BEING A BOY

By Charles Dudley Warner

BEING A BOY

I. BEING A BOY

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requiresno experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. Thedisadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it issoon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be somethingelse, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much fun. Andyet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy with therestrictions that are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it is to yokeup the calves and play work, there is not a boy on a farm but wouldrather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glorious feeling itis, indeed, when a boy is for the first time given the long whip andpermitted to drive the oxen, walking by their side, swinging the longlash, and shouting "Gee, Buck!" "Haw, Golden!" "Whoa, Bright!" and allthe rest of that remarkable language, until he is red in the face, andall the neighbors for half a mile are aware that something unusual isgoing on. If I were a boy, I am not sure but I would rather drive theoxen than have a birthday. The proudest day of my life was one day whenI rode on the neap of the cart, and drove the oxen, all alone, with aload of apples to the cider-mill. I was so little that it was a wonderthat I did n't fall off, and get under the broad wheels. Nothing couldmake a boy, who cared anything for his appearance, feel flatter than tobe run over by the broad tire of a cart-wheel. But I never heard of onewho was, and I don't believe one ever will be. As I said, it was a greatday for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. Theysagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in my faceoccasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side ofthe road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I "came theJulius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use such a slangexpression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know thatJulius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have seen thepeasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round the Forum (ofcourse in Latin, a language that those cattle understood as well as oursdo English); but what I mean is, that I stood up and "hollered" with allmy might, as everybody does with oxen, as if they were born deaf, andwhacked them with the long lash over the head, just as the big folks didwhen they drove. I think now that it was a cowardly thing to crack thepatient old fellows over the face and eyes, and make them wink in theirmeek manner. If I am ever a boy again on a farm, I shall speak gentlyto the oxen, and not go screaming round the farm like a crazy man; and Ishall not hit them a cruel cut with the lash every few minutes, becauseit looks big to do so and I cannot think of anything else to do. I neverliked lickings myself, and I don't know why an ox should like them, especially as he cannot reason about the moral improvement he is to getout of them. 

Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my cows Latin. I don'tmean that I taught them to read it, for it is very difficult to teacha cow to read Latin or any of the dead languages, --a cow cares morefor her cud than she does for all the classics put together. But if youbegin early, you can teach a cow, or a calf (if you can teach a calfanything, which I doubt), Latin as well as English. There were ten cows, which I had to escort to and from pasture night and morning. To thesecows I gave the names of the Roman numerals, beginning with Unus andDuo, and going up to Decem. Decem was, of course, the biggest cow of theparty, or at least she was the ruler of the others, and had the place ofhonor in the stable and everywhere else. I admire cows, and especiallythe exactness with which they define their social position. In thiscase, Decem could "lick" Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so ondown to Unus, who could n't lick anybody, except her own calf. I supposeI ought to have called the weakest cow Una instead of Unus, consideringher sex; but I did n't care much to teach the cows the declensions ofadjectives, in which I was not very well up myself; and, besides, it would be of little use to a cow. People who devote themselves tooseverely to study of the classics are apt to become dried up; and youshould never do anything to dry up a cow. Well, these ten cows knewtheir names after a while, at least they appeared to, and would taketheir places as I called them. At least, if Octo attempted to get beforeNovem in going through the bars (I have heard people speak of a "pairof bars" 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 hornsinto Octo's ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, or else the two lockedhorns and tried the game of push and gore until one gave up. Nothingis stricter than the etiquette of a party of cows. There is nothingin royal courts equal to it; rank is exactly settled, and the sameindividuals always have the precedence. You know that at Windsor Castle, if the Royal Three-Ply Silver Stick should happen to get in front of theMost Royal Double-and-Twisted Golden Rod, when the court is going in todinner, something so dreadful would happen that we don't dare to thinkof it. It is certain that the soup would get cold while the Golden Rodwas pitching the Silver Stick out of the Castle window into the moat, and perhaps the island of Great Britain itself would split in two. Butthe people are very careful that it never shall happen, so we shallprobably never know what the effect would be. Among cows, as I say, thequestion is settled in short order, and in a different manner from whatit sometimes is in other society. It is said that in other society thereis 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 calledposition; and in order to be first they will injure their neighbors bytelling stories about them and by backbiting, which is the meanest kindof biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas. But in cow societythere is nothing of this detraction in order to get the first place atthe 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 itis a very good plan. It does not do the cows much good, but it is verygood exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory as good shortpoems as I could find (the cows liked to listen to "Thanatopsis" aboutas well as anything), and repeat them when I went to the pasture, and asI 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 ismilking, that operation acquires a certain dignity. 

II. THE BOY AS A FARMER

Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notions aboutfarming were not so very different from those they entertain. Whatpasses for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in aparticular way. For instance, some morning in early summer John is toldto catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring wagon, and put inthe buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to drive over tothe "Corners, to see a man" about some cattle, to talk with the roadcommissioner, to go to the store for the "women folks, " and to attendto other important business; and very likely he will not be back tillsundown. It must be very pressing business, for the old gentleman drivesoff in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day, and appears to havea great deal on his mind. 

Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up thechores. As if the chores could ever be "done up" on a farm. He is firstto clean out the horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut downthe thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowing-lot andalong the road towards the village; to dig up the docks round the gardenpatch; to weed out the beet-bed; to hoe the early potatoes; to rake thesticks and leaves out of the front yard; in short, there is work enoughlaid out for John to keep him busy, it seems to him, till he comes ofage; and at half an hour to sundown he is to go for the cows "and mindhe don't run 'em!"

"Yes, sir, " says John, "is that all?"

"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over thosepotatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat. "

John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore morecheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing thesprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mountshis wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dog boundingalong beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John's call. Johnhalf wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of farming thatsuits him. He likes to run along the road and see all the dogs andother people, and he likes best of all to lie on the store steps at theCorners--while his master's horse is dozing at the post and hismaster is talking politics in the store--with the other dogs of hisacquaintance, snapping at mutually annoying flies, and indulging inthat delightful dog gossip which is expressed by a wag of the tail and asniff of the nose. Nobody knows how many dogs' characters are destroyedin this gossip, or how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion by a wagof the tail as a man can by a shrug of the shoulders, or sniff a slanderas a man can suggest one by raising his eyebrows. 

John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with theodorous buffalo-robe and the new whip, and he thinks that is the sort offarming he would like to do. And he cries after his departing parent, "Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt thecattle?" John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantly ingoing over to that pasture, looking for bird's nests and shying at redsquirrels on the way, and who knows but he might "see" a sucker in themeadow brook, and perhaps get a "jab" at him with a sharp stick. Heknows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of his plans in lifeis to go some day and snare him, and bring him home in triumph. It istherefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the cattle want salting. But his father, without turning his head, replies, "No, they don't need salting any more 'n you do!" And the old equipagegoes rattling down the road, and John whistles his disappointment. WhenI was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were neversalted 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-door work, thatrather drags. There are so many things to distract the attention--achipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, and a hen-hawk circlinghigh in the air over the barnyard. John loses a little time in stoningthe chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and in watching the bird, tofind where its nest is; and he convinces himself that he ought to watchthe hawk, lest it pounce upon the chickens, and therefore, with an easyconscience, he spends fifteen minutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows it away out of sight over the woods, and then wishes itwould come back again. And then a carriage with two horses, and a trunkon behind, goes along the road; and there is a girl in the carriage wholooks out at John, who is suddenly aware that his trousers are patchedon 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, andwhether that nice-looking man is the girl's father, and if that boy onthe seat with the driver is her brother, and if he has to do chores;and as the gay sight disappears, John falls to thinking about the greatworld 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. Andthen a boy, whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, andthe boy makes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twistof his own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things taketime. The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although itis not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play. John imaginesthat yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom he has readin a fairy book, and he advances on him with "Die, ruffian!" andslashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon the rows ofmullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, and hews themdown without mercy. What fun it might be if there were only another boythere to help. But even war, single handed, gets to be tiresome. It isdinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time beforeJohn has made much impression on the garden. 

This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn all daythan work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work that Johncan do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan in this lifeis to go fishing. When there comes a rainy day, he attempts to carry itout. But ten chances to one his father has different views. As it rainsso that work cannot be done out-doors, it is a good time to work inthe garden. He can run into the house between the heavy showers. Johnaccordingly detests the garden; and the only time he works briskly in itis when he has a stent set, to do so much weeding before the Fourth ofJuly. If he is spry, he can make an extra holiday the Fourth and theday after. Two days of gunpowder and ball-playing! When I was a boy, Isupposed there was some connection between such and such an amount ofwork done on the farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there couldbe any Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at least, worked formy Independence. 

III. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING

There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that Isometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I shouldalmost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is agreat comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. Itis sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand, --he who leadsthe school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and thereis so much to take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything. Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is sent to theneighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is not exactlycruel, but he wants to see if he can hit 'em. No other living thing cango so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unlesshe happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chaseto it like a deer; and it is a curious fact about boys, that two willbe a great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more youhave to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys havea great power of helping each other to do nothing; and they are soinnocent about it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could, "says the boy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when hehas been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has noeffect on the boy. 

Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb ahill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could anyboy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasturethere were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to eat or tosmell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climba tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try ifI could see the steeple of the village church. It became veryimportant sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in the midst of myinvestigations the tin horn would blow a great blast from the farmhouse, which would send a cold chill down my back in the hottest days. I knewwhat it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at alllike the sweet note that called us to dinner from the hay-field. Itsaid, "Why on earth does n't that boy come home? It is almost dark, andthe cows ain't milked!" And that was the time the cows had to start intoa brisk pace and make up for lost time. I wonder if any boy ever drovethe cows home late, who did not say that the cows were at the veryfarther end of the pasture, and that "Old Brindle" was hidden in thewoods, and he couldn't find her for ever so long! The brindle cow is theboy'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 onesort. The excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and theanticipation of great luck! These are pure pleasures, enjoyed becausethey are rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any time care but littlefor it. Tramping all day through bush and brier, fighting flies andmosquitoes, and branches that tangle the line, and snags that break thehook, and returning home late and hungry, with wet feet and a string ofspeckled trout on a willow twig, and having the family crowd out at thekitchen 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 beselectman and deacon and to "keep store. "

But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring andfall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, in a neighboring town, maybe, to drive thither the young cattle and colts, and to bring themback 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 upa dashing brook-side among great hills. What a day's adventure it was!It was like a journey to Europe. The night before, I could scarcelysleep for thinking of it! and there was no trouble about getting meup at sunrise that morning. The breakfast was eaten, the luncheonwas packed in a large basket, with bottles of root beer and a jug ofswitchel, which packing I superintended with the greatest interest;and then the cattle were to be collected for the march, and the horseshitched up. Did I shirk any duty? Was I slow? I think not. I was willingto run my legs off after the frisky steers, who seemed to have an ideathey were going on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing into all gates, and through all bars except the right ones; and how cheerfully I didyell at them. 

It was a glorious chance to "holler, " and I have never since heardany public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting who could make morenoise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount of noise in aboy does not increase in proportion to his size; if it did, the worldcould not contain it. 

The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. We were away fromthe farm, which to a boy is one of the best parts of farming; we sawother farms and other people at work; I had the pleasure of marchingalong, and swinging my whip, past boys whom I knew, who were picking upstones. Every turn of the road, every bend and rapid of the river, thegreat bowlders by the wayside, the watering-troughs, the giant pine thathad been struck by lightning, the mysterious covered bridge over theriver where it was, most swift and rocky and foamy, the chance eagle inthe blue sky, the sense of going somewhere, --why, as I recall all thesethings I feel that even the Prince Imperial, as he used to dash onhorseback through the Bois de Boulogne, with fifty mounted hussarsclattering at his heels, and crowds of people cheering, could not havebeen as happy as was I, a boy in short jacket and shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust that day behind the steers and colts, cracking myblack-stock whip. 

I wish the journey would never end; but at last, by noon, we reach thepastures and turn in the herd; and after making the tour of the lots tomake sure there are no breaks in the fences, we take our luncheon fromthe wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring. This is the suprememoment of the day. This is the way to live; this is like the SwissFamily Robinson, and all the rest of my delightful acquaintances inromance. Baked beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist, remember), doughnutsand cheese, pie, and root beer. What richness! You may live to dineat Delmonico's, or, if those Frenchmen do not eat each other up, atPhilippe's, in Rue Montorgueil in Paris, where the dear old Thackerayused to eat as good a dinner as anybody; but you will get there neitherdoughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer, nor anything so good as that luncheonat noon in the old pasture, high among the Massachusetts hills! Norwill you ever, if you live to be the oldest boy in the world, have anyholiday equal to the one I have described. But I always regretted that Idid not take along a fishline, just to "throw in" the brook we passed. Iknow there were trout there. 

IV. NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY

Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, it is myimpression 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, alwaysin demand, always expected to do the thousand indispensable thingsthat nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds and ends, the mostdifficult things. After everybody else is through, he has to finishup. His work is like a woman's, --perpetual waiting on others. Everybodyknows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner than it is to washthe 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 store, to the post office, and to carry all sorts ofmessages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would tire beforenight. 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 rotateabout in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do; and people whohave seen him "turning cart-wheels" along the side of the road havesupposed that he was amusing himself, and idling his time; he was onlytrying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so that he could economizehis legs and do his errands with greater dispatch. He practices standingon his head, in order to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrogis one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He wouldwillingly go an errand any distance if he could leap-frog it with afew other boys. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure withbusiness. This is the reason why, when he is sent to the spring for apitcher of water, and the family are waiting at the dinner-table, he isabsent so long; for he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or, if there is a penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirtthe water a little while. He is the one who spreads the grass when themen have cut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse tocultivate the corn, up and down the hot, weary rows; he picks up thepotatoes when they are dug; he drives the cows night and morning; hebrings wood and water and splits kindling; he gets up the horse and putsout the horse; whether he is in the house or out of it, there is alwayssomething for him to do. Just before school in winter he shovels paths;in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots ofwinter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for them, he isto stay in-doors and pare apples and stone raisins and pound somethingin a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of schemes of what he wouldlike to do, and his hands full of occupations, he is an idle boy who hasnothing to busy himself with but school and chores! He would gladly doall the work if somebody else would do the chores, he thinks, and yet Idoubt if any boy ever amounted to anything in the world, or was of muchuse as a man, who did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal education inthe way of chores. 

A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, andprobably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens. A guinea-hen suits aboy. It is entirely useless, and makes a more disagreeable noise thana Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young fox which a neighbor hadcaught. It is a mistake to suppose the fox cannot be tamed. Jacko was avery clever little animal, and behaved, in all respects, with propriety. He kept Sunday as well as any day, and all the ten commandments that hecould understand. He was a very graceful playfellow, and seemed to havean affection for me. He lived in a wood-pile in the dooryard, and when Ilay down at the entrance to his house and called him, he would come outand sit on his tail and lick my face just like a grown person. I taughthim a great many tricks and all the virtues. That year I had a largenumber of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfectindifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputationthat I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the dark withoutcounting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I was fond of himand very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an exampleof what affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with much patience, taught to goup a long hill alone and surround the cows, and drive them home from theremote pasture. He liked the fun of it at first, but by and by he seemedto get the notion that it was a "chore, " and when I whistled for him togo for the cows, he would turn tail and run the other way, and the moreI whistled and threw stones at him, the faster he would run. His namewas Turk, and I should have sold him if he had not been the kind of dogthat nobody will buy. I suppose he was not a cow-dog, but what they calla sheep-dog. At least, when he got big enough, he used to get intothe pasture and chase the sheep to death. That was the way he got intotrouble, 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 peddlers andsmall children, and run out and yelp at wagons that pass by, and tohowl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were a boy again, thefirst 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 tobark at woodchuck-holes. 

A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole long after the animal hasretired to a remote part of his residence, and escaped by another hole. This deceives the woodchuck. Some of the most delightful hours of mylife have been spent in hiding and watching the hole where the dog wasnot. What an exquisite thrill ran through my frame when the timid noseappeared, was withdrawn, poked out again, and finally followed by theentire animal, who looked cautiously about, and then hopped away to feedon the clover. At that moment I rushed in, occupied the "home base, "yelled to Turk, and then danced with delight at the combat between thespunky woodchuck and the dog. They were about the same size, but scienceand civilization won the day. I did not reflect then that it would havebeen more in the interest of civilization if the woodchuck had killedthe dog. I do not know why it is that boys so like to hunt and killanimals; 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 awoodchuck. It was not till long after that I learned with surprise thathe is a rodent mammal, of the species Arctomys monax, is called at theWest a ground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish. 

But I have forgotten my beautiful fox. Jacko continued to deport himselfwell until the young chickens came; he was actually cured of thefox vice of chicken-stealing. He used to go with me about the coops, pricking up his ears in an intelligent manner, and with a demure eye andthe most virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox! If he had held outa little while longer, I should have put him into a Sunday-school book. But I began to miss chickens. They disappeared mysteriously in thenight. I would not suspect Jacko at first, for he looked so honest, andin the daytime seemed to be as much interested in the chickens as Iwas. But one morning, when I went to call him, I found feathers at theentrance of his hole, --chicken feathers. He couldn't deny it. He was athief. His fox nature had come out under severe temptation. And he diedan unnatural death. He had a thousand virtues and one crime. But thatcrime struck at the foundation of society. He deceived and stole; hewas a liar and a thief, and no pretty ways could hide the fact. Hisintelligent, bright face couldn't save him. If he had been honest, hemight have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox. 

V. THE BOY'S SUNDAY

Sunday in the New England hill towns used to begin Saturday night atsundown; and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills there before ithas set by the almanac. I remember that we used to go by the almanacSaturday night and by the visible disappearance Sunday night. OnSaturday night we very slowly yielded to the influences of the holytime, which were settling down upon us, and submitted to the ablutionswhich were as inevitable as Sunday; but when the sun (and it nevermoved so slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night, the effect upon thewatching boy was like a shock from a galvanic battery; something flashedthrough all his limbs and set them in motion, and no "play" ever seemedso sweet to him as that between sundown and dark Sunday night. This, however, was on the supposition that he had conscientiously kept Sunday, and had not gone in swimming and got drowned. This keeping of Saturdaynight instead of Sunday night we did not very well understand; but itseemed, on the whole, a good thing that we should rest Saturday nightwhen we were tired, and play Sunday night when we were rested. Isupposed, however, that it was an arrangement made to suit the big boyswho wanted to go "courting" Sunday night. Certainly they were not to beblamed, 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 inthe 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 tothe other members of the family; for the same chores must be done thatday as on others, and he could not divert his mind with whistling, hand-springs, or sending the dog into the river after sticks. He had tosubmit, in the first place, to the restraint of shoes and stockings. Heread in the Old Testament that when Moses came to holy ground, he putoff his shoes; but the boy was obliged to put his on, upon the holyday, not only to go to meeting, but while he sat at home. Only theemancipated country-boy, who is as agile on his bare feet as a youngkid, and rejoices in the pressure of the warm soft earth, knows what ahardship it is to tie on stiff shoes. The monks who put peas in theirshoes as a penance do not suffer more than the country-boy in hispenitential Sunday shoes. I recall the celerity with which he used tokick them off at sundown. 

Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy. He must risetolerably early, for the cows were to be milked and driven to pasture;family prayers were a little longer than on other days; there were theSunday-school verses to be relearned, for they did not stay in mind overnight; perhaps the wagon was to be greased before the neighbors began todrive by; and the horse was to be caught out of the pasture, ridden homebareback, and harnessed. 

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 wantedfor taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful and still in thepasture on Sunday morning; but the horses were never so playful, thecolts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the boy went calling, inan entreating Sunday voice, "Jock, jock, jock, jock, " and shaking hissalt-dish, while the horses, with heads erect, and shaking tails andflashing heels, dashed from corner to corner, and gave the boy a prettygood 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 ratherenjoyed the fun, after all. 

The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the setof his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory of theSunday-school verses; and what a wild confusion there was through thehouse in getting off for meeting, and how he was kept running hither andthither, to get the hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, orto pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch of caraway-seed. Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load of the deacon's folks, hadgone shambling past, head and tail drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking upclouds of dust, while the good deacon sat jerking the reins, in anautomatic way, and the "womenfolks" patiently saw the dust settle upontheir best summer finery. Wagon after wagon went along the sandyroad, and when our boy's family started, they became part of a longprocession, which sent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pioussmell of buffalo-robes. There were fiery horses in the trail which hadto be held in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to pass anybodyon Sunday. It was a great delight to the farmer-boy to see all thisprocession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys, wholeaned over the wagon-seats for that purpose. Occasionally a boy rodebehind, with his back to the family, and his pantomime was always something wonderful to see, and was considered very daring and wicked. 

The meeting-house which our boy remembers was a high, square building, without a steeple. Within it had a lofty pulpit, with doors underneathand closets where sacred things were kept, and where the tithing-menwere supposed to imprison bad boys. The pews were square, with seatsfacing each other, those on one side low for the children, and all withhinges, so that they could be raised when the congregation stood up forprayers and leaned over the backs of the pews, as horses meet each otheracross a pasture fence. After prayers these seats used to be slammeddown with a long-continued clatter, which seemed to the boys aboutthe best part of the exercises. The galleries were very high, and thesingers' seats, where the pretty girls sat, were the most conspicuousof all. To sit in the gallery away from the family, was a privilege notoften granted to the boy. The tithing-man, who carried a long rod andkept order in the house, and out-doors at noontime, sat in the gallery, and visited any boy who whispered or found curious passages in theBible and showed them to another boy. It was an awful moment when thebushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time. The eyes ofthe whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the guilt ooze outof his burning face. 

At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon service, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon togetherat the watering-trough, where some of the elders were likely to begathered, talking very solemnly about cattle; or they went over toa neighboring barn to see the calves; or they slipped off down theroadside to a place where they could dig sassafras or the root of thesweet-flag, roots very fragrant in the mind of many a boy with religiousassociations to this day. There was often an odor of sassafras in theafternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as a substitute for theOld Testament incense of the Jews. Something in the same way the bigbass-viol in the choir took the place of "David's harp of solemn sound. "

The going home from meeting was more cheerful and lively than the comingto it. There was all the bustle of getting the horses out of the shedsand bringing them round to the meeting-house steps. At noon the boyssometimes 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 thehorses up in good style; and the boy was rather proud of the horse ifit 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 in a New EnglandSunday. He liked to drive home fast. The old house and the farm lookedpleasant to him. There was an extra dinner when they reached home, and acheerful consciousness of duty performed made it a pleasant dinner. Longbefore sundown the Sunday-school book had been read, and the boy satwaiting in the house with great impatience the signal that the "day ofrest" was over. A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not see the needof "rest. " Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of older farmers. 

VI. THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE

If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of thefarmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythesis one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets nocredit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crankis turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a greatdeal of poetry about haying--I mean for those not engaged in it. Onelikes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and theresponse of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence andsuperintends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sortof music in the "swish" and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes inconcert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is livelybusiness "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk alongand lay the grass low, while the boy has the whole hay-field on hishands. He has little time for the poetry of haying, as he strugglesalong, filling 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 andfreshly cut stubble. 

But if the scythes cut well and swing merrily, it is due to the boywho turned the grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just turn thegrindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast; any"hired man" was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone. Howthey 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"wabbled" a good deal on its axis, for when I turned it fast, it putthe grinder on a lively lookout for cutting his hands, and entirelysatisfied his desire that I should "turn faster. " It was some sport tomake the water fly and wet the grinder, suddenly starting up quickly andsurprising him when I was turning very slowly. I used to wish sometimesthat I could turn fast enough to make the stone fly into a dozenpieces. Steady turning is what the grinders like, and any boy whoturns steadily, so as to give an even motion to the stone, will be muchpraised, and will be in demand. I advise any boy who desires to do thissort of work to turn steadily. If he does it by jerks and in a fitfulmanner, the "hired men" will be very apt to dispense with his servicesand turn the grindstone for each other. 

This is one of the most disagreeable tasks of the boy farmer, and, hardas it is, I do, not know why it is supposed to belong especially tochildhood. But it is, and one of the certain marks that second childhoodhas come to a man on a farm is, that he is asked to turn the grindstoneas 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 canturn grindstone, and it is in this way that he renews his youth. "Ain'tyou ashamed to have your granther turn the grindstone?" asks the hiredman of the boy. So the boy takes hold and turns himself, till his littleback aches. When he gets older, he wishes he had replied, "Ain't youashamed to make either an old man or a little boy do such hard grindingwork?"

Doing the regular work of this world is not much, the boy thinks, butthe wearisome part is the waiting on the people who do the work. And theboy 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, thathe has no time that he can call his own. He is, like a barrel of beer, always on draft. The men-folks, having worked in the regular hours, liedown and rest, stretch themselves idly in the shade at noon, or loungeabout after supper. Then the boy, who has done nothing all day but turngrindstone, and spread hay, and rake after, and run his little legs offat everybody's beck and call, is sent on some errand or some householdchore, in order that time shall not hang heavy on his hands. The boycomes nearer to perpetual motion than anything else in nature, only itis not altogether a voluntary motion. The time that the farm-boy getsfor his own is usually at the end of a stent. We used to be given acertain piece of corn to hoe, or a certain quantity of corn to husk inso many days. If we finished the task before the time set, we had theremainder to ourselves. In my day it used to take very sharp work togain anything, but we were always anxious to take the chance. I think weenjoyed the holiday in anticipation quite as much as we did when we hadwon it. Unless it was training-day, or Fourth of July, or the circus wascoming, it was a little difficult to find anything big enough to fillour anticipations of the fun we would have in the day or the two orthree days we had earned. We did not want to waste the time on anycommon thing. Even going fishing in one of the wild mountain brooks washardly 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, onthe whole, a waste of our precious time. Unless we could get outour military company, life was apt to be a little blank, even on theholidays for which we had worked so hard. If you went to see anotherboy, he was probably at work in the hay-field or the potato-patch, andhis father looked at you askance. You sometimes took hold and helpedhim, so that he could go and play with you; but it was usually time togo for the cows before the task was done. The fact is, or used tobe, that the amusements of a boy in the country are not many. Snaring"suckers" out of the deep meadow brook used to be about as good as anythat I had. The North American sucker is not an engaging animal in allrespects; his body is comely enough, but his mouth is puckered up likethat of a purse. The mouth is not formed for the gentle angle-worm northe delusive fly of the fishermen. It is necessary, therefore, to snarethe 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 onlystirring 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 andapparent bliss. The boy who also has a holiday, but cannot keep still, comes along and peeps over the bank. "Golly, ain't he a big one!"Perhaps he is eighteen inches long, and weighs two or three pounds. Helies there among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a schoolof them, perhaps a district school, that only keeps in warm days inthe summer. The pupils seem to have little to learn, except to balancethemselves and to turn gracefully with a flirt of the tail. Not muchis taught but "deportment, " and some of the old suckers are perfectTurveydrops in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line, andon 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 approachesthe bank and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale. The boy devourshim with his eyes. He is almost too much excited to drop the snare intothe water without making a noise. A puff of wind comes and ruffles thesurface, so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm again, and there hestill is, moving his fins in peaceful security. The boy lowers his snarebehind the fish and slips it along. He intends to get it around himjust back of the gills and then elevate him with a sudden jerk. It is adelicate operation, for the snare will turn a little, and if it hitsthe fish, he is off. However, it goes well; the wire is almost inplace, when suddenly the fish, as if he had a warning in a dream, for heappears to see nothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out of theloop, and with no seeming appearance of frustrating any one's plans, lounges over to the other side of the pool; and there he reposes just asif he was not spoiling the boy's holiday. This slight change of base onthe 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 patientlywait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time, cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the unsuspectingfish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as he gives a tremendousjerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has got him fast. Out hecomes, up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to look at him. In thistransaction, however, no one can be more surprised than the sucker. 

VII. FICTION AND SENTIMENT

The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as hiscity cousin. When school keeps, he has only to "do chores and go toschool, " but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm thathave been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in the pastures andpiling them in heaps used to be one of them. Some lots appeared togrow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the surface, as itcoaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft garden soil; it is certainthat 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 turning up the larger stones in order to stand fora moment in the warm place that had been covered from the frost. A boycan stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork; and the boy who founda warm spot for the sole of his foot was likely to stand in it untilthe words, "Come, stir your stumps, " broke in discordantly upon hismeditations. For the boy is very much given to meditations. If he hadhis way, he would do nothing in a hurry; he likes to stop and thinkabout things, and enjoy his work as he goes along. He picks up potatoesas if each one were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, andrequiring careful examination. 

Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (ashe does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he isreleased from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school is hisopening into the world, --his romance. Its opportunities for enjoymentare numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set at books for;he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs, standing up andshouting out the words with entire recklessness of consequences; hegrapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as something that mustbe cleared out of his way before recess, but not at all with the zesthe would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But recess! Was ever anyenjoyment so keen as that with which a boy rushes out of the schoolhousedoor for the ten minutes of recess? He is like to burst with animalspirits; he runs like a deer; he can nearly fly; and he throws himselfinto play with entire self-forgetfulness, and an energy that wouldoverturn the world if his strength were proportioned to it. Forten minutes the world is absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own master for that brieftime, --as he never again will be if he lives to be as old as the kingof 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 beenslyly matured during the school-hours: expeditions are undertaken; warsare begun between the Indians on one side and the settlers on the other;the military company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games arecarried on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of windsufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch. 

Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, andenmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot, aftera rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases of longcredit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys; boot onjack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered muchmore honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if theexplanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and then takea sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The country-boy at thedistrict school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a copy of the ArabianNights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, and the last leavesmissing, which is passed around, and slyly read under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents disapprove ofnovel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the house except a piousfraud called "Six Months in a Convent, " and the latest comic almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the treasures out of thewondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in the land of enchantmentopen before him. He tells at home that he has seen the most wonderfulbook that ever was, and a big boy has promised to lend it to him. "Is ita true book, John?" asks the grandmother; "because, if it is n'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 ithome; 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 whenhe is supposed to be doing chores. There were no chores in the ArabianNights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius, whowould 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 worldof books, which he soon found was larger than his own, and filled withpeople he longed to know. 

And the farmer-boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets, thoughhe has never been at a children's party in his life, and, in fact, neverhas heard that children go into society when they are seven, and giveregular wine-parties when they reach the ripe age of nine. But one ofhis regrets at having the summer school close is dimly connected with alittle girl, whom he does not care much for, would a great deal ratherplay with a boy than with her at recess, --but whom he will not see againfor 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 inpaper, 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 turnsand goes a longer distance towards her home, so that it is late whenhe reaches his own. Is he late? He did n't know he was late; he camestraight home when school was dismissed, only going a little way homewith Alice Linton to help her carry her books. In a box in his chamber, which he has lately put a padlock on, among fishhooks and lines andbaitboxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet apples, pop-corn, beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-cornered or otherwise, and written, I willwarrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These little notes are partinggifts at the close of school, and John, no doubt, gave his own inexchange for them, though the writing was an immense labor, and thefolding was a secret bought of another boy for a big piece of sweetflag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry in hispantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that putting hisfingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the sugar-bowlat home. Each precious note contained a lock or curl of girl's hair, --arare collection of all colors, after John had been in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting 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 theschool, and expressed a melancholy foreboding of early death, and atouching desire to leave hair enough this side the grave to constitutea sort of strand of remembrance. With little variation, the poetry thatmade 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. "

John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and freshimpression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they werefor him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he usedwhen he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And it didnot occur to him until he was a great deal older and less innocent, tosmile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep every lock of hairintrusted to him, though death should come on the wings of cholera andtake away every one of these sad, red-ink correspondents. When John'sbig brother one day caught sight of these treasures, and brutally toldhim that he "had hair enough to stuff a horse-collar, " John was sooutraged and shocked, as he should have been, at this rude invasion ofhis heart, this coarse suggestion, this profanation of his most delicatefeeling, that he was kept from crying only by the resolution to "lick"his brother as soon as ever he got big enough. 

VIII. THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING

One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts, hickory-nuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts, in the late fall, afterthe frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shaken them, and the colored leaves have strewn the ground. On a bright Octoberday, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there is nothing quiteso exhilarating as going nutting. Nor is the pleasure of it altogetherdestroyed for the boy by the consideration that he is making himselfuseful in obtaining supplies for the winter household. The getting-in ofpotatoes and corn is a different thing; that is the prose, but nuttingis the poetry, of farm life. I am not sure but the boy would find itvery irksome, though, if he were obliged to work at nut-gathering inorder to procure food for the family. He is willing to make himselfuseful in his own way. The Italian boy, who works day after day at ahuge pile of pine-cones, pounding and cracking them and taking outthe long seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which arealmost as good as pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boyhere were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the pricklychestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What ahardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them outwith his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy iswilling to do any amount of work if it is called play. 

In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than theboy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; theyleave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts. To climb atree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass to thenext, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion of boys scamperover our grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one as active as ifhe 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 speakto them about it. Indeed, I have noticed that boys don't care much forconversation with the owners of fruit-trees. They could speedily maketheir fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields. I havenever seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing thegrasshoppers from a piece of pasture. 

Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some ofour best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of theskirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major ofour holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler;he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step, and the samemartial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, butgoes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can seeevery part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance isone of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch thegobbler maneuvering his forces in a grasshopper-field. He throws outhis company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, thenumber disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically inthe rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with militaryprecision, killing the foe and disposing of the dead bodies with thesame peck. Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey willhold; but he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner, --he keepson eating as long as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of theseraids, does not condescend to grab a single grasshopper, --at least, notwhile anybody is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when hisdignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his voracity; perhapshe falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of thefield. But he is only fattening himself for destruction; like allgreedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if the turkeys had anySunday-school, they would be taught this. 

The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the greatevent of the year. He was apt to get stents set him, --so much corn tohusk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extraplay-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at histask with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had the dayafter Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted on. Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival, --very much likeSunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his imaginationfor months before as completely as it did his stomach for that day anda week after. There was an impression in the house that that dinnerwas the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower. Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who hadprepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous banquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and liked peacocksstuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never had anything like aThanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or Sardanapalus either, ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie at one dinner? Therein manya New England boy is greater than the Roman emperor or the Assyrianking, and these were among the most luxurious eaters of their day andgeneration. But something more is necessary to make good men thanplenty 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 disapprovalof 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 wellwhere they are. 

For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not being allowed totaste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of fragrantspices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry, --a world that he was only yetallowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house was with themost delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made! If John had beenshut in solid walls with them piled about him, he could n't have eatenhis way out in four weeks. There were dainties enough cooked in thosetwo weeks to have made the entire year luscious with good living, ifthey had been scattered along in it. But people were probably all thebetter for scrimping themselves a little in order to make this a greatfeast. And it was not by any means over in a day. There were weeks deepof chicken-pie and other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to excavate all its riches. 

Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being sosubdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of theSunday clothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt littleexhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the real holiday. Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps the skatings andsleigh-rides, for the freezing weather came before the governor'sproclamation in many parts of New England. The night after Thanksgivingoccurred, perhaps, the first real party that the boy had ever attended, with live girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And there he heard thosephilandering songs, and played those sweet games of forfeits, which puthim quite beside himself, and kept him awake that night till the roostercrowed at the end of his first chicken-nap. What a new world did thatparty open to him! I think it likely that he saw there, and probablydid not dare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older thanhimself, who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see herface just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wondered if shenoticed how awkward he was, and how short his trousers-legs were. Heblushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes; and determined, then and there, that he wouldn't be put off with a ribbon any longer, but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhat painful, thinkingthe 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 itexactly in that way. But he rather resolved to live for her, which mightin the end amount to the same thing. At least, he thought that nobodywould live to speak twice disrespectfully of her in his presence. 

IX. THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE

What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but thatwas after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mincewould be better. 

The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie has never been properlyconsidered. 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 watcheswith the greatest interest the stirring-up process and the pouring intothe scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the baking reaches hisnostrils, he is filled with the most delightful anticipations. Whyshould he not be? He knows that for months to come the buttery willcontain golden treasures, and that it will require only a slightingenuity to get at them. 

The fact is, that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part offarming. His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is avery coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a world thatis full of good things to eat, and there is, on the whole, a veryshort time in which to eat them; at least, he is told, among the firstinformation he receives, that life is short. Life being brief, and pieand the like fleeting, he very soon decides upon an active campaign. Itmay be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fiftyyears, but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thinas it comes, as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them verythin. I knew a place where they were not thicker than the poor man'splaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were betterfitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up bythe great oven-full and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened anddried 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 ofboys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stoppedcoming into the world. 

The truth is, that boys have always been so plenty that they are nothalf appreciated. We have shown that a farm could not get along withoutthem, and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of the mostamusing things is their effort to acquire personal property. The boyhas 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 tobe looked after, --until he gets to hate the name of calf. But inconsideration of his faithfulness, two of them are given to him. Thereis no doubt that they are his: he has the entire charge of them. Whenthey get to be steers he spends all his holidays in breaking them in toa yoke. He gets them so broken in that they will run like a pair of deerall over the farm, turning the yoke, and kicking their heels, while hefollows in full chase, shouting the ox language till he is red in theface. When the steers grow up to be cattle, a drover one day comes alongand takes them away, and the boy is told that he can have another pairof calves; and so, with undiminished faith, he goes back and begins overagain to make his fortune. He owns lambs and young colts in the sameway, and makes just as much out of them. 

There are ways in which the farmer-boy can earn money, as by gatheringthe early chestnuts and taking them to the corner store, or by findingturkeys' eggs and selling them to his mother; and another way is to gowithout 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 represented by a blank spot in the atlas) use the butter togrease their hair, putting on pounds of it at a time; and he said hehad rather eat his butter than have it put to that use, especially as itmelted away so fast in that hot climate. 

Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do not actuallycarry butter to Africa, and that they must usually go without itthemselves there, it being almost impossible to make it good from themilk in the cocoanuts. And it was further explained to him that evenif the heathen never received his butter or the money for it, it was anexcellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit of self-denial and ofbenevolence, and if the heathen never heard of him, he would be blessedfor his generosity. This was all true. 

But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of hisbutter, and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eatingbutter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know where theother members of the family got their money to send to the heathen; andhis mother said that he was about half right, and that self-denial wasjust 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 cupboard. I usedto know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, and brushed hishair straight up like General Jackson, and went to the legislature, where he always voted against every measure that was proposed, in themost honest manner, and got the reputation of being the "watch-dog ofthe treasury. " Rats in the cellar were nothing to be compared to thisboy for destructiveness in pies. He used to go down whenever he couldmake an excuse, to get apples for the family, or draw a mug of ciderfor his dear old grandfather (who was a famous story-teller about theRevolutionary War, and would no doubt have been wounded in battle if hehad not been as prudent as he was patriotic), and come upstairs with atallow candle in one hand and the apples or cider in the other, lookingas innocent and as unconscious as if he had never done anything in hislife except deny himself butter for the sake of the heathen. Andyet this boy would have buttoned under his jacket an entire roundpumpkin-pie. And the pie was so well made and so dry that it was notinjured in the least, and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit morethan if it had been inside of him instead of outside; and this boy wouldretire to a secluded place and eat it with another boy, being neversuspected because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, andhe never appeared to have one about him. But he did something worsethan this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she told thefamily that she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said aword, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired man was probablyregarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his days, and if hehad been accused of robbing, they would have believed him guilty. 

I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse now aboutthat pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his jacket andsticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like around and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals. Perhaps not. It isdifficult 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 forthe game of pitching quoits, and a pair of them would have made veryfair wheels for the dog-cart. And yet it is probably as wrong to steala thin pie as a thick one; and it made no difference because it was easyto steal this sort. Easy stealing is no better than easy lying, wheredetection of the lie is difficult. The boy who steals his mother's pieshas no right to be surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons. Stealing is like charity in one respect, --it is apt to begin at home. 

X. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD

If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country, --the best kindof boy to be in the summer, --I would be about ten years of age. As soonas I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boy is, thatjust as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has to be set todoing something else. If a country boy were wise, he would stay at justthat age when he could enjoy himself most, and have the least expectedof him in the way of work. 

Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do"chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters, ratherthan enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such boy. Helived in the town of Goshen, --not the place where the butter is made, but a much better Goshen than that. And I never saw him, but I heard ofhim; and being about the same age, as I supposed, I was taken once fromZoah, where I lived, to Goshen to see him. But he was dead. He had beendead almost a year, so that it was impossible to see him. He died of themost singular disease: it was from not eating green apples in the seasonof them. This boy, whose name was Solomon, before he died, wouldrather split up kindling-wood for his mother than go a-fishing, --theconsequence was, that he was kept at splitting kindling-wood and suchwork most of the time, and grew a better and more useful boy day by day. Solomon would not disobey his parents and eat green apples, --not evenwhen they were ripe enough to knock off with a stick, but he had sucha longing for them, that he pined, and passed away. If he had eaten thegreen apples, he would have died of them, probably; so that his exampleis a difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to geta moral from. All his little playmates who ate green apples came toSolomon's funeral, and were very sorry for what they had done. 

John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, nor halfso dead. He was a farmer's boy, as Solomon was, but he did not take somuch interest in the farm. If John could have had his way, he wouldhave discovered a cave full of diamonds, and lots of nail-kegs full ofgold-pieces and Spanish dollars, with a pretty little girl living inthe cave, and two beautifully caparisoned horses, upon which, taking thejewels and money, they would have ridden off together, he did not knowwhere. John had got thus far in his studies, which were apparentlyarithmetic and geography, but were in reality the Arabian Nights, andother 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 hisown imagination, in which he lived a good deal. I daresay he found outsoon enough what the world is, and he had a lesson or two when he wasquite young, in two incidents, which I may as well relate. 

If you had seen John at this time, you might have thought he was onlya shabbily dressed country lad, and you never would have guessed whatbeautiful thoughts he sometimes had as he went stubbing his toes alongthe dusty road, nor what a chivalrous little fellow he was. You wouldhave seen a short boy, barefooted, with trousers at once too big and tooshort, held up perhaps by one suspender only, a checked cotton shirt, and a hat of braided palm-leaf, frayed at the edges and bulged up inthe crown. It is impossible to keep a hat neat if you use it to catchbumblebees and whisk 'em; to bail the water from a leaky boat; to catchminnows in; to put over honey-bees' nests, and to transport 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 slingapples a great distance. If he walked in the road, he walked in themiddle of it, shuffling up the dust; or if he went elsewhere, he waslikely to be running on the top of the fence or the stone wall, andchasing chipmunks. 

John knew the best place to dig sweet-flag in all the farm; it was in ameadow by the river, where the bobolinks sang so gayly. He never likedto hear the bobolink sing, however, for he said it always reminded himof the whetting of a scythe, and that reminded him of spreading hay; andif there was anything he hated, it was spreading hay after the mowers. "I guess you would n't like it yourself, " said John, "with the stubbsgetting into your feet, and the hot sun, and the men getting ahead ofyou, all you could do. "

Towards evening, once, John was coming along the road home with somestalks of the sweet-flag in his hand; there is a succulent pith in theend of the stalk which is very good to eat, --tender, and not so strongas the root; and John liked to pull it, and carry home what he did noteat on the way. As he was walking along he met a carriage, which stoppedopposite to him; he also stopped and bowed, as country boys used to bowin John's day. A lady leaned from the carriage, and said:

"What have you got, little boy?"

She seemed to be the most beautiful woman John had ever seen; with lighthair, dark, tender eyes, and the sweetest smile. There was that in hergracious mien and in her dress which reminded John of the beautifulcastle ladies, with whom he was well acquainted in books. He felt thathe knew her at once, and he also seemed to be a sort of young princehimself. I fancy he did n't look much like one. But of his ownappearance he thought not at all, as he replied to the lady's question, without the least embarrassment:

"It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?"

"Indeed, I should like to taste it, " said the lady, with a most winningsmile. "I used to be very fond of it when I was a little girl. "

John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, and that shewas pleased to accept it from him. He thought himself that it was aboutthe best thing to eat he knew. He handed up a large bunch of it. Thelady took two or three stalks, and was about to return the rest, whenJohn said:

"Please keep it all, ma'am. I can get lots more. "

"I know where it's ever so thick. "

"Thank you, thank you, " said the lady; and as the carriage started, shereached out her hand to John. He did not understand the motion, until hesaw a cent drop in the road at his feet. Instantly all his illusionand his pleasure vanished. Something like tears were in his eyes as heshouted:

"I don't want your cent. I don't sell flag!"

John was intensely mortified. "I suppose, " he said, "she thought I was asort of beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!"

At any rate, he walked away and left the cent in the road, a humiliatedboy. The next day he told Jim Gates about it. Jim said he was green notto take the money; he'd go and look for it now, if he would tell himabout where it dropped. And Jim did spend an hour poking about in thedirt, but he did not find the cent. Jim, however, had an idea; he saidhe was going to dig sweet-flag, and see if another carriage wouldn'tcome along. 

John's next rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort. Hewas again walking the road at twilight, when he was overtaken by a wagonwith one seat, upon which were two pretty girls, and a young gentlemansat between them, driving. It was a merry party, and John could hearthem laughing and singing as they approached him. The wagon stopped whenit overtook him, and one of the sweet-faced girls leaned from the seatand said, quite seriously and pleasantly:

"Little boy, how's your mar?"

John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the younglady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any rate, hisinstinct of politeness made him say:

"She's pretty well, I thank you. "

"Does she know you are out?"

And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter, anddashed on. 

It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and ithurt him dreadfully. His self-respect was injured somehow, and he feltas if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would like to havethrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:

"You're a nice.... " but he could n't think of any hard, bitter wordsquick enough. 

Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady, never knew what a cruel thing she had done. 

XI. HOME INVENTIONS

The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, by anymeans; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any part ofthe year. There is a difference in boys: some are always jolly, and somego scowling always through life as if they had a stone-bruise on eachheel. I like a jolly boy. 

I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses candy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fifty cents a day tosee his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is now the owner ofa large town at the West. To be sure, there are no houses in it excepthis own; but there is a map of it, and roads and streets are laid outon it, with dwellings and churches and academies and a college andan opera-house, and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield orHartford, --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; itmakes 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 itfreezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it; and it is coveredwith snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cows topasture. He would have a very easy time if it were not for the gettingup before daylight to build the fires and do the "chores. " Natureintended the long winter nights for the farmer-boy to sleep; but in myday he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the cock crew, get outof the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his cold pantaloons, and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone down to zero, rake open the coals on the hearth and start the morning fire, and thengo to the barn to "fodder. " The frost was thick on the kitchen windows, the snow was drifted against the door, and the journey to the barn, inthe pale light of dawn, over the creaking snow, was like an exile's tripto Siberia. The boy was not half awake when he stumbled into the coldbarn, and was greeted by the lowing and bleating and neighing of cattlewaiting for their breakfast. How their breath steamed up from themangers, and hung in frosty spears from their noses. Through thegreat lofts above the hay, where the swallows nested, the winter windwhistled, and the snow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated. 

I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should betight and warm, with a fire in it, if necessary, in order to keep thetemperature somewhere near the freezing-point. I could n't see how thecattle 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 andslap his hands, and jump about like a goat. I thought I would have asort of perpetual manger that should shake down the hay when it waswanted, and a self-acting machine that should cut up the turnips andpass them into the mangers, and water always flowing for the cattle andhorses to drink. With these simple arrangements I could lie in bed, and know that the "chores" were doing themselves. It would also benecessary, in order that I should not be disturbed, that the crow shouldbe taken out of the roosters, but I could think of no process to do it. It seems to me that the hen-breeders, if they know as much as they saythey do, might raise a breed of crowless roosters for the benefit ofboys, quiet neighborhoods, 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 mybed, connecting with a wire, which should run to a torpedo which I wouldplant over night in the ashes of the fireplace. By touching the springI could explode the torpedo, which would scatter the ashes and coverthe live coals, and at the same time shake down the sticks of wood whichwere standing by the side of the ashes in the chimney, and the firewould kindle itself. This ingenious plan was frowned on by the wholefamily, who said they did not want to be waked up every morning by anexplosion. And yet they expected me to wake up without an explosion! Aboy'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 schoolin the winter. There is such a chance for learning, that he must be adull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater, an accuratesnow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with or without aboard, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet. Take a moderatehill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a "go-round"of boys on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling awayboot-leather. The boy is the shoemaker's friend. An active lad can weardown a pair of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice will scrape histoes. Sledding or coasting is also slow fun compared to the "bareback"sliding down a steep hill over a hard, glistening crust. It is not onlydangerous, but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree tomake a tailor laugh. If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as aschoolboy wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one oncea month. In a country district-school patches were not by any means asign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet-ironseats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out his trousers onthe hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering hard sums. For thatextraordinary statement he received two castigations, --one at home, thatwas mild, and one from the schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rodupon 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, --earlyhistory, --the Indian wars. We studied it mostly at noontime, and we hadit illustrated as the children nowadays have "object-lessons, " thoughour object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive realhistory. 

Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by the settlers fordefense against the Indians. For the Indians had the idea that thewhites were not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle--themwith a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It was very steep on eachside, and the river ran close by. It was a charming place in summer, where one could find laurel, and checkerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across the river, and listening to the murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built ameeting-house there afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winterthat the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that itblew nearly all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwardsheard of in the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came downinto the valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards. It used to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought tostand as near heaven as possible. 

The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one was theEarly Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the most numerous. The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a strong fortressit was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast size (larger thanthe cyclopean blocks of stone which form the ancient Etruscan walls inItaly), piled one upon another, and the whole cemented by pouring onwater which froze and made the walls solid. The Pequots helped thewhites build it. It had a covered way under the snow, through which onlycould it be entered, and it had bastions and towers and openings tofire from, and a great many other things for which there are no names inmilitary books. And it had a glacis and a ditch outside. 

When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in theschoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and awaitthe attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison, while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that theyshould be barbarous. And it was in this light that the great questionwas settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soakedover night in water and let freeze. They were as hard as cobble-stones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them, he could not tellwhether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It was considered asunfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it is to use poisonedammunition in real war. But as the whites were protected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that thelatter 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 attempted to scale the walls. The Settlers had the advantage of position, but they were sometimesoverpowered by numbers, and would often have had to surrender but forthe ringing of the school-bell. The Pequots were in great fear of theschool-bell. 

I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag andsurrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried bystorm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of thefortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was to scalphim, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There were a greatmany hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it was inthe cause of our early history. The history of Greece and Rome was stuffcompared to this. And we had many boys in our school who could imitatethe Indian war whoop enough better than they could scan arma, virumquecano. 

XII. THE LONELY FARMHOUSE

The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be sogay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of age. Aremote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up with sawdustand earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks like a besiegedfort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the traveler wearily draggingalong in his creaking sleigh, the light from its windows suggests ahouse of refuge and the cheer of a blazing fire. But it is no less afort, into which the family retire when the New England winter on thehills really sets in. 

The boy is an important part of the garrison. He is not only one of thebest means of communicating with the outer world, but he furnishes halfthe entertainment and takes two thirds of the scolding of the familycircle. A farm would come to grief without a boy-on it, but it isimpossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it. 

"That boy" brings life into the house; his tracks are to be seeneverywhere; he leaves all the doors open; he has n't half filledthe wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in abrown-study by the fire and cannot be stirred, or he has fastened a gripinto some Crusoe book which cannot easily be shaken off. I suppose thatthe farmer-boy's evenings are not now what they used to be; that he hasmore 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 thecomic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a supreme delight. 

Of course he had the evenings to himself, after he had done the "chores"at the barn, brought in the wood and piled it high in the box, ready tobe heaped upon the great open fire. It was nearly dark when he came fromschool (with its continuation of snowballing and sliding), and healways had an agreeable time stumbling and fumbling around in barn andwood-house, in the waning light. 

John used to say that he supposed nobody would do his "chores" if hedid not get home till midnight; and he was never contradicted. Whateverhappened to him, and whatever length of days or sort of weather wasproduced by the almanac, the cardinal rule was that he should be at homebefore dark. 

John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wondersometimes 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 tablein order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on his slateor his book, the women of the house also sat by the table knitting andsewing. The head of the house sat in his chair, tipped back against thechimney; the hired man was in danger of burning his boots in the fire. John might be deep in the excitement of a bear story, or be hard atwriting a "composition" on his greasy slate; but whatever he was doing, he was the only one who could always be interrupted. It was he who mustsnuff 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-geeseboard was, and he could find the twelve-men-Morris. Considering thathe was expected to go to bed at eight o'clock, one would say that theopportunity for study was not great, and that his reading was ratherinterrupted. There seemed to be always something for him to do, evenwhen all the rest of the family came as near being idle as is everpossible in a New England household. 

No wonder that John was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had been flyingabout while the others had been yawning before the fire. He would liketo sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it would become asthe night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, to mend his sled, tofinish that chapter. Why should he go away from that bright blaze, andthe company that sat in its radiance, to the cold and solitude of hischamber? Why did n't the people who were sleepy go to bed?

How lonesome the old house was; how cold it was, away from that greatcentral fire in the heart of it; how its timbers creaked as if in thecontracting pinch of the frost; what a rattling there was of windows, what a concerted attack upon the clapboards; how the floors squeaked, and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame ofthe candle from the boy's hand. How he shivered, as he paused at thestaircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow, upon thestripped forest, through which he could hear the wind raving in a kindof fury, and up at the black flying clouds, amid which the young moonwas dashing and driven on like a frail shallop at sea. And his teethchattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets, and drewhimself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox in his hole. 

For a little time he could hear the noises downstairs, and an occasionallaugh; he could guess that now they were having cider, and now appleswere going round; and he could feel the wind tugging at the house, evensometimes shaking the bed. But this did not last long. He soon went awayinto a country he always delighted to be in: a calm place where thewind never blew, and no one dictated the time of going to bed to any oneelse. I like to think of him sleeping there, in such rude surroundings, ingenious, innocent, mischievous, with no thought of the buffeting he isto get from a world that has a good many worse places for a boy thanthe hearth of an old farmhouse, and the sweet, though undemonstrative, affection of its family life. 

But there were other evenings in the boy's life, that were differentfrom these at home, and one of them he will never forget. It openeda new world to John, and set him into a great flutter. It produced arevolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder ifgreased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; and hewished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as he walkedaway from it, what was the effect of round patches on the portion of histrousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and if patches werequite stylish, even on everyday trousers. And he began to be very muchtroubled about the parting of his hair, and how to find out on whichside was the natural part. 

The evening to which I refer was that of John's first party. He knew thegirls at school, and he was interested in some of them with a differentinterest from that he took in the boys. He never wanted to "take itout" with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight, and heinstinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he was with them. He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and slide; he woulddraw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with cold, without amurmur; he would generously give her red apples into which he longed toset his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two his lead-pencil fora girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he not some of the beautifulauburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate, spruce-gum, and wintergreenbox at home? And yet the grand sentiment of life was little awakenedin John. He liked best to be with boys, and their rough play suitedhim better than the amusements of the shrinking, fluttering, timid, andsensitive little girls. John had not learned then that a spider-web isstronger than a cable; or that a pretty little girl could turn him roundher finger a great deal easier than a big bully of a boy could make himcry "enough. "

John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the featof "going home with a girl" afterwards; and he had been growing into thehabit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing how Cynthiawas dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as much if Cynthia wasabsent as when she was present. But there was very little sentiment inall this, and nothing whatever to make John blush at hearing her name. 

But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the invitation, in a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparent wafer: "Miss C. Rudd requests the pleasure of the company of, " etc. , all in blue ink, and the finest kind of pin-scratching writing. What a precious documentit was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of perfume, whether oflavender or caraway-seed he could not tell. He read it over a hundredtimes, and showed it confidentially to his favorite cousin, who hadbeaux of her own and had even "sat up" with them in the parlor. And fromthis sympathetic cousin John got advice as to what he should wear andhow he should conduct himself at the party. 

XIII. JOHN'S FIRST PARTY

It 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 hislife. " But he took care not to tumble into anything that should keephim from the next party, which was given with due formality by MelindaMayhew. 

John had been many a time to the house of Deacon Mayhew, and neverwith any hesitation, even if he knew that both the deacon'sdaughters--Melinda and Sophronia were at home. The only fear he had feltwas of the deacon's big dog, who always surlily watched him as he cameup the tan-bark walk, and made a rush at him if he showed the least signof wavering. But upon the night of the party his courage vanished, andhe thought he would rather face all the dogs in town than knock at thefront door. 

The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flaggingbefore the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound ofvoices--girls' voices--which set his heart in a flutter. He could facethe whole district school of girls without flinching, --he didn't mind'em in the meeting-house in their Sunday best; but he began to beconscious that now he was passing to a new sphere, where the girls aresupreme and superior, and he began to feel for the first time that hewas an awkward boy. The girl takes to society as naturally as a ducklingdoes to the placid pond, but with a semblance of shy timidity; the boyplunges in with a great splash, and hides his shy awkwardness in noiseand commotion. 

When John entered, the company had nearly all come. He knew them everyone, and yet there was something about them strange and unfamiliar. Theywere all a little afraid of each other, as people are apt to be whenthey are well dressed and met together for social purposes in thecountry. 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 overcome. Perhaps it was because they were in the awful parlor, --that carpetedroom of haircloth furniture, which was so seldom opened. Upon the wallhung two certificates framed in black, --one certifying that, by thepayment of fifty dollars, Deacon Mayhew was a life member of theAmerican Tract Society, and the other that, by a like outlay of breadcast upon the waters, his wife was a life member of the A. B. C. F. M. , a portion of the alphabet which has an awful significance to all NewEngland childhood. These certificates are a sort of receipt in full forcharity, and are a constant and consoling reminder to the farmer that hehas discharged his religious duties. 

There was a fire on the broad hearth, and that, with the tallow candleson the mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in the room, and enabledthe boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to see the girls, whowere 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 feelingthe full embarrassment of his entrance into fashionable life. It wasqueer that these children, who were so free everywhere else, shouldbe so constrained now, and not know what to do with themselves. Theshooting of a spark out upon the carpet was a great relief, and wasaccompanied by a deal of scrambling to throw it back into the fire, andcaused much giggling. It was only gradually that the formality was atall broken, and the young people got together and found their tongues. 

John at length found himself with Cynthia Rudd, to his great delight andconsiderable embarrassment, for Cynthia, who was older than John, neverlooked so pretty. To his surprise he had nothing to say to her. They hadalways found plenty to talk about before--but now nothing that he couldthink of seemed worth saying at a party. 

"It is a pleasant evening, " said John. 

"It 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, " saidCynthia, in a burst of confidence. 

"Was it slippery?" continued John. 

"Not very. "

John hoped it would be slippery--very--when he walked home withCynthia, as he determined to do, but he did not dare to say so, and theconversation ran aground again. John thought about his dog and his sledand his yoke of steers, but he didn't see any way to bring them intoconversation. Had she read the "Swiss Family Robinson"? Only a littleways. John said it was splendid, and he would lend it to her, for whichshe thanked him, and said, with such a sweet expression, she should beso glad to have it from him. That was encouraging. 

And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since thehusking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn'tshe think she was a real pretty girl. 

"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew itpretty 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 did n't laugh so much and showher teeth. "

John said her mouth was her worst feature. 

"Oh, no, " said Cynthia warmly; "her mouth is better than her nose. "

John did n't know but it was better than her nose, and he should likeher looks better if her hair was n't so dreadful black. 

But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked blackhair, and she wished hers was dark. Whereupon John protested that heliked light hair--auburn hair--of all things. 

And Cynthia said that Sally was a dear, good girl, and she did n'tbelieve one word of the story that she only really found one red ear atthe husking that night, and hid that and kept pulling it out as if itwere a new one. 

And so the conversation, once started, went on as briskly aspossible about the paring-bee, and the spelling-school, and the newsinging-master who was coming, and how Jack Thompson had gone toNorthampton to be a clerk in a store, and how Elvira Reddington, inthe geography class at school, was asked what was the capital ofMassachusetts, and had answered "Northampton, " and all the schoollaughed. John enjoyed the conversation amazingly, and he half wishedthat he and Cynthia were the whole of the party. 

But the party had meantime got into operation, and the formality wasbroken up when the boys and girls had ventured out of the parlor intothe more comfortable living-room, with its easy-chairs and everydaythings, and even gone so far as to penetrate the kitchen in theirfrolic. As soon as they forgot they were a party, they began to enjoythemselves. 

But the real pleasure only began with the games. The party was nothingwithout the games, and, indeed, it was made for the games. Very likelyit was one of the timid girls who proposed to play something, andwhen the ice was once broken, the whole company went into the businessenthusiastically. There was no dancing. We should hope not. Not in thedeacon's house; not with the deacon's daughters, nor anywhere in thisgood Puritanic society. Dancing was a sin in itself, and no one couldtell what it would lead to. But there was no reason why the boys andgirls shouldn't come together and kiss each other during a whole eveningoccasionally. Kissing was a sign of peace, and was not at all liketaking hold of hands and skipping about to the scraping of a wickedfiddle. 

In the games there was a great deal of clasping hands, of going round ina circle, of passing under each other's elevated arms, of singing aboutmy true love, and the end was kisses distributed with more or lesspartiality, according to the rules of the play; but, thank Heaven, therewas no fiddler. John liked it all, and was quite brave about paying allthe forfeits imposed on him, even to the kissing all the girls in theroom; but he thought he could have amended that by kissing a few of thema good many times instead of kissing them all once. 

But John was destined to have a damper put upon his enjoyment. They wereplaying a most fascinating game, in which they all stand in a circle andsing a philandering song, except one who is in the center of the ring, and holds a cushion. At a certain word in the song, the one inthe center throws the cushion at the feet of some one in the ring, indicating thereby the choice of a "mate" and then the two sweetly kneelupon the cushion, like two meek angels, and--and so forth. Then thechosen one takes the cushion and the delightful play goes on. It is veryeasy, as it will be seen, to learn how to play it. Cynthia was holdingthe 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 femaleheart. He felt like wiping Ephraim off the face of the earth, onlyEphraim was older and bigger than he. When it came his turn atlength, --thanks to a plain little girl for whose admiration he did n'tcare a straw, --he threw the cushion down before Melinda Mayhew withall the devotion he could muster, and a dagger look at Cynthia. AndCynthia'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 incarrying different kinds of pie and cake, and red apples and cider, to the girls he liked the least. He shunned Cynthia, and when he wasaccidentally near her, and she asked him if he would get her a glass ofcider, he rudely told her--like a goose as he was--that she had betterask Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got more and moremiserable, 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 what the matterwas. John blushed, and said that nothing was the matter. Cynthia saidthat it wouldn't do for two people always to be together at a party; andso they made up, and John obtained permission to "see" Cynthia home. 

It was after half-past nine when the great festivities at the Deacon'sbroke up, and John walked home with Cynthia over the shining crustand under the stars. It was mostly a silent walk, for this was also anoccasion when it is difficult to find anything fit to say. And John wasthinking all the way how he should bid Cynthia good-night; whetherit would do and whether it wouldn't do, this not being a game, andno forfeits attaching to it. When they reached the gate, there wasan awkward little pause. John said the stars were uncommonly bright. Cynthia did not deny it, but waited a minute and then turned abruptlyaway, with "Good-night, John!"

"Good-night, Cynthia!"

And the party was over, and Cynthia was gone, and John went home in akind of dissatisfaction with himself. 

It was long before he could go to sleep for thinking of the new worldopened to him, and imagining how he would act under a hundred differentcircumstances, and what he would say, and what Cynthia would say; but adream at length came, and led him away to a great city and a brillianthouse; and while he was there, he heard a loud rapping on the underfloor, and saw that it was daylight. 

XIV. THE SUGAR CAMP

I think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than the makingof maple sugar; it is better than "blackberrying, " and nearly as good asfishing. And one reason he likes this work is, that somebody else doesthe most of it. It is a sort of work in which he can appear to be veryactive, and yet not do much. 

And it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busy aboutnothing. If the power, for instance, that is expended in play by aboy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied to someindustry, we should see wonderful results. But a boy is like agalvanic battery that is not in connection with anything; he generateselectricity and plays it off into the air with the most recklessprodigality. And I, for one, would n't have it otherwise. It is as mucha boy's business to play off his energies into space as it is for aflower to blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the tunes of all theother birds. 

In my day maple-sugar-making used to be something between picnicking andbeing shipwrecked on a fertile island, where one should save from thewreck tubs and augers, and great kettles and pork, and hen's eggs andrye-and-indian bread, and begin at once to lead the sweetest life in theworld. I am told that it is something different nowadays, and that thereis more desire to save the sap, and make good, pure sugar, and sellit for a large price, than there used to be, and that the old fun andpicturesqueness of the business are pretty much gone. I am told that itis the custom to carefully collect the sap and bring it to the house, where there are built brick arches, over which it is evaporated inshallow pans, and that pains is taken to keep the leaves, sticks, andashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar is clarified; and that, inshort, it is a money-making business, in which there is very little fun, and that the boy is not allowed to dip his paddle into the kettle ofboiling sugar and lick off the delicious sirup. The prohibition mayimprove the sugar, but it is cruel to the boy. 

As I remember the New England boy (and I am very intimate with one), heused to be on the qui vive in the spring for the sap to begin running. I think he discovered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he knew it by afeeling of something starting in his own veins, --a sort of spring stirin his legs and arms, which tempted him to stand on his head, or throwa handspring, if he could find a spot of ground from which the snowhad melted. The sap stirs early in the legs of a country-boy, and showsitself in uneasiness in the toes, which get tired of boots, and wantto come out and touch the soil just as soon as the sun has warmed ita little. The country-boy goes barefoot just as naturally as the treesburst their buds, which were packed and varnished over in the fall tokeep the water and the frost out. Perhaps the boy has been out digginginto the maple-trees with his jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sureto announce the discovery as he comes running into the house in a greatstate of excitement--as if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn--with"Sap's runnin'!"

And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sap-buckets, whichhave been stored in the garret over the wood-house, and which the boyhas occasionally climbed up to look at with another boy, for they arefull of sweet suggestions of the annual spring frolic, --the sap-bucketsare brought down and set out on the south side of the house and scalded. The snow is still a foot or two deep in the woods, and the ox-sled isgot out to make a road to the sugar camp, and the campaign begins. Theboy 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 theprocession starts into the woods. The sun shines almost unobstructedlyinto the forest, for there are only naked branches to bar it; the snowis soft and beginning to sink down, leaving the young bushes spindlingup everywhere; the snowbirds are twittering about, and the noise ofshouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far and wide. This isspring, and the boy can scarcely contain his delight that his out-doorlife is about to begin again. 

In the first place, the men go about and tap the trees, drive in thespouts, and hang the buckets under. The boy watches all these operationswith the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, when a hole isbored in a tree, the sap would spout out in a stream as it does whena cider-barrel is tapped; but it never does, it only drops, sometimesalmost in a stream, but on the whole slowly, and the boy learns that thesweet things of the world have to be patiently waited for, and do notusually come otherwise than drop by drop. 

Then the camp is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is re-covered withboughs. In front of it two enormous logs are rolled nearly together, anda fire is built between them. Forked sticks are set at each end, anda long pole is laid on them, and on this are hung the great caldronkettles. The huge hogsheads are turned right side up, and cleaned out toreceive 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, aslong as the season lasts. Somebody is always cutting wood to feed it;somebody is busy most of the time gathering in the sap; somebody isrequired to watch the kettles that they do not boil over, and to fillthem. It is not the boy, however; he is too busy with things in generalto be of any use in details. He has his own little sap-yoke andsmall pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid. He has a littleboiling-place of his own, with small logs and a tiny kettle. Inthe great kettles the boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, as itthickens, is dipped from one to another, until in the end kettle it isreduced to sirup, and is taken out to cool and settle, until enough ismade to "sugar off. " To "sugar off" is to boil the sirup until it isthick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is the grand event, and isdone only once in two or three days. 

But the boy's desire is to "sugar off" perpetually. He boils his kettledown as rapidly as possible; he is not particular about chips, scum, orashes; he is apt to burn his sugar; but if he can get enough to make alittle wax on the snow, or to scrape from the bottom of the kettle withhis wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal is wasted on his hands, andthe outside of his face, and on his clothes, but he does not care; he isnot 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 porktied on the end of a stick, which he dips into the boiling mass when itthreatens to go over. He is constantly tasting of it, however, to seeif it is not almost sirup. He has a long round stick, whittled smooth atone end, which he uses for this purpose, at the constant risk of burninghis tongue. The smoke blows in his face; he is grimy with ashes; he isaltogether such a mass of dirt, stickiness, and sweetness, that his ownmother would n't know him. 

He likes to boil eggs in the hot sap with the hired man; he likes toroast potatoes in the ashes, and he would live in the camp day and nightif he were permitted. Some of the hired men sleep in the bough shantyand keep the fire blazing all night. To sleep there with them, and awakein the night and hear the wind in the trees, and see the sparks fly upto the sky, is a perfect realization of all the stories of adventureshe has ever read. He tells the other boys afterwards that he heardsomething in the night that sounded very much like a bear. The hired mansays 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, andit was made the excuse for a frolic in the camp. The neighbors wereinvited; sometimes even the pretty girls from the village, who filledall the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter and littleaffectations of fright. The white snow still lies on all the groundexcept the warm spot about the camp. The tree branches all showdistinctly in the light of the fire, which sends its ruddy glare farinto the darkness, and lights up the bough shanty, the hogsheads, thebuckets on the trees, and the group about the boiling kettles, until thescene is like something taken out of a fairy play. If Rembrandt couldhave seen a sugar party in a New England wood, he would have made outof its strong contrasts of light and shade one of the finest picturesin the world. But Rembrandt was not born in Massachusetts; people hardlyever do know where to be born until it is too late. Being born in theright place is a thing that has been very much neglected. 

At these sugar parties every one was expected to eat as much sugar aspossible; and those who are practiced in it can eat a great deal. It isa peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you may eat somuch of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it, you willwant it the next day more than ever. At the "sugaring-off" they usedto pour the hot sugar upon the snow, where it congealed, withoutcrystallizing, into a sort of wax, which I do suppose is the mostdelicious substance that was ever invented. And it takes a great whileto eat it. If one should close his teeth firmly on a ball of it, hewould be unable to open his mouth until it dissolved. The sensationwhile 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, whoseized it with great avidity, and closed his jaws on it, as dogs will onanything. It was funny the next moment to see the expression of perfectsurprise 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 acircle; he dashed into the woods and back again. He did everythingexcept climb a tree, and howl. It would have been such a relief to himif he could have howled. But that was the one thing he could not do. 

XV. THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, ora missionary, or a peddler. Most of them used to. There is everything inthe heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy, and excite his longing for strange countries. I scarcely know whatthe subtle influence is that forms him and attracts him in the mostfascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from allthe sweet delights of his home to become a roamer in literature and inthe world, a poet and a wanderer. There is something in the soil andthe pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, that excites the imagination without satisfying it, and begets thedesire of adventure. And the prosaic life of the sweet home does not atall correspond to the boy's dreams of the world. In the good old days, I am told, the boys on the coast ran away and became sailors; thecountryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries, andthen they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports. Johnused to spend hours in the top of a slender hickory-tree that a littledetached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of the steep andlofty pasture behind his house. He was sent to make war on the bushesthat constantly encroached upon the pastureland; but John had nohostility to any growing thing, and a very little bushwhacking satisfiedhim. When he had grubbed up a few laurels and young tree-sprouts, hewas wont to retire into his favorite post of observation and meditation. Perhaps he fancied that the wide-swaying stem to which he clung was themast of a ship; that the tossing forest behind him was the heaving wavesof the sea; and that the wind which moaned over the woods and murmuredin the leaves, and now and then sent him a wide circuit in the air, as if he had been a blackbird on the tip-top of a spruce, was anocean gale. What life, and action, and heroism there was to him in themultitudinous roar of the forest, and what an eternity of existence inthe monologue of the river, which brawled far, far below him over itswide stony bed! How the river sparkled and danced and went on, now in asmooth amber current, now fretted by the pebbles, but always withthat continuous busy song! John never knew that noise to cease, and hedoubted not, if he stayed here a thousand years, that same loud murmurwould 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 awaybelow in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples that linedthe green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him, except now andthen the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or the muffled far-off voicesof some chance passers on the road. Seen from this high perch, thefamiliar village, sending its brown roofs and white spires up throughthe green foliage, had a strange aspect, and was like some town in abook, say a village nestled in the Swiss mountains, or something inBohemia. And there, beyond the purple hills of Bozrah, and not so far asthe stony pastures of Zoah, whither John had helped drive the colts andyoung stock in the spring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John hadhimself once been to the land of Canaan with his grandfather, when hewas a very small boy; and he had once seen an actual, no-mistake Jew, a mysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who soldscythe-snaths in that region, and about whom there was a rumor that hewas once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who apprehended inhis long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the worldhad vast possibilities for John. Away to the south, up a vast basin offorest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line ofwoods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an armymight appear, perhaps British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red and ofyellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose, andopen on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute, winding downthe mountain road, deploying in the meadows, and giving the valley topillage and to flame. In which event his position would be an excellentone for observation and for safety. While he was in the height ofthis engagement, perhaps the horn would be blown from the back porch, reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brush and go for thecows. As if there were no better use for a warrior and a poet in NewEngland than to send him for the cows!

John knew a boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who afterwards became ageneral in the war, and went to Congress, and got to be a real governor, who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures, and hated itin his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast what kind of a manhe would be. This boy, as soon as he had cut about one brush, wouldseek for one of several holes in the ground (and he was familiar withseveral), in which lived a white-and-black animal that must always benameless in a book, but an animal quite capable of the most pungentdefense of himself. This young aspirant to Congress would cut a longstick, 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, andthen he would pull the beast out; and when he got the white-and-blackjust out of the hole so that his dog could seize him, the boy would taketo his heels, and leave the two to fight it out, content to scent thebattle 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 himthat he had spent long enough time cutting brush, he would industriouslygo home as innocent as anybody. There are few such boys as thisnowadays; and that is the reason why the New England pastures are somuch overgrown with brush. 

John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore aspecial grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostilitythat boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to schoola woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. Thewoodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small apple-tree. Johnthought this a most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood under thetree and taunted the animal and stoned it. Thereupon the woodchuckdropped down on John and seized him by the leg of his trousers. John wasboth enraged and scared by this dastardly attack; the teeth of the enemywent through the cloth and met; and there he hung. John then made apivot of one leg and whirled himself around, swinging the woodchuckin the air, until he shook him off; but in his departure the woodchuckcarried away a large piece of John's summer trousers-leg. The boy neverforgot it. And whenever he had a holiday, he used to expend an amountof labor and ingenuity in the pursuit of woodchucks that would have madehis for tune in any useful pursuit. There was a hill pasture, downon one side of which ran a small brook, and this pasture was full ofwoodchuck-holes. It required the assistance of several boys to capture awoodchuck. It was first necessary by patient watching to ascertain thatthe woodchuck was at home. When one was seen to enter his burrow, thenall the entries to it except one--there are usually three--were pluggedup 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 woodchuck. This was often adifficult feat of engineering, and a long job. Often it took more thanhalf a day of hard labor with shovel and hoe to dig the canal. But whenthe canal was finished and the water began to pour into the hole, theexcitement began. How long would it take to fill the hole and drown outthe woodchuck? Sometimes it seemed as if the hole was a bottomless pit. But sooner or later the water would rise in it, and then there was sureto be seen the nose of the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level withthe rising flood. It was piteous to see the anxious look of the hunted, half-drowned creature as--it came to the surface and caught sight ofthe dog. There the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole, quivering withexcitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him were thecruel boys dancing with joy and setting the dog on. The poor creaturewould disappear in the water in terror; but he must breathe, and outwould come his nose again, nearer the dog each time. At last the waterran 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 boysstood off in a circle, with stones in their hands, to see what theycalled "fair play. " They maintained perfect "neutrality" so long as thedog was getting the best of the woodchuck; but if the latter was likelyto escape, they "interfered" in the interest of peace and the "balanceof power, " and killed the woodchuck. This is a boy's notion of justice;of course, he'd no business to be a woodchuck, --an--unspeakablewoodchuck. 

I used the word "aromatic" in relation to the New England soil. Johnknew very well all its sweet, aromatic, pungent, and medicinal products, and liked to search for the scented herbs and the wild fruits andexquisite flowers; but he did not then know, and few do know, that thereis no part of the globe where the subtle chemistry of the earth producesmore that is agreeable to the senses than a New England hill-pasture andthe green meadow at its foot. The poets have succeeded in turning ourattention from it to the comparatively barren Orient as the land ofsweet-smelling spices and odorous gums. And it is indeed a constantsurprise that this poor and stony soil elaborates and grows so manydelicate and aromatic products. 

John, it is true, did not care much for anything that did not appeal tohis taste and smell and delight in brilliant color; and he trod down theexquisite ferns and the wonderful mosses--without compunction. But hegathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantineand the blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, andfox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of the pink-and-white laurel and thewild honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the fragrant sassafras and ofthe sweet-flag; he ate the tender leaves of the wintergreen and its redberries; he gathered the peppermint and the spearmint; he gnawedthe 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 hecould not chew, the gum of the wild cherry; it was his melancholy dutyto bring home such medicinal herbs for the garret as the gold-thread, the tansy, and the loathsome "boneset;" and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel, stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, and butternuts. But that which lives most vividly in hismemory and most strongly draws him back to the New England hills is thearomatic sweet-fern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to crush inhis hands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of NewEngland. 

XVI. JOHN'S REVIVAL. 

The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard ofChristmas. There was no such day in his calendar. If John ever cameacross it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word. 

If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders aboutit, he might have got the dim impression that it was a kind of Popishholiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as "card-playing, "or being a "Democrat. " John knew a couple of desperately bad boys whowere reported to play "seven-up" in a barn, on the haymow, and theenormity of this practice made him shudder. He had once seen a pack ofgreasy "playing-cards, " and it seemed to him to contain the quintessenceof sin. If he had desired to defy all Divine law and outrage all humansociety, he felt that he could do it by shuffling them. And he was quiteright. The two bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the most wicked thing they could do. If it hadbeen as sinless as playing marbles, they would n't have cared forit. John sometimes drove past a brown, tumble-down farmhouse, whoseshiftless inhabitants, it was said, were card-playing people; and it isimpossible to describe how wicked that house appeared to John. He almostexpected to see its shingles stand on end. In the old New England onecould not in any other way so express his contempt of all holy andorderly life as by playing cards for amusement. 

There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than therewas of Easter; and probably nobody about him could have explainedEaster; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts. Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on his birthday orany other day. He expected nothing that he did not earn, or make inthe way of "trade" with another boy. He was taught to work for what hereceived. He even earned, as I said, the extra holidays of the day afterthe Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving. Of the free grace and giftsof Christmas he had no conception. The single and melancholy associationhe had with it was the quaking hymn which his grandfather used to singin a cracked and quavering voice:

 "While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground. "

The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of it--the doleful voicealways repeating, "and glory shone around "--made John as miserable as"Hark! from the tombs. " It was all one dreary expectation of somethinguncomfortable. It was, in short, "religion. " You'd got to have it sometime; that John believed. But it lay in his unthinking mind to put offthe "Hark! from the tombs" enjoyment as long as possible. He experienceda kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his dislike of hymns and ofSunday. 

John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what hiswickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much to lie;and he despised "meanness" and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feelingtoward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him that there wasany virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty and veracity were inthe atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he "got mad" easily; but hedid 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 did n't mind; they were a part ofregular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy's pleasures. Butwhen there began to be evening meetings at the different houses, anew element came into affairs. There was a kind of solemnity over thecommunity, and a seriousness in all faces. At first these twilightassemblies offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life; andJohn liked to meet the boys and girls, and to watch the older peoplecoming in, dressed in their second best. I think John's imagination wasworked upon by the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sungin the stiff old parlors. There was a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctitytoo, in the odor of caraway-seed that pervaded the room. The windowswere wide open also, and the scent of June roses came in, with all thelanguishing sounds of a summer night. All the little boys had a scaredlook, but the little girls were never so pretty and demure as in thistheir susceptible seriousness. If John saw a boy who did not come to theevening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling down themeadow, looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster ofwickedness. 

After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under thegeneral impression of fright and seriousness. All the talk wasof "getting religion, " and he heard over and over again that theprobability was if he did not get it now, he never would. The chance didnot come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would be givenover to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that he was not oneof the elect. John fancied that he could feel his heart hardening, andhe began to look with a wistful anxiety into the faces of the Christiansto see what were the visible signs of being one of the elect. John puton a good deal of a manner that he "did n't care, " and he never admittedhis disquiet by asking any questions or standing up in meeting to beprayed for. But he did care. He heard all the time that all he had to dowas to repent and believe. But there was nothing that he doubted, and hewas perfectly willing to repent if he could think of anything to repentof. 

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, hadit, and he wondered why he could n't have it. Boys and girls whom heknew were "under conviction, " and John began to feel not only panicky, but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days and days, andnot able to sleep at night, but now she had given herself up and foundpeace. There was a kind of radiance in her face that struck Johnwith awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulf between him andCynthia. Everybody was going away from him, and his heart was gettingharder than ever. He could n't feel wicked, all he could do. And therewas Ed Bates his intimate friend, though older than he, a "whaling, "noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction and sure he was going to belost. How John envied him! And pretty soon Ed "experienced religion. "John anxiously watched the change in Ed's face when he became one of theelect. And a change there was. And John wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to go trout-fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in ameadow 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 awfuljerk, sending the fish more than three hundred feet into the air andlanding it in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying out, "Guldarn ye, I'll learn ye. " And John wondered if Ed would take the littletrout out any more gently now. 

John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of his playmatescame 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 acontralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and he heard it with aheartache. "There she is, " thought John, "singing away like an angel inheaven, and I am left out. " During all his after life a contralto voicewas to John one of his most bitter and heart-wringing pleasures. Itsuggested the immaculate scornful, the melancholy unattainable. 

If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction of sin, John tried. And what made him miserable was, that he couldn't feelmiserable when everybody else was miserable. He even began to pretendto be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like the others. Hepretended he did n't care for play; he refrained from chasing chipmunksand snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the bright vivacity of thesummer--time that used to make him turn hand-springs smote him as adiscordant levity. He was not a hypocrite at all, and he was getting tobe alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself. Every day and night heheard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving withhim, and leave him out. The phrase was that he would "grieve away theHoly Spirit. " John wondered if he was not doing it. He did everythingto put himself in the way of conviction, was constant at the eveningmeetings, wore a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feelanxious. At length he concluded that he must do something. 

One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several ofhis little playmates had "come forward, " he felt that he could forcethe crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was an enchanting summernight; the stars danced overhead, and by his side the broad and shallowriver ran over its stony bed with a loud but soothing murmur that filledall the air with entreaty. John did not then know that it sang, "But Igo on forever, " yet there was in it for him something of the solemn flowof the eternal world. When he came in sight of the house, he knelt downin the dust by a pile of rails and prayed. He prayed that he might feelbad, and be distressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly, and yet not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs bythe meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had init 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, thedespair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years afterit happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on the edgeof the Ravenna marshes. A little way over the purple plain he saw thedarkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola. " The Holy PontiffPius IX. Was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood in that serene andmoist region. As the train waited, John heard from miles of marshesround about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and moremelancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells. Andinstantly his mind went back for the association of sound is as subtleas that of odor--to the prayer, years ago, by the roadside and theplaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and he wondered if the littlePope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps, when he thought ofhimself as a little Pope, associated his conversion with this plaintivesound. 

John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperatelyinto the house, and told the family that he was in an anxious state ofmind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and thelittle boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and tobecome that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told to read theBible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the texts ofScripture and hymns he could think of. John did this, and said overand over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about in a realdiscontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing thehypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel, asthe other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner. He tried tothink of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed, it often cameto his mind. It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie, that never injuredanybody but himself John knew he was not wicked enough to tell a lie toinjure anybody else. 

This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's class wasto recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a young lady he held in greatlove and respect, came in to visit the school. John was a favorite withher, and she had come to hear him recite. As it happened, John feltshaky in the geographical lesson of that day, and he feared to behumiliated in the presence of his cousin; he felt embarrassed to thatdegree that he could n't have "bounded" Massachusetts. So he stood upand raised his hand, and said to the schoolma'am, "Please, ma'am, I've got the stomach-ache; may I go home?" And John's character fortruthfulness was so high (and even this was ever a reproach to him), that his word was instantly believed, and he was dismissed withoutany medical examination. For a moment John was delighted to get out ofschool so early; but soon his guilt took all the light out of the summersky and the pleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly, withouta single hop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a woodchuckat a distance from his well-known hole tempted John, but he restrainedhimself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a woodchuckwas 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 thereason he had left school, but he added that he felt "some" better now. The "some" did n't save him. Genuine sympathy was lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty "picra, "--the horror of allchildhood, and he was put in bed immediately. The world never looked sopleasant to John, but to bed he was forced to go. He was excused fromall chores; he was not even to go after the cows. John said he thoughthe 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 forthis heroic offer, in the condition he was, he got credit for a desireto 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 cousincame home, and sat by his bedside and condoled with him; his schoolma'amhad sent word how sorry she was for him, John was Such a good boy. Allthis was dreadful. 

He groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; it wouldbe very dangerous to eat a morsel. The prospect was appalling. Neverwas there such a long twilight; never before did he hear so many soundsoutdoors that he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illnesswas a horrible condition. And he began to have real stomach-ache now;and it ached because it was empty. John was hungry enough to have eatenthe New England Primer. But by and by sleep came, and John forgot hiswoes in dreaming that he knew where Madagascar was just as easy asanything. 

It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying tobe affected by the revival. And he was very much ashamed of it, andbelieved he would never tell another. But then he fell thinking whether, with the "picra, " and the going to bed in the afternoon, and the lossof his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it. And in thisunhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep. 

And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer torealizing the terrors he desired to feel. But he was a conscientiousboy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of theseason. He not only put himself away from them all, but he refrainedfrom doing almost everything that he wanted to do. There came at thattime a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a long accountof the Long Island races, in which the famous horse "Lexington" was arunner. John was fond of horses, he knew about Lexington, and he hadlooked forward to the result of this race with keen interest. But toread the account of it how he felt might destroy his seriousness ofmind, and in all reverence and simplicity he felt it--be a means of"grieving away the Holy Spirit. " He therefore hid away the paper ina table-drawer, intending to read it when the revival should be over. Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was not to be found, and John never knew what "time" Lexington made nor anything about therace. This was to him a serious loss, but by no means so deep as anotherfeeling that remained with him; for when his little world returned toits ordinary course, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehensionof his own separateness from other people, in his insensibility to therevival. Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pitythat there was no one to explain that religion for a little fellow likehim is not a "scheme. "

XVII. WAR

Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. The scientistswho want to study the primitive man, and have so much difficulty infinding one anywhere in this sophisticated age, couldn't do better thanto devote their attention to the common country-boy. He has the primal, vigorous instincts and impulses of the African savage, without any ofthe vices inherited from a civilization long ago decayed or developed inan unrestrained barbaric society. You want to catch your boy young, andstudy him before he has either virtues or vices, in order to understandthe primitive man. 

Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, beforechildren were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with theword "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing, andwar. The military instinct, which is the special mark of barbarism, isstrong in him. It arises not alone from his love of fighting, for theboy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, but from his fondness fordisplay, --the same that a corporal or a general feels in decking himselfin tinsel and tawdry colors and strutting about in view of the femalesex. Half the pleasure in going out to murder another man with a gunwould be wanting if one did not wear feathers and gold-lace and stripeson his pantaloons. The law also takes this view of it, and will notpermit men to shoot each other in plain clothes. And the world alsomakes some curious distinctions in the art of killing. To kill peoplewith arrows is barbarous; to kill them with smooth-bores and flintlockmuskets is semi-civilized; to kill them with breech-loading rifles iscivilized. That nation is the most civilized which has the appliances tokill the most of another nation in the shortest time. This is the resultof six thousand years of constant civilization. By and by, when thenations cease to be boys, perhaps they will not want to kill each otherat all. Some people think the world is very old; but here is an evidencethat it is very young, and, in fact, has scarcely yet begun to be aworld. When the volcanoes have done spouting, and the earthquakes arequaked out, and you can tell what land is going to be solid and keep itslevel twenty-four hours, and the swamps are filled up, and the deltas ofthe great rivers, like the Mississippi and the Nile, become terra firma, and men stop killing their fellows in order to get their land and otherproperty, then perhaps there will be a world that an angel would n'tweep over. Now one half the world are employed in getting ready tokill the other half, some of them by marching about in uniform, and theothers 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 ofdisplay 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. One of them was the same passion for ornament that induces the Africanto wear anklets and bracelets of hide and of metal, and to decoratehimself with tufts of hair, and to tattoo his body. In John's day therewas a rage at school among the boys for wearing bracelets woven ofthe hair of the little girls. Some of them were wonderful specimens ofbraiding and twist. These were not captured in war, but were sentimentaltokens of friendship given by the young maidens themselves. John's ownhair was kept so short (as became a warrior) that you couldn't have madea bracelet out of it, or anything except a paintbrush; but the littlegirls were not under military law, and they willingly sacrificed theirtresses to decorate the soldiers they esteemed. As the Indian is honoredin proportion to the scalps he can display, at John's school the boywas held in highest respect who could show the most hair trophies on hiswrist. John himself had a variety that would have pleased a Mohawk, fineand coarse and of all colors. There were the flaxen, the faded straw, the glossy black, the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the undecidedauburn, and the fiery red. Perhaps his pulse beat more quickly under thered hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account of all the other wristlets puttogether; it was a sort of gold-tried-in-the-fire-color to John, and burned there with a steady flame. Now that Cynthia had becomea Christian, this band of hair seemed a more sacred if less glowingpossession (for all detached hair will fade in time), and if he hadknown anything about saints, he would have imagined that it was a partof the aureole that always goes with a saint. But I am bound to say thatwhile John had a tender feeling for this red string, his sentiment wasnot that of the man who becomes entangled in the meshes of a woman'shair; and he valued rather the number than the quality of these elasticwristlets. 

John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the breast ofany slaughterer of his fellows. He liked to read of war, of encounterswith the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing in glitteringuniform, to the noise of the terribly exciting fife and drum, whichmaddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the wounded. In hisfuture he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword and snug-fitting, decorated clothes, --very different from his somewhat roomy trousers andcountry-cut roundabout, made by Aunt Ellis, the village tailoress, whocut out clothes, not according to the shape of the boy, but to whathe was expected to grow to, --going where glory awaited him. In hisobservation of pictures, it was the common soldier who was alwaysfalling and dying, while the officer stood unharmed in the storm ofbullets and waved his sword in a heroic attitude. John determined to bean officer. 

It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the militarycompany of his village. He had risen from the grade of corporal to thatof first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father was captainof the grown militia company, and consequently had inherited militaryaptness and knowledge. The old captain was a flaming son of Mars, whosenose militia, war, general training, and New England rum had paintedwith the color of glory and disaster. He was one of the gallant oldsoldiers of the peaceful days of our country, splendid in uniform, amartinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious object when he marchedat the head of his company of flintlock muskets, with the Americanbanner full high advanced, and the clamorous drum defying the world. In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen, faithfully teaching hisuniformed companions how to march by the left leg, and to get reelingdrunk by sundown; otherwise he did n't amount to much in the community;his house was unpainted, his fences were tumbled down, his farm was awaste, his wife wore an old gown to meeting, to which the captain neverwent; but he was a good trout-fisher, and there was no man in town whospent more time at the country store and made more shrewd observationsupon the affairs of his neighbors. Although he had never been in anasylum any more than he had been in war, he was almost as perfect adrunkard as he was soldier. He hated the British, whom he had neverseen, as much as he loved rum, from which he was never separated. 

The company which his son commanded, wearing his father's belt andsword, 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 autumnmaneuvers, like the general training. It was an artillery company, which gave every boy a chance to wear a sword, and it possessed a smallmounted cannon, which was dragged about and limbered and unlimbered andfired, to the imminent danger of everybody, especially of the company. In point of marching, with all the legs going together, and twistingitself up and untwisting breaking into single-file (for Indianfighting), and forming platoons, turning a sharp corner, and gettingout of the way of a wagon, circling the town pump, frightening horses, stopping short in front of the tavern, with ranks dressed and eyes rightand left, it was the equal of any military organization I ever saw. Itcould train better than the big company, and I think it did more goodin keeping alive the spirit of patriotism and desire to fight. Itsdiscipline was strict. If a boy left the ranks to jab a spectator, ormake 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 aboutthe hot and hard marching, and as boys have no humor, nothing ludicrousoccurred. John was very proud of his office, and of his ability to keepthe rear ranks closed up and ready to execute any maneuver when thecaptain "hollered, " which he did continually. He carried a real sword, which his grandfather had worn in many a militia campaign on the villagegreen, the rust upon which John fancied was Indian blood; he had variousred and yellow insignia of military rank sewed upon different partsof his clothes, and though his cocked hat was of pasteboard, it wasdecorated with gilding and bright rosettes, and floated a red featherthat made his heart beat with martial fury whenever he looked at it. Theeffect of this uniform upon the girls was not a matter of conjecture. Ithink they really cared nothing about it, but they pretended to thinkit fine, and they fed the poor boy's vanity, the weakness by which womengovern the world. 

The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay wasnever equaled in any subsequent occupation. The display of the companyin the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. There was nothingwanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had by half thecompany staining themselves with elderberry juice and going into thewoods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind trees with bowsand arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners. This, however, wasmade to seem very like real war. Traditions of Indian cruelty were stillfresh in western Massachusetts. Behind John's house in the orchard weresome old slate tombstones, sunken and leaning, which recorded the namesof Captain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms, who had been killed by Indiansin the last century while at work in the meadow by the river, and whoslept there in the hope of the glorious resurrection. Phineas Armsmartial name--was long since dust, and even the mortal part of the greatCaptain Moses Rice had been absorbed in the soil and passed perhaps withthe sap up into the old but still blooming apple-trees. It was a quietplace where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--theloud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the longgrass on that sunny slope. There was a tradition that years ago anIndian, probably the last of his race, had been seen moving along thecrest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley which hadbeen the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he grew hiscorn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish. John used tofancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red spectergliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested tohim the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoopthat had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. The Indianalways preceded murder by the war-whoop; and this was an advantagethat the artillery had in the fight with the elderberry Indians. It waswarned in time. If there was no war-whoop, the killing did n't count;the artillery man got up and killed the Indian. The Indian usually hadthe worst of it; he not only got killed by the regulars, but he gotwhipped by the home guard at night for staining himself and his clotheswith the elderberry. 

But once a year the company had a superlative parade. This was when themilitary company from the north part of the town joined the villagers ina general muster. This was an infantry company, and not to be comparedwith that of the village in point of evolutions. There was a great andnatural hatred between the north town boys and the center. I don't knowwhy, but no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile. It was allright for one of either section to "lick" the other if he could, or forhalf a dozen to "lick" one of the enemy if they caught him alone. Thenotion of honor, as of mercy, comes into the boy only when he is prettywell grown; to some neither ever comes. And yet there was an artificialmilitary courtesy (something like that existing in the feudal age, nodoubt) which put the meeting of these two rival and mutually detestedcompanies on a high plane of behavior. It was beautiful to see theseriousness of this lofty and studied condescension on both sides. Forthe time everything was under martial law. The village company beingthe senior, its captain commanded the united battalion in the march, andthis put John temporarily into the position of captain, with the rightto march at the head and "holler;" a responsibility which realized allhis hopes of glory. I suppose there has yet been discovered by man nogratification like that of marching at the head of a column in uniformon parade, unless, perhaps, it is marching at their head when theyare leaving a field of battle. John experienced all the thrill of thisconspicuous authority, and I daresay that nothing in his later life hasso exalted him in his own esteem; certainly nothing has since happenedthat was so important as the events of that parade day seemed. Hesatiated himself with all the delights of war. 

XVIII. COUNTRY SCENES

It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomesconscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious aboutthe part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. Theseharrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least, ageneration ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only for amaster, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life. 

But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it iseasy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, wereexpanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was thelovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were thegreat hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretching awayto a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures, andthe wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempests howled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the great shadows ofsummer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shoulderingup above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky, --the clouds out ofwhich the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden dashes of rain;and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, afathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the eagle poised onoutstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can you say how thesethings fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contactwith 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 strawhat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along the river-bank ofa cool morning to see if an eel had "got on, " you would not have fanciedthat he lived in an ideal world. Nor did he consciously. So far as heknew, he had no more sentiment than a jack-knife. Although he lovedCynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousinfound a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept hisfishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to makefish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had noattractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, afterall, only a single and a very undefined item in his general idealworld, and there was no harm in letting his imagination play abouther illumined head. Since Cynthia had "got religion" and John hadgot nothing, his love was tempered with a little awe and a feeling ofdistance. He was not fickle, and yet I cannot say that he was not readyto construct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated. Nothing was easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage, drawnby two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the sandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on theback seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, onthe 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 carriagewas from Baltimore. Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part of the slender boy on thefront seat, --here was an opening into a vast realm. The high-steppinghorses and the shining harness were enough to excite John's admiration, but these were nothing to the little girl. His eyes had never beforefallen upon that kind of girl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovelycreature could exist. Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it thebrown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cutfeatures, or the charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Wasthis expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeinga country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in himwhat John felt himself to be? Then he would go the world over to serveher. In a moment he was self-conscious. His trousers seemed to creephigher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush. He hopedthat she had not seen the other side of him, for, in fact, the patcheswere not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth. The vision flashedby him in a moment, but it left him with a resentful feeling. Perhapsthat proud little girl would be sorry some day, when he had become ageneral, or written a book, or kept a store, to see him go away andmarry another. He almost made up his cruel mind on the instant that hewould never marry her, however bad she might feel. And yet he couldn't get her out of his mind for days and days, and when her image waspresent, even Cynthia in the singers' seat on Sunday looked a littlecheap and common. Poor Cynthia! Long before John became a general orhad his revenge on the Baltimore girl, she married a farmer and was themother of children, red-headed; and when John saw her years after, shelooked tired and discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood noneof the romance of her youth. 

Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusements John had. Themiddle pier of the long covered bridge over the river stood upon a greatrock, and this rock (which was known as the swimming-rock, whence theboys on summer evenings dove into the deep pool by its side) was afavorite spot with John when he could get an hour or two from theeverlasting "chores. " Making his way out to it over the rocks at lowwater with his fish-pole, there he was content to sit and observe theworld; and there he saw a great deal of life. He always expected tocatch the legendary trout which weighed two pounds and was believed toinhabit that pool. He always did catch horned dace and shiners, which hedespised, and sometimes he snared a monstrous sucker a foot and a halflong. But in the summer the sucker is a flabby fish, and John was notthanked for bringing him home. He liked, however, to lie with hisface close to the water and watch the long fishes panting in the cleardepths, and occasionally he would drop a pebble near one to see howgracefully he would scud away with one wave of the tail into deeperwater. Nothing fears the little brown boy. The yellow-bird slants hiswings, almost touches the deep water before him, and then escapes awayunder the bridge to the east with a glint of sunshine on his back; thefish-hawk comes down with a swoop, dips one wing, and, his prey havingdarted under a stone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring oneven-poised pinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle whichis sweeping the sky in widening circles. 

But there is other life. A wagon rumbles over the bridge, and the farmerand his wife, jogging along, do not know that they have startled a lazyboy into a momentary fancy that a thunder-shower is coming up. Johncan see as he lies there on a still summer day, with the fishes andthe birds for company, the road that comes down the left bank of theriver, --a hot, sandy, well-traveled road, hidden from view here andthere by trees and bushes. The chief point of interest, however, is anenormous sycamore-tree by the roadside and in front of John's house. Thehouse is more than a century old, and its timbers were hewed and squaredby 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 tomahawksome time after his house was set in order. The gigantic tree, struckwith a sort of leprosy, like all its species, appears much older, and ofcourse has its tradition. They say that it grew from a green stake whichthe 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 thedecrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally atwig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand whenhe dropped exhausted in the square with the word "Victory!" on his lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat, where theSwiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad but scantyshade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an oldwatering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn spoutpouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough. It isfed by a spring near by, and the water is sweeter and colder than any inthe known world, unless it be the well Zem-zem, as generations of peopleand horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could comeback. And if they could file along this road again, what a processionthere would be riding down the valley!--antiquated vehicles, rustywagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottestdays, lean and long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generationafter generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way tomeeting and to mill. 

What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there are pilgrimsto it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them. Here comes agray horse drawing a buggy with two men, --cattle buyers, probably. Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a good draught the nagtakes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brownlinen coat and wide-awake hat, --dissolute, horsey-looking man. They turnup, of course. Ah, there is an establishment he knows well: a sorrelhorse and an old chaise. The sorrel horse scents the water afar off, andbegins to turn up long before he reaches the trough, thrusting out hisnose in anticipation of the coot sensation. No check to let down; heplunges his nose in nearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it. Twomaiden ladies--unmistakably such, though they appear neither "anxiousnor aimless"--within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrelback. 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 theearth, "--the brevet rank of the women who stand and wait, --going down tothe village store to dicker. There come two men in a hurry, horse drivenup smartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and thehorse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back, thenervous man in the buggy hitches forward on his seat, as if that wouldcarry the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumber-wagon with load of boards;horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and cries "G'lang, " andthe horse reluctantly goes by, turning his head wistfully towards theflowing spout. Ah, here comes an equipage strange to these parts, andJohn stands up to look; an elegant carriage and two horses; trunksstrapped on behind; gentleman and boy on front seat and two ladies onback seat, --city people. The gentleman descends, unchecks the horses, wipes his brow, takes a drink at the spout and looks around, evidentlyremarking upon the lovely view, as he swings his handkerchief in anexplanatory manner. Judicious travelers. John would like to know whothey are. Perhaps they are from Boston, whence come all the wonderfullypainted peddlers' 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 anundefined longing as they drive away toward the mountains of Zoar. Hereis a footman, dusty and tired, who comes with lagging steps. He stops, removes his hat, as he should to such a tree, puts his mouth to thespout, and takes a long 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 afternoon; but the great event ofthe day is the passing down the valley of the majestic stage-coach, --thevast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off theshaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, and the creaking of itsleathern 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 init to the confines of the world, --to Boston and to Albany. 

There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy'seducation. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band of gypsieswho used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little roadsidepatch of green turf by the river-bank not far from his house. It wasshaded by elms and butternut-trees, and a long spit of sand and pebblesran out from it into the brawling stream. Probably they were not a verygood kind of gypsy, although the story was that the men drank and beatthe women. John didn't know much about drinking; his experience of itwas confined to sweet cider; yet he had already set himself up as areformer, and joined the Cold Water Band. The object of this Band was towalk in a procession under a banner that declared, "So here we pledge perpetual hate To all that can intoxicate;"

and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of awell-curb with a long sweep. It kept John and all the little boys andgirls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age;though perhaps a few of them died meantime from eating loaf-cake and pieand drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band. 

The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of curiosityand fear. Nothing more alien could come into the New England life thanthis tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible that here were actuallypeople who lived out-doors, who slept in their covered wagon or undertheir tent, and cooked in the open air; it was a visible romancetransferred from foreign lands and the remote times of the story-books;and John took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray intothe country, trading and stealing horses and robbing hen-roosts andcornfields, for the mysterious race who for thousands of years have donethese same things in all lands, by right of their pure blood and ancientlineage. John was afraid to approach the camp when any of the scowlingand villainous men were lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he tookmore courage when only women and children were visible. The swarthy, black-haired women in dirty calico frocks were anything but attractive, but they spoke softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled himinto bringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the courseof the season. In front of the tent were planted in the ground threepoles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle. Thiswas the kitchen, and it was sufficient. The fuel for the fire was thedriftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require to besawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the "chores" about thisestablishment were reduced to the minimum. And an older person than Johnmight envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid neither rent nortaxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature. It seemed to the boythat affairs would go more smoothly in the world if everybody would livein this simple manner. Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, whyit is that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians. 

XIX. A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY

One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music fromthe swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church muchfrequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedingly prettysight rewarded me. 

It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart for somefestival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I suppose that whenleap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint ready to claimthe 29th of February. Whatever the day was to the elders, the eveningwas devoted to the children. The first thing I noticed was, that thequaint old church was lighted up with innumerable wax tapers, --anuncommon sight, for the darkness of a Catholic church in the eveningis usually relieved only by a candle here and there, and by a blazingpyramid of them on the high altar. The use of gas is held to be avulgar thing all over Europe, and especially unfit for a church or anaristocratic palace. 

Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and thegroups of children were scattered all about the church. There was agroup by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupiedby knots of them, and there were so many circles of them seated on thepavement that I could with difficulty make my way among them. Therewere hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in their holidayapparel, and all intent upon the illumination, which seemed to be aprivate affair to each one of them. 

And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vastvaults above them. The tapers were little spiral coils of wax, which thechildren unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they were tired ofholding them, they rested them on the ground and watched the burning. Istood some time by a group of a dozen seated in a corner of the church. They had massed all the tapers in the center and formed a ring about thespectacle, sitting with their legs straight out before them and theirtoes turned up. The light shone full in their happy faces, and made thegroup, enveloped otherwise in darkness, like one of Correggio's picturesof children or angels. Correggio was a famous Italian artist of thesixteenth century, who painted cherubs like children who were just goingto heaven, and children like cherubs who had just come out of it. Butthen, he had the Italian children for models, and they get the knack ofbeing lovely very young. An Italian child finds it as easy to be prettyas an American child to be good. 

One could not but be struck with the patience these little peopleexhibited in their occupation, and the enjoyment they got out of it. There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved in themost gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, and therewere many of them so small that they could only toddle about by the mostjudicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say this by way ofreproof to any other kind of children. 

These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about thechurch; and they made with their tapers little spots of light, whichlooked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is atDresden, --the Holy Family at Night, and the light from the Divine Childblazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of the children wereinfants in the nurses' 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 thechurch has understood this longing in human nature, and found means togratify it by this festival of tapers. 

The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there is agood deal of shifting about, and I see little stragglers wandering overthe church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionally they forma little procession and march from one altar to another, their lightstwinkling as they go. 

But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft at theend of the church, and flooding all its spaces with its volume. In frontof the organ is a choir of boys, led by a round-faced and jolly monk, who rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noise rumble about along time in his stomach before he pours it out of his mouth. I can seethe faces of all of them quite well, for each singer has a candle tolight his music-book. 

And next to the monk stands the boy, --the handsomest boy in the wholeworld probably at this moment. I can see now his great, liquid, darkeyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his longwaving hair when he struck into his part. He resembled the portraits ofRaphael, when that artist was a boy; only I think he looked better thanRaphael, and without trying, for he seemed to be a spontaneous sort ofboy. And how that boy did sing! He was the soprano of the choir, and hehad a voice of heavenly sweetness. When he opened his mouth and tossedback his head, he filled the church with exquisite melody. 

He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As we never heard an angelsing, that comparison is not worth much. I have seen pictures of angelssinging, there is one by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck in the gallery atBerlin, --and they open their mouths like this boy, but I can't say asmuch for their singing. The lark, which you very likely never heardeither, for larks are as scarce in America as angels, --is a bird thatsprings up from the meadow and begins to sing as he rises in a spiralflight, and the higher he mounts, the sweeter he sings, until you thinkthe notes are dropping out of heaven itself, and you hear him when heis gone from sight, and you think you hear him long after all sound hasceased. 

And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes anda greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his voice inthe same gleesome abundance. 

I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy was agood boy. He was probably one of the most mischievous boys that was everin an organ-loft. All the time that he was singing the vespers he wasskylarking 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 tohim, and while he was waiting for his part, he would kick out behind atany one who was incautious enough to approach him. There never wassuch a vicious boy; he kept the whole loft in a ferment. When the monkrumbled his bass in his stomach, the boy cut up monkey-shines that setevery other boy into a laugh, or he stirred up a row that set them allat fisticuffs. 

And yet this boy was a great favorite. The jolly monk loved him bestof all and bore with his wildest pranks. When he was wanted to sing hispart and was skylarking in the rear, the fat monk took him by the earand brought him forward; and when he gave the boy's ear a twist, the boyopened his lovely mouth and poured forth such a flood of melody as younever heard. And he did n't mind his notes; he seemed to know his notesby heart, and could sing and look off like a nightingale on a bough. Heknew his power, that boy; and he stepped forward to his stand when hepleased, certain that he would be forgiven as soon as he began to sing. And such spirit and life as he threw into the performance, rollickingthrough the Vespers with a perfect abandon of carriage, as if he couldsing himself out of his skin if he liked. 

While the little angels down below were pattering about with their waxtapers, keeping the holy fire burning, suddenly the organ stopped, themonk shut his book with a bang, the boys blew out the candles, and Iheard them all tumbling down-stairs in a gale of noise and laughter. Thebeautiful 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 thegood fortune of the New England boy.