Chapter 8

It was thought best in New England country towns that boys, who were not needed on the farm and were not to be educated beyond the common school, should learn some trade. As my mother possessed no land nor any means to send me to academy and college, it was early decided to apprentice me to a trade with some good master. There was another reason; she did not feel able nor competent to manage me when I should be older. She had a presentiment that it would require a stronger hand than her own gentle one to guide me in a straight path. Always after the death of her husband, her only means of meeting her difficulties and perplexities was by prayer. Three times each day, after the morning, noon and evening meals she retired to her own chamber to pray. She read none but religious books and the Bible. Her Bible was the wedding gift of her husband--that and one silver spoon marked with his and her initials J. A. and E. T. intertwined after the manner of silversmiths. My father appears to have been the owner of but one book, Cotton Mather's, "Essays to do Good," which I still possess and, alas, could never read through. Of course the title of the volume at the date of its republication, 1808, had been greatly reduced. No Mather would be satisfied with a title much less expansive than the contents, nor wanting some Latin interlardings. The original title was "Benifacias," followed by ten lines of sub-titles. This was unusual reserve for one of Cotton Mather's productions. In its day it was as popular as is the worst novel of ours, and was continually being republished. Even Dr. Franklin read and praised it and professed that it had influenced his whole life. The preface is a fine specimen of the manner in which a popular Boston preacher at the beginning of the eighteenth century expressed himself when he appeared in print. It has all the airs and attudinizing of a full dress ball-room. He says that a passage in the speech of a British envoy suggested the book and declares of it, "Ink were too vile a liquor to write that passage. Letters of gold were too mean to be the preservers of it. Paper of Amyanthus would not be precious and perennous enough to perpetuate it."

A prayerful mother, the Bible and the Rev. Cotton Mather ought to have been sufficient to turn out good boys from any household. Then there was Sunday-school where we were much instructed about the nature and consequences of sin and the end that awaited bad boys. Notwithstanding, some closer and more practical guidance was needed for a growing lad; something to put him in the way of preparing to earn his living. Accordingly in my eighth year I was turned over to an uncle, my father's only brother, who lived in the next town. He was a boot maker with four sons of his own. At once I found myself cut off from all the objects and persons I had ever known, thrown into a strange world, my own lost as completely as if I had gone to another. I found myself introduced to a small room up a flight of stairs at the end of the shed of my uncle's house. The room was full of windows, all of which looked in the direction of my lost home; it had a number of low shoemaker's benches ranged along three of its sides. Here my uncle and two of his sons made boots. I was directed to one of the benches and began by being taught how to use a waxed end and stitch the counters of bootlegs. Never in my life before had I been pinned to one spot for any length of time save on a school bench; never before set at any work that was not or that could not be made half play. A deadly home-sickness at once seized upon me, of which I could not be cured by all the kindness and encouragement of my uncle and aunt. I was constantly looking out of the shop windows, expecting some one to come and rescue me. Constantly I wept and could not swallow my food for the lump in my throat; at last food was loathsome and my eyes became so swollen with continual tears that I could scarcely see to thread my needle. Thus I suffered for three weeks and my young heart was wounded and broken past all cure. My nature was changed from that time; a kind of depression and melancholy, took the place of my natural gaiety. I can readily believe, such were my misery and agony, that one might die of home-sickness. I recall it so well that I can diagnose its symptoms which are like those of a fever. It comes over one in paroxysms, followed by a great calm as from sudden cessation of acute pain, then by a choking sensation, a terrible sinking of the heart, down, down, all things swim in the convulsion of lost senses until tears once more relieve the overwrought soul. To add to my misery my two young cousins would have nothing to do with me. For the entire three weeks I never spoke a word; the moment I tried I choked and burst into tears. No wonder my cousins and other boys avoided me. Such a baby was past their comprehension or tolerance. In my own natural place I should have had no more mercy on such an one. It is remarkable how early boys begin to trim each other into manly character; they instantly discover and attack any little weakness, and with rough and ready hand or tongue make the weakling or the upstart ashamed of himself. But no treatment harsh or kind could cure a homesick child, and one day my uncle said he was going to see my mother, and that I was to go with him. Oh, how my spirits recovered themselves! I never thought of the return; only to go, to be once more in my own home, with my own river, fields and companions, filled me with ecstacy. I went and I did not return. I did not know what was said between my mother and uncle; I saw him drive away and leave me behind with unspeakable joy. For many subsequent days I observed my mother's sorrowful eyes when she spoke to me. Her first experiment, which promised so well, had failed. If she was disappointed, I was sobered and much easier to manage from that time forth: I tried to please my mother. Our old way of life went on its usual round. Again the little Red House was happy. I resumed my play under the garden apple tree or on the great rock in the corner of the orchard. That year I mastered the alphabet, and I was given a slate and pencil for the purpose of keeping me still when not saying my letters. The school days of that period are memorable to me, chiefly from the recesses and the noon intermission an hour long. It was in that hour I became intimate with some little girls, and found that I liked them as well as boy playmates. How we choose our favorite companions, no man is wise enough to know; yet choice there certainly was, with no formality or effort. How could it be otherwise? From the troop by the door or the roadside, eating their dinner from basket or pail or playing games, some predestined affinity drew away a boy and maid to the birchen bower, where with one mind they set up mimic housekeeping and forbade the entrance of strange children. There one cloak covered them both. Or they rambled hand in hand through the woods, or waded in the shallow water of Beaver brook down to the stone arch bridge where the confined streamlet gurgled softly over the slimy pebbles, and the arch echoed to the sound of their voices. What matter though pantalets and little breeches, pulled up as high as they could be, were wet with jumping and splashing; hot sun and warm blood would soon dry them. Wrinkles and limpness might betray them when they returned to the mother's fold at night, but her reproaches had no terror nor any restraint for happy children, who alone know the secrets of their own pleasures and have no remembrance of interference with them. With boy and boy there is a perfect equality; no pretentions are allowed, except those of age. With maid and boy it is different. With my companion, I wished to appear superior, to show her things, even to attempt to explain them; and thus I myself learned to observe natural objects and to love them. She was my teacher, although I believed myself hers. She listened, she looked up at me and asked another question, and so I see her to this day. How should I not become wise? If not, it is no fault of hers. My Launa, whom I led through the woods, along the water courses, and to whom I promised, that some day we would catch a cloud and ride around the sky visiting the moon and stars, yes, it was Launa to whom I promised everything, and promised because she wished it, and I felt it my business to seem able to gratify all her desires. She already led me captive; well she knew it, and loved to test me with impossible demands. She dared me to do a hundred things, which attempting and failing, I boldly declared I had done. Just as willing to be deceived as I to deceive, she never questioned my lie, but led me on to some fresh feat, some brook or fence to leap, or inaccessible flower or berry to bring her. Already I got out of difficulties by changing the subject, by evading the challenge and diverting her to some other object, play or plan to which she as readily listened. How proud, how important and superior I felt and with what trust the little siren permitted it. Among all my apprenticeships this to Launa Probana was that which taught me most and is most ineffaceable.

THE SAW-MILL

The next effort to make a craftsman of me was in my tenth year. I was put under the hands of a mill-wright. He set up the machinery of saw and grist mills and repaired them when out of order. He had a saw mill and shingle mill of his own, but he was often away from home, especially in winter, and then I ran the saw mill alone. Its machinery was old fashioned and now obsolete, an upright saw, a carriage for the logs somewhat like that now in use, but much heavier and more clumsy. To set the logs to the required width of boards or other lumber we used inch rules, a bar made on purpose for the work and dogs to hold the logs in place. The power was water turned upon the floats of a large wheel. No large timber was left in the neighborhood, otherwise a boy of ten could not have run the mill alone; but with a cant-hook I could usually manage to roll the log upon the carriage and put it in position. We ran off the slabs first and these were the perquisites of the mill owner. They were used in his own family and some were sold or given to poor widows and others. The saw mill was run only in winter time; the water of the mill pond was drawn off in early spring, and where it had flooded the land, grass grew in summer. While the log was running through the saw, it was my never ending delight to lean out of an opening in the side of the mill and watch the tailrace rush from under the building. All winter I looked forward to the day when the great gates of the dam would be raised and the pond disappear in a few hours. I cannot exactly describe the feeling with which, after a few days of sunshine, I walked over the ground where the water had stood; a strange commingling of awe and curiosity, especially as I threaded the now dry, narrow and deep canal, which led the water of the pond to the mill. There I often walked just to enjoy in imagination the thought, what if the water should suddenly come pouring down upon me! I even selected the best places to escape up the rough stone walls of the canal. All my boyhood I enjoyed thrilling imaginary perils, and the planning means of escape. The walls of this canal were made of irregular stones from the field. Alternately wet and dry they had taken on beautiful colors, variegated according to the character of the stone, and between them in summer, and quite covering them in places, grew many kinds of wild flowers, mosses and ferns, and, most splendid of all, the cardinal flower. The canal was always damp, and a few frogs and green snakes made it their summer home. Do not imagine I made any such observations as these at the time, least of all that I then knew the cardinal flower by its correct name. I saw, I felt, I dreamed; now I remember and know a little more. I lacked the right name and reason for most things, but knowing nothing, I named everything after my own fancy and found the creation as good and sweet as the Creator at the end of his week's work. Every boy is a new Adam, and christens the world of his senses in the most primitive figure of language, metonomy.

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

By this time I could read and even imitate the copies set in the writing books. This, however, was not the real method by which I had learned to use the pen or rather pencil. Much more skill was acquired in little notes to Launa Probana during school hours, passed furtively under the desks and benches or hidden in a book which I was suddenly anxious to borrow or lend. What nothings we wrote! With what pains and searchings of the brain for words! Still I filled my bit of paper while Launa wrote only three words, yet her name signed in the tiniest letters satisfied me. With that name in my vest pocket I felt her near me, fixed my attention upon my book again, and learned my lessons more easily. I was conscious that she watched all my movements out of the corner of her eye, and at recitations it was she, who, when I hesitated and was lost, bending her head down so as not to be observed by the teacher, whispered softly the right word and saved me from shame. Thus in a thousand ways she repaid the boy's devotion, and however out-spelt or out-grammared he might be, where he stood, was for her the head of the class. What lessons we learned, not in any book nor taught by any teacher! After a year or two more of winter saw-mill and summer school my teacher thought I was old enough to write compositions, an exercise usual in all New England common schools. Long before this I thought myself competent and was ambitious to begin. It seemed too much a school exercise to be undertaken out of it. I saw the older pupils on appointed afternoons stand up in their places and read from their slates the compositions they had written. It fired my ambition beyond any of the other exercises or lessons. It seemed to me the very pinnacle of greatness to stand up and read a composition before the whole school. How I labored over my first little essay, not being able to think of anything, or to find language; how I began without any real beginning sentences that had no end; how I strung together words without connection or sense, how the whole school tittered and made faces as I read, how I sat down flushed, trembling, completely overwhelmed with mortification, it pains me even to remember. What would Launa care for me now! Without seeming to notice her I looked over to where she sat and saw that she was weeping. I did not speak to her for a whole week. Thus I punished myself, and all the week pondered how I could write something which should make her again proud of me and reinstate myself with my teacher and schoolmates. Suddenly it occurred to me that next time I would choose a subject of which I knew something. Wonderful discovery, which has been of use to me ever since; a bit as well as reins--this is the reason why I have not been a prolific writer. Between one book and the next I am totally forgotten. I found also thus early that one needs a muse. I had made a blunder in not taking Launa into my counsels, say rather into my mind, for I had never once thought of her while writing, nor that she would be my audience. No, I thought only of myself, and the distinction I should win all for myself. Thus experienced, I did not repeat my mistake. When we were next called upon for compositions, I coaxed Launa to go with me at the nooning to the shade of the old blacksmith shop, where I proposed that we should write them together. There sentence by sentence I made my little essay, covering one side of my slate, with Launa for inspirer and critic. My subject was the saw-mill, that one I knew best. There was a pricking of ears in the school-room when I named my humble subject, and an elder boy by my side whispered, "Now, give us some sawdust." I prospered this time and won a smile from Launa. Had I helped her at all in her own composition? I know not; yet when she read, it seemed to me I had written it myself. Such has always been my experience in regard to writing which I have admired, and thought I could do as well--until I tried.

Thus passed two happy summers and two lonely impatient winters; then I was ill with a fever and came to the doors of death. I never resumed my apprenticeship to the mill-wright. For some years succeeding my illness I suffered from periodical sick headache which, before and after, was accompanied by a dreadful depression, an indescribable apathy, a distaste for food, for play, for everything: I wished myself dead. My mother and sisters were very tender to me at this time; they amused me, they petted me, and in the evening read to me stories out of Merry's Museum and from the school readers. It was at this time I was sent on a visit to Boston, perhaps for my health and spirits. I say sent, for I went alone in a stage coach the thirty miles. Much preparation was made for my journey and many letters passed to relatives in Boston concerning it. I had a new cloak lined with bright red flannel, home-made, and a cap with an extremely flat crown and a tassel that fell upon my shoulder. These were the first articles of clothing that made me feel that everybody was looking at me, a feeling something between vanity and embarrassment. My cousin met me in Boston at the stage office and took me to his house in the old West End, at that time the residence of the respectable middle class, with here and there some more wealthy citizens. There were a few shops at the corners of the streets; but I did not venture beyond the street where my cousin lived and saw nothing at all of the city. I was taken to church on Sunday and once to the Museum, where I saw the elder Booth in Shylock. The only scene that made an impression upon me was that where Shylock is about to take his pound of flesh. He squatted upon the floor, his wild and terrible face turned directly upon me, as it seemed, while he sharpened his knife upon his rusty shoe. I was filled with terror and began to cry and begged to be taken away. Quite angry, yet pitying me, too, I suppose, my cousin led me out and home where I went at once to bed, covering my head tightly, unable to sleep for apprehension lest I should be discovered by Shylock. At the Players' Club, in New York City, in the last winter of Edwin Booth's life, I related this incident to him as a childish tribute to his father's power. "Yes," he said, "that was my father, and such things often happened among women and children when he was playing that character. He was dangerous at times, not to his audiences, but occasionally to his fellow actors."

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

Although I was more active and restless than most boys, ever longing, yet with no definite object, I believe I should always have remained in the place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had no ambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. When I reflect on the futility of literature without genius, or the miserly rewards of scholarship, or the disastrous conclusion in a majority of business enterprises, I confess the life of a New England farmer is to be preferred. It was so ordered that opportunities, which I never could have made for myself, came to me unsought and without effort. Such education as I have, a miscellany of odds and ends of learning, and such things as I have accomplished, are the chance results of various and disconnected impulses; and God himself has given me my beautiful friends. I have found them waiting for me all along my path, and their attachment has always filled me with astonishment and gratitude; for I cannot think it is anything I have done that should deserve it. So I relegate it to that indefinable, unconscious self which is hidden from our own knowledge. On the whole, who is he, that would not rather be loved for himself than for his book, his horses or his honors? He, who is capable of friendship, and inspires it, is happier than Alexander with worlds conquered and to be conquered.