33
BEING A BOY
palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, or to pick
from the Sunday part of the garden the
bunch of caraway seed. Already the dea-
con’s mare, with a wagon load of the dea-
con’s folks, had gone shambling past, head
and tail drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up
clouds of dust, while the good deacon sat
jerking the reins in an automatic way, and
the “women-folks†patiently saw the dust
settle upon their best summer finery.
Wagon after wagon went along the sandy
road, and when our boy’s family started,
they became part of a long procession,
which sent up a mile of dust and a pun-
gent if not pious smell of buffalo -robes.
There were fiery horses in the train which
had to be held in, for it was neither eti-
quette nor decent to pass anybody on Sun-
day. It was a great delight to the farmer-
boy to see all this procession of horses, and
to exchange sly winks with the other boys,
who leaned over the wagon-seats for that
purpose. Occasionally a boy rode behind,
with his back to the family, and his panto-
mime was always something wonderfulto see, *
and was considered very daring and wicked.
34
THE BOY’S SUNDAY ~
The meeting-house which our boy re-
members was a high, square building, with-
out a steeple. Within, it had a lofty pul-
pit, with doors underneath and closets
where sacred things were kept, and where
the tithing-men were supposed to imprison
bad boys. The pews were square, with
seats facing each other, those on one side
low for the children, and all with hinges, so
that they could be raised when the congre-
gation stood up for prayers and leaned over
the backs of the pews, as horses meet each
other across a pasture fence. After prayers
these seats used to be slammed down with
a long-continued clatter, which seemed to
the boys about the best part of the exer-
cises. The galleries were very high, and
the singers’ seats, where the pretty girls
sat, were the most conspicuous of all. To
sit in the gallery, away from the family, was
a privilege not often granted to the boy.
The tithing-man, who carried a long rod
and kept order in the house, and outdoors
at noontime, sat in the gallery, and visited
any boy who whispered or found curious
passages in the Bible and showed them
35
BEING A BOY
to another boy. It was an awful moment
when the bushy-headed tithing-man ap-
proached a boy in sermon-time. The eyes
of the whole congregation were on him,
and he could feel the guilt ooze out of his
burning face. °
At noon was Sunday-school, and after
that, before the afternoon service, in sum-
mer, the boys had a little time to eat their
luncheon together at the watering-trough,
where some of the elders were likely to be
gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle;
“or they went over to a neighboring barn
to see the calves; or they slipped off down
the roadside to a place where they could
dig sassafras or the root of the sweet flag,
— roots very fragrant in the mind of many
a boy with religious associations to this day.
There was often an odor of sassafras in the
afternoon service. It used to stand in my
mind as a substitute for the Old Testament
incense of the Jews. Something in the
same way the big bass-viol in the choir
took the place of “ David’s harp of solemn
sound.â€
The going home from meeting was more
36
NDSTONE
Oo
(a)
is
a
o
Z
5
Zz
5
H
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
cheerful and lively than the coming to it.
There was all the bustle of getting the
horses out of the sheds and bringing them
round to the meeting-house steps. At noon
the boys sometimes sat in the wagons and
swung the whips without cracking them:
now it was permitted to give them a little
snap in order to bring the horses up in good
style; and the boy was rather proud of the
horse if it pranced a little while the timid
“women-folks†were trying to get in. The
boy had an eye for whatever life and stir
there was ina New England Sunday. He
liked to drive home fast. The old house
and the farm looked pleasant to him.
There was an extra dinner when they
reached home, and a cheerful conscious-
ness of duty performed made it a pleasant
dinner. Long before sundown the Sunday-
school book had been read, and the boy sat
waiting in the house with great impatience
the signal that the “day of rest†was over.
A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not
see the need of “rest.†Neither his idea of
rest nor work is that of older farmers.
37
VI
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
IF there is one thing more than another
that hardens the lot of the farmer-boy it
is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to
grind scythes is one of those heroic but un-
obtrusive occupations for which one gets no
credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and,
however faithfully the crank is turned, it is
one that brings little reputation. There isa
great deal of poetry about haying —I mean
for those not engaged in it. One likes to
hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh
morning and the response of the noisy
bobolink, who always sits upon the fence
and superintends the cutting of the dew-
laden grass. There is a sort of music in
the “swish†and a rhythm in the swing of
the scythes in concert. The boy has not
much time to attend to it, for it is lively
business “spreading†after half a dozen
38
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
men who have only to walk along and lay
the grass low, while the boy has the whole
hayfield on his hands. He has little time
for the poetry of haying, as he struggles
along, fillmg the air with the wet mass
which he shakes over his head, and picking
his way with short legs and bare feet amid
the short and freshly cut stubble.
But if the scythes cut well and swing
merrily it is due to the boy who turned the
grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just
turn the grindstone a few minutes for this
and that one before breakfast ; any “hired
man†was authorized to order the boy to
turn the grindstone. How they did bear on,
those great strapping fellows! Turn, turn,
turn, what a weary go it was. For my
part, I used to like a grindstone that “ wab-
bled†a good deal on its axis, for when I
turned it fast, it put the grinder on a lively
lookout for cutting his hands, and entirely
satisfied his desire that I should “turn
faster.†It was some sport to make the water
fly and wet the grinder, suddenly starting
up quickly and surprising him when I was
turning very slowly. I used to wish some-
39
BEING A BOY
times that I could turn fast enough to make
the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Steady
turning is what the grinders like, and any
boy who turns steadily, so as to give an
even motion to the stone, will be much
praised, and will be in demand. I advise
any boy who desires to do this sort of work
to turn steadily. If he does it by jerks and
in a fitful manner, the “hired menâ€â€™ will be
very apt to dispense with his services and
turn the grindstone for each other.
This is one of the most disagreeable tasks
of the boy farmer, and, hard as it is, I do
not know why it is supposed to belong es-
pecially to childhood. But it is, and one
of the certain marks that second childhood
has come to a man on a farm is that he is
asked to turn the grindstone as if he were
a boy again. When the old man is good for
nothing else, when he can neither mow nor
pitch, and scarcely “rake after,†he can
turn grindstone, and it is in this way that
he renews his youth. ‘“Ain’t you ashamed
to have your granther turn the grind-
stone?†asks the hired man of the boy. So
the boy takes hold and turns himself, till
4o
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
his little back aches. When he gets older
he wishes he had replied, “Ain’t you
ashamed to make either an old man or a
little boy do such hard grinding work?â€
Doing the regular work of this world is
not much, the boy thinks, but the wearisome
part is the waiting on the people who do
the work. And the boy is not far wrong.
This is what women and boys have to do
on a farm,—wait upon everybody who
“works.†The trouble with the boy’s life
is that he has no time that he can call his
own. He is, like a barrel of beer, always on
draught. The men-folks, having worked in
the regular hours, lie down and rest, stretch
themselves idly in the shade at noon, or
lounge about after supper. Then the boy,
who has done nothing all day but turn
grindstone, and spread hay, and rake after,
and run his little legs off at everybody’s
beck and call, is sent on some errand or
some household chore, in order that time
shall not hang heavy on his hands. The
boy comes nearer to perpetual motion than
anything else in nature, only it is not alto-
gether a voluntary motion. The time that
4l
BEING A BOY
the farm-boy gets for his own is usually at
the end of a stent. We used to be given
a certain piece of corn to hoe, or a certain
quantity of corn to husk in so many days.
If we finished the task before the time set,
we had the remainder to ourselves. In my
day it used to take very sharp work to gain
anything, but we were always anxious to
take the chance. I think we enjoyed the
holiday in anticipation quite as much as we
did when we had won it. Unless it was
training-day, or Fourth of July, or the cir-
cus was coming, it was a little difficult to
find anything big enough to fill our antici-
pations of the fun we would have in the
day or the two or three days we had earned.
We did not want to waste the time on any
common thing. Even going fishing in one
of the wild mountain brooks was hardly up
to the mark, for we could sometimes do
that on a rainy day. Going down to the
village store was not very exciting, and
was on the whole a waste of our precious
time. Unless we could get out our mili-
tary company, life was apt to be a little
blank, even on the holidays for which we
42
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
had worked so hard. If you went to see
another boy, he was probably at work in
the hayfield or the potato-patch, and his
father looked at you askance. You some-
times took hold and helped him, so that
he could go and play with you; but it was
usually time to go for the cows before the
task was done. There has been a change,
but the amusements of a boy in the coun-
try were few then. Snaring “suckers†out
of the deep meadow brook used to be about
as good as any that I had. The North
American sucker is not an engaging animal
in all respects; his body is comely enough,
but his mouth is puckered up like that of a
purse. The mouth is not formed for the
gentle angle-worm nor the delusive fly of
the fishermen. It is necessary therefore to
snare the fish if you want him. In the
sunny days he lies in the deep pools, by
some big stone or near the bank, poising
himself quite still, or only stirring his fins
a little now and then, as an elephant moves
his ears. He will lie so for hours, — or
rather float, —in perfect idleness and ap-
parent bliss,
43
BEING A BOY
The boy who also has a holiday, but can-
not keep still, comes along and peeps over
the bank. “Golly, ain’t hea big one!†Per-
. haps he is eighteen inches long, and weighs
two or three pounds. He lies there among
his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a
school of them, perhaps a district school,
that only keeps in warm days in the summer.
The pupils seem to have little to learn, ex-
cept to balance themselves and to turn
gracefully with a flirt of the tail, Not much
is taught but “deportment,†and some of
the old suckers are perfect Turveydrops in
that. The boy is armed with a pole and a
stout line, and on the end of it a brass wire
bent into a hoop, which is a slipnoose, and
slides together when anything is caught in
it. The boy approaches the bank and looks
over. There he lies, calm as a whale.
The boy devours him with his eyes. He is
almost too much excited to drop the snare
into the water without making a noise. A
puff of wind comes and ruffles the surface,
so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm
again, and there he still is, moving his fins
in peaceful security. The boy lowers his
44
SNARING SUCKERS
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
snare behind the fish and slips it along.
He intends to get it around him just back
of the gills and then elevate him with a
sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation,
for the snare will turn a little, and if it
hits the fish he is off. However, it goes
well, the wire is almost in place, when sud-
denly the fish, as if he had a warning in a
dream, for he appears to see nothing, moves
his tail just a little, glides out of the loop,
and, with no seeming appearance of frus-
trating any one’s plans, lounges over to the
other side of the pool; and there he re-
poses just as if he was not spoiling the
boy’s holiday.
This slight change of base on the part of
the fish requires the boy to reorganize his
whole campaign, get a new position on the
bank, a new line of approach, and patiently
wait for the wind and sun before he can
lower his line. This time, cunning and pa-
tience are rewarded. The hoop encircles
the unsuspecting fish, The boy’s eyes
almost start from his head as he gives a tre-
mendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight
that he has got him fast. Out he comes,
45
BEING A BOY
up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to
look at him. In this transaction, however,
no one can be more surprised than the
sucker.
46
VII
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
Tue boy farmer does not appreciate
school vacations as highly as his city cousin.
When school keeps he has only to “do
chores and go to school,’ — but between
terms there are a thousand things on the
farm that have been left for the boy to do.
Picking up stones in the pastures and piling
them in heaps used to be one of them.
Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else
the sun every year drew them to the sur-
face, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out
of the soft garden soil; it is certain that
there were fields that always gave the boys
this sort of fall work. And very lively
work it was on frosty mornings for the
barefooted boys, who were continually turn-
ing up the larger stones in order to stand
for a moment in the warm place that had
been covered from the frost. A boy can
47
BEING A BOY
stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork;
and the boy who found a warm spot for the
sole of his foot was likely to stand in it
until the words, “Come, stir your stumps,â€
broke in discordantly upon his meditations.
For the boy is very much given to medita-
tions. If he had his way he would do no-
thing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think
about things, and enjoy his work as he goes
along.. He picks up potatoes as if each one
was a lump of. gold just turned out of the
dirt, and requiring careful examination.
Although the country boy feels a little
joy when school breaks up (as he does
when anything breaks up, or any change
takes place), since he is released from the
discipline and restraint of it, yet the school
is his opening into the world, —his ro-
mance. Its opportunities for enjoyment are
numberless. He does not exactly know
what. he is set at books for; he takes spell-
ing rather as.an exercise for his lungs,
standing up and shouting out the words
with entire recklessness of consequences ;
he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and
geography as something that must be
48
PICKING UP POTATOES
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
cleared out of his way before recess, but
not at all with the zest he would dig a
woodchuck out of his hole. But recess!
Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that
with which a boy rushes out of the school-
house door for the ten minutes of recess?
He is like to burst with animal spirits; he
runs like a deer; he can nearly fly; and
he throws himself into play with entire self-
forgetfulness, and an energy that would
overturn the world if his strength were pro-
portioned to it. For ten minutes the world
is absolutely his; the weights are taken
off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own
master for that brief time, as he never
again will be if he lives to be as old as the
king of Thule, and nobody knows how old
he was. And there is the nooning, a solid
hour, in which vast projects can be carried
out which have been slyly matured during
the school-hours; expeditions are under-
taken, wars are begun between the Indians
on one side and the settlers on the other,
the military company is drilled (without
uniforms or arms), or games are carried on
which involve miles of running, and an
49
BEING A BOY
expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the
spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
Friendships are formed, too, which are
fervent if not enduring, and enmities con-
tracted which are frequently “taken outâ€
on the spot, after a rough fashion boys
have of settling as they go along; cases of
long ‘credit, either in words or trade, are
not frequent with boys ; boot on jack-knives
must be paid on the nail; and it is consid-
ered much more honorable to out with a
personal grievance at once, even if the ex-
planation is. made with the fists, than to
pretend fair, and then take a sneaking re-
venge on some concealed opportunity. The
country boy at the district school is intro-
duced into a wider world than he knew at
home, in many ways. Some big boy brings
to school a copy of the Arabian Nights, a
dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, and
the last leaves missing, which is passed
around, and slyly read under the desk, and
perhaps comes to the little boy whose par-
ents disapprove of novel-reading, and have
no work of fiction in the house except a
pious fraud called “Six Months in a Con-
50
LEAP FROG AT RECESS
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
vent,†and the latest comic almanac. The
boy’s eyes dilate as he steals some of the
treasures out of the wondrous pages, and
he longs to lose himself in the land of
enchantment open before him. He tells
at home that he has seen the most wonder-
ful book that ever was, and a big boy has
promised to lend it to him. “Is it a true
book, John?†asks the grandmother ; “be-
cause if it isn’t true, it is the worst thing
that a boy can read.†(This happened
years ago.) John cannot answer as to the
truth of the book, and so does not bring it
home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and
conceals it in the barn, and lying in the
hay-mow is lost in its enchantments many
an odd hour when he is supposed to be
doing chores. There were no chores in
the Arabian Nights; the boy there had but
to rub the ring and summon a genius, who
would feed the calves and pick up chips
and bring in wood in a minute. It was
through this emblazoned portal that the
boy walked into the world of books, which
he soon found was larger than his own, and
filled with people he longed to know.
51
BEING A BOY
And the farmer-boy is not without his
sentiment and his secrets, though he has
never been at a children’s party in his life,
and, in fact, never has heard that children
go into society when they are seven, and
give regular wine-parties when they reach
the ripe age of nine. But one of his re-
grets at having the summer school close is
dimly connected with a little girl, whom he
does not care much for,—would a great
deal rather play with a boy than with her at
recess, — but whom he will not see again
. for some time, —a sweet little thing, who
is very friendly with John, and with whom
he has been known to exchange bits of
candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom
he cut in two his lead-pencil, and gave her
half. At the last day of school she goes
part way with John, and then he turns and
goes a longer distance towards her home,
so that it is late when he reaches his own.
Is he late? He didn’t know he was late,
he came straight home when school was
dismissed, only going a little way home with
Alice Linton to help her carry her books.
In a box in his chamber, which he has lately
52
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
put a padlock on, among fish-hooks and
lines and bait-boxes, odd pieces of brass,
twine, early sweet apples, popcorn, beech-
nuts, and other articles of value, are some
little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-
cornered or otherwise, and written, I will
warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink.
These little notes are parting gifts at the
close of school, and John, no doubt, gave
his own in exchange for them, though the
writing was an immense labor, and the fold-
ing was a secret bought of another boy
for a big piece of sweet flag-root baked in
sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry
in his pantaloons pocket until his pocket
was in such a state that putting his fingers
into them was about as good as dipping
them into the sugar-bowl at home. Each
precious note contained a lock or curl of
girl’s hair, —a rare collection of all colors,
after John had been in school many terms,
and had passed through a great many part-
ing scenes, — black, brown, red, tow-color,
and some that looked like spun gold and
felt like silk. The sentiment contained in
the notes was that which was common in
53
BEING A BOY
the school, and expressed a melancholy
foreboding of early death, and a touching
desire to leave hair enough this side the
grave to constitute a sort of strand of
remembrance. With little variation, the
poetry that made the hair precious was in
the words, and, as a Cockney would say,
set to the hair, following : —
“This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head ;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead.â€
John liked to read these verses, which
always made a new and fresh impression
with each lock of hair, and he was not
critical ; they were for him vehicles of true
sentiment, and indeed they were what he
used when he inclosed a clip of his own
sandy hair to a friend. And it did not
occur to him until he was a great deal
older and less innocent to smile at them.
John felt that he would sacredly keep every
lock of hair intrusted to him, though death
should come on the wings of cholera and
54
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
take away every one of these sad, red-ink
correspondents. When John’s big brother
one day caught sight of these treasures,
and brutally told him that he “had hair
enough to stuff a horse-collar,†John was
so outraged and shocked, as he should have
been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this
coarse suggestion, this profanation of his
most delicate feeling, that he was only kept
from crying by the resolution to “lickâ€
his brother as soon as ever he got big
enough,
55
VII
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
One of the best things in farming is
gathering the chestnuts, hickory-nuts, but-
ternuts, and even beech-nuts, in the late
fall, after the frosts have cracked the husks
and the high winds have shaken them, and
the colored leaves have strewn the ground.
On a bright October day, when the air is
full of golden sunshine, there is nothing
quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor
is the pleasure of it altogether destroyed
for the boy by the consideration that he is
making himself useful in obtaining supplies
for the winter household. The getting-in
of potatoes and corn is a different thing;
that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry,
of farm life. I am not sure but the boy
would find it very irksome, though, if he
were obliged to work at nut-gathering in
order to procure food for the family. He is
56
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
willing to make himself useful in his own
way. The Italian boy, who works day after
day at a huge pile of pine-cones, pounding
and cracking them and taking out the long
seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat
nuts (and which are almost as good as
pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the
Italians), probably does not see the fun of
nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy here
were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks
and opening the prickly chestnut-burs as
a task, he would think himself an ill-used
boy. What a hardship the prickles in his
fingers would be! But now he digs them
out with his jack-knife, and he enjoys the
process, on the whole. The boy is willing
to do any amount of work if it is called
play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nim-
ble and industrious than the boy. I like to
see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-
grove; they leave a desert behind them
like the seventeen-years locusts. To climb
a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of
its fruit and pass to the next, is the sport of
a brief time. I have seen a legion of boys
57
BEING A BOY
scamper over our grassplot under the chest-
nut-trees, each one as active as if he were a
new patent picking-machine, sweeping the
ground clean of nuts, and disappear over
the hill before I could go to the door and
speak to them about it. Indeed, I have
noticed that boys: don’t care much for con-
versation with the owners of fruit - trees.
They could speedily make their fortunes if
they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields.
I have never seen anything like it except a
flock of turkeys removing the grasshoppers
from a piece of pasture.
Perhaps it is not generally known that we
get the idea of some of our best military
manoeuvres from the turkey. The deploy-
ing of the skirmish-line in advance of an
army is one of them. The drum-major of
our holiday militia companies is copied ex-
actly from the turkey gobbler; he has the
same splendid appearance, the same proud
step, and the same martial aspect. The
gobbler does not lead his forces in the field,
but goes behind them, like the colonel of a
regiment, so that he can see every part of
the line and direct its movements, This
58
POUNDING OFF SHUCKS
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
resemblance is one of the most singular
things in natural history. I like to watch
the gobbler manceuvring his forces in a
grasshopper-field. He throws out his com-
pany of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-
shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed
at equal distances, while he walks majesti-
cally in the rear. They advance rapidly,
picking right and left, with military pre-
cision, killing the foe and disposing of the
dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody
has yet discovered how many grasshoppers
a turkey will hold; but he is very much
like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner, — he
keeps on eating as long as the supplies
last.
The gobbler, in one of these raids, does
not condescend to grab a single grasshop-
per, — at least, not while anybody is watch-
ing him. But I suppose he makes up for it
when his dignity cannot be injured by hav-
ing spectators of his voracity; perhaps he
falls upon. the grasshoppers when they are
driven into a corner of the field. But he is
only fattening himself for destruction ; like
all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end.
59
BEING A BOY
And if the turkeys had any Sunday-school,
they would be taught this.
The New England boy used to look for-
ward to Thanksgiving as the great event of
the year. He was apt to get stents set him,
—so much corn to husk, for instance, be-
fore that day, so that he could have an ex-
tra play-spell ; and in order to gain a day
or two, he would work at his task with
the rapidity of half a dozen boys, He had
the day after Thanksgiving always as a holi-
day, and this was the day he counted on.
Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful fes-
tival,—very much like Sunday, except for
the enormous dinner, which filled his imagi-
nation for months before as completely as
it-did his stomach for that day and a week
after. There was an impression in the
house that that dinner was the most impor-
tant event since the landing from the May-
flower. Heliogabalus, who did not resem-
ble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who had
prepared for himself in his day some very
sumptuous banquets in Rome, and ate a
great deal of the best he could get (and
liked peacocks stuffed with asafoetida, for
60
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
one thing), never had anything like a
Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose
that he, or Sardanapalus either, ever had
twenty-four different kinds of pie at one
dinner? Therein many a New England boy
is greater than the Roman emperor or the
Assyrian king, and these were among the
most luxurious eaters of their day and gen-
eration. But something more is necessary
to make good men than plenty to-eat, as
Heliogabalus no doubt found when his head
was cut off. Cutting off the head was a
mode the people had of expressing disap-
proval of their conspicuous men. Nowadays
they elect them to a higher office, or give
them a mission to some foreign country, if
they do not do well where they are.
For days and days before Thanksgiving
the boy was kept at work evenings, pound-
ing and paring and cutting up and mixing
(not being allowed to taste much), until the
world seemed to him to be made of fra-
grant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,
—a world that he was only yet allowed to
enjoy through his nose. How filled the
house was with the most delicious smells!
61
BEING A, BOY
The mince-pies that were made! If John
had been shut in solid walls with them
piled about him, he could n’t have eaten his
way out in four weeks. There were dain-
_ ties enough cooked in those two weeks to
have made the entire year luscious with
good living, if they had been scattered
along in it. But people were probably all
the better for scrimping themselves a little
in order to make this a great feast. And
it was not by any means over in a day.
There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and
other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave
of Aladdin, and it took a long time to ex-
cavate all its riches.
Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy day,
the hilarity of it being so subdued by going
to meeting, and the universal wearing of
the Sunday clothes, that the boy could n’t
see it. But if he felt little exhilaration, he
ate a great deal. The next day was the
real holiday. Then were the merry-making
parties, and perhaps the skatings and sleigh-
rides, for the freezing weather came before
the governor’s proclamation in many parts
of New England. The night after Thanks-
62
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
giving occurred, perhaps, the first real party
that the boy had ever attended, with live
girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And
there he heard those philandering songs,
and played those sweet games of forfeits,
which put him quite beside himself, and
kept him awake that night till the rooster
crowed at the end of his first chicken-nap.
What a new world did that party open to
him! I think it likely that he saw there,
and probably did not dare say ten words to,
some tall, graceful girl, much older than
himself, who seemed to him like a new
order of being. He could see her face just
as plainly in the darkness of his chamber.
He wondered if she noticed how awkward
he was, and how short his trousers-legs
were. He blushed as he thought of his
rather ill-fitting shoes; and determined,
then and there, that he would n’t be put off
with a ribbon any longer, but would have
a young man’s necktie. It was somewhat
painful thinking the party over, but it was
delicious too, He did not think, probably,
that he would die for that tall, handsome
girl; he did not put it exactly in that way.
63
BEING A BOY
But he rather resolved to live for her, —
which might in the end amount to the
same thing. At least, he thought that no-
body would live to speak twice disrespect-
fully of her in his presence.
64
IX
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
Wuart John said was, that he didn’t care
much for pumpkin-pie; but that was after
he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to
him then that mince would be better.
The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie
has never been properly considered. There
is an air of festivity about its approach in
the fall. The boy is willing to help pare
and cut up the pumpkin, and he watches
with the greatest interest the stirring-up
process and the pouring into the scalloped
crust. When the sweet savor of the bak-
ing reaches his nostrils, he is filled with the
most delightful anticipations. Why should
he not be? He knows that for months to
come the buttery will contain golden treas-
ures, and that it will require only a slight
ingenuity to get at them.
The fact is, that the boy is as good in
65
BEING A BOY
the buttery as in any part of farming. His
elders say that the boy is always hungry ;
but that is a very coarse way to put it. He
has only recently come into a world that is
full of good things to eat, and there is on
the whole a very short time in which to eat
them ; at least he is told, among the first
information he receives, that life is short.
Life being brief, and pie and the like fleet-
ing, he very soon decides upon an active
campaign. It may be an old story to peo-
ple who have been eating for forty or fifty
years, but it is different with a beginner.
He takes the thick and thin as it comes, as
to pie, for instance. Some people do make
them very thin. I knew a place -where
they were not thicker than the poor man’s
plaster ; they were spread so thin upon the
crust that they were better fitted to draw
out hunger than to satisfy it. They used
to be made up by the great oven-full and
kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened
and dried to a toughness you would hardly
believe. This was a long time ago, and
they make the pumpkin-pie in the country
better now, or the race of boys would have
66
{THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
been so discouraged that I think they would
have stopped coming into the world.
The truth is, that boys have always been
so plenty that they are not half appreciated.
We have shown that a farm could not get
along without them, and yet their rights
are seldom recognized. One of the most
amusing things is their effort to acquire
personal property. The boy has the care
of the calves ; they always need feeding or
shutting up or letting out; when the boy
wants to play, there are those calves to be
looked after, — until he gets to hate the
name of calf. But in consideration of his
faithfulness, two of them are given to him.
There is no doubt that they are his; he has
the entire charge of them. When they get
to be steers, he spends all his holidays in
breaking them in to a yoke. He gets them
so broken in that they will run like a pair
of deer all over the farm, turning the yoke,
and kicking their heels, while he follows in
full chase, shouting the ox language till he
is red in the face. When the steers grow
up to be cattle, a drover one day comes
along and takes them away, and the boy is
67
BEING A BOY
told that he can have another pair of
calves ; and so, with undiminished faith, he
goes back and begins over ‘again to make
his fortune. He owns lambs and young
colts in the same way, and makes just as
much out of them.
There are ways in which the farmer-boy
can earn money, as by gathering the early
chestnuts and taking them to the Corner
store, or by finding turkeys’ eggs and sell-
ing them to his mother ; and another way is
to go without butter at the table, — but the
money thus made is for the heathen. John
read in Dr. Livingstone that some of the
tribes in Central Africa (which is repre-
sented by a blank spot in the atlas) use
the butter to grease their hair, putting on
pounds of it at a time; and he said he had
rather eat his butter than have it put to
that use, especially as it melted away so
fast in that hot climate.
Of course it was explained to John that
the missionaries do not actually carry butter
to Africa, and that they must usually go
without it themselves there, it being almost
impossible to make it good from the milk
68
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
in the cocoanuts. And it was further
explained to him that, even if the heathen
never received his butter or the money for
it, it was an excellent thing for a boy to cul-
tivate the habit of self-denial and of benev-
olence, and if the heathen never heard of
him he would be blessed for his generosity.
This was all true.
But John said that he was tired of sup-
porting the heathen out of his butter, and
he wished the rest of the family would also
stop eating butter and save the money for
missions; and he wanted to know where
the other members of the family got their
money to send to the heathen; and his’
mother said that he was about half right,
and that self-denial was just as good for
grown people as it was for little boys and
girls.
The boy is not always slow to take what
he considers his rights. Speaking of those
thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cup-
board, I used to know a boy who after-
wards grew to be a selectman, and brushed
his hair straight up like General Jackson,
and went to the legislature, where he al-
69
BEING A BOY
ways voted against every measure that was
proposed, in the most honest manner, and
got the reputation of being the ‘ watch-dog
of the treasury.†Rats in the cellar were
nothing to be compared to this boy for de-
structiveness in pies. He used to go down,
whenever he could make an excuse, to get
apples for the family, or draw a mug of
cider for his dear old grandfather (who was
a famous story-teller about the Revolu-
tionary War, and would no doubt have been
wounded in battle if he had not been as
prudent as he was patriotic), and come up
stairs with a tallow candle in one hand and
the apples or cider in the other, looking as
innocent and as unconscious as if he had
never done anything in his life except deny
himself butter for the sake of the heathen.
And yet this boy would have buttoned
under his jacket an entire round pumpkin-
pie. And the pie was so well made and so
dry that it was not injured in the least, and
it never hurt the boy’s clothes a bit more
than if it had been inside of him instead
of outside; and this boy would retire toa
secluded place and eat it with another boy,
70
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
being never suspected, because he was not
in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and he
never appeared to have one about him. But
he did something worse than this. When
his mother saw that pie after pie departed,
she told the family that she suspected
the hired man; and the boy never said a
word, which was the meanest kind of lying.
That hired man was probably regarded with
suspicion by the family to the end of his
days, and if he had been accused of robbing
they would have believed him guilty.
I should n’t wonder if that selectman
occasionally has remorse now about that
pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up
under his jacket and sticking to him like a
breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like
a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into
his vitals. Perhaps not. It is difficult to
say exactly what was the sin of stealing
that kind of pie, especially if the one who
stole it ate it. It could have been used for
the game of pitching quoits, and a pair of
them would have made very fair wheels for
the dog-cart. And yet it is probably as
wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one;
71
BEING A BOY
and it made no difference because it was
easy to steal this sort. Easy stealing is no
better than easy lying, where detection of
the lie is difficult. The boy who steals his
mother’s pies has no right to be surprised
when some other boy steals his watermel-
ons. Stealing is like charity in one respect,
—it is apt to begin at home.
72
xX
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
Ir I were forced to be a boy, and a boy
in the country, —the best kind of boy to
be in the summer,—I would be about
ten years of age. As soon as I got any
older, I would quit it. The trouble with
a boy is that just as he begins to enjoy
himself he is too old, and has to be set to
doing something else. If a country boy
were wise he would stay at just that age
when he could enjoy himself most, and
have the least expected of him in the way
of work.
Of course the perfectly good boy will
always prefer to work, and to do “choresâ€
for his father and errands for his mother
and sisters, rather than enjoy himself in his
own way. I never saw but one such boy.
He lived in the town of Goshen, — not the
place where the butter is made, but a much
73
BEING A BOY
better Goshen than that. And I never saw
him, but I heard of him; and being about
the same age, as I supposed, I was taken
once from Zoar, where I lived, to Goshen
to see him. But he was dead. He had
been dead almost a year, so that it was im-
possible to see him. He died of the most
singular disease: it was from oz eating
green apples in the season of them. This
boy, whose name was Solomon, before he
died would rather split up kindling-wood
for his mother than go afishing: the con-
sequence was, that he was kept at splitting
kindling-wood and such work most of the
time, and grew a better and more useful
boy day by day. Solomon would not dis-
obey his parents and eat green apples, —
not even when they were ripe enough to
knock off with a stick,— but he had such
a longing for them that he pined and
passed away. If he had eaten the green
apples he would have died of them, proba-
bly ; so that his example is a difficult one
to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject
to get a moral from. All his little play-
mates who ate green apples came to Solo-
74
RUNNING ON THE STONE WALL
|
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a
The Baldwin Library
University
Oia
Florida
FISHING ON THE SWIMMING ROCK (page 169)
Being a Boy
by
Charles Dudley
Warner
ete,
Sep
QBYe
With Illustrations
from Photographs
by Clifton Fohnson
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Che Wivergide JBrege, Cambridge
Mdccexevii
COPYRIGHT, 1877, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND CO.
1897, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
1 PAGE
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION . . vii
I. BEING A Boy
Il. THE Boy as A FARMER . ; . . 8
Ill. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING . . eas
IV. No FARMING WITHOUT A Boy . : : 22
V. THE Boy’s SUNDAY ‘i . : . rs 30
VI. THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE Tctcieens 38
VII. FICTION AND SENTIMENT. : . - 47
VIL. THe CoMING oF THANKSGIVING . : 56
IX. THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE . . » 65
X. First EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD . 73
XI. Home INVENTIONS . ‘ 7 ; 5 - 82
XII. THe Lonety FarmM-HousE . : . 92
XIII. Joun’s First PARTY . . . : . Ior
XIV, THE SuGAR CAMP aie Re ave eee LT
XV. THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND . ;: . 123
XVI. Joun’s REVIVAL . . . . enuicas 134
XVII. War . . . . emis . . + 50
XVIII. Country SCENES. . 3 : : : 164
XIX. A ConTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND Boy. 179
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
FISHING ON THE SWIMMING ROCK (see page 169)
Frontispiece.
BEING A Boy. . - . : . : ° : 2
THE FARM OXEN . . . . . . . 4
AT THE PASTURE BARS A . ‘ Shiels 3 8
IN THE CATTLE PASTURE 5 3 : . Io
AFTER A Crow’s NEST 3 : . . ee LO)
A STRING OF SPECKLED TROUT . . . ° 20
WATCHING FOR SUNSET . , a Sie MenieaYottan 2O
RIDING BAREBACK , D . . . ° ° 32
TURNING THE GRINDSTONE Spano se Uen cee eer SO,
SNARING SUCKERS . ° . ° . . ° 44
PICKING UP POTATOES. . 2. « « « «© 48
LEAP-FROG AT RECESS . . e ° ° 50
PouNDING OFF SHUCKS The roe aes maenene eee erat 5O
RUNNING ON THE STONE WALL . . ° ° 74
CoAsTING a arora ane obs TN NG RNS org cee RUSE TALE OD
FINES CHOOL Meseure se salen att oe 88
A REMOTE FARMHOUSE 5 . ° ° ° 2 692
Goinc HoME WITH CYNTHIA. . . ° ° IIo
A YounG SuGAR MaxER ., stators 5 » 18
WATCHING THE KETTLES ° e ° ° . 120
THE VILLAGE FROM THE HILL. : . . + 126
TREEING A WoopcHuCcK. ° . ° . . 132
LooKING FoR Frocs . . ° . 5 «136
TROUT FISHING . ; . . ‘ : . : 140
FORCED TO Go To BED ° s
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SLIPPERY WORK f : i : : 166
RIGGING UP THE Pena Daceen R : , - 168
WATCHING THE FISHES . , My * 170
ENTERING THE OLD BRIDGE 3 3 5 ‘ - 178
THE OLD WATERING TROUGH . : ‘ e 180
THE NEW ENGLAND Boy . . ASS eeaien eee AOA
vi
“PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED
EDITION
Tuis volume was first published over
twenty years ago. If-any of the boys de-
scribed in it were real, they have long since
grown up, got married, gone West, become
selectmen or sheriffs, gone to Congress,
invented an electric churn, become editors
or preachers or commercial travelers, writ-
ten a book, served a term as consul to a
country the language of which they did not
know, or plodded along on a farm, culti-
vating rheumatism and acquiring invalu-
able knowledge of the most fickle weather
known in a region which has all the fasci-
nation and all the power of being disagree-
able belonging to the most accomplished
coquette in the world.
vii
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
The rural life described is that of New
England between 1830 and 1850, in a
period of darkness, before the use of lucifer
matches ; but when, although religion had a
touch of gloom and all pleasure was height-
ened by a timorous apprehension that it
was sin, the sun shone, the woods were full
of pungent scents, nature was strong in its
invitations to cheerfulness, and girls were
as sweet and winsome as they are in the
old ballads.
The object of the papers composing the
volume — though “object†is a strong
word to use about their waywardness —
was to recall scenes in the boy-life of New
England, or the impressions that a boy had
of that life. There was no attempt at the
biography of any particular boy; the expe-
riences given were common to the boyhood
of the time and place. While the book,
therefore, was not consciously biographical,
it was of necessity written out of a personal
viii
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
knowledge. And I may be permitted to
say that, as soon as I became conscious
that I was dealing with a young life of the
past, I tried to be faithful to it, strictly so,
and to import into it nothing of later expe-
rience, either in feeling or performance. I
invented nothing, — not an adventure, not
a scene, not an emotion. I know from
observation how difficult it is for an adult
to write about childhood. Invention is apt
to supply details that memory does not
carry. The knowledge of the man insen-
sibly inflates the boyhood limitations. The
temptation is to make a psychological analy-
sis of the boy’s life and aspirations, and
to interpret them according to the man’s
view of life. It seems comparatively easy
to write stories about boys, and even bio-
graphies ; but it is not easy to resist the
temptation of inventing scenes to make
them interesting, indulging in exaggera-
tions both of adventure and of feeling
ix
PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION
which: are not true to experience, invent-
ing details impossible to be recalled by
the best memory, and states of mind which
are psychologically untrue to the boy’s con-
sciousness.
How far I succeeded in keeping the man
out of the boy’s life, my readers can judge
better than the writer. The volume origi-
nally made no sensation —how could it,
pitched in such a key?—but it has gone
on peacefully, and, I am glad to acknow-
ledge, has made many valuable friends. It
started a brook, and a brook it has con-
tinued. In sending out this new edition
with Mr. Clifton Johnson’s pictures, lov-
ingly taken from the real life and heart of
New England, I may express the hope
that the boy of the remote generation will
lose no friends.
Cc. D. W.
HARTFORD, May 8, 1897.
x
BEING A BOY
I
BEING A BOY
One of the best things in the world to be
is a boy; it requires no experience, though
it needs some practice to be a good one.
The disadvantage of the position is that it
does not last long enough ; it is soon over;
just as you get used to being a boy, you
have to be something else, with a good deal
more work to do and not half so much fun.
And yet every boy is anxious to be a man,
and is very uneasy with the restrictions that
are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it
is to yoke up the calves and play work, there
is not a boy on a farm but would rather drive
a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glori-
ous feeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for
the first time given the long whip and per-
I
BEING A BOY
mitted to drive the oxen, walking by their
side, swinging the long lash, and shouting
“Gee, Buck!†“Haw, Golden!†“Whoa,
Bright!†and all the rest of that remark-
able language, until he is red in the face,
and all the neighbors for half a mile are
aware that something unusual is going on.
If I were a boy, Iam not sure but I would
rather drive the oxen than have a birthday.
The proudest day of my life was one day
when I rode on the neap of the cart, and
drove the oxen, all alone, with a load of
apples to the cider-mill. I was so little,
that it was a wonder that I didn’t fall off,
and get under the broad wheels. Nothing
could make a boy, who cared anything for
his appearance, feel flatter than to be run
over by the broad tire of a cart-wheel. But
I never heard of one who was, and I don’t
believe one ever will be. As I said, it was
a great day for me, but I don’t remember
that the oxen cared much about it. They
sagged along in their great clumsy way,
switching their tails in my face occasionally,
and now and then giving a lurch to this or
that side of the road, attracted by a choice
2
BEING A BOY
BEING A BOY
tuft of grass. And then I “came the Julius
Czesar†over them, if you will allow me
to use such a slang expression, a liberty
T never should permit you. I don’t know
that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though
he must often have seen the peasants from
the Campagna “haw†and “gee†them
round the Forum (of course in Latin, a lan-
guage that those cattle understood as well
as ours do English) ; but what I mean is,
that I stood up and “hollered†with all my
might, as everybody does with oxen, as if
they were born deaf, and whacked them
with the long lash over the head, just as
the big folks did when they drove. I think
now that it was a cowardly thing to crack
the patient old fellows over the face and
eyes, and make them wink in their meek
manner. If J am ever a boy again on a
farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen, and
not go screaming round the farm like a
crazy man; and I shall not hit them a
cruel cut with the lash every few minutes,
because it looks big to do so and I cannot
think of anything else to do. I never liked
lickings myself, and I don’t know why an
3
BEING A BOY
ox should like them, especially as he cannot
reason about the moral improvement he is
to get out of them.
Speaking of Latin reminds me that I
once taught my cows Latin. I don’t mean
that I taught them to read it, for it is very
difficult to teach a cow to read Latin or any
of the dead languages, — a cow cares more
for her cud than she does for all the classics
put together. But if you begin early you
can teach a cow, or a calf (if you can teach
a calf anything, which I doubt), Latinas
well as English. There were ten cows,
which I had to escort to and from pasture
night and morning. To these cows I gave
the names of the Roman numerals, begin-
ning with Unus and Duo, and going up to
Decem. Decem was of course the biggest
cow of the party, or at least she was the
ruler of the others, and had the place of
honor in the stable and everywhere else.
I admire cows, and especially the exactness
with which they define their social position.
In this case, Decem could “lickâ€â€™ Novem,
and Novem could “lick†Octo, and so on
down to Unus, who could n’t lick anybody,
4
THE FARM OXEN
BEING A BOY
except her own calf. I suppose I ought to
have called the weakest cow Una instead
of Unus, considering her sex; but I didn’t
care much to teach the cows the declen-
sions of adjectives, in which I was not very
well up myself; and besides it would be
of little use to a cow. People who devote
themselves too severely to study of the
classics are apt to become dried up; and
you should never do anything to dry up
a cow. Well, these ten cows knew their
names after a while, at least they appeared
to, and would take their places as I called
them. At least, if Octo attempted to get
before Novem in going through the bars (I
have heard people speak of a “ pair of barsâ€
when there were six or eight of them), or
into the stable, the matter of precedence
was settled then and there, and once settled
there was no dispute about it afterwards.
Novem either put her horns into Octo’s
ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, or
else the two locked horns and tried the
game of push and gore until one gave up.
Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a
party of cows. There is nothing in royal
5
BEING A BOY
courts equal to it; rank is exactly settled,
and the same individuals always have the
precedence. You know that at Windsor
Castle, if the Royal Three-Ply Silver Stick
should happen to get in front of the Most
Royal Double-and- Twisted Golden Rod,
when the court is going in to dinner, some-
thing so dreadful would happen that we
don’t dare to think of it. It is certain that
the soup would get cold while the Golden
Rod was pitching the Silver Stick out of
. the castle window into the moat, and per-
haps the island of Great Britain itself would
split in two. But the people are very care-
ful that it never shall happen, so we shall
probably never know what the effect would
be. Among cows, as I say, the question is
settled in short order, and in a different
manner from what it sometimes is in other
society. It is said that in other society
there is sometimes a great scramble for the
first place, for the leadership as it is called,
and that women, and men too, fight for
what is called position; and in order to be
first they will injure their neighbors by tell-
ing stories about them and by backbiting,
6
BEING A BOY
which is the meanest kind of biting there
is, not excepting the bite of fleas. But in
cow society there is nothing of this detrac-
tion in order to get the first place at the
crib, or the farther stall in the stable. If
the question arises, the cows turn in, horns
and all, and settle it with one square fight,
and that ends it. I have often admired this
trait in cows.
Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the
cows a little poetry, and it is a very good
plan. It does not benefit the cows much,
but it is excellent exercise for a boy farmer.
I used to commit to memory as many short
poems as I could find (the cows liked to
listen to Thanatopsis about as well as any-
thing), and repeat them when I went to the
pasture, and as I drove the cows home
through the sweet ferns and down the rocky
slopes. It improves a boy’s elocution a
great deal more than driving oxen.
It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats
Thanatopsis while he is milking, that opera-
tion acquires a certain dignity.
7
IT
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Boys in general would be very good
farmers if the current notions about farm-
ing were not so very different from those
they entertain. What passes for laziness
is very often an unwillingness to farm in a
particular way. For instance, some morn-
ing in early summer John is told to catch
the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring
wagon, and put in the buffalo and the best
whip, for father is obliged to drive over to the
“Corners, to seeaman’†about some cattle,
or talk with the road commissioner, or go
to the store for the “women folks,†and to
attend to other important business; and
very likely he will not be back till sundown.
It must be very pressing business, for the
old gentleman drives off in this way some-
where almost every pleasant day, and ap-
pears to have a great deal on his mind.
8
AT THE PASTURE BARS
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Meantime, he tells John that he can play
ball after he has done up the chores. As
if the chores could ever be “done up†ona
farm. He is first to clean out the horse-
stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut
down the thistles and weeds from the fence-
corners in the home mowing-lot and along
the road towards the village; to dig up the
docks round the garden patch ; to weed out
the beet-bed ; to hoe the early potatoes ; to
rake the sticks and leaves out of the front
yard; in short, there is work enough laid
out for John to keep him busy, it seems to
him, till he comes of age; and at half an
hour to sundown he is to go for the cows,
and, mind he don’t run ’’em!
“Yes, sir,†says John, “is that all?â€
“Well, if you get through in good sea-
son, you might pick over those potatoes in
the cellar: they are sprouting; they ain’t
fit to eat.â€
John is obliged to his father, for if there
is any sort of chore more cheerful to a boy
than another, on a pleasant day, it is rub-
bing the sprouts off potatoes in a dark
cellar. And the old gentleman mounts his
9
BEING A. BOY
wagon and drives away down the enticing
road, with the dog bounding along beside
the wagon, and refusing to come back at
John’s call.. John half wishes he were the
dog. The dog knows the part of farming
that suits him. He likes to run along the
road and see all the dogs and other people,
and he likes best of all to lie on the store
steps at the Corners — while his master’s
horse is dozing at the post and his master
is talking politics in the store —with the
other dogs of his acquaintance, snapping
at mutually annoying flies and indulging
in that delightful dog gossip which is ex-
pressed by a wag of the tail and a sniff of
the nose. Nobody knows how many dogs’
characters are destroyed in this gossip; or
how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion
by a wag of the tail asa man can by a shrug
of the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a
man can suggest one by raising his eye-
brows.
John looks after the old gentleman driv-
ing off in state, with the odorous buffalo-
robe and the new whip, and he thinks that
is the sort of farming he would like to
Io
IN THE CATTLE PASTURE
THE BOY AS A FARMER
do. And he cries after his departing par-
ent, —
“ Say, father, can’t I go over to the farther
pasture and salt the cattle?†John knows
that he could spend half a day very pleas-
antly in going over to that pasture, looking
for bird’s-nests and shying at red squirrels
on the way, and who knows but he might
“see†a sucker in the meadow brook, and
perhaps get a “jab†at him with a sharp
stick, He knows a hole where there is a
whopper; and one of his plans in life is to
go some day and snare him, and bring him
home in triumph. It therefore is strongly
impressed upon his mind that the cattle
want salting. But his father, without turn-
ing his head, replies, —
“No, they don’t need salting any more’n
you do!†And the old equipage goes rat-
tling down the road, and John whistles his
disappointment. When I was a boy on a
farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were
never salted half enough.
John goes to his chores, and gets through
the stable as soon as he can, for that must
be done; but when it comes to the out-
II
BEING A BOY
door work, that rather drags. There are
so many things to distract the attention, —
a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near
tree, and a hen-hawk circling high in the air
over the barn-yard. John loses a little time
in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes
the sport, and in watching the bird to find
where its nest is; and he convinces him-
self that he ought to watch the hawk, lest
it pounce upon the chickens, and, there-
fore, with an easy conscience, he spends fif-
teen minutes in hallooing to that distant
bird, and follows it away out of sight over
the woods, and then wishes it would come
back again. And then a carriage with
two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes
along the road; and there is a girl in the
carriage who looks out at John, who is sud-
denly aware that his trousers are patched
on each knee and in two places behind ;
and he wonders if she is rich, and whose
name is on the trunk, and how much the
horses cost, and whether that nice-looking
man is the girl’s father, and if that boy on
the seat with the driver is her brother, and
if he has to do chores ; and as the gay sight
12
THE BOY AS A FARMER
disappears John falls to thinking about the
great world beyond the farm, of cities, and
people who are always dressed up, and a
great many other things of which he has a
very dim notion. And then a boy, whom
John knows, rides by in a wagon with his
father, and the boy makes a face at John,
and John returns the greeting with a twist
of his own visage and some symbolic ges-
tures. All these things take time. The
work of cutting down the big weeds gets on
slowly, although it is not very disagreeable,
or would not be if it were play. John im-
agines that yonder big thistle is some whis-
kered villain, of whom he has read in a fairy
book, and he advances on him with “ Die,
ruffian!’’ and slashes off his head with the
bill-hook ; or he charges upon the rows of
mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regi-
mental ranks, and hews them down without °
mercy. What fun it might be if there were
only another boy there to help. But even
war, single-handed, gets to be tiresome.
It is dinner-time before John finishes the
weeds, and it is cow-time before John has
made much impression on the garden,
13
BEING A BOY
This garden John has no fondness for.
He would rather hoe corn all day than work
init. Father seems to think that it is easy
work that John can do, because it is near
the house! John’s continual plan in this
life is to go fishing. When there comes a
rainy day, he attempts to carry it out. But
ten chances to one his father has different
views. As it rains so that work cannot be
done outdoors, it is a good time to work in
the garden. He can run into the house
during the heavy showers. John accord-
ingly detests the garden; and the only
time he works briskly in it is when he has a
stent set, to do so much weeding before the
Fourth of July. If he is spry he can make
an extra holiday the Fourth and the day
after. Two days of gunpowder and _ball-
playing! When I was a boy, I supposed
there was some connection between such
and such an amount of work done on the
farm and our national freedom. I doubted
if there could be any Fourth of July if my
stent was not done. JI, at least, worked for
my Independence.
14
III
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
THERE are so many bright spots in the
life of a farm-boy, that I sometimes think
I should like to live the life over again ;
I should almost be willing to be a girl if it
were not for the chores. There is a great
comfort to a boy in the amount of work
he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes
astonishing how slow he can go on an
errand, he who leads the school in a race.
The world is new and interesting to him,
and there is so much to take his attention
off, when he is sent to do anything. Per-
haps he couldn’t explain, himself, why,
when he is sent to the neighbor’s after
yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is
not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he
can hit em. No other living thing can go
so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His
legs seem to be lead, unless he happens to
15
BEING A BOY
espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when
he gives chase to it like a deer; and it is
a curious fact about boys, that two will be
a great deal slower in doing anything than
one, and that the more you have to help on
a piece of work the less is accomplished.
Boys have a great power of helping each
other to do nothing ; and they are so inno-
cent about it, and unconscious. ‘I went
as quick as ever I could,†says the boy:
his father asks him why he didn’t stay all
night, when he has been absent three hours
‘on aten-minute errand. The sarcasm has
no effect on the boy.
Going after the cows was a serious thing
in my day. I had to climb a hill, which was
covered with wild strawberries in the sea-
son. Could any boy pass by those ripe ber-
ries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture
there were beds of wintergreen with red
berries, tufts of columbine, roots of sassa-
fras to be dug, and dozens of things good
to eat or to smell, that I could not resist.
It sometimes even lay in my way to climb
a tree to look for a crow’s nest, or to swing
in the top, and to try if I could see the
16
AFTER A CROW’S NEST
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
steeple of the village church. It became
very important sometimes for me to see
that steeple; and in the midst of my inves-
tigations the tin horn would blow a great
blast from the farmhouse, which would
send a cold chill down my back in the hot-
test days. I knew what it meant. It had
a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at
all like the sweet note that called us to din-
ner from the hayfield. It said, “Why on
earth doesn’t that boy come home? It is
almost dark, and the cows ain’t milked!â€
And that was the time the cows had to
start into a brisk pace and make up for
lost time. I wonder if any boy ever drove
the cows home late, who did not say that
the cows were at the very farther end of the
pasture, and that “ Old Brindle†was hidden
in the woods, and he could n’t find her for
ever so long! The brindle cow is the boy’s
scapegoat, many a time.
No other boy knows how to appreciate a
holiday as the farm-boy does ; and his best
ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing
is of course one sort. The excitement of
rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and
17
BEING A BOY
the anticipation of great luck, — these are
pure pleasures, enjoyed because they are
rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any time
care but little for it. Tramping all day
through bush and brier, fighting flies and
mosquitoes, and branches that tangle the
line, and snags that break the hook, and re-
turning home late and hungry, with wet feet
and a string of speckled trout on a willow
twig, and having the family crowd out at
the kitchen door to look at ’em, and say,
“Pretty well done for you, bub; did you
catch that big one yourself ?’’ — this is also
pure happiness, the like of which the boy
will never have again, not if he comes to be
selectman and deacon and to “keep store.â€
But the holidays I recall with delight
were the two days in spring and fall, when
we went to the distant pasture-land, in a
neighboring town, may be, to drive thither
the young cattle and colts, and to bring
them back again. It was a wild and rocky
upland where our great pasture was, many
miles from home, the road to it running by
a brawling river, and up a dashing brook-
side among great hills. What a day’s ad-
18
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
venture it was! It was like a journey to
Europe. The night before, I could scarcely
sleep for thinking of it, and there was no
trouble about getting me up at sunrise that
morning. The breakfast was eaten, the
luncheon was packed in a large basket, with
bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel,
which packing I superintended with the
greatest interest; and then the cattle were
to be collected for the march, and. the
horses hitched up. Did I shirk any duty?
Was I slow? I think not. I was willing
to run my legs off after the frisky steers,
who seemed to have an idea they were go-
ing on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing
into all gates, and through all bars except
the right ones; and how cheerfully I did
yell at them; it was a glorious chance to
“holler,†and I have never since heard any
public speaker on the stump or at camp-
meeting who could make more noise. I
have often thought it fortunate that the
amount of noise in a boy does not increase
in proportion to his size; if it te the world
could not contain it.
The whole day was full of excitement
19
BEING A BOY
and of freedom. We were away from the
farm, which to a boy is one of the best
parts of farming; we saw other farms and
other people at work; I had the pleasure
of marching along, arid swinging my whip,
past boys whom I knew, who were picking
up stones. Every turn of the road, every
bend and rapid of the river, the great
boulders by the wayside, the watering-
troughs, the giant pine that had been
struck by lightning, the mysterious covered
bridge over the river where it was most
swift and rocky and foamy, the chance eagle
in the blue sky, the sense of going some-
where, — why, as I recall all these things
I feel that even the Prince Imperial, as he
used to dash on horseback through the
Bois de Boulogne, with fifty mounted hus-
sars clattering at his heels, and crowds of
people cheering, could not have been as
happy as was I, a boy in short jacket and
shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust
that day behind the steers and colts, crack-
ing my black-stock whip.
I wish the journey would never end; but
at last, by noon, we reach the pastures and
20
A STRING OF SPECKLED TROUT
THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
turn in the herd; and, after making the tour
of the lots to make sure there are no breaks
in the fences, we take our luncheon from
the wagon and eat it under the trees by the
spring. This is the supreme moment of the
day. This is the way to live; this is like
the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the rest
of my delightful acquaintances in romance.
Baked beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist,
remember), doughnuts and cheese, pie, and
root beer. What richness! You may live
to dine at Delmonico’s, or, if those French-
men do not eat each other up, at Philippe’s,
in the Rue Montorgueil in Paris, where the
dear old Thackeray used to eat as good a
dinner as anybody; but you will get there
neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer,
nor anything so good as that luncheon at
noon in the old pasture, high among the
Massachusetts hills! Nor will you ever,
if you live to be the oldest boy in the world,
have any holiday equal to the one I have
described. But I always regretted that I
did not take along a fish-line, just to “throw
in†the brook we passed. I know there
were trout there.
21
IV
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
Say what you will about the general use-
fulness of boys, it is my impression that a
farm without a boy would very soon come
to grief. What the boy does is the life
of the farm. He is the factotum, always
in demand, always expected to do the
thousand indispensable things that nobody
else will do. Upon him fall all the odds
and ends, the most difficult things. After
everybody else is through, he has to finish
up. His work is like a woman’s, — perpet-
ual waiting on others. Everybody knows
how much easier it is to eat a good dinner
than it is to wash the dishes afterwards.
Consider what a boy on a farm is required
to do; things that must be done, or life
would actually stop.
It is understood, in the first place, that
he is to do all the errands, to go to the
22
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
store, to the post-office, and to carry all
sorts of messages. If he had as many legs
as a centipede, they would tire before night.
His two short limbs seem to him entirely
inadequate to the task. He would like to
have as many legs as a wheel has spokes,
and rotate about in the same way. This
he sometimes tries to do; and people who
have seen him “turning cart-wheels†along
the side of the road have supposed that he
was amusing himself, and idling his time;
he was only trying to invent a new mode of
locomotion, so that he could economize his
legs and do his errands with greater dis-
patch. He practices standing on his head,
in order to accustom himself to any posi-
tion. lLeap-frog is one of his methods of
getting over the ground quickly. He would
willingly go an errand any distance if he
could leap-frog it with a few other boys.
He has a natural genius for combining
pleasure with business. This is the reason
why, when he is sent to the spring for a
pitcher of water, and the family are waiting
at the dinner-table, he is absent so long;
for he stops to poke the frog that sits on
23
BEING A BOY
the stone, or, if there is a penstock, to put
his hand over the spout and squirt the
water a little while. He is the one who
spreads the grass when the men have cut
it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides
the horse to cultivate the corn, up and
down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the
potatoes when they are dug; he drives the
cows night and morning; he brings wood
and water and splits kindling ; he gets up
the horse and puts out the horse; whether
he is in the house or out of it, there is al-
ways something for him to do. Just before
school in winter he shovels paths ; in sum-
mer he turns the grindstone. He knows
where there are lots of wintergreen and
sweet flag root, but instead of going for
them he is to stay indoors and pare apples
and stone raisins and pound something in
a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of
schemes of what he would like to do, and
his hands full of occupations, he is an idle
boy who has nothing to busy himself with
but school and chores! He would gladly
do all the work if somebody else would do
the chores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if
24
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
any boy ever amounted to anything in the
world, or was of much use as a man, who
did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal
education in the way of chores.
A boy ona farm is nothing without his
pets ; at least a dog, and probably rabbits,
chickens, ducks, and guinea hens. A guinea
hen suits a boy. It is entirely useless, and
makes a more disagreeable noise than a
Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young
fox which a neighbor had caught. It isa
mistake to suppose the fox cannot be tamed.
Jacko was a very clever little animal, and
behaved, in all respects, with propriety. He
kept Sunday as well as any day, and all the
ten commandments that he could under-
stand. He was a very graceful playfellow,
and seemed to have an affection for me.
He lived in a woodpile, in the dooryard,
and when I lay down at the entrance to
his house and called him, he would come
out and sit on his tail and lick my face just
like a grown person. I taught him a great
many tricks and all the virtues. That year
I had a large number of hens, and Jacko
went about among them with the most per-
25
BEING A BOY
fect indifference, never looking on them to
lust after them, as I could see, and never
touching an egg or a feather. So excellent
was his reputation that I would have trusted
him in the hen-roost in the dark without
counting the hens. In short, he was do-
mesticated, and I was fond of him and very
proud of him, exhibiting him to all our vis-
itors as an example of what affectionate
treatment would do in subduing the brute
instincts. I preferred him to my dog,
whom I had, with much patience, taught to
go up a long hill alone and surround the
cows, and drive them home from the re
mote pasture. He liked the fun of it at
first, but by and by he seemed to get the
notion that it was a “chore,†and when I
whistled for him to go for the cows, he
would turn tail and run the other way, and
the more I whistled and threw stones at
him the faster he would run. His name
was Turk, and I should have sold him if he
had not been the kind of dog that nobody
will buy. I suppose he was not a cow-dog,
but what they call a sheep-dog. At least,
when he got big enough, he used to get
26
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
into the pasture and chase the sheep to
death. That was the way he got into trou-
ble, and lost his valuable life. A dog is of
great use on a farm, and that is the reason
a boy likes him. He is good to bite ped-
lers and small children, and run out and
yelp at wagons that pass by, and to howl
all night when the moon shines. And yet,
if I were a boy again, the first thing I
would have should be a dog; for dogs are
great companions, and as active and spry
as a boy at doing nothing. They are also
good to bark at woodchuck holes.
A good dog will bark at a woodchuck
hole long after the animal has retired to a
remote part of his residence, and escaped
by another hole. This deceives the wood-
chuck. Some of the most delightful hours
of my life have been spent in hiding and
watching the hole where the dog was not.
What an exquisite thrill ran through my
frame when the timid nose appeared, was
withdrawn, poked out again, and finally fol-
lowed by the entire animal, who looked cau-
tiously about, and then hopped away to feed
on the clover. At that moment I rushed
27
BEING A BOY |
in, occupied the “home base,†yelled to
Turk and then danced with delight at the
combat between the spunky woodchuck and
the dog. They were about the same size,
but science and civilization won the day. I
did not reflect then that it would have been
more in the interest of civilization if the
woodchuck had killed the dog. -I do not
know why it is that boys so like to hunt
and kill animals; but the excuse that I
gave in this case for the murder was, that
the woodchuck ate the clover and trod it
down; and, in fact, was a woodchuck. | It
was not till long after that I learned with
surprise that he is a rodent mammal, of the
species Avctomys monax, is called at the
West a ground-hog, and is eaten by peo-
ple of color with great relish.
But I have forgotten my beautiful fox.
Jacko continued to deport himself well until
the young chickens came; he was actually
cured of the fox vice of chicken-stealing.
He used:to go with me about the coops,
pricking up his ears in an intelligent man-
ner, and with a demure eye and the most
virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox!
28
NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
If he had held out a little while longer, I
should have put him into a Sunday-school
book. But I began to miss chickens. They
disappeared mysteriously in the night. I
would not suspect Jacko at first, for he
looked so honest, and in the daytime he
seemed to be as much interested in the
chickens as I was. But one morning, when
I went to call him, I found feathers at the
entrance of his hole, —chicken feathers.
He couldn’t deny it. He was a thief.
His fox nature had come out under severe
temptation. And he died an unnatural
death. He had a thousand virtues and one
crime. But that crime struck at the foun-
dation of society. He deceived and stole ;
he was a liar and a thief, and no pretty
ways could hide the fact. His intelligent,
bright face couldn’t save him. If he had
been honest, he might have grown up to be
a large, ornamental fox.
29
V
THE BOY'S SUNDAY
Sunpay in the New England hill towns
used to begin Saturday night at sundown ;
and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills
there before it has set by the almanac. I
remember that we used to go by the alma-
nac Saturday night and by the visible dis-
appearance Sunday night. On Saturday
night we very slowly yielded to the influ-
ences of the holy time, which were settling
down upon us, and submitted to the ablu-
tions which were as inevitable as Sunday ;
but when the sun (and it never moved so
slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night,
the effect upon the watching boy was like a
shock from a galvanic battery ; something
flashed through all his limbs and set them
in motion, and no “play†ever seemed so
sweet to him as that between sundown
and dark Sunday night. This, however,
30
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
was on the supposition that he had con-
scientiously kept Sunday, and had not gone
in swimming and got drowned. This keep-
ing of Saturday night instead of Sunday
night we did not very well understand ;
but it seemed, on the whole, a good thing
that we should rest Saturday night when
we were tired, and play Sunday night when
we were rested. I supposed, however, that
it was an arrangement made to suit the
big boys who wanted to go “courting†Sun-
day night. Certainly they were not to
be blamed, for Sunday was the day when
pretty girls were most fascinating, and I
have never since seen any so lovely as those
who used to sit in the gallery and in the
singers’ seats in the bare old meeting-
houses.
Sunday to the country farmer-boy was
hardly the relief that it was to the other
members of the family; for the same
chores must be done that day as on others,
and he could not divert his mind with whis-
tling, hand-springs, or sending the dog into
the river after sticks. He had to submit,
in the first place, to the restraint of shoes
31
BEING A BOY
and stockings. He read in the Old Testa-
ment that when Moses came to holy ground
he put off his shoes; but the boy was
obliged to put his on, upon the holy day,
not only to go to meeting, but while he sat
at home. Only the emancipated country-
boy, who is as agile on his bare feet as a
young kid, and rejoices in the pressure of
the warm soft earth, knows what a hard-
ship it is to tie on stiff shoes. The monks
who put peas in their shoes as a penance
do not suffer more than the country-boy in
his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the
celerity with which he used to kick them off
at sundown.
Sunday morning was not an idle one for
the farmer-boy. He must rise tolerably
early, for the cows were to be milked and
driven to pasture; family prayers were a
little longer than on other days ; there were
the Sunday-school verses to be re-learned,
for they did not stay in mind over night;
perhaps the wagon was to be greased before
the neighbors began to drive by; and the
horse was to be caught out of the pasture,
ridden home bareback, and _ harnessed.
32
RIDING BAREBACK
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
This catching the horse, perhaps two of
them, was very good fun usually, and would
have broken the Sunday if the horse had
not been wanted for taking the family to
meeting. It was so peaceful and still in the
pasture on Sunday morning ; but the horses
were never so playful, the colts never so
frisky. Round and round the lot the boy
went, calling, in an entreating Sunday
voice, “Jock, jock, jock, jock,†and shaking
his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads
erect, and shaking tails and flashing heels,
dashed from corner to corner, and gave the
boy a pretty good race before he could coax
the nose of one of them into his dish. The
boy got angry, and came very near saying
“dum it,’ but he rather enjoyed the fun,
after all.
The boy remembers how his mother’s
anxiety was divided between the set of his
turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and
his memory of the Sunday-school verses ;
and what a wild confusion there was
through the house in getting off for meet-
ing, and how he was kept running hither
and thither, to get the hymn-book, or a
33
BEING A BOY
palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, or to pick
from the Sunday part of the garden the
bunch of caraway seed. Already the dea-
con’s mare, with a wagon load of the dea-
con’s folks, had gone shambling past, head
and tail drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up
clouds of dust, while the good deacon sat
jerking the reins in an automatic way, and
the “women-folks†patiently saw the dust
settle upon their best summer finery.
Wagon after wagon went along the sandy
road, and when our boy’s family started,
they became part of a long procession,
which sent up a mile of dust and a pun-
gent if not pious smell of buffalo -robes.
There were fiery horses in the train which
had to be held in, for it was neither eti-
quette nor decent to pass anybody on Sun-
day. It was a great delight to the farmer-
boy to see all this procession of horses, and
to exchange sly winks with the other boys,
who leaned over the wagon-seats for that
purpose. Occasionally a boy rode behind,
with his back to the family, and his panto-
mime was always something wonderfulto see, *
and was considered very daring and wicked.
34
THE BOY’S SUNDAY ~
The meeting-house which our boy re-
members was a high, square building, with-
out a steeple. Within, it had a lofty pul-
pit, with doors underneath and closets
where sacred things were kept, and where
the tithing-men were supposed to imprison
bad boys. The pews were square, with
seats facing each other, those on one side
low for the children, and all with hinges, so
that they could be raised when the congre-
gation stood up for prayers and leaned over
the backs of the pews, as horses meet each
other across a pasture fence. After prayers
these seats used to be slammed down with
a long-continued clatter, which seemed to
the boys about the best part of the exer-
cises. The galleries were very high, and
the singers’ seats, where the pretty girls
sat, were the most conspicuous of all. To
sit in the gallery, away from the family, was
a privilege not often granted to the boy.
The tithing-man, who carried a long rod
and kept order in the house, and outdoors
at noontime, sat in the gallery, and visited
any boy who whispered or found curious
passages in the Bible and showed them
35
BEING A BOY
to another boy. It was an awful moment
when the bushy-headed tithing-man ap-
proached a boy in sermon-time. The eyes
of the whole congregation were on him,
and he could feel the guilt ooze out of his
burning face. °
At noon was Sunday-school, and after
that, before the afternoon service, in sum-
mer, the boys had a little time to eat their
luncheon together at the watering-trough,
where some of the elders were likely to be
gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle;
“or they went over to a neighboring barn
to see the calves; or they slipped off down
the roadside to a place where they could
dig sassafras or the root of the sweet flag,
— roots very fragrant in the mind of many
a boy with religious associations to this day.
There was often an odor of sassafras in the
afternoon service. It used to stand in my
mind as a substitute for the Old Testament
incense of the Jews. Something in the
same way the big bass-viol in the choir
took the place of “ David’s harp of solemn
sound.â€
The going home from meeting was more
36
NDSTONE
Oo
(a)
is
a
o
Z
5
Zz
5
H
THE BOY’S SUNDAY
cheerful and lively than the coming to it.
There was all the bustle of getting the
horses out of the sheds and bringing them
round to the meeting-house steps. At noon
the boys sometimes sat in the wagons and
swung the whips without cracking them:
now it was permitted to give them a little
snap in order to bring the horses up in good
style; and the boy was rather proud of the
horse if it pranced a little while the timid
“women-folks†were trying to get in. The
boy had an eye for whatever life and stir
there was ina New England Sunday. He
liked to drive home fast. The old house
and the farm looked pleasant to him.
There was an extra dinner when they
reached home, and a cheerful conscious-
ness of duty performed made it a pleasant
dinner. Long before sundown the Sunday-
school book had been read, and the boy sat
waiting in the house with great impatience
the signal that the “day of rest†was over.
A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not
see the need of “rest.†Neither his idea of
rest nor work is that of older farmers.
37
VI
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
IF there is one thing more than another
that hardens the lot of the farmer-boy it
is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to
grind scythes is one of those heroic but un-
obtrusive occupations for which one gets no
credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and,
however faithfully the crank is turned, it is
one that brings little reputation. There isa
great deal of poetry about haying —I mean
for those not engaged in it. One likes to
hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh
morning and the response of the noisy
bobolink, who always sits upon the fence
and superintends the cutting of the dew-
laden grass. There is a sort of music in
the “swish†and a rhythm in the swing of
the scythes in concert. The boy has not
much time to attend to it, for it is lively
business “spreading†after half a dozen
38
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
men who have only to walk along and lay
the grass low, while the boy has the whole
hayfield on his hands. He has little time
for the poetry of haying, as he struggles
along, fillmg the air with the wet mass
which he shakes over his head, and picking
his way with short legs and bare feet amid
the short and freshly cut stubble.
But if the scythes cut well and swing
merrily it is due to the boy who turned the
grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just
turn the grindstone a few minutes for this
and that one before breakfast ; any “hired
man†was authorized to order the boy to
turn the grindstone. How they did bear on,
those great strapping fellows! Turn, turn,
turn, what a weary go it was. For my
part, I used to like a grindstone that “ wab-
bled†a good deal on its axis, for when I
turned it fast, it put the grinder on a lively
lookout for cutting his hands, and entirely
satisfied his desire that I should “turn
faster.†It was some sport to make the water
fly and wet the grinder, suddenly starting
up quickly and surprising him when I was
turning very slowly. I used to wish some-
39
BEING A BOY
times that I could turn fast enough to make
the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Steady
turning is what the grinders like, and any
boy who turns steadily, so as to give an
even motion to the stone, will be much
praised, and will be in demand. I advise
any boy who desires to do this sort of work
to turn steadily. If he does it by jerks and
in a fitful manner, the “hired menâ€â€™ will be
very apt to dispense with his services and
turn the grindstone for each other.
This is one of the most disagreeable tasks
of the boy farmer, and, hard as it is, I do
not know why it is supposed to belong es-
pecially to childhood. But it is, and one
of the certain marks that second childhood
has come to a man on a farm is that he is
asked to turn the grindstone as if he were
a boy again. When the old man is good for
nothing else, when he can neither mow nor
pitch, and scarcely “rake after,†he can
turn grindstone, and it is in this way that
he renews his youth. ‘“Ain’t you ashamed
to have your granther turn the grind-
stone?†asks the hired man of the boy. So
the boy takes hold and turns himself, till
4o
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
his little back aches. When he gets older
he wishes he had replied, “Ain’t you
ashamed to make either an old man or a
little boy do such hard grinding work?â€
Doing the regular work of this world is
not much, the boy thinks, but the wearisome
part is the waiting on the people who do
the work. And the boy is not far wrong.
This is what women and boys have to do
on a farm,—wait upon everybody who
“works.†The trouble with the boy’s life
is that he has no time that he can call his
own. He is, like a barrel of beer, always on
draught. The men-folks, having worked in
the regular hours, lie down and rest, stretch
themselves idly in the shade at noon, or
lounge about after supper. Then the boy,
who has done nothing all day but turn
grindstone, and spread hay, and rake after,
and run his little legs off at everybody’s
beck and call, is sent on some errand or
some household chore, in order that time
shall not hang heavy on his hands. The
boy comes nearer to perpetual motion than
anything else in nature, only it is not alto-
gether a voluntary motion. The time that
4l
BEING A BOY
the farm-boy gets for his own is usually at
the end of a stent. We used to be given
a certain piece of corn to hoe, or a certain
quantity of corn to husk in so many days.
If we finished the task before the time set,
we had the remainder to ourselves. In my
day it used to take very sharp work to gain
anything, but we were always anxious to
take the chance. I think we enjoyed the
holiday in anticipation quite as much as we
did when we had won it. Unless it was
training-day, or Fourth of July, or the cir-
cus was coming, it was a little difficult to
find anything big enough to fill our antici-
pations of the fun we would have in the
day or the two or three days we had earned.
We did not want to waste the time on any
common thing. Even going fishing in one
of the wild mountain brooks was hardly up
to the mark, for we could sometimes do
that on a rainy day. Going down to the
village store was not very exciting, and
was on the whole a waste of our precious
time. Unless we could get out our mili-
tary company, life was apt to be a little
blank, even on the holidays for which we
42
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
had worked so hard. If you went to see
another boy, he was probably at work in
the hayfield or the potato-patch, and his
father looked at you askance. You some-
times took hold and helped him, so that
he could go and play with you; but it was
usually time to go for the cows before the
task was done. There has been a change,
but the amusements of a boy in the coun-
try were few then. Snaring “suckers†out
of the deep meadow brook used to be about
as good as any that I had. The North
American sucker is not an engaging animal
in all respects; his body is comely enough,
but his mouth is puckered up like that of a
purse. The mouth is not formed for the
gentle angle-worm nor the delusive fly of
the fishermen. It is necessary therefore to
snare the fish if you want him. In the
sunny days he lies in the deep pools, by
some big stone or near the bank, poising
himself quite still, or only stirring his fins
a little now and then, as an elephant moves
his ears. He will lie so for hours, — or
rather float, —in perfect idleness and ap-
parent bliss,
43
BEING A BOY
The boy who also has a holiday, but can-
not keep still, comes along and peeps over
the bank. “Golly, ain’t hea big one!†Per-
. haps he is eighteen inches long, and weighs
two or three pounds. He lies there among
his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a
school of them, perhaps a district school,
that only keeps in warm days in the summer.
The pupils seem to have little to learn, ex-
cept to balance themselves and to turn
gracefully with a flirt of the tail, Not much
is taught but “deportment,†and some of
the old suckers are perfect Turveydrops in
that. The boy is armed with a pole and a
stout line, and on the end of it a brass wire
bent into a hoop, which is a slipnoose, and
slides together when anything is caught in
it. The boy approaches the bank and looks
over. There he lies, calm as a whale.
The boy devours him with his eyes. He is
almost too much excited to drop the snare
into the water without making a noise. A
puff of wind comes and ruffles the surface,
so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm
again, and there he still is, moving his fins
in peaceful security. The boy lowers his
44
SNARING SUCKERS
THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
snare behind the fish and slips it along.
He intends to get it around him just back
of the gills and then elevate him with a
sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation,
for the snare will turn a little, and if it
hits the fish he is off. However, it goes
well, the wire is almost in place, when sud-
denly the fish, as if he had a warning in a
dream, for he appears to see nothing, moves
his tail just a little, glides out of the loop,
and, with no seeming appearance of frus-
trating any one’s plans, lounges over to the
other side of the pool; and there he re-
poses just as if he was not spoiling the
boy’s holiday.
This slight change of base on the part of
the fish requires the boy to reorganize his
whole campaign, get a new position on the
bank, a new line of approach, and patiently
wait for the wind and sun before he can
lower his line. This time, cunning and pa-
tience are rewarded. The hoop encircles
the unsuspecting fish, The boy’s eyes
almost start from his head as he gives a tre-
mendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight
that he has got him fast. Out he comes,
45
BEING A BOY
up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to
look at him. In this transaction, however,
no one can be more surprised than the
sucker.
46
VII
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
Tue boy farmer does not appreciate
school vacations as highly as his city cousin.
When school keeps he has only to “do
chores and go to school,’ — but between
terms there are a thousand things on the
farm that have been left for the boy to do.
Picking up stones in the pastures and piling
them in heaps used to be one of them.
Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else
the sun every year drew them to the sur-
face, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out
of the soft garden soil; it is certain that
there were fields that always gave the boys
this sort of fall work. And very lively
work it was on frosty mornings for the
barefooted boys, who were continually turn-
ing up the larger stones in order to stand
for a moment in the warm place that had
been covered from the frost. A boy can
47
BEING A BOY
stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork;
and the boy who found a warm spot for the
sole of his foot was likely to stand in it
until the words, “Come, stir your stumps,â€
broke in discordantly upon his meditations.
For the boy is very much given to medita-
tions. If he had his way he would do no-
thing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think
about things, and enjoy his work as he goes
along.. He picks up potatoes as if each one
was a lump of. gold just turned out of the
dirt, and requiring careful examination.
Although the country boy feels a little
joy when school breaks up (as he does
when anything breaks up, or any change
takes place), since he is released from the
discipline and restraint of it, yet the school
is his opening into the world, —his ro-
mance. Its opportunities for enjoyment are
numberless. He does not exactly know
what. he is set at books for; he takes spell-
ing rather as.an exercise for his lungs,
standing up and shouting out the words
with entire recklessness of consequences ;
he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and
geography as something that must be
48
PICKING UP POTATOES
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
cleared out of his way before recess, but
not at all with the zest he would dig a
woodchuck out of his hole. But recess!
Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that
with which a boy rushes out of the school-
house door for the ten minutes of recess?
He is like to burst with animal spirits; he
runs like a deer; he can nearly fly; and
he throws himself into play with entire self-
forgetfulness, and an energy that would
overturn the world if his strength were pro-
portioned to it. For ten minutes the world
is absolutely his; the weights are taken
off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own
master for that brief time, as he never
again will be if he lives to be as old as the
king of Thule, and nobody knows how old
he was. And there is the nooning, a solid
hour, in which vast projects can be carried
out which have been slyly matured during
the school-hours; expeditions are under-
taken, wars are begun between the Indians
on one side and the settlers on the other,
the military company is drilled (without
uniforms or arms), or games are carried on
which involve miles of running, and an
49
BEING A BOY
expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the
spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
Friendships are formed, too, which are
fervent if not enduring, and enmities con-
tracted which are frequently “taken outâ€
on the spot, after a rough fashion boys
have of settling as they go along; cases of
long ‘credit, either in words or trade, are
not frequent with boys ; boot on jack-knives
must be paid on the nail; and it is consid-
ered much more honorable to out with a
personal grievance at once, even if the ex-
planation is. made with the fists, than to
pretend fair, and then take a sneaking re-
venge on some concealed opportunity. The
country boy at the district school is intro-
duced into a wider world than he knew at
home, in many ways. Some big boy brings
to school a copy of the Arabian Nights, a
dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, and
the last leaves missing, which is passed
around, and slyly read under the desk, and
perhaps comes to the little boy whose par-
ents disapprove of novel-reading, and have
no work of fiction in the house except a
pious fraud called “Six Months in a Con-
50
LEAP FROG AT RECESS
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
vent,†and the latest comic almanac. The
boy’s eyes dilate as he steals some of the
treasures out of the wondrous pages, and
he longs to lose himself in the land of
enchantment open before him. He tells
at home that he has seen the most wonder-
ful book that ever was, and a big boy has
promised to lend it to him. “Is it a true
book, John?†asks the grandmother ; “be-
cause if it isn’t true, it is the worst thing
that a boy can read.†(This happened
years ago.) John cannot answer as to the
truth of the book, and so does not bring it
home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and
conceals it in the barn, and lying in the
hay-mow is lost in its enchantments many
an odd hour when he is supposed to be
doing chores. There were no chores in
the Arabian Nights; the boy there had but
to rub the ring and summon a genius, who
would feed the calves and pick up chips
and bring in wood in a minute. It was
through this emblazoned portal that the
boy walked into the world of books, which
he soon found was larger than his own, and
filled with people he longed to know.
51
BEING A BOY
And the farmer-boy is not without his
sentiment and his secrets, though he has
never been at a children’s party in his life,
and, in fact, never has heard that children
go into society when they are seven, and
give regular wine-parties when they reach
the ripe age of nine. But one of his re-
grets at having the summer school close is
dimly connected with a little girl, whom he
does not care much for,—would a great
deal rather play with a boy than with her at
recess, — but whom he will not see again
. for some time, —a sweet little thing, who
is very friendly with John, and with whom
he has been known to exchange bits of
candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom
he cut in two his lead-pencil, and gave her
half. At the last day of school she goes
part way with John, and then he turns and
goes a longer distance towards her home,
so that it is late when he reaches his own.
Is he late? He didn’t know he was late,
he came straight home when school was
dismissed, only going a little way home with
Alice Linton to help her carry her books.
In a box in his chamber, which he has lately
52
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
put a padlock on, among fish-hooks and
lines and bait-boxes, odd pieces of brass,
twine, early sweet apples, popcorn, beech-
nuts, and other articles of value, are some
little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-
cornered or otherwise, and written, I will
warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink.
These little notes are parting gifts at the
close of school, and John, no doubt, gave
his own in exchange for them, though the
writing was an immense labor, and the fold-
ing was a secret bought of another boy
for a big piece of sweet flag-root baked in
sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry
in his pantaloons pocket until his pocket
was in such a state that putting his fingers
into them was about as good as dipping
them into the sugar-bowl at home. Each
precious note contained a lock or curl of
girl’s hair, —a rare collection of all colors,
after John had been in school many terms,
and had passed through a great many part-
ing scenes, — black, brown, red, tow-color,
and some that looked like spun gold and
felt like silk. The sentiment contained in
the notes was that which was common in
53
BEING A BOY
the school, and expressed a melancholy
foreboding of early death, and a touching
desire to leave hair enough this side the
grave to constitute a sort of strand of
remembrance. With little variation, the
poetry that made the hair precious was in
the words, and, as a Cockney would say,
set to the hair, following : —
“This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head ;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead.â€
John liked to read these verses, which
always made a new and fresh impression
with each lock of hair, and he was not
critical ; they were for him vehicles of true
sentiment, and indeed they were what he
used when he inclosed a clip of his own
sandy hair to a friend. And it did not
occur to him until he was a great deal
older and less innocent to smile at them.
John felt that he would sacredly keep every
lock of hair intrusted to him, though death
should come on the wings of cholera and
54
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
take away every one of these sad, red-ink
correspondents. When John’s big brother
one day caught sight of these treasures,
and brutally told him that he “had hair
enough to stuff a horse-collar,†John was
so outraged and shocked, as he should have
been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this
coarse suggestion, this profanation of his
most delicate feeling, that he was only kept
from crying by the resolution to “lickâ€
his brother as soon as ever he got big
enough,
55
VII
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
One of the best things in farming is
gathering the chestnuts, hickory-nuts, but-
ternuts, and even beech-nuts, in the late
fall, after the frosts have cracked the husks
and the high winds have shaken them, and
the colored leaves have strewn the ground.
On a bright October day, when the air is
full of golden sunshine, there is nothing
quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor
is the pleasure of it altogether destroyed
for the boy by the consideration that he is
making himself useful in obtaining supplies
for the winter household. The getting-in
of potatoes and corn is a different thing;
that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry,
of farm life. I am not sure but the boy
would find it very irksome, though, if he
were obliged to work at nut-gathering in
order to procure food for the family. He is
56
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
willing to make himself useful in his own
way. The Italian boy, who works day after
day at a huge pile of pine-cones, pounding
and cracking them and taking out the long
seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat
nuts (and which are almost as good as
pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the
Italians), probably does not see the fun of
nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy here
were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks
and opening the prickly chestnut-burs as
a task, he would think himself an ill-used
boy. What a hardship the prickles in his
fingers would be! But now he digs them
out with his jack-knife, and he enjoys the
process, on the whole. The boy is willing
to do any amount of work if it is called
play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nim-
ble and industrious than the boy. I like to
see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-
grove; they leave a desert behind them
like the seventeen-years locusts. To climb
a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of
its fruit and pass to the next, is the sport of
a brief time. I have seen a legion of boys
57
BEING A BOY
scamper over our grassplot under the chest-
nut-trees, each one as active as if he were a
new patent picking-machine, sweeping the
ground clean of nuts, and disappear over
the hill before I could go to the door and
speak to them about it. Indeed, I have
noticed that boys: don’t care much for con-
versation with the owners of fruit - trees.
They could speedily make their fortunes if
they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields.
I have never seen anything like it except a
flock of turkeys removing the grasshoppers
from a piece of pasture.
Perhaps it is not generally known that we
get the idea of some of our best military
manoeuvres from the turkey. The deploy-
ing of the skirmish-line in advance of an
army is one of them. The drum-major of
our holiday militia companies is copied ex-
actly from the turkey gobbler; he has the
same splendid appearance, the same proud
step, and the same martial aspect. The
gobbler does not lead his forces in the field,
but goes behind them, like the colonel of a
regiment, so that he can see every part of
the line and direct its movements, This
58
POUNDING OFF SHUCKS
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
resemblance is one of the most singular
things in natural history. I like to watch
the gobbler manceuvring his forces in a
grasshopper-field. He throws out his com-
pany of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-
shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed
at equal distances, while he walks majesti-
cally in the rear. They advance rapidly,
picking right and left, with military pre-
cision, killing the foe and disposing of the
dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody
has yet discovered how many grasshoppers
a turkey will hold; but he is very much
like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner, — he
keeps on eating as long as the supplies
last.
The gobbler, in one of these raids, does
not condescend to grab a single grasshop-
per, — at least, not while anybody is watch-
ing him. But I suppose he makes up for it
when his dignity cannot be injured by hav-
ing spectators of his voracity; perhaps he
falls upon. the grasshoppers when they are
driven into a corner of the field. But he is
only fattening himself for destruction ; like
all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end.
59
BEING A BOY
And if the turkeys had any Sunday-school,
they would be taught this.
The New England boy used to look for-
ward to Thanksgiving as the great event of
the year. He was apt to get stents set him,
—so much corn to husk, for instance, be-
fore that day, so that he could have an ex-
tra play-spell ; and in order to gain a day
or two, he would work at his task with
the rapidity of half a dozen boys, He had
the day after Thanksgiving always as a holi-
day, and this was the day he counted on.
Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful fes-
tival,—very much like Sunday, except for
the enormous dinner, which filled his imagi-
nation for months before as completely as
it-did his stomach for that day and a week
after. There was an impression in the
house that that dinner was the most impor-
tant event since the landing from the May-
flower. Heliogabalus, who did not resem-
ble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who had
prepared for himself in his day some very
sumptuous banquets in Rome, and ate a
great deal of the best he could get (and
liked peacocks stuffed with asafoetida, for
60
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
one thing), never had anything like a
Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose
that he, or Sardanapalus either, ever had
twenty-four different kinds of pie at one
dinner? Therein many a New England boy
is greater than the Roman emperor or the
Assyrian king, and these were among the
most luxurious eaters of their day and gen-
eration. But something more is necessary
to make good men than plenty to-eat, as
Heliogabalus no doubt found when his head
was cut off. Cutting off the head was a
mode the people had of expressing disap-
proval of their conspicuous men. Nowadays
they elect them to a higher office, or give
them a mission to some foreign country, if
they do not do well where they are.
For days and days before Thanksgiving
the boy was kept at work evenings, pound-
ing and paring and cutting up and mixing
(not being allowed to taste much), until the
world seemed to him to be made of fra-
grant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,
—a world that he was only yet allowed to
enjoy through his nose. How filled the
house was with the most delicious smells!
61
BEING A, BOY
The mince-pies that were made! If John
had been shut in solid walls with them
piled about him, he could n’t have eaten his
way out in four weeks. There were dain-
_ ties enough cooked in those two weeks to
have made the entire year luscious with
good living, if they had been scattered
along in it. But people were probably all
the better for scrimping themselves a little
in order to make this a great feast. And
it was not by any means over in a day.
There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and
other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave
of Aladdin, and it took a long time to ex-
cavate all its riches.
Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy day,
the hilarity of it being so subdued by going
to meeting, and the universal wearing of
the Sunday clothes, that the boy could n’t
see it. But if he felt little exhilaration, he
ate a great deal. The next day was the
real holiday. Then were the merry-making
parties, and perhaps the skatings and sleigh-
rides, for the freezing weather came before
the governor’s proclamation in many parts
of New England. The night after Thanks-
62
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
giving occurred, perhaps, the first real party
that the boy had ever attended, with live
girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And
there he heard those philandering songs,
and played those sweet games of forfeits,
which put him quite beside himself, and
kept him awake that night till the rooster
crowed at the end of his first chicken-nap.
What a new world did that party open to
him! I think it likely that he saw there,
and probably did not dare say ten words to,
some tall, graceful girl, much older than
himself, who seemed to him like a new
order of being. He could see her face just
as plainly in the darkness of his chamber.
He wondered if she noticed how awkward
he was, and how short his trousers-legs
were. He blushed as he thought of his
rather ill-fitting shoes; and determined,
then and there, that he would n’t be put off
with a ribbon any longer, but would have
a young man’s necktie. It was somewhat
painful thinking the party over, but it was
delicious too, He did not think, probably,
that he would die for that tall, handsome
girl; he did not put it exactly in that way.
63
BEING A BOY
But he rather resolved to live for her, —
which might in the end amount to the
same thing. At least, he thought that no-
body would live to speak twice disrespect-
fully of her in his presence.
64
IX
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
Wuart John said was, that he didn’t care
much for pumpkin-pie; but that was after
he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to
him then that mince would be better.
The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie
has never been properly considered. There
is an air of festivity about its approach in
the fall. The boy is willing to help pare
and cut up the pumpkin, and he watches
with the greatest interest the stirring-up
process and the pouring into the scalloped
crust. When the sweet savor of the bak-
ing reaches his nostrils, he is filled with the
most delightful anticipations. Why should
he not be? He knows that for months to
come the buttery will contain golden treas-
ures, and that it will require only a slight
ingenuity to get at them.
The fact is, that the boy is as good in
65
BEING A BOY
the buttery as in any part of farming. His
elders say that the boy is always hungry ;
but that is a very coarse way to put it. He
has only recently come into a world that is
full of good things to eat, and there is on
the whole a very short time in which to eat
them ; at least he is told, among the first
information he receives, that life is short.
Life being brief, and pie and the like fleet-
ing, he very soon decides upon an active
campaign. It may be an old story to peo-
ple who have been eating for forty or fifty
years, but it is different with a beginner.
He takes the thick and thin as it comes, as
to pie, for instance. Some people do make
them very thin. I knew a place -where
they were not thicker than the poor man’s
plaster ; they were spread so thin upon the
crust that they were better fitted to draw
out hunger than to satisfy it. They used
to be made up by the great oven-full and
kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened
and dried to a toughness you would hardly
believe. This was a long time ago, and
they make the pumpkin-pie in the country
better now, or the race of boys would have
66
{THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
been so discouraged that I think they would
have stopped coming into the world.
The truth is, that boys have always been
so plenty that they are not half appreciated.
We have shown that a farm could not get
along without them, and yet their rights
are seldom recognized. One of the most
amusing things is their effort to acquire
personal property. The boy has the care
of the calves ; they always need feeding or
shutting up or letting out; when the boy
wants to play, there are those calves to be
looked after, — until he gets to hate the
name of calf. But in consideration of his
faithfulness, two of them are given to him.
There is no doubt that they are his; he has
the entire charge of them. When they get
to be steers, he spends all his holidays in
breaking them in to a yoke. He gets them
so broken in that they will run like a pair
of deer all over the farm, turning the yoke,
and kicking their heels, while he follows in
full chase, shouting the ox language till he
is red in the face. When the steers grow
up to be cattle, a drover one day comes
along and takes them away, and the boy is
67
BEING A BOY
told that he can have another pair of
calves ; and so, with undiminished faith, he
goes back and begins over ‘again to make
his fortune. He owns lambs and young
colts in the same way, and makes just as
much out of them.
There are ways in which the farmer-boy
can earn money, as by gathering the early
chestnuts and taking them to the Corner
store, or by finding turkeys’ eggs and sell-
ing them to his mother ; and another way is
to go without butter at the table, — but the
money thus made is for the heathen. John
read in Dr. Livingstone that some of the
tribes in Central Africa (which is repre-
sented by a blank spot in the atlas) use
the butter to grease their hair, putting on
pounds of it at a time; and he said he had
rather eat his butter than have it put to
that use, especially as it melted away so
fast in that hot climate.
Of course it was explained to John that
the missionaries do not actually carry butter
to Africa, and that they must usually go
without it themselves there, it being almost
impossible to make it good from the milk
68
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
in the cocoanuts. And it was further
explained to him that, even if the heathen
never received his butter or the money for
it, it was an excellent thing for a boy to cul-
tivate the habit of self-denial and of benev-
olence, and if the heathen never heard of
him he would be blessed for his generosity.
This was all true.
But John said that he was tired of sup-
porting the heathen out of his butter, and
he wished the rest of the family would also
stop eating butter and save the money for
missions; and he wanted to know where
the other members of the family got their
money to send to the heathen; and his’
mother said that he was about half right,
and that self-denial was just as good for
grown people as it was for little boys and
girls.
The boy is not always slow to take what
he considers his rights. Speaking of those
thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cup-
board, I used to know a boy who after-
wards grew to be a selectman, and brushed
his hair straight up like General Jackson,
and went to the legislature, where he al-
69
BEING A BOY
ways voted against every measure that was
proposed, in the most honest manner, and
got the reputation of being the ‘ watch-dog
of the treasury.†Rats in the cellar were
nothing to be compared to this boy for de-
structiveness in pies. He used to go down,
whenever he could make an excuse, to get
apples for the family, or draw a mug of
cider for his dear old grandfather (who was
a famous story-teller about the Revolu-
tionary War, and would no doubt have been
wounded in battle if he had not been as
prudent as he was patriotic), and come up
stairs with a tallow candle in one hand and
the apples or cider in the other, looking as
innocent and as unconscious as if he had
never done anything in his life except deny
himself butter for the sake of the heathen.
And yet this boy would have buttoned
under his jacket an entire round pumpkin-
pie. And the pie was so well made and so
dry that it was not injured in the least, and
it never hurt the boy’s clothes a bit more
than if it had been inside of him instead
of outside; and this boy would retire toa
secluded place and eat it with another boy,
70
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
being never suspected, because he was not
in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and he
never appeared to have one about him. But
he did something worse than this. When
his mother saw that pie after pie departed,
she told the family that she suspected
the hired man; and the boy never said a
word, which was the meanest kind of lying.
That hired man was probably regarded with
suspicion by the family to the end of his
days, and if he had been accused of robbing
they would have believed him guilty.
I should n’t wonder if that selectman
occasionally has remorse now about that
pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up
under his jacket and sticking to him like a
breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like
a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into
his vitals. Perhaps not. It is difficult to
say exactly what was the sin of stealing
that kind of pie, especially if the one who
stole it ate it. It could have been used for
the game of pitching quoits, and a pair of
them would have made very fair wheels for
the dog-cart. And yet it is probably as
wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one;
71
BEING A BOY
and it made no difference because it was
easy to steal this sort. Easy stealing is no
better than easy lying, where detection of
the lie is difficult. The boy who steals his
mother’s pies has no right to be surprised
when some other boy steals his watermel-
ons. Stealing is like charity in one respect,
—it is apt to begin at home.
72
xX
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
Ir I were forced to be a boy, and a boy
in the country, —the best kind of boy to
be in the summer,—I would be about
ten years of age. As soon as I got any
older, I would quit it. The trouble with
a boy is that just as he begins to enjoy
himself he is too old, and has to be set to
doing something else. If a country boy
were wise he would stay at just that age
when he could enjoy himself most, and
have the least expected of him in the way
of work.
Of course the perfectly good boy will
always prefer to work, and to do “choresâ€
for his father and errands for his mother
and sisters, rather than enjoy himself in his
own way. I never saw but one such boy.
He lived in the town of Goshen, — not the
place where the butter is made, but a much
73
BEING A BOY
better Goshen than that. And I never saw
him, but I heard of him; and being about
the same age, as I supposed, I was taken
once from Zoar, where I lived, to Goshen
to see him. But he was dead. He had
been dead almost a year, so that it was im-
possible to see him. He died of the most
singular disease: it was from oz eating
green apples in the season of them. This
boy, whose name was Solomon, before he
died would rather split up kindling-wood
for his mother than go afishing: the con-
sequence was, that he was kept at splitting
kindling-wood and such work most of the
time, and grew a better and more useful
boy day by day. Solomon would not dis-
obey his parents and eat green apples, —
not even when they were ripe enough to
knock off with a stick,— but he had such
a longing for them that he pined and
passed away. If he had eaten the green
apples he would have died of them, proba-
bly ; so that his example is a difficult one
to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject
to get a moral from. All his little play-
mates who ate green apples came to Solo-
74
RUNNING ON THE STONE WALL
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
mon’s funeral, and were very sorry for
what they had done.
John was a very different boy from Solo-
mon, not half so good, nor half so dead.
He was a farmer’s boy, as Solomon was, but
he did not take so much interest in the
farm. If John could have had his way he
would have discovered a cave full of dia-
monds, and lots of nail-kegs full of gold-
pieces and Spanish dollars, with a pretty
little girl living in the cave, and two beauti-
fully caparisoned horses, upon which, tak-
ing the jewels and money, they would have
ridden off together, he did not know where.
John had got thus far in his studies, which
were apparently arithmetic and geography,
but were in reality the Arabian Nights, and
other books of high and mighty adventure.
He was a simple country boy, and did not
know much about the world as it is, but he
had one of his own imagination, in which
he lived a good deal. I dare say he found
out soon enough what the world is, and he
had a lesson or two when he was quite
young, in two incidents, which I may as
well relate.
75
BEING A BOY
If you had seen John at this time, you
might have thought he was only a shabbily
dressed country lad, and you never would
have guessed what beautiful thoughts he
sometimes had as he went stubbing his
toes along the dusty road, nor what a chiv-
alrous little fellow he was. You would
have seen a short boy, barefooted, with
trousers at once too big and too short, held
up, perhaps, by one suspender only; a
checked cotton shirt; and a hat of braided
palmleaf, frayed at the edges and bulged up
in the crown. It is impossible to keepa
hat neat if you use it to catch bumble-bees
and whisk ’em; to bail the water from
a leaky boat; to catch minnows in; to
put over honey-bees’ nests; and to trans-
port pebbles, strawberries, and hens’ eggs.
John usually carried a sling in his hand, or
a bow, or a limber stick sharp at one end,
from which he could sling apples a great
distance. If he walked in the road, he
walked in the middle of it, shuffling up the
dust ; or, if he went elsewhere, he was likely
to be running on the top of the fence or
the stone-wall, and chasing chipmunks.
76
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
John knew the best place to dig sweet-
flag in all the farm; it was in a meadow by
the river, where the bobolinks sang so
gayly. He never liked to hear the bobo-
link sing, however, for he said it always
reminded him of the whetting of a scythe,
and ¢hat reminded him of spreading hay ;
and if there was anything he hated it was
spreading hay after the mowers. “TI guess
you wouldn't like it yourself,†said John,
“with the stubs getting into your feet, and
the hot sun, and the men getting ahead of
you, all you could do.â€
Towards evening once, John was coming
along the road home with some stalks of
the sweet-flag in his hand ; there is a succu-
lent pith in the end of the stalk which is
very good to eat, tender, and not so strong
as the root; and John liked to pull it, and
carry home what he did not eat on the way.
As he was walking along he met a carriage,
which stopped opposite to him; he also
stopped and bowed, as country boys used
to bow in John’s day. A lady leaned from
the carriage and said, —
“What have you got, little boy?â€
77
BEING A BOY
She seemed to be the most beautiful wo-
man John had ever seen; with light hair,
dark, tender eyes, and the sweetest smile.
There was that in her gracious mien and in
her dress which reminded John of the beau-
tiful castle ladies, with whom he was well
acquainted in books. He felt that he knew
her at once, and he also seemed to bea sort
of young prince himself. I fancy he didn’t
look much like one. But of his own ap-
pearance he thought not at all, as he replied
to the lady’s question, without the least
embarrassment, —
“Tt’s sweet-flag stalk; would you like
some?â€
“Indeed, I should like to taste it,†said
the lady, with a most winning smile. “1
used to be very fond of it when I was a lit-
tle:sarl;â€
John was delighted that the lady should
like sweet-flag, and that she was pleased to
accept it from him. He thought himself
that it was about the best thing to eat he
knew. He handed up a large bunch of it.
The lady took two or three stalks, and was
about to return the rest, when John said, —
78
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
“Please keep it all, ma’am. I can get
lots more. I know where it’s ever so
thick.â€
“Thank you, thank you,†said the lady ;
and as the carriage started she reached out
her hand to John. He did not understand
the motion, until he saw a cent drop in the
road at his feet. Instantly all his illusion
and his pleasure vanished. Something like
tears were in his eyes as he shouted, —
“JT don’t want your cent. I don’t sell
flag!â€
John was intensely mortified. “I sup-
pose,†he said, ‘“‘she thought I was a sort of
beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!â€
At any rate, he walked away and left the
cent in the road, a humiliated boy. The
next day he told Jim Gates about it. Jim
said he was green not to take the money ;
he’d go and look for it now, if he would
tell him about where it dropped. And Jim
did spend an hour poking about in the dirt,
but he did not find the cent. Jim, how-
ever, had an idea: he said he was going to
dig sweet-flag, and see if another carriage
would n’t come along.
79
BEING A BOY
John’s next rebuff and knowledge of the
world was of another sort. He was again
walking the road at twilight, when he was
overtaken by a wagon with one seat, upon
which were two pretty girls, and a young
gentleman sat between them driving. It
was a merry party, and John could hear
them laughing and singing as they ap-
proached him. The wagon stopped when
it overtook him, and one of the sweet-faced
girls leaned from the seat and said, quite
seriously and pleasantly, —
“Little boy, how’s your mar ?â€
John was surprised and puzzled for a mo-
ment. He had never seen the young lady,
but he thought that she perhaps knew his
mother ; at any rate his instinct of polite-
ness made him say, —
“She ’s pretty well, I thank you.â€
“Does she know you are out ?â€
And thereupon all three in the wagon
burst into a roar of laughter and dashed on.
It flashed upon John in a moment that
he had been imposed on, and it hurt him
dreadfully. His self-respect was injured
somehow, and he felt as if his lovely, gentle
80
FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
mother had been insulted. He would like
to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and
in a rage he cried, —
“VYou’re a nice’â€â€” But he couldn't
think of any hard, bitter words quick
enough.
Probably the young lady, who might have
been almost any young lady, never knew
what a cruel thing she had done.
81
XI
HOME INVENTIONS
THE winter season is not all sliding down
hill for the farmer-boy by any means; yet
he contrives to get as much fun out of it as
from any part of the year. There is a dif-
ference in boys: some are always jolly, and
some go scowling always through life as if
they had a stone-bruise on each heel. I
like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round
every morning to sell molasses candy, offer-
ing two sticks for a cent apiece; it was
worth fifty cents a day to see his cheery
face. That boy rose in the world. He is
now the owner of a large town at the West.
To be sure, there are no houses in it except
his own; but there is a map of it and roads
and streets are laid out on it, with dwell-
ings and churches and academies and a
college and an opera-house, and you could
82
Go
a
4
a
n
<
o
oO
HOME INVENTIONS
scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hart-
ford, on paper. He and all his family have
the fever and ague, and shake worse than
the people at Lebanon: but they do not
mind it; it makes them lively, in fact. Ed
May is just as jolly as he used to be. He
calls his town Mayopolis, and expects to be
mayor of it; his wife, however, calls the
town Maybe.
The farmer-boy likes to have winter
come, for one thing, because it freezes up
the ground so that he can’t dig in it; and
it is covered with snow, so that there is no
picking up stones, nor driving the cows to
pasture. He would have a very easy time
if it were not for the getting up before day-
light to build the fires and do the “chores.â€
Nature intended the long winter nights for
the farmer-boy to sleep; but in my day he
was expected to open his sleepy eyes when
the cock crew, get out of the warm bed and
light a candle, struggle into his cold panta-
loons, and pull on boots in which the ther-
mometer would have gone down to zero,
rake open the coals on the hearth and start
the morning fire, and then go to the barn
83
BEING A BOY
to “fodder.†The frost was thick on the
kitchen windows; the snow was drifted
against the door; and the journey to the
barn, in the pale light of dawn, over the
creaking snow, was like an exile’s trip to
Siberia. The boy was not half awake when
he stumbled into the cold barn, and was
greeted by the lowing and bleating and
neighing of cattle waiting for their break-
fast. How their breath steamed up from
the mangers, and hung in frosty spears
from their noses! Through the great lofts
above the hay, where the swallows nested,
the winter wind whistled and the snow
sifted. Those old barns were well venti-
lated.
I used to spend much valuable time in
planning a barn that should be tight and
warm, with a fire in it if necessary in order
to keep the temperature somewhere near
the freezing point. I couldn’t see how the
cattle could live in a place where a lively
boy, full of young blood, would freeze to
death in a short time if he did not swing
his arms and slap his hands, and jump
about like a goat. I thought I would have
84
HOME INVENTIONS
a sort of perpetual manger that should
shake down the hay when it was wanted,
and a self-acting machine that should cut
up the turnips and pass them into the
mangers, and water always flowing for the
cattle and horses to drink. With these
simple arrangements I could lie in bed, and
know that the “chores†were doing them-
selves. It would also be necessary, in order
that I should not be disturbed, that the
crow should be taken out of the roosters,
but I could think of no process to do it.
Tt seems to me that the hen-breeders, if
they know as much as they say they do,
might raise a breed of crowless roosters,
for the benefit of boys, quiet neighbor-
hoods, and sleepy families.
There was another notion that I had,
about kindling the kitchen fire, that I never
carried out. It was, to have a spring at the
head of my bed, connecting with a wire,
which should run to a torpedo which I
would plant overnight in the ashes of the
_ fireplace. By touching the spring I could
explode the torpedo, which would scatter
the ashes and uncover the live coals, and at
85
BEING A BOY
the same time shake down the sticks of
wood which were standing by the side of
the ashes in the chimney, and the fire ©
would kindle itself. This ingenious plan
was frowned on by the whole family, who
said they did not want to be waked up
every morning by an explosion. And yet
they expected me to wake up without an
explosion. A boy’s plans for making life
agreeable are hardly ever heeded.
I never knew a boy farmer who was not
eager to go to the district school in the
winter. There is such a chance for learn-
ing, that he must be a dull boy who does
not come out in the spring a fair skater, an
accurate snowballer, and an accomplished
slider downhill, with or without a board, on
his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.
Take a moderate hill, with a foot -slide
down it worn to icy smoothness, and a
“go-round†of boys on it, and there is no-
thing like it for whittling away boot-leather.
The boy is the shoemaker’s friend. An
active lad can wear down a pair of cowhide
soles in a week so that the ice will scrape
his toes, Sledding or coasting is also slow
86
HOME INVENTIONS
fun compared to the ‘“barebackâ€â€™ sliding
down a steep hill over a hard, glistening
crust. It is not only dangerous, but it is
destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a
degree to make a tailor laugh. If any other
animal wore out his skin as fast as a school-
boy wears out his clothes in winter, it would
need anew one once a month. Ina coun-
try district-school, patches were not by any
means a sign of poverty, but of the boy’s
courage and adventurous disposition. Our
elders used to threaten to dress us in
leather and put sheet-iron seats in our
trousers. The boy sazd that he wore out
his trousers on the hard seats in the
schoolhouse ciphering hard sums. For
that extraordinary statement he received
two castigations,—one at home, that was
_ mild, and one from the schoolmaster, who
was careful to lay the rod upon the boy’s
sliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely
called it, on a sliding scale, according to
the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however,
was the study of history, early history, the
Indian wars. We studied it mostly at
87
BEING A BOY
noontime, and we had it illustrated as the
children nowadays have “ object-lessons,â€
—though our object was not so much to
have lessons as it was to revive real history.
Back of the school-house rose a round
hill, upon which tradition said had stood in
colonial times a block-house, built by the
settlers for defense against the Indians.
For the Indians had the idea that the
whites were not settled enough, and used
to come nights to settle them with a toma-
hawk. It was called Fort Hill. It was
very steep on each side, and the river ran
close by. It was a charming place in sum-
mer, where one could find laurel, and
checkerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit
in the cool breeze, looking at the moun-
tains across the .river, and listening to the
murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists
built a meeting-house there afterwards, but
the hill was so slippery in winter that the
aged could not climb it, and the wind raged
so fiercely that it blew nearly all the young
Methodists away (many of whom were after-
wards heard of in the West), and finally
the meeting-house itself came down into
88
IN SCHOOL
HOME INVENTIONS
the valley and grew a steeple, and enjoyed
itself ever afterwards. It used to bea no-
tion in New England that a meeting-house
ought to stand as near heaven as possible.
The boys at our school divided them-
selves into two parties ; one was the Early
Settlers and the other the Pequots, the
latter the most numerous. The Early Set-
tlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a
strong fortress it was, constructed of snow-
balls rolled up to a vast size (larger than
the Cyclopean blocks of stone which form
the ancient Etruscan walls in Italy), piled
one upon another, and the whole cemented
by pouring on water which froze and made
the walls solid. The Pequots helped the
whites build it. It had a covered way
under the snow, through which only could
it be entered, and it had bastions and towers
and openings to fire from, and a great many
other things for which there are no names
in military books. And it had a glacis and
a ditch outside.
When it was completed, the Early Set-
tlers, leaving the women in the school-
house, a prey to the Indians, used to retire
89
BEING A BOY
into it, and await the attack of the Pequots.
There was only a handful of the garrison,
while the Indians were many, and also bar-
barous. It was agreed that they should be
barbarous. And it was in this light that
the great question was settled whether a
boy might snowball with balls that he had
soaked over night in water and let freeze.
They were as hard as cobblestones, and if
a boy should be hit in the head by one of
them he could not tell whether he was a
Pequot or an Early Settler. It was con-
sidered as unfair to use these ice-balls in
an open fight, as it is to use poisoned am-
munition in real war. But as the whites
were protected by the fort, and the Indians
were treacherous by nature, it was decided
that the latter might use the hard missiles.
The Pequots used to come swarming up
the hill, with hideous war-whoops, attacking
the fort on all sides with great noise and a
shower of balls. The garrison replied with
yells of defiance and well-directed shots,
hurling back the invaders when they at-
tempted to scale the walls. The Settlers
had the advantage of position, but they
go
HOME INVENTIONS
were sometimes overpowered by numbers,
and would often have had to surrender
but for the ringing of the school-bell. The
Pequots were in great fear of the school-
bell.
I do not remember that the whites ever
hauled down their flag and surrendered vol-
untarily ; but once or twice the fort was
carried by storm and the garrison were mas-
sacred to a boy, and thrown out of the for-
tress, having been first scalped. To take a
boy’s cap was to scalp him, and after that
he was dead, if he played fair. There were
a great many hard hits given and taken, but
always cheerfully, for it was in the cause of
our early history. The history of Greece
and Rome was stuff compared to this. And
we had many boys in our school who could
imitate the Indian war-whoop enough better
than they could scan arma, virumaque cano.
gI
XII
THE LONELY FARM-HOUSE
Tue winter evenings of the farmer-boy
in New England used not to be so gay as
to tire him of the pleasures of life before
he became of age. A remote farm-house,
standing a little off the road, banked up
with sawdust and earth to keep the frost
out of the cellar, blockaded with snow, and
flying a blue flag of smoke from its chim-
ney, looks like a besieged fort. On cold
and stormy winter nights, to the traveler
wearily dragging along in his creaking
sleigh, the light from its windows suggests
a house of refuge and the cheer of a blazing
fire. But it is no less a fort, into which
the family retire when the New England
winter on the hills really sets in.
The boy is an important part of the gar-
rison. He is not only one of the best
means of communicating with the outer
92
A REMOTE FARMHOUSE
THE LONELY FARM-HOUSE
world, but he furnishes half the entertain-
ment and takes two thirds of the scolding
of the family circle. A farm would come
to grief without a boy on it, but it is impos-
sible to think of a farm-house without a
boy in it.
“That boy†brings life into the house ;
his tracks are to be seen everywhere, he
leaves all the doors open, he hasn’t half
filled the wood-box, he makes noise enough
to wake the dead ; or he is in a brown-study
by the fire and cannot be stirred, or he
has fastened a grip upon some Crusoe book
which cannot easily be shaken off. I sup-
pose that the farmer-boy’s evenings are not
now what they used to be; that he has
more books, and less to do, and is not half
so good a boy as formerly, when he used to
think the almanac was pretty lively reading,
and the comic almanac, if he could get hold
of that, was a supreme delight.
Of course he had the evenings to him-
self after he had done the “chores†at the
barn, brought in the wood and piled it high
in the box, ready to be heaped upon the
great open fire. It was nearly dark when
93
BEING A BOY
he came from school (with its continuation
of snowballing and sliding), and he always
had an agreeable time stumbling and fum-
bling around in barn and woodhouse in the
waning light.
John used to say that he supposed no-
body would do his “chores†if he did not
get home till midnight; and he was never
contradicted. Whatever happened to him,
and whatever length of days or sort of
weather was produced by the almanac, the
cardinal rule was that he should be at home
before dark.
John used to imagine what people did
in the dark ages, and wonder sometimes
whether he was n't still in them.
Of course, John had nothing to do all
the evening, after his “chores,†— except
little things. While he drew his chair up
to the table in order to get the full radiance
of the tallow candle on his slate or his book,
the women of the house also sat by the
table knitting and sewing. The head of
the house sat in his chair, tipped back
against the chimney; the hired man was
in danger of burning his boots in the fire.
94
THE LONELY FARM-HOUSE
John might be deep in the excitement of a
bear story, or be hard at writing a ‘“‘com-
position†on his greasy slate; but, what-
ever he was doing, he was the only one who
could always be interrupted. It was he
who must snuff the candles, and put on a
stick of wood, and toast the cheese, and
turn the apples, and crack the nuts. He
knew where the fox-and-geese board was,
and he could find the twelve-men-Morris.
Considering that he was expected to go to
bed at eight o’clock, one would say that
the opportunity for study was not great,
and that his reading was rather interrupted.
There seemed to be always something for
him to do, even when all the rest of the
family came as near being idle as is ever
possible in a New England household.
No wonder that John was not sleepy at
eight o’clock: he had been flying about
while the others had been yawning before
the fire. He would like to sit up just to
see how much more solemn and stupid it
would become as the night went on; he
wanted to tinker his skates, to mend his
sled, to finish that chapter. Why should
95
BEING A BOY
he go away from that bright blaze, and the
company that sat in its radiance, to the cold
and solitude of his chamber? Why didn’t
the people who were sleepy go to bed ?
How lonesome the old house was ; how
cold it was, away from that great central
fire in the heart of it; how its timbers
creaked as if in the contracting pinch of
the frost ; what a rattling there was of win-
dows, what a concerted attack upon the
clapboards ; how the floors squeaked, and
what gusts from round corners came to
snatch the feeble flame of the candle from
the boy’s hand! How he shivered, as he
paused at the staircase window to look out
upon the great fields of snow, upon the
stripped forest, through which he could
hear the wind raving in a kind of fury, and
up at the black flying clouds, amid which
the young moon was dashing and driven on
like a frail shallop at sea! And his teeth
chattered more than ever when he got into
the icy sheets, and drew himself up into a
ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox in
his hole.
For a little time he could hear the noises
96
THE LONELY FARM-HOUSE
downstairs, and an occasional laugh; he
could guess that now they were having
cider, and now apples were going round;
and he could feel the wind tugging at the
house, even sometimes shaking the bed.
But this did not last long. He soon went
away into a country he always delighted to
be in; a calm place where the wind never
blew, and no one dictated the time of going
to bed to any one else. I like to think of
him sleeping there, in such rude surround-
ings, ingenuous, innocent, mischievous, with
no thought of the buffeting he is to get
from a world that has a good many worse
places for a boy than the hearth of an old
farm-house, and the sweet though unde-
monstrative affection of its family life.
But there were other evenings in the
boy’s life that were different from these at
home, and one of them he will never forget.
It opened a new world to John, and set him
into a great flutter. It produced a revolu-
tion in his mind in regard to neckties ; it
made him wonder if greased boots were
quite the thing compared with blacked
boots ; and he wished he had a long look-
97
BEING A BOY
ing-glass, so that he could see, as he walked
away from it, what was the effect of round
patches on the portion of his trousers he
could not see except in a mirror; and if
patches were quite stylish, even on every-
day trousers. And he began to be very
much troubled about the parting of his
hair, and how to find out on which side was
the natural part.
The evening to which I refer was that of
John’s first party. He knew the girls at
school, and he was interested in some of
them with a different interest from that he
took in the boys. He never wanted to
“take it out†with one of them, for an in-
sult, in a stand-up fight, and he instinctively
softened a boy’s natural rudeness when he
was with them. He would help a timid
little girl to stand erect and slide ; he would
draw her on his sled, till his hands were
stiff with cold, without a murmur ; he would
generously give her red apples into which
he longed to set his own sharp teeth ; and
he would cut in two his lead-pencil for a
girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he
not some of the beautiful auburn tresses of
98
THE LONELY FARM-HOUSE
Cynthia Rudd in his skate, spruce-gum, and
wintergreen box at home? And yet the
grand sentiment of life was little awakened
in John. He liked best to be with boys,
and their rough play suited him better than
the amusements of the shrinking, flutter-
ing, timid, and sensitive little girls. John
had not learned then that a spider-web is
stronger than a cable; or that a pretty little
girl could turn him round her finger a great
deal easier than a big bully of a boy could
make him cry “enough.â€
John had indeed been at spelling-schools,
and had accomplished the feat of “going
home with a girl†afterwards; and he had
been growing into the habit of looking
around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing
how Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying
the service quite as much if Cynthia was
absent as when she was present. But there
was very little sentiment in all this, and no-
thing whatever to make John blush at hear-
ing her name.
But now John was invited to a regular
party. There was the invitation, in a three-
cornered billet, sealed with a transparent
99
BEING A BOY
wafer: “Miss C. Rudd requests the plea-
sure of the company of,†etc., all in blue
ink, and the finest kind of pin - scratching
writing. Whata precious document it was
to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of
perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-
seed he could not tell. He read it overa
hundred times, and showed it confidentially
to his favorite cousin, who had beaux of
her own, and had even “sat up†with them
in the parlor. And from this sympathetic
cousin John got advice as to what he should
wear and how he should conduct himself at
the party.
100
XIII
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
Ir turned out that John did not go after
all to Cynthia Rudd’s party, having broken
through the ice on the river when he was
skating that day, and, as the boy who pulled
him out said, “ come within an inch of his
lifeâ€â€™ But he took care not to tumble into
anything that should keep him from the
next party, which was given with due for-
mality by Melinda Mayhew.
John had been many a time to the house
of Deacon Mayhew, and never with any
hesitation, even if he knew that both the
deacon’s daughters — Melinda and Sophro-
nia—were at home. The only fear he had
felt was of the deacon’s big dog, who always
surlily watched him as he came up the tan-
bark walk, and made a rush at him if he
showed the least sign of wavering. But
upon the night of the party his courage
IoI
BEING A BOY
vanished, and he thought he would rather
face all the dogs in town than knock at the
front door.
The parlor was lighted up, and as John
stood on the broad flagging before the
front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear
the sound of voices — girls’ voices — which
set his heart in a flutter. He could face
the whole district school of girls without
flinching, —he didn’t mind ’em in the
meeting-house in their Sunday best; but
he began to be conscious that now he was
passing to a new sphere, where the girls are
supreme and superior, and he began to feel
for the first time that he was an awkward
boy. The girl takes to society as naturally
as a duckling does to the placid pond, but
with a semblance of sly timidity ; the boy
plunges in with a great splash, and hides
his shy awkwardness in noise and commo-
tion.
When John entered, the company had
nearly all come. He knew them every one,
and yet there was something about them
strange and unfamiliar. They were all a
little afraid of each other, as people are apt
102
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
to be when they are well dressed and met
together for social purposes in the country.
To be at a real party was a novel thing for
most of them, and put a constraint upon
them which they could not at once over-
come. Perhaps it was because they were
in the awful parlor, that carpeted room of
haircloth furniture, which was so seldom
opened. Upon the wall hung two certifi-
cates framed in black,—one certifying
that, by the payment of fifty dollars, Dea-
con Mayhew was a life member of the
American Tract Society; and the other
that, by a like outlay of bread cast upon
the waters, his wife was a life member of
the A. B. C. F. M., a portion of the alpha-
bet which has an awful significance to all
New England childhood. These certificates
are a sort of receipt in full for charity, and
are a constant and consoling reminder to
the farmer that he has discharged his reli-
gious duties.
There was a fire on the broad hearth,
and that, with the tallow candles on the
mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in
the room, and enabled the boys, who were
103
BEING A BOY
mostly on one side of the room, to see the
girls, who were on the other, quite plainly.
How sweet and demure the girls looked, to
be sure! Every boy was thinking if his
hair was slick, and feeling the full embar-
rassment of his entrance into fashionable
life. It was queer that these children, who
were so free everywhere else, should be so
constrained now, and not know what to do
with themselves. The shooting of a spark
out upon the carpet was a great relief, and
was accompanied by a deal of scrambling
to throw it back into the fire, and caused
much giggling. It was only gradually that
the formality was at all broken, and the
young people got together and found their
tongues.
John at length found himself with Cyn-
thia Rudd, to his great delight and con-
siderable embarrassment, for Cynthia, who
was older than John, never looked so
pretty. To his surprise he had nothing to
say to her. They had always found plenty
to talk about before, but now nothing that
he could think of seemed worth saying at a
party.
104
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
“Tt is a pleasant evening,†said John.
“Tt is quite so,†replied Cynthia.
“Did you come in a cutter?†asked
John, anxiously.
“No; I walked on the crust, and it was
perfectly lovely walking,†said Cynthia, in
a burst of confidence.
“Was it slippery ?â€â€™ continued John.
“Not very.â€
John hoped it would be slippery — very
—when he walked home with Cynthia, as
he determined to do, but he did not dare to
say so, and the conversation ran aground
again. John thought about his dog and his
sled and his yoke of steers, but he didn’t
see any way to bring them into conversa-
tion. Had she read the “Swiss Family
Robinson� Only a little ways. John said
it was splendid, and he would lend it to her,
for which she thanked him, and said, with
such a sweet expression, she should be so
glad to have it from him. That was en-
couraging.
And then John asked Cynthia if she had
seen Sally Hawkes since the husking at
their house, when Sally found so many red
105
BEING A BOY
ears; and didn’t she think she was a real
pretty girl?
“Yes, she was right pretty ;†and Cyn-
thia guessed that Sally knew it pretty well.
But did John like the color of her eyes?
No; John didn’t like the color of her
eyes exactly.
“Her mouth would be well enough if
she didn’t laugh so much and show her
teeth.â€
John said her mouth was her worst fea-
ture.
“Oh no,†said Cynthia, warmly; “her
mouth is better than her nose.â€
John did n’t know but it was better than
her nose, and he should like her looks bet-
ter if her hair wasn’t so dreadful black.
But Cynthia, who could afford to be gen-
erous now, said she liked black hair, and
she wished hers was dark. Whereupon
John protested that he liked light hair —
auburn hair — of all things,
And Cynthia said that Sally was a dear,
good girl, and she didn’t believe one word
of the story that she only really found one
red ear at the husking that night, and hid -
106
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
that and kept pulling it out as if it werea
new one.
And so the conversation, once started,
went on as briskly as possible about the
paring-bee and the spelling-school, and the
new singing-master who was coming, and
how Jack Thompson had gone to North-
ampton to be a clerk in a store, and how
Elvira Reddington, in the geography class
at school, was asked what was the capital of
Massachusetts, and had answered “ North-
ampton,†and all the school laughed. John
enjoyed the conversation amazingly, and he
half wished that he and Cynthia were the
whole of the party.
But the party had meantime got into
operation, and the formality was broken up
when the boys and girls had ventured out
of the parlor into the more comfortable liv-
ing-room, with its easy-chairs and every-day
things, and even gone so far as to penetrate
the kitchen in their frolic. As soon as
they forgot they were a party, they began
to enjoy themselves,
But the real pleasure only began with
the games. The party was nothing with-
107
BEING A BOY
out the games, and indeed it was made for
the games. Very likely it was one of the
timid girls who proposed to play something,
and when the ice was once broken, the
whole company went into the business en-
thusiastically. There was no dancing. We
should -hope not. Not in the deacon’s
house; not with the deacon’s daughters,
nor anywhere in this good Puritanic so-
ciety. Dancing was a sin in itself, and no
one could tell what it would lead to. But
there was no reason why the boys and girls
should n’t come together and kiss each
other during a whole evening occasionally.
Kissing was a sign of peace, and was not at
all like taking hold of hands and skipping
about to the scraping of a wicked fiddle.
In the games there was a great deal of
clasping hands, of going round in a circle,
of passing under each other’s elevated
arms, of singing about my true love, and
the end was kisses distributed with more
or less partiality according to the rules of
the play ; but, thank Heaven, there was no
fiddler. John liked it all, and was quite
brave about paying all the forfeits imposed
108
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
on him, even to the kissing all the girls in
the room; but he thought he could have
amended that by kissing a few of them a
good many times instead of kissing them
all once.
But John was destined to have a damper
put upon his enjoyment. They were play-
ing a most fascinating game, in which they
all stand in a circle and sing a philandering
song, except one who is in the centre of
the ring and holds a cushion. At a certain
word in the song, the one in the centre
throws the cushion at the feet of some one
in the ring, indicating thereby the choice
of a mate, and then the two sweetly kneel
upon the cushion, like two meek angels,
and—and so forth. Then the chosen one
takes the cushion and the delightful play
goes on. It is very easy, as it will be seen,
to learn how to play it. Cynthia was hold-
ing the cushion, and at the fatal word she
threw it down,—not before John, but in
front of Ephraim Leggett. And they two
kneeled, and so forth. John was astounded.
He had never conceived of such perfidy in
the female heart. He felt like wiping
10g
BEING A BOY
Ephraim off the face of the earth, only
Ephraim was older and bigger than he.
When it came his turn at length — thanks
to a plain little girl for whose admiration he
did n’t care a straw —he threw the cushion
down before Melinda Mayhew with all-the
devotion he could muster, and a dagger
look at Cynthia. And Cynthia’s perfidious
smile only enraged him the more. John
felt wronged, and worked himself up to
pass a wretched evening,
When supper came he never went near
Cynthia, and busied himself in carrying dif-
ferent kinds of pie and cake, and red apples
and cider, to the girls he liked the least.
He shunned Cynthia, and when he was ac-
cidentally near her, and she asked him if
he would get her a glass of cider, he rudely
told her—like a goose as he was—that
she had better ask Ephraim.. That seemed
to him very smart; but he got more and
more miserable, and began to feel that he
was making himself ridiculous,
Girls have a great deal more good sense
in such matters than boys. Cynthia went
to john, at length, and asked him simply
IIo
GOING HOME WITH CYNTHIA
JOHN’S FIRST PARTY
what the matter was. John blushed, and
said that nothing was the matter. Cynthia
said that it would n’t do for two people
always to be together at a party; and so
they made up, and John obtained permis-
sion to “see†Cynthia home.
It was after half past nine when the
great festivities at the Deacon’s broke up,
and John walked home with Cynthia over
the shining crust and under the stars. It
was mostly a silent walk, for this was also
an occasion when it is difficult to find any-
thing fit to say. And John was thinking
all the way how he should bid Cynthia good-
night ; whether it would do and whether it
would n’t do, this not being a game, and no
forfeits attaching to it. When they reached
the gate there was an awkward little pause.
John said the stars were uncommonly bright.
Cynthia did not deny it, but waited a min-
ute and then turned abruptly away, with
“ Good-night, John!â€
“ Good-night, Cynthia!â€
And the party was over, and Cynthia
was gone, and John went home in a kind
of dissatisfaction with himself.
III
BEING A BOY
It was long before he could go to sleep
for thinking of the new world opened to
him, and imagining how he would act under
a hundred different circumstances, and what
he would say, and what Cynthia would say ;
but a dream at length came, and led him
away to a great city and a brilliant house;
and while he was there he heard a loud
rapping on the under floor, and saw that it
was daylight.
112
XIV
THE SUGAR CAMP
I THINK there is no part of farming the
boy enjoys more than the making of maple
sugar; it is better than “blackberrying,â€
and nearly as good as fishing. And one
reason he likes this work is that somebody
else does the most of it. It is a sort of
work in which he can appear to be very
active and yet not do much.
And it exactly suits the temperament of
a real boy to be very busy about nothing.
If the power, for instance, that is expended
in play by a boy between the ages of eight
and fourteen could be applied to some in-
dustry, we should see wonderful results.
But a boy is like a galvanic battery that is
not in connection with anything : he gener-
ates electricity and plays it off into the air
with the most reckless prodigality. And I,
for one, wouldn’t have it otherwise. It is
II3-
BEING A BOY
‘as much a boy’s business to play off his
energies into space as it is for a flower to
blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the
tunes of all the other birds.
In my day, maple-sugar making used to be
something between picnicking and being
shipwrecked on a fertile island where one
should save from the wreck tubs and augers,
and great kettles and pork, and hen’s-eggs
and rye-and-indian bread, and begin at once
to lead the sweetest life in the world. I am
told that it is something different nowadays,
and that there is more desire to save the
sap, and make good, pure sugar, and sell it
for a large price, than there used to be, and
that the old fun and picturesqueness of the
business are pretty much gone. Iam told
that it is the custom to carefully collect the
sap and bring it to the house, where there
are built brick arches, over which it is
evaporated in shallow pans; and that pains
is taken to keep the leaves, sticks, and
ashes and-coals out of it; and that the
sugar is clarified; and that, in short, it is
a money-making business, in which there
is very little fun, and that the boy is not
114
THE SUGAR CAMP
allowed to dip his paddle into the kettle
of boiling sugar and lick off the delicious
sirup. The prohibition may improve the
sugar, but it is cruel to the boy.
As I remember the New England boy
(and I am very intimate with one), he used
to be on the guz vive in the spring for the
sap to begin running. I think he discoy-
ered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he
knew it by a feeling of something starting
in his own veins, — a sort of spring stir in
his legs and arms, which tempted him to
stand on his head, or throw a handspring,
if he could find a spot of ground from which
the snow had melted. The sap stirs early
in the legs of a country boy, and shows
itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get
tired of boots, and want to come out and
touch the soil just as soon as the sun has
warmed it a little. The country boy goes
barefoot just as naturally as the trees burst
their buds, which were packed and varnished
over in the fall to keep the water and the
frost out. Perhaps the boy has been out
digging into the maple-trees with his jack-
knife; at any rate, he is prétty sure to an-
11s
BEING A BOY
nounce the discovery as he comes running
into the house inagreat state of excitement
—as if he had heard a hen cackle in the
barn — with, “Sap’s runnin’ !â€
And then, indeed, the stir and excitement
begin. The sap-buckets, which have been
stored in the garret over the wood-house,
and which the boy has occasionally climbed
up to look at with another boy, for they
are full of sweet suggestions of the annual
spring frolic, —the sap-buckets are brought
down and set out on the south side of the
house and scalded. The snow is still a foot
or two feet deep in the woods, and the
ox-sled is got out to make a road to the
sugar camp, and the campaign begins. The
boy is everywhere present, superintending
everything, asking questions, and filled with
a desire to help the excitement.
It is a great day when the cart is loaded
with the buckets and the procession starts
into the woods. The sun shines almost
unobstructedly into the forest, for there
are only naked branches to bar it; the snow
is soft and beginning to sink down, leaving
the young bushes spindling up everywhere;
116
THE SUGAR CAMP
the snow-birds are twittering about, and
the noise of shouting and of the blows of
the axe echoes far and wide. This is
spring, and the boy can scarcely contain
his delight that his out-door life is about to
begin again.
In the first place the men go about and
tap the trees, drive in the spouts, and hang
the buckets under, The boy watches all
these operations with the greatest interest.
He wishes that some time when a hole is
bored in a tree that the sap would spout
out in a stream as it does when a cider-bar-
rel is tapped; but it never does, it only
drops, sometimes almost in a stream, but
on the whole slowly, and the boy learns
that the sweet things of the world have to
be patiently waited for, and do not usually
come otherwise than drop by drop.
Then the camp is to be cleared of snow.
The shanty is re-covered with boughs. In
front of it two enormous logs are rolled
nearly together, and a fire is built between
them. Forked sticks are set at each end,
and a long pole is laid on them, and on this
are hung the great caldron kettles. The
II7
{BEING A BOY
huge hogsheads are turned right side up,
and cleaned out to receive the sap that is
gathered. And now, if there is a good
“sap run,†the establishment is under full
headway.
The great fire that is kindled up is never
let out, night or day, as long as the season
lasts. Somebody is always cutting wood
to feed it; somebody is busy most of the
time gathering in the sap; somebody is re-
quired to watch the kettles that they do
not boil over, and to fill them. It is not
the boy, however; he is too busy with
things in general to be of any use in details.
He has his own little sap-yoke and small
pails, with which he gathers the sweet
liquid. He has a little boiling-place of his
own, with small logs and a tiny kettle. In
the great kettles the boiling goes on slowly,
and the liquid, as it thickens, is dipped from
one to another, until in the end kettle it
is reduced to sirup, and is taken out to
cool and settle, until enough is made to
“sugar off.’ To “sugar off†is to boil the
sirup until it is thick enough to crystal-
lize into sugar. This is the grand event,
118
A YOUNG SUGAR-MAKER
THE SUGAR CAMP
and it is only done once in two or three
days.
But the boy's desire is to “sugar offâ€
perpetually. He boils his kettle down as
rapidly as possible; he is not particular
about chips, scum, or ashes; he is apt to
burn his sugar; but if he can get enough
to make a little wax on the snow, or to
scrape from the bottom of the kettle with
his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good
deal is wasted on his hands and the outside
of his face and on his clothes, but he does
not care; he is not stingy.
To watch the operations of the big fire
gives him constant pleasure. Sometimes
he is left to watch the boiling kettles, with
a piece of pork tied on the end of a stick,
which he dips into the boiling mass when
it threatens to go over. He is constantly
tasting of it, however, to see if it is not
almost sirup. He has a long round stick,
whittled smooth at one end, which he uses
for this purpose, at the constant risk of
burning his tongue. The smoke blows in
his face; he is grimy with ashes; he is
altogether such a mass of dirt, stickiness,
IIg
BEING A BOY
and sweetness, that his own mother
would n’t know him.
He likes to boil eggs with the hired man
in the hot sap; he likes to roast potatoes
in the ashes, and he would live in the camp
day and night if he were permitted. Some
of the hired men sleep in the bough shanty
and keep the fire blazing all night. To
sleep there with them, and awake in the
night and hear the wind in the trees, and
see the sparks fly up to the sky, is a perfect
realization of all the stories of adventures
he has ever read. He tells the other boys
afterwards that he heard something in the
night that sounded very much like a bear.
The hired man says that he was very much
scared by the hooting of an owl.
The great occasions for the boy, though,
are the times of “ sugaring off.†Sometimes
this used to be done in the evening, and
it was made the excuse for a frolic in the
camp. The neighbors were invited ; some-
times even the pretty girls from the village,
who filled all the woods with their sweet
voices and merry laughter and little affecta-
tions of fright. The white snow still lies
120
WATCHING THE KETTLES
THE SUGAR CAMP
on all the ground except the warm spot
about the camp. The tree branches all
show distinctly in the light of the fire,
which sends its ruddy glare far into the
darkness, and lights up the bough shanty,
the hogsheads, the buckets on the trees,
and the group about the boiling kettles,
until the scene is like something taken out
of a fairy play. If Rembrandt could have
seen a sugar party in a New England wood,
he would have made out of its strong con-
trasts of light and shade one of the finest
pictures in the world. But Rembrandt was
not born in Massachusetts; people hardly
ever do know where to be born until it is
too late. Being born in the right place is a
thing that has been very much neglected.
At these sugar parties every one was
expected to eat as much sugar as possible ;
and those who are practiced in it can eat a
great deal. It is a peculiarity about eating
warm maple-sugar that, though you may eat
so much of it one day as to be sick and
loathe the thought of it, you will want it the
next day more than ever. At the “sugar-
ing off†they used to pour the hot sugar
121
BEING A BOY
upon the snow, where it congealed, without
crystallizing, into a sort of wax, which I do
suppose is the most delicious substance
that was ever invented. And it takes a
great while to eat it. If one should close
his teeth firmly on a ball of it, he would be
unable to open his mouth until it dissolved.
The sensation while it is melting is very
pleasant, but one cannot converse.
The boy used to make a big lump of it
and give it to the dog, who seized it with
great avidity, and closed his jaws on it, as
dogs will on anything. It was funny the
next moment to see the expression of per-
fect surprise on the dog’s face when he
found that he could not open hisjaws. He
shook his head ; he sat down in despair ; he
ran round in a circle; he dashed into the
woods and back again. He did everything
except climb a tree and howl. It would
have been such a relief to him if he could
have howled! But that was the one thing
he could not do.
122
XV
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
It is a wonder that every New England
boy does not turn out a poet, or a mission-
ary, or a peddler. Most of them used to.
There is everything in the heart of the New
England hills to feed the imagination of
the boy, and excite his longing for strange
countries. I scarcely know what the sub-
tle influence is that forms him and attracts
him in the most fascinating and aromatic of
all lands, and yet urges him away from all
the sweet delights of his home to become a
roamer in literature and in the world, —a
poet and a wanderer. There is something
in the soil and the pure air, I suspect, that
promises more romance than is forthcoming,
that excites the imagination without satisfy-
ing it, and begets the desire of adventure.
And the prosaic life of the sweet home does
not at all correspond to the boy’s dreams of
123
BEING A BOY
the world. In the good old days, I am told,
the boys on the coast ran away and became
sailors; the country boys waited till they
grew big enough to be missionaries, and
then they sailed away, and met the coast
boys in foreign ports.
John used to spend hours in the top of a
slender hickory-tree that a little detached
itself from the forest which crowned the
brow of the steep and lofty pasture behind
his house. He was sent to make war on
the bushes that constantly encroached upon
the pasture land ; but John had no hostility
to any growing thing, and a very little
bushwhacking satisfied him. When he had
grubbed up a few laurels and young tree-
sprouts, he was wont to retire into his fa-
vorite post of observation and meditation.
Perhaps he fancied that the wide-swaying
stem to which he clung was the mast of a
ship; that the tossing forest behind him
was the heaving waves of the sea ; and that
the wind which moaned over the woods and
murmured in the leaves, and now and then
sent him a wide circuit in the air, as if he
had been a blackbird on the tiptop of a
124
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
spruce, was an ocean gale. What life and
action and heroism there was to him in the
multitudinous roar of the forest, and what
an eternity of existence in the monologue
of the river which brawled far, far below
him over its wide stony bed! How the
river sparkled and danced and went on —
now in asmooth amber current, now fretted
by the pebbles, but always with that con-
tinuous busy song! John never knew that
noise to cease, and he doubted not if he
stayed here a thousand years that same
loud murmur would fill the air.
On it went, under the wide spans of the
old wooden, covered bridge, swirling around
the great rocks on which the piers stood,
spreading away below in shallows, and tak-
ing the shadows of a row of maples that
lined the green shore. Save this roar, no
sound reached him, except now and then
the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or
the muffled, far-off voices of some chance
passers on the road. Seen from this high
perch, the familiar village, sending its
brown roofs and white spires up through
the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and
125
BEING A BOY
was like some town in a book, say a village
nestled in the Swiss mountains, or some-
thing in Bohemia. And there, beyond the
purple hills of Bozrah, and not so far as the
stony pastures of Zoar, whither John had
helped drive the colts and young stock in
the spring, might be perhaps Jerusalem it-
self. John had himself once been to the
land of Canaan with his grandfather, when
' he was a very small boy ; and he had once
seen an actual, no-mistake Jew, a myste-
rious person, with uncut beard and long
hair, who sold scythe-snaths in that region,
and about whom there was a rumor that he
was once caught and shaved by the indig-
nant farmers, who apprehended in his long
locks a contempt of the Christian religion.
Oh, the world had vast possibilities for
John. Away to the south, up a vast basin
of forest, there was a notch in the horizon
and an opening in the line of woods, where
the road ran. Through this opening John
imagined an army might appear, perhaps
British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red
and of yellow advance, and a cannon wheel
about and point its long nose and open on
126
THE VILLAGE FROM THE HILL
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
the valley. He fancied the army, after this
salute, winding down the mountain road,
deploying in the meadows, and giving the
valley to pillage and to flame. In which
event his position would be an excellent
one for observation and for safety. While
he was in the height of this engagement,
perhaps the horn would be blown from the
back porch, reminding him that it was time
to quit cutting brush and go for the cows.
As if there were no better use for a warrior
and a poet in New England than to send
him for the cows!
John knew a boy —a bad enough boy, I
dare say —who afterwards became a gen-
eral in the war, and went to Congress and
got to bea real governor, who used also to be
sent to cut brush in the back pastures, and
hated it in his very soul; and by his wrong
conduct forecast what kind of a man he
would be. This boy, as soon as he had
cut about one brush, would seek for one of
several holes in the ground (and he was fa-
miliar with several), in which lived a white-
and-black animal that must always be name-
less ina book, but an animal quite capable
127
BEING A BOY
of the most pungent defense of himself.
This young aspirant to Congress would cut
a long stick, with a little crotch in the end
of it, and run it into the hole; and when
the crotch was punched into the fur and
skin of the animal, he would twist the stick
round till it got a good grip on the skin,
and then he would pull the beast out ; and
when he got the white-and-black just out of
“the hole so that his dog could seize him,
the boy would take to his heels, and leave
the two to fight it out, content to scent the
battle afar off. And this boy, who was in
training for public life, would do this sort
of thing all the afternoon ; and when the
sun told him that he had spent long enough
time cutting brush, he would industriously
go home as innocent as anybody. There
are few such boys as this nowadays; and
that is the reason why the New England
pastures are so much overgrown with
brush.
John himself preferred to hunt the pug-
nacious woodchuck. He bore a special
grudge against this clover-eater, beyond
the usual hostility that boys feel for any
128
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
wild animal. One day on his way to school
a woodchuck crossed the road before him,
and John gave chase. The woodchuck
scrambled into an orchard and climbed
a small apple-tree. John thought this a
most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood
under the tree and taunted the animal
and stoned it. Thereupon the woodchuck
dropped down on John and seized him by
the leg of his trousers. John was both en-
raged and scared by this dastardly attack ;
the teeth of the enemy went through the
cloth and met ; and there he hung. John
then made a pivot of one leg and whirled
himself around, swinging the woodchuck in
the air, until he shook him off; but in his
departure the woodchuck carried away a
large piece of John’s summer trousers leg.
The boy never forgot it. And whenever
he had a holiday he used to expend an
amount of labor and ingenuity in the pur-
suit of woodchucks that would have made
his fortune in any useful pursuit. There
was a hill-pasture, down on one side of
which ran a small brook, and this pasture
was full of woodchuck-holes. It required
129
BEING A BOY
the assistance of several boys to capture a
woodchuck. It was first necessary by pa-
tient watching to ascertain that the wood-
chuck was at home. When one was seen
to enter his burrow, then all the entries to
it except one—there are usually three —
were plugged up with stones. A boy and
a dog were then left to watch the open
hole, while John and his comrades went to
the brook and began to dig a canal, to turn
the water into the residence of the wood-
chuck. This was often a difficult feat of
engineering and a long job. Often it took
more than half a day of hard labor with
shovel and hoe to dig the canal. But when
the canal was finished, and the water began
to pour into the hole, the excitement began.
How long would it take to fill the hole and
drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it
seemed as if the hole were a bottomless pit.
But sooner or later the water would rise in
it, and then there was sure to be seen the
nose of the woodchuck, keeping itself on
a level with the rising flood. It was pite-
ous to see the anxious look of the hunted,
half-drowned creature as it came to the sur-
130
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
face and caught sight of the dog. There
the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole,
quivering with excitement from his nose to
the tip of his tail, and behind. him were the
cruel boys dancing with joy and setting the
dog on. The poor creature would disap-
pear in the water in terror; but he must
breathe, and out would come his nose again,
nearer the dog each time. At last the
water ran out of the hole as well as in, and
the soaked beast came with it, and made a
desperate rush. But in a trice the dog had
him, and the boys stood off in a circle, with
stones in their hands, to see what they
called “fair play.†They maintained per-
fect “neutrality†so long as the dog was
getting the best of the woodchuck; but if
the latter was likely to escape, they “ inter-
fered†in the interest of peace and the
“balance of power,†and killed the wood-
chuck. This is a boy’s notion of justice ;
of course he ’d no business to be a wood-
chuck, —an “ unspeakable woodchuck.â€
I used the word “aromatic†in relation
to the New England soil. John knew very
well all its sweet, aromatic, pungent, and
131
BEING A BOY
medicinal products, and liked to search for
the scented herbs and the wild fruits and
exquisite flowers; but he did not then
know, and few do know, that there is no
part of the globe where the subtle chem-
istry of the earth produces more that is
agreeable to the senses than a New Eng-
land hill-pasture and the green meadow at
its foot. The poets have succeeded in
turning our attention from it to the com-
paratively barren Orient as the land of
sweet -smelling spices and odorous gums.
And it is indeed a constant surprise that this
poor and stony soil elaborates and grows so
many delicate and aromatic products.
John, it is true, did not care much for
anything that did not appeal to his taste and
smell and delight in brilliant color; and he
trod down the exquisite ferns and the won-
derful mosses without compunction. But
he gathered from the crevices of the rocks
the columbine and the eglantine and the
blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored
alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the box-
berry, wild currants and gooseberries and
fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of
132
TREEING A WOODCHUCK
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
the pink-and-white laurel and the wild
honeysuckle ; he dug the roots of the fra-
grant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; he
ate the tender leaves of the wintergreen
and its red berries ; he gathered the pepper-
mint and the spearmint; he gnawed the
twigs of the black birch ; there was a stout
fern which he called “brake,†which he
pulled up, and found that the soft end
“tasted good;†he dug the amber gum
from the spruce-tree, and liked to smell,
though he could not chew, the gum of the
wild cherry ; it was his melancholy duty to
bring home such medicinal herbs for the
garret as the goldthread, the tansy, and the
loathsome “boneset ;†and he laid in for
the winter, like a squirrel, stores of beech-
nuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts,
and butternuts. But that which lives most
vividly in his memory and most strongly
draws him back to the New England hills
is the aromatic sweet-fern : he likes to eat
its spicy seeds, and to crush in his hands its
fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique
essence of New England.
133
XVI
JOHN’S REVIVAL
Tue New England country boy of the
last generation never heard of Christmas.
' There was no such day in his calendar.
If John ever came across it in his reading,
he attached no meaning to the word.
If his curiosity had been aroused, and he
had asked his elders about it, he might have
got the dim impression that it wasa kind of
Popish holiday, the celebration of which
was about as wicked as “ card-playing,†or
being a “democrat.†John knew a couple
of desperately bad boys who were reported
to play “seven-up †in a barn, on the hay-
mow, and the enormity of this practice
made him shudder. He had once seen
a pack of greasy “playing-cards,†and it
seemed to him to contain the quintessence
of sin. If he had desired to defy all Divine
law and outrage all human society, he felt
134
JOHN’S REVIVAL
that he could do it by shuffling them.
And he was quite right. The two bad boys
enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime,
because they knew it was the most wicked
thing they could do. If it had been as sin-
less as playing marbles, they would n’t have
cared for it. John sometimes drove past
a brown, tumble-down farm-house, whose
shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were card-
playing people; and it is impossible to de-
scribe how wicked that house appeared
to John. He almost expected to see its
shingles stand on end. In the old New
England, one could not in any other way
so express his contempt of all holy and or-
derly life as by playing cards for amuse-
ment.
There was no element of Christmas in
John’s life, any more than there was of
Easter, and probably nobody about him
could have explained Easter ; and he escaped
all the demoralization attending Christmas
gifts. Indeed, he never had any presents
of any kind, either on his birthday or any
other day. He expected nothing that he
did not earn, or make in the way of “tradeâ€
135
BEING A BOY
with another boy. He was taught to work
for what he received. He even earned, as
I said, the extra holidays of the day after
the “Fourth†and the day after Thanks-
giving. Of the free grace and gifts of
Christmas he had no conception. The sin-
gle and melancholy association he had with
it was the quaking hymn which his grand-
father used to sing inacracked and quaver-
ing voice, —
“While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
. All seated on the ground.â€
The “gloryâ€. that “shone around†at the
end of it — the doleful voice always repeat-
ing, “and glory shone around’? — made
John as miserable as “Hark! from the
tombs.†It was all one dreary expectation
of. something uncomfortable. It was, in
short, “religion.†You’d got to have it
some time; that John believed. But it
lay in his unthinking mind to put off the
“Hark! from the tombs†enjoyment as
long as possible. He experienced a kind of
delightful wickedness in indulging his dis-
like of hymns. and of Sunday.
John was not a model boy, but I cannot
136
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A
JOHN’S REVIVAL
exactly define in what his wickedness con-
sisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor
much to lie; and he despised “meannessâ€
and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feel-
ing toward little girls. Probably it never
occurred to him that there was any virtue
in not stealing and lying, for honesty and
veracity were in the atmosphere about him.
He hated work, and he “got mad†easily ;
but he did work, and he was always ashamed
when he was over his fit of passion. In
short, you couldn’t find a much better
wicked boy than John.
When the “revival†came, therefore,
one summer, John was in a quandary.
Sunday meeting and Sunday school he
didn’t mind ; they were a part of regular
life, and only temporarily interrupted a
boy’s pleasures. But when there began to
be evening meetings at the different houses,
a new element came into affairs. There
was a kind of solemnity over the commu-
nity, and a seriousness in all faces. At
first these twilight assemblies offered a lit-
tle relief to the monotony of farm-life ; and
John liked to meet the boys and girls, and
137
BEING A BOY
to watch the older people coming in, dressed
in their second best. I think John’s imagi-
nation was worked upon by the sweet and
mournful hymns that were discordantly
sung in the stiff old parlors. There was a
suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity too, in
the odor of caraway-seed that pervaded the
room. The windows were wide open also,
_and the scent of June roses came in with
all the languishing sounds of a summer
night. All the little boys had a scared
look, but the little girls were never so
pretty and demure as in this their suscep-
tible seriousness. If John saw a boy who
did not come to the evening meeting, but
was wandering off with his sling down the
meadow, looking for frogs, maybe, that boy
seemed to him a monster of wickedness.
After a time, as the meetings continued,
John fell also under the general impression
of fright and seriousness. All the talk was
of “ getting religion,†and he heard over and
over again that the probability was, if he
did not get it now he never would. The
chance did not come often, and, if this offer
was not improved, John would be given
138
JOHN’S REVIVAL
over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy
would show that he was not one of the
elect. John fancied that he could feel his
heart hardening, and he began to look with
a wistful anxiety into the faces of the Chris-
tians to see what were the visible signs of
being one of the elect. John put on a
good deal of a manner that he“didn’t .
care,†and he never admitted his disquiet
by asking any questions or standing up in
meeting to be prayed for. But he did care.
He heard all the time that all he had to do
was to repent and believe. But there was
nothing that he doubted, and he was per-
fectly willing to repent if he could think of
anything to repent of.
It was essential, he learned, that he
should have a “conviction of sin.†This he
earnestly tried to have. Other people, no
better than he, had it, and he wondered
why he couldn’t have it. Boys and girls
whom he knew were “under conviction,â€
and John began to feel not only panicky
but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been
anxious for days and days, and not able to
sleep at night, but now she had given her-
139
BEING A BOY
self up and found peace. There was a kind
of radiance in her face that. struck John
with awe, and he felt that now there was
a great gulf between him and Cynthia.
Everybody was going away from him, and
his heart was getting harder than ever.
He could n’t feel wicked, all he could do.
And there was Ed Bates, his intimate
friend, though older than he, a “ whaling,â€
noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction
and sure he was going to be lost. How
John envied him! And, pretty soon, Ed
“experienced religion.†John anxiously
watched the change in Ed’s face when he
became one of the elect. And a change
there was. And John wondered about
another thing. Ed Bates used to go trout-
fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a
meadow-brook near the river; and when
the trout didn’t bite right off Ed would
“get mad,’ and as soon as one took hold
he would give an awful jerk, sending the
fish more than three hundred feet into the
air and landing it in the bushes the other
side of the meadow, crying out, “ Gul darn
ye, I'll learn ye.’ And John wondered if
140
JOHN’S REVIVAL
Ed would take the little trout out any more
gently now.
John felt more and more lonesome 2s
one after another of his playmates came
out and made a profession. Cynthia (she
too was older than John) sat on Sunday
in the singers’ seat ; her voice, which was
going to be a contralto, had a wonderful
pathos in it for him, and he heard it with a
heartache. “There she is,†thought John,
“singing away like an angel in heaven, and
I am left out.†During all his after life
a contralto voice was to John one of his
most bitter and heart-wringing pleasures.
It suggested the immaculate scornful, the .
melancholy unattainable.
If ever a boy honestly tried to work him-
self into a conviction of sin, John tried.
And what made him miserable was that
he could n’t feel miserable when everybody
else was miserable. He even began to
pretend to be so. He put on a serious and
anxious look like the others. He pretended
he didn’t care for play; he refrained from
chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers ;
the songs of birds and the bright vivacity
141
BEING A BOY
of the summer time that used to make him
turn handsprings smote him as a discord-
ant levity. He was not a hypocrite at all,
and he was getting to be alarmed that he
was not alarmed at himself. Every day
and night he heard that the spirit of the
Lord would probably soon quit striving
with him, and leave him out. The phrase
was that he would “grieve away the Holy
Spirit.†John wondered if he was not do-
ing it. He did everything to put himself
in the way of conviction, was constant at
the evening meetings, wore a grave face,
refrained from play, and tried to feel anx-
ious. At length he concluded that he
must do something.
One night as he walked home from a
solemn meeting, at which several of his
little playmates had “come forward,†he
felt that he could force the crisis. He was
alone on the sandy road: it was an en-
chanting summer night ; the stars danced
overhead, and by his side the broad and
shallow river ran over its stony bed with a
loud but soothing murmur that filled all the
air with entreaty. John did not then know
142
JOHN’S REVIVAL
that it sang, “But I go on forever,†yet
there was in it for him something of the
solemn flow of the eternal world. When
he came in sight of the house, he knelt
down in the dust by a pile of rails and
prayed. He prayed that he might feel bad,
and be distressed about himself. As he
prayed he heard distinctly, and yet not as
a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking
of the frogs by the meadow-spring. It was
not discordant with his thoughts ; it had in
it a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind
of call to the unconverted. What is there
in this sound that suggests the tenderness
of spring, the despair of a summer night,
the desolateness of young love? Years
after it happened to John to be at twilight
at a railway station on the edge of the Ra-
venna marshes. A little way over the
purple plain he saw the darkening towers
and heard “the sweet bells of Imola.â€
The Holy Pontiff Pius IX. was born at
Imola, and passed his boyhood in that
serene and moist region. As the train
waited, John heard from miles of marshes
round about the evening song of millions
143
BEING A BOY
of frogs, louder and more melancholy and
entreating than the vesper call of the bells.
And instantly his mind went back — for
the association of sound is as subtle as that
of odor —to the prayer, years ago, by the
roadside and the plaintive appeal of the un-
heeded frogs, and he wondered if the little
Pope had not heard the like importunity,
and perhaps, when he thought of himself
as a little Pope, associated his conversion
with this plaintive sound.
John prayed, but without feeling any
worse, and then went desperately into the
house and told the family that he was in
an anxious state of mind. This was joyful
news to the sweet and pious household,
and the little boy was urged to feel that he
was a sinner, to repent, and to become that
night a Christian ; he was prayed over, and
told to read the Bible, and put to bed with
the injunction to repeat all the texts of
Scripture and hymns he could think of.
John did this, and said over and over the
few texts he was master of, and tossed
about in a real discontent now, for he had a
dim notion that he was playing the hypo-
144
JOHN’S REVIVAL
crite alittle. But he was sincere enough in
wanting to feel, as the other boys and girls
felt, that he was a wicked sinner. He tried
to think of his evil deeds ; and one occurred
to him, indeed, it often came to his mind.
It was a lie,—a deliberate, awful lie, that
never injured anybody but himself. John
knew he was not wicked enough to tell a
lie to injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at
school, just before John’s class was to
recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a
young lady he held in great love and re-
spect, came in to visit the school. John
was a favorite with her, and she had come
to hear him recite. As it happened, John
felt shaky in the geographical lesson of that
day, and he feared to be humiliated in the
presence of his cousin; he felt embarrassed
to that degree that he couldn’t have
“bounded†Massachusetts. So he stood
up and raised his hand, and said to the
schoolma’am, “ Please, ma’am, I’ve got the
stomach-ache; may I go home?â€â€™ And
John’s character for truthfulness was so
high (and even this was ever a reproach to
145
BEING A BOY
him) that his word was instantly believed,
and he was dismissed without any medical
examination. For a moment John was de-
lighted to get out of school so early ; but
soon his guilt took all the light out of the
summer sky and the pleasantness out of na-
ture. He had to walk slowly, without a sin-
gle hop or jump, as became a diseased boy.
The sight of a woodchuck at a distance
from his well-known hole tempted John,
but he restrained himself, lest somebody
should see him, and know that chasing
a woodchuck was inconsistent with the
stomach-ache. He was acting a miserable
part, but it had to be gone through with.
He went home and told his mother the
reason he had left school, but he added that
he felt “some†better now. The “someâ€
didn’t save him. Genuine sympathy was
lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff
dose of nasty “picra,†the horror of all
childhood, and he was put in bed immedi-
ately. The world never looked so pleasant
to John, but to bed he was forced to go. He
was excused from all chores; he was not
even to go after the cows. John said he
146
JOHN’S REVIVAL
thought he ought to go after the cows, —
much as he hated the business usually, he
would now willingly have wandered over
the world after cows, —and for this heroic
offer, in the condition he was, he got credit
for a desire to do his duty; and this unjust
confidence in him added to his torture.
And he had intended to set his hooks that
night for eels. His cousin came home,
and sat by his bedside and condoled with
him ; his schoolma’am had sent word how
sorry she was for him, John was such a
good boy. All this was dreadful. He
groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to
have any supper; it would be very danger-
ous to eat a morsel. The prospect was
appalling. Never was there such a long
twilight ; never before did he hear so many
sounds outdoors that he wanted to investi-
gate, Being ill without any illness was a
horrible condition. And he began to have
real stomach-ache now; and it ached be-
cause it was empty. John was hungry
enough to have eaten the New England
Primer. But by and by sleep came, and
John forgot his woes in dreaming that he
147
BEING A BOY
knew where Madagascar was just as easy as
anything.
It was this lie that came back to John
the night he was trying to be affected by
the. revival. And he was very much
ashamed of it, and believed he would never
tell another. But then he fell thinking
whether with the “picra,’ and the going
to bed in the afternoon, and the loss of his
supper, he had not been sufficiently paid
for it. . And in this unhopeful frame of
mind he dropped off in sleep.
And the truth must be told, that in the
morning John was no nearer to realizing
the terrors he desired to feel. But he was
a conscientious boy, and would do nothing
to interfere with the influences of the sea-
son. He not only put himself away from
them all, but he refrained from doing al-
most everything that he wanted to do.
There came at that time a newspaper, a
secular newspaper, which had in it a long
account of the Long Island races, in which
the famous horse “Lexington†was a
runner. John was fond of horses, he knew
about Lexington, and he had looked for-
148
JOHN’S REVIVAL
ward to the result of this race with keen
interest. But to read the account of it
now he felt might destroy his seriousness
of mind, and —in all reverence and sim-
plicity he felt it — be a means of “ grieving
away the Holy Spirit.†He therefore hid
away the paper in a table drawer, intending
to read it when the revival should be over.
Weeks after, when he looked for the news-
paper, it was not to be found, and John
never knew what “time†Lexington made,
nor anything about the race. This was to
him a serious loss, but by no means so deep
as another feeling that remained with him ;
for when his little world returned to its or-
dinary course, and long after, John had an
uneasy apprehension of his own separate-
ness from other people in his insensibility
to the revival. Perhaps the experience was
a damage to him; and it is a pity that there
was no one to explain that religion for a
little fellow like him is not a “scheme.â€
149
XVII
WAR
Every boy who is good for anything is a
natural savage. The scientists who want
to study the primitive man, and have so
much difficulty in finding one anywhere in
this sophisticated age, could n’t do better
than to devote their attention to the com-
mon country boy. He has the primal, vig-
orous instincts and impulses of the African
savage, without any of the vices inherited
from a civilization long ago decayed, or
developed in an unrestrained barbaric so-
ciety. You want to catch your boy young,
and study him before he has either virtues
or vices, in order to understand the primi-
tive man.
Every New England boy desires (or did
desire a generation ago, before children
were born sophisticated, with a large library,
and with the word “culture†written on
150
WAR
their brows) to live by hunting, fishing, and
war. ‘The military instinct, which is the
special mark of barbarism, is strong in him.
It arises not alone from his love of fighting,
for the boy is naturally as cowardly as the
savage, but from his fondness for display,
—the same that a corporal or a general
feels in decking himself in tinsel and tawdry
colors and strutting about in view of the
female sex. Half the pleasure in going out
to murder another man with a gun would
be wanting if one did not wear feathers and
gold lace and stripes on his pantaloons.
The law also takes this view of it, and will
not permit men to shoot each other in plain
clothes. And the world also makes some
curious distinctions in the art of killing. To
kill people with arrows is barbarous; to kill
them with smooth-bores and flint-lock mus-
kets is semi-civilized; to kill them with
breech-loading rifles is civilized. That na-
tion is the most civilized which has the
appliances to kill the most of another
nation in the shortest time. This is the
‘result of six thousand years of constant
civilization. By and by, when the nations
I$1
BEING A BOY
cease to be boys, perhaps they will not
want to kill each other at all. Some people
think the world is very old ; but here is an
evidence that it is very young, and, in fact,
has scarcely yet begun to be a world.
When the volcanoes have done spouting,
and the earthquakes are quaked out, and
you can tell what land is going to be solid
and keep its level twenty-four hours, and
the swamps are filled up, and the deltas of
the great rivers, like the Mississippi and
the Nile, become ¢ervva firma, and men stop
killing their fellows in order to get their
land and other property, then perhaps there
will be a world that an angel wouldn't
weep over. Nowone half the world are em-
ployed in getting ready to kill the other
half, some of them by marching about in
uniform, and the others by hard work to
earn money to pay taxes to buy uniforms
and guns,
John was not naturally very cruel, and it
was probably the love of display quite as
much as of fighting that led him into a
military life; for he in common with all
his comrades had other traits of the savage.
. 152
WAR
One of them was the same passion for
ornament that induces the African to wear
anklets and bracelets of hide and of metal,
and to decorate himself with tufts of hair,
and to tattoo his body. In John’s day there
was a rage at school among the boys for
wearing bracelets woven of the hair of the
little girls. Some of them were wonderful
specimens of braiding and twist. These
were not captured in war, but were senti-
mental tokens of friendship given by the
young maidens themselves. John’s own
hair was kept so short (as became a warrior)
that you could n’t have made a bracelet out
of it, or anything except a paint-brush ; but
the little girls were not under military law,
and they willingly sacrificed their tresses to
decorate the soldiers they esteemed. As
the Indian is honored in proportion to the
scalps he can display, the boy at John’s
school was held in highest respect who
could show the most hair trophies on his
wrist. John himself had a variety that
would have pleased a Mohawk, fine and
coarse and of all colors. There were the
flaxen, the faded straw, the glossy black,
153
BEING A BOY
the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the
undecided auburn, and the fiery red. Per-
haps his pulse beat more quickly under the
red hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account
of all the other wristlets put together ; it
was a sort of gold-tried-in-the-fire color to
John, and burned there with a steady flame.
Now that Cynthia had become a Christian,
this band of hair seemed a more sacred if
less glowing possession (for all detached
hair will fade in time), and if he had known
anything about saints he would have ima-
gined that it was a part of the aureole that
always goes with a saint. But I am bound
to say that, while John had a tender feeling
for this red string, his sentiment was not
that of the man who becomes entangled
in the meshes of a woman’s hair; and he
valued rather the number than the quality
of these elastic wristlets.
John burned with as real a military ardor
as ever inflamed the breast of any slaugh-
terer of his fellows. He liked to read of
war, of encounters with the Indians, of any
kind of wholesale killing in glittering uni-
form, to the noise of the terribly exciting
154
WAR
fife and drum, which maddened the com-
batants and drowned the. cries of the
wounded. In his future he saw himself a
soldier with plume and sword and snug-
fitting, decorated clothes, —very different
from his somewhat roomy trousers and
country-cut roundabout, made by Aunt
Ellis, the village tailoress, who cut out
clothes, not according to the shape of the
boy, but to what he was expected to grow
to, — going where glory awaited him. In
his observation of pictures, it was the com-
mon soldier who was always falling and
dying, while the officer stood unharmed in
the storm of bullets and waved his sword in
a heroic attitude. John determined to be
an officer.
It is needless to say that he was an ar-
dent member of the military company of
his village. He had risen from the grade
of corporal to that of first lieutenant; the
captain was a boy whose father was captain
of the grown militia company, and conse-
quently had inherited military aptness and
knowledge. The old captain was a flam-
ing son of Mars, whose nose militia war,
155
BEING A BOY
general training, and New England rum
had painted with the color of glory and dis-
aster. He was one of the gallant old sol-
diers of the peaceful days of our country,
splendid in uniform, a martinet in drill, ter-
rible in oaths, a glorious object when he
marched at the head of his company of
flintlock muskets, with the American ban-
ner full high advanced, and the clamorous
drum defying the world. In this he ful-
filled his duties of citizen, faithfully teach-
ing his uniformed companions how to march
by the left leg, and to get reeling drunk by
sundown; otherwise he didn’t amount to
much in the community; his house was
unpainted, his fences were tumbled down,
his farm was a waste, his wife wore an old
gown to meeting, to which the captain
never went; but he was a good trout-fisher,
and there was no man in town who spent
more time at the country store and made
more shrewd observations upon the affairs
of his neighbors. Although he had never
been in an asylum any more than he had
been in war, he was almost as perfect a
drunkard as he was soldier. He hated the
156
WAR
British, whom he had never seen, as much
as he loved rum, from which he was never
separated.
The company which his son commanded,
wearing his father’s belt and sword, was
about as effective as the old company, and
more orderly. It contained from thirty to
fifty boys, according to the pressure of
“chores †at home, and it had its great days
of parade and its autumn manoeuvres, like
the general training. It was an artillery
company, which gave every boy a chance
to wear a sword; and it possessed a small
mounted cannon, which was dragged about
and limbered and unlimbered and fired, to
the imminent danger of everybody, espe-
cially of the company. In point of march-
ing, with all the legs going together, and
twisting itself up and untwisting, breaking
into singlefile (for Indian fighting) and
forming platoons, turning a sharp corner,
and getting out of the way of a wagon,
circling the town pump, frightening horses,
stopping short in front of the tavern, with
ranks dressed and eyes right and left, it
was the equal of any military organization
157
BEING A BOY
ITever saw. It could train better than the
big company, and I think it did more good
in keeping alive the spirit of patriotism and
desire to fight. Its discipline was strict.
If a boy left the ranks to jab a spectator, -
or make faces at a window, or “go for†a
striped snake, he was “hollered†at no
end.
It was altogether a very serious business ;
there was no levity about the hot and hard
marching, and as boys have no humor no-
thing ludicrous occurred. John was very
proud of his office, and of his ability to
keep the rear ranks closed up and ready to
execute any manceuvre when the captain
“hollered,†which he did continually. He
carried a real sword, which his grandfather
had worn in many a militia campaign on
the village green, the rust upon which John
fancied was Indian blood; he had various
red and yellow insignia of military rank
sewed upon different parts of his clothes,
and though his cocked hat was of paste-
board, it was decorated with gilding and
bright rosettes, and floated a red feather
that made his heart beat with martial fury
158
WAR
whenever he looked at it. The effect of
this uniform upon the girls was not a matter
of conjecture. I think they really cared
nothing about it, but they pretended to
think it fine, and they fed the poor boys’
vanity, —the weakness by which women
govern the world.
The exalted happiness of John in this
military service I dare say was never
equalled in any subsequent occupation.
The display of the company in the village
filled him with the loftiest heroism. ‘There
was nothing wanting but an enemy to fight,
but this could only be had by half the com-
pany staining themselves with elderberry
juice and going into the woods as Indians,
to fight the artillery from behind trees with
bows and arrows, or to ambush it and tom-
ahawk the gunners. This, however, was
made to seem very like real war. Tradi-
tions of Indian cruelty were still fresh in
Western Massachusetts. Behind John’s
house in the orchard were some old slate
tombstones, sunken and leaning, which re-
corded the names of Captain Moses Rice
and Phineas Arms, who had been killed by
159
‘BEING A BOY
Indians in the last century while at work in
the meadow by the river, and who slept
there in the hope of a glorious resurrection.
Phineas Arms — martial name — was long
since dust ; and even the mortal part of the
great Captain Moses Rice had been ab-
sorbed in the soil, and passed perhaps with
the sap up into the old but still blooming
apple-trees. It was a quiet place where
they lay, but they might have heard —if
hear they could — the loud, continuous
roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of
the long grass on that sunny slope. There
was a tradition that years ago an Indian,
probably the last of his race, had been seen
moving along the crest of the mountain,
and gazing down into the lovely valley
which had been the favorite home of his
tribe, upon the fields where he grew his
corn and the sparkling stream whence he
drew his fish. John used to fancy at times,
as he sat there, that he could see that red
spectre gliding among the trees on the
hill ; and if the tombstone suggested to him
the trump of judgment, he could not sepa-
rate it from the war-whoop that had been
160
WAR
the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms.
The Indian always preceded murder by the
war-whoop ; and this was an advantage that
the artillery had in the fight with the elder-
berry Indians. It was warned in time. If
there was no war-whoop, the killing didn’t
count; the artilleryman got up and killed
the Indian. The Indian usually had the
worst of it; he not only got killed by the
regulars, but he got whipped by the home-
guard at night for staining himself and his
clothes with the elderberry.
But once a year the company had a su-
perlative parade. This was when the mili-
tary company from the north part of the
town joined the villagers in a general mus-
ter. This was an infantry company, and
not to be compared with that of the village
in point of evolutions. There was a great
and natural hatred between the north town
boys and the centre. I don’t know why,
but no contiguous African tribes could be
more hostile. It was all right for one of
either section to “lick†the other if he
could, or for half a dozen to “lick’’ one of
the enemy if they caught him alone. The
161
BEING A BOY
notion of honor, as of mercy, comes into
the boy only when he is pretty well grown ;
to some, neither ever comes. And yet there
was an artificial military courtesy (some-
thing like that existing in the feudal age, no
doubt) which put the meeting of these two
rival and mutually detested companies on a
high plane of behavior. It was beautiful to
sée the seriousness of this lofty and studied
condescension om both sides. For the time,
everything was under martial law. The
village company being the senior, its cap-
tain-commanded the united battalion in the
march, and this put John temporarily into
the position of captain, with the right to
march at the head and “holler;†a re-
sponsibility which realized all his hopes of
glory.
I suppose there has yet been discovered
by man no gratification like that of march-
ing at the head of a column in uniform on
parade, —unless perhaps it is marching at
their head when they are leaving a field of
battle. John experienced all the thrill of
this conspicuous authority, and I dare say
that nothing in his later life has so exalted
162
WAR
him in his own esteem ; certainly nothing
has since happened that was so important
as the events of that parade day seemed.
He satiated himself with all the delights of
war.
163
XVIII
COUNTRY SCENES
Ir is impossible to say at what age a
New England country boy becomes con-
scious that his trousers-legs are too short,
and is anxious about the part of his hair
and the fit of his woman-made roundabout.
These harrowing thoughts come to him
later than to the city lad. At least, a gen-
eration ago he served a long apprenticeship
with nature only for a master, absolutely
unconscious of the artificialities of life.
But I do not think his early education was
neglected. And yet it is easy to underesti-
mate the influences that, unconsciously to
him, were expanding his mind and nursing
in him heroic purposes. There was the
lovely but narrow valley, with its rapid
mountain stream ; there were the great hills
which he climbed only to see other hills
stretching away toa broken and tempting
164
COUNTRY SCENES
horizon ; there were the rocky pastures,
and the wide sweeps of forest through
which the winter tempests howled, upon
which hung the haze of summer heat, over
which the great shadows of summer clouds
traveled; there were the clouds them-
selves, shouldering up above the peaks,
hurrying across the narrow sky,—the
clouds out of which the wind came, and the
lightning and the sudden dashes of rain ;
and there were days when the sky was in-
effably blue and distant, a fathomless vault
of heaven where the hen- hawk and the
eagle poised on outstretched wings and
watched for their prey. Can you say how
these things fed the imagination of the boy,
who had few books and no contact with
the great world? Do you think any city
lad could have written “ Thanatopsis†at
eighteen?
If you had seen John, in his short and
roomy trousers and ill-used straw hat, pick-
ing his barefooted way over the rocks along
the river-bank of a cool morning to see if
an eel had “got on,†you would not have
fancied that. he lived in an ideal world.
165
BEING A BOY
Nor did he consciously. So far as he knew,
he had no more sentiment than a jack-knife.
Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devot-
edly, and blushed scarlet one day when
his cousin found a lock of Cynthia’s flam-
ing hair in the box where John kept his
fish-hooks, spruce gum, flagroot, tickets of
standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in
blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make
fish bite, and other precious possessions,
yet Cynthia’s society had no attractions for
him comparable to a day’s trout-fishing.
She was, after all, only a single and a very
undefined item in his general ideal world,
and there was no harm in letting his im-
agination play about her illumined head.
Since Cynthia had “got religion†and
John had got nothing, his love was tem-
pered with a little awe and a feeling of dis-
tance. Hewas not fickle, and yet I cannot
say that he was not ready to construct a
new romance in which Cynthia should be
eliminated. Nothing was easier. Perhaps
it was a luxurious traveling-carriage, drawn
by two splendid horses in plated harness,
driven along the sandy road. There were
166
SLIPPERY WORK
COUNTRY SCENES
a gentleman and a young lad on the front
seat, and on the back seat a handsome, pale
lady with a little girl beside her. Behind,
on the rack with the trunk, was a colored
boy, an imp out of a story-book. John
was told that the black boy was a slave,
and that the carriage was from Baltimore.
Here was a chance for aromance. Slavery,
beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on
the part of the slender boy on the front
seat, — here was an opening into a vast
realm. The high-stepping horses and the
shining harness were enough to excite
John’s admiration, but these were nothing
to the little girl. His eyes had never be
fore fallen upon that kind of girl; he had
hardly imagined that such a lovely creature
could exist. Was it the soft and dainty
toilet, was it the brown curls, or the large
laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut
features, or the charming little figure of
this fairy-like person ? Was this expression
on her mobile face merely that of amuse-
ment at seeing acountry boy? Then John
hated her. On the contrary, did she see
in him what John felt himself to be? Then
167
BEING A BOY
he would go the world over to serve her.
In a moment he was self-conscious. His
trousers seemed to creep higher up his legs,
and he could feel his very ankles blush.
He hoped that she had not seen the other
side of him, for in fact the patches were
not of the exact shade of the rest of the
cloth. The vision flashed by him in a mo-
ment, but it left him with a resentful feel-
ing. Perhaps that proud little girl would
be sorry some day, when he had become a
general, or written a book, or. kept a store,
to see him go away and marry another. He
almost made up his cruel mind on the in-
stant that he would never marry her, how-
ever bad she might feel. And yet he
couldn’t get her out of his mind for days
and days, and when her image was present
even Cynthia in the singers’ seat on Sun-
day looked a little cheap and common.
Poor Cynthia! Long before John became
a general, or had his revenge on the Balti-
more girl, she married a farmer and was
the mother of children, red-headed; and
when John saw her years after, she looked
tired and discouraged, as one who has car-
168
RIGGING UP THE FISHING TACKLE
COUNTRY SCENES
ried into womanhood none of the romance
of her youth.
Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the
best amusements John had. The middle
pier of the long covered bridge over the
river stood upon a great rock, and this rock
(which was known as the swimming-rock,
whence the boys on summer evenings dived
into the deep pool by its side) was a favor-
ite spot with John when he could get an
hour or two from the everlasting “ chores.â€
Making his way out to it over the rocks at
low water with his fish-pole, there he was
content to sit and observe the world; and
there he saw a great deal of life. He al-
ways expected to catch the legendary trout
which weighed two pounds and was believed
to inhabit that pool. He always did catch
horned dace and shiners, which he despised,
and sometimes he snared. a monstrous
sucker a foot and a half long. But in the
summer the sucker is a flabby fish, and
John was not thanked for bringing him
home. He liked, however, to lie with his
face close to the water and watch the long
fishes panting in the clear depths, and occa-
169
BEING A BOY
sionally he would drop a pebble near one
to see how gracefully he would scud away
with one wave of the tail into deeper water.
‘Nothing fears the little brown boy. The
yellow-bird slants his wings, almost touches
the deep water before him, and then es-
capes away under the bridge to the east
with a glint of sunshine on his back; the
fish-hawk comes down with a swoop, dips
one wing, and, his prey having darted under
a stone, is away again over the still hill,
high soaring on even-poised pinions, keep-
ing an eye perhaps upon the great eagle
which is sweeping the sky in widening
circles.
But there is other life. A wagon rum-
bles over the bridge, and the farmer and
his wife, jogging along, do not know that
they have startled a lazy boy into a mo-
mentary fancy that a thunder - shower is
coming up. John can see, as he lies there
on a still summer day with the fishes and
the birds for company, the road that comes
down the left bank of the river, a hot, sandy,
well-traveled road, hidden from view here
and there by trees and bushes. The chief
170
WATCHING THE FISHES
COUNTRY SCENES
point of interest, however, is an enormous
sycamore-tree by the roadside and in front
of John’s house. The house is more than
a century old, and its timbers were hewed
and squared by Captain Moses Rice (who
lies in his grave on the hillside above it), in
the presence of the Red Man who killed
him with arrow and tomahawk some time
after his house was set in order. The gi-
gantic: tree, struck with a sort of leprosy,
like all its species, appears much older, and
of course has its tradition. They say it grew
from a green stake which the first land-
surveyor planted there for one of his points
of sight. John was reminded of it years
after when he sat under the shade of the
decrepit lime-tree in Freiberg and was told
that it was originally a twig which the
breathless and bloody messenger carried in
his hand when he dropped exhausted in the
square with the word “Victory!†on his
lips, announcing thus the result of the glo-
rious battle of Morat, where the Swiss in
1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under
the broad but scanty shade of the great
button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an
171
BEING A BOY
old watering-trough, with its half-decayed
penstock and well-worn spout pouring for-
ever cold sparkling water into the overflow-
ing trough. It is fed by a spring near by,
and the water is sweeter and colder than
any in the known world, unless it be the
well Zem-Zem, as generations of people
and horses which have drunk of it would
testify if they could come back. And if
they could file along this road again, what
a procession there would be riding down
the valley !—antiquated vehicles, rusty
wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-
robe even in the hottest days, lean and
long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing
generation after generation the sober and
pious saints that passed this way to meet-
ing and to mill.
What a refreshment is that water-spout !
All day long there are pilgrims to it, and
John likes nothing better than to watch
them. Here comes a gray horse drawing a
buggy with two men, — cattle-buyers prob-
ably. Out jumps a man, down goes the
check-rein. What a good draught the nag
takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter
172
COUNTRY SCENES
in a sulky ; man in a brown linen coat and
wide-awake hat, — dissolute, horsey-looking
man. They turnup, of course. Ah! there
is an establishment he knows well ; a sorrel
horse and an old chaise. The sorrel horse
scents the water afar off, and begins to
turn up long before he reaches the trough,
thrusting out his nose in anticipation of the
cool sensation. No check to let down; he
plunges his nose in nearly to his eyes in
his haste to get at it. Two maiden ladies
—unmistakably such, though they appear
neither “anxious nor aimless†— within
the scoop-top smile benevolently on the
sorrel back. It is the deacon’s horse, a
meeting-going nag, with a sedate, leisurely
jog as he goes; and these are two of the
“salt of the earth,’—the brevet rank of
the women who stand and wait, — going
down to the village store to dicker. There
come two men in a hurry, horse driven up
smartly and pulled up short; but as it is
rising ground, and the horse does not easily
reach the water with the wagon pulling
back, the nervous man in the buggy hitches
forward on his seat, as if that would carry
f 173
BEING A BOY
the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumber-
wagon with load of boards; horse wants to
turn up, and driver switches him and cries
“Glang,†and the horse reluctantly goes
by, turning his head wistfully towards the
flowing spout. Ah! here comes an equi-
page strange to these parts, and John stands
up to look: an elegant carriage and two
horses ; trunks strapped on behind ; gentle-
man and boy on front seat and two ladies
on back seat,—city people. The gentle-
man descends, unchecks the horses, wipes
his brow, takes a drink at the spout and
looks around, evidently remarking upon the
lovely view, as he swings his handkerchief
in an explanatory manner. Judicious trav-
elers! John would like to know who they
are. Perhaps they are from Boston, whence
come all the wonderfully painted pedlers’
wagons drawn by six stalwart horses, which
the driver, using no rein, controls with his
long whip and cheery voice. If so, great
is the condescension of Boston; and John
follows them with an undefined longing as
they drive away toward the mountains of
Zoar. Here is a footman, dusty and tired,
174
COUNTRY SCENES
who comes with lagging steps. He stops,
removes his hat, as he should to such a
tree, puts his mouth to the spout, and takes
along pull at the lively water. And then
he goes on, perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a
worse place.
So they come and go all the summer after-
noon; but the great event of the day is
the passing down the valley of the majestic
stage-coach, the vast yellow-bodied, rattling
vehicle. Johncan hear a mile off the shak-
ing of chains, traces, and whiffletrees, and
the creaking of its leathern braces, as the
great bulk swings along piled high with
trunks. It represents to John, somehow,
authority, government, the right of way ;
the driver is an autocrat, — everybody must
make way for the stage-coach. It almost
satisfies the imagination, this royal vehicle ;
one can go in it to the confines of the world,
—to Boston and to Albany.
There were other influences that I dare
say contributed to the boy’s education. I
think his imagination was stimulated by a
band of gypsies who used to come every
summer and pitch a tent ona little road-
175
BEING A BOY
side patch of green turf by the river-bank,
not far from his house. It was shaded by
elms and butternut -trees, and a long spit
of sand and pebbles ran out from it into
the brawling stream. Probably they were
not a very good kind of gypsy, although the
story was that the men drank and beat
the women. John didn’t know much about
drinking ; his experience of it was confined
to sweet cider ; yet he had already set him-
self up as a reformer, and joined the Cold
Water Band. The object of this Band was
to walk in a procession under a banner that
declared, —
“ So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate ;â€
and wear a badge with this legend, and
above it the device of a well-curb with a
long sweep. It kept John and all the lit-
tle boys and girls from being drunkards
till they were ten or eleven years of age;
though perhaps a few of them died mean-
time from eating loaf-cake and pie and
drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations
of the Band.
The gypsy camp had a strange fascina-
176
‘COUNTRY SCENES
tion for John, mingled of curiosity and fear.
Nothing more alien could come into the
New England life than this tatterdema-
lion band. It was hardly credible that
here were actually people who lived out-
doors, who slept in their covered wagon or
under their tent, and cooked in the open
air; it was a visible romance transferred
from foreign lands and the remote times of
the story-books; and John took these city
thieves, who were on their annual foray
into the country, trading and stealing
horses and robbing hen -roosts and corn-
fields, for the mysterious race who for thou-
sands of years have done these same things
in all lands, by right of their pure blood
and ancient lineage. John was afraid to
approach the camp when any of the scowl-
ing and villanous men were lounging about,
pipes in mouth; but he took more courage
when only women and children were visi-
ble. The swarthy, black-haired women in
dirty calico frocks were anything but attrac-
tive, but they spoke softly to the boy, and
told his fortune, and wheedled him into
bringing them any amount of cucumbers
177
BEING A BOY
and green corn in the course of the season.
In front of the tent were planted in the
ground three poles that met together at the
top, whence depended a kettle. This was
the kitchen, and it was sufficient. The fuel
for the fire was the driftwood of the stream.
John noted that it did not require to be
sawed into stovelengths; and, in short,
that the “chores†about this establishment
were reduced to the minimum. And an
older person. than John might envy the
free life of these wanderers, who paid
neither rent nor taxes, and yet enjoyed all
the delights of nature. It seemed to the
boy that affairs would go more smoothly in
the world if everybody would live in this
simple manner. Nor did he then know, or
ever after find out, why it is that the world
only permits wicked people to be Bohe-
mians.
178
BRIDGE
3
TERING THE
£
XIX
A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
ONE evening at vespers in Genoa, at-
tracted by a burst of music from the swing-
ing curtain of the doorway, I entered a
little church much frequented by the com-
mon people. An unexpected and exceed-
ingly pretty sight rewarded me.
It was All-Souls’ Day. In Italy almost
every day is set apart for some festival, or
belongs to some saint or another; and I
suppose that when leap-year brings around
the extra day, there is a saint ready to
claim the 29th of February. Whatever
the day was to the elders, the evening was
devoted to the children. The first thing
I noticed was, that the quaint old church
was lighted up with innumerable wax-
tapers, —an uncommon sight, for the dark-
ness of a Catholic church in the evening is
usually relieved only by a candle here and
179
BEING A BOY
there, and by a blazing pyramid of them
on the high altar. The use of gas is held.
to be a vulgar thing all over Europe, and
especially unfit for a church or an aristo-
cratic palace.
Then I saw that each taper belonged to
a little boy or girl, and the groups of chil-
dren were scattered all about the church.
There was a group by every side altar and
chapel, all the benches were occupied by
knots of them, and there were so many
circles of them seated on the pavement
that I could with difficulty make my way
among them. There were hundreds of
children in the church, all dressed in their
holiday apparel, and all intent upon the illu-
mination, which seemed to be a private
affair to each one of them.
And not much effect had their tapers
upon the darkness of the vast vaults above
them. The tapers were little spiral coils
of wax, which the children unrolled as fast
as they burned, and when they were tired
of holding them they rested them on the
ground and watched the burning. I stood
some time by a group of a dozen seated in
180
OLD WATERING TROUGH
A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
a corner of the church. They had massed
all the tapers in the centre and formed a
ring about the spectacle, sitting with their
legs straight out before them and their
toes turned up. The light shone full in
their happy faces, and made the group, en-
veloped otherwise in darkness, like one of
Correggio’s pictures of children or angels.
Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the
sixteenth century, who painted cherubs
like children who were just going to
heaven, and children like cherubs who had
just come out of it. But then, he had the
Italian children for models, and they get
the knack of being lovely very young. An
Italian child finds it as easy to be pretty as
an American child to be good.
One could not but be struck with the pa-
tience these little people exhibited in their
occupation, and the enjoyment they got
out of it. There was no noise; all con-
versed in subdued whispers and behaved
in the most gentle manner to each other,
especially to the smallest, and there were
many of them so small that they could only
toddle about by the most judicious exercise
181
BEING A BOY
of their equilibrium. I do not say this by
way of reproof to any other kind of children.
These little groups, as I have said, were
scattered all about the church; and they
made with their tapers little spots of light,
which looked in the distance very much
like Correggio’s picture which is at Dres-
den, —the Holy Family at Night, and the
light from the Divine Child blazing in the
faces of all the attendants. Some of the
children were infants in the nurse’s arms,
but no one was too small to have a taper,
and to run the risk of burning its fingers.
There is nothing that a baby likes more
than a lighted candle, and the church has
understood this longing in human nature,
and found means to gratify it by this festi-
val of tapers.
The groups do not all remain long in
place, you may imagine; there is a good
deal of shifting about, and I see little strag-
glers wandering over the church, like fairies
lighted by fire-flies. Occasionally they form
a little procession and march from one altar
to another, the lights twinkling as they go.
But all this time there is music pouring
182
A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
out of the organ-loft at the end of the
church, and flooding all its spaces with its
volume. In front of the organ is a choir
of boys, led by a round-faced and jolly
monk, who rolls abott as he sings, and lets
the deep bass noise rumble about a long
time in his stomach before he pours it out
of his mouth. I can see the faces of all of
them quite well, for each singer has a can-
dle to light his music-book.
And next to the monk stands the boy,
—the handsomest boy in the whole world
probably at this moment. I can see now
his great, liquid, dark eyes and his exqui-
site face, and the way he tossed back his
long waving hair when he struck into his
part. He resembled the portraits of Ra-
phael, when that artist was a boy; only I
think he looked better than Raphael, and
without trying, for he seemed to be a spon-
taneous sort of boy. And how that boy
did sing! He was the soprano of the choir,
and he had a voice of heavenly sweetness.
When he opened his mouth and tossed back
his head, he filled the church with exquisite
melody.
183
BEING A BOY
He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As
we never heard an angel sing, that compari-
sonis not worthmuch. I have seen pictures
of angels singing, —there is one by Jan
and Hubert Van Eyck in the gallery at
Berlin, — and they open their mouths like
this boy, but I can’t say as much for their
singing. The lark, which you very likely
never heard either, — for larks are as scarce
in America as angels,—is a bird that
springs up from the meadow and begins to
sing as he rises in a spiral flight, and the
higher he mounts the sweeter he sings,
until you think the notes are dropping out
of heaven itself, and you hear him when he
is gone from sight, and you think you hear
him long after all sound has ceased.
And yet this boy sang better than a lark,
because he had more notes and a greater
compass and more volume, although he
shook out his voice in the same gleesome
abundance.
I am sorry that I cannot add that this rav-
ishingly beautiful boy wasa good boy. He
was probably one of the most mischievous
boys that was ever in an organ-loft. All
184
THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
the time that he was singing the vespers he
was skylarking like an imp. While he was
pouring out the most divine melody, he
would take the opportunity of kicking the
shins of the boy next to him; and while he
was waiting for his part he would kick out
behind at any one who was incautious
enough to approach him. There never was
such a vicious boy; he kept the whole loft
in a ferment. When the monk rumbled
his bass in his stomach, the boy cut up
monkey-shines that set every other boy into
a laugh, or he stirred up a row that set
them all at fisticuffs.
And yet this boy was a great favorite.
The jolly monk loved him best of all, and
bore with his wildest pranks. When he
was wanted to sing his part and was sky-
larking in the rear, the fat monk took him
by the ear and brought him forward; and
when he gave the boy’s ear a twist, the boy
opened his lovely mouth and poured forth
such a flood of melody as you never heard.
And he didn’t mind his notes ; he seemed
to know his notes by heart, and could sing
and look off like a nightingale on a bough.
185
BEING A BOY
He knew his power, that boy; and he
stepped forward to his stand when he
pleased, certain that he would be forgiven
as soon as he began to sing. And such
spirit and life as he threw into the perform-
ance, rollicking through the Vespers with a
perfect abandon of carriage, as if he could
sing himself out of his skin if he liked!
While the little angels down below were
pattering about with their wax tapers, keep-
ing the holy fire burning, suddenly the
organ stopped, the monk shut his book with
a bang, the boys blew out the candles, and
T heard them all tumbling down stairs in a
gale of noise and laughter. The beautiful
boy I saw no more,
About him plays the light of tender
memory; but were he twice as lovely, I
could never think of him as having either
the simple manliness or the good fortune
of the New England boy.
186
Che Viihersive Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
22h 1668
setae Las ail
MWS
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