HOMESICK AGAIN. BLUE, OH, SO BLUE!
The jaunt with Edgar and the excitement about old "Three-Legs" had
distracted my thoughts for the time being, but had not cured me of
homesickness. Two days later my mother sent me by mail my book of
arithmetic, the one I had recently used at school; she thought that I
might attend the district school in Maine and need it.
Now there is not usually much in a text-book of arithmetic that excites
fond memories in a boy of thirteen. Often the reverse. But I had no
sooner taken that well-thumbed book from its wrapping of brown paper,
than another pang of homesickness went through me; and this time it was
nostalgia in earnest.
If, at this moment, there is anywhere in the United States, or in the
whole world, a boy or girl who is homesick, I know how to pity each and
all of them. I do not suppose that my pity will do them much good.
Nothing does much good. But I know exactly how they feel, and they have
my heartiest sympathy.
Whoever ridicules and laughs at any one who is truly homesick must have
a hard heart and a shallow mind. It is no laughing matter. Homesickness
is something midway between a physical disease and a mental worry. It
has a real, physiological cause, and is due to the inability of the
brain to adapt itself, without a struggle, to the strangeness of new
scenes and new surroundings; and that struggle is often a very painful
one.
Homesickness had not fallen upon me at first, there were so many new
things to see, so many new cousins and young neighbors to get acquainted
with. For a time my attention was wholly taken up with the novelties of
the place. The farm, the cattle, the birds, the work which we had to do,
everything, in fact, was novel. Perhaps for that very reason, when the
mental struggle to really adapt myself to it came, it was the more
profound and severe.
That morning I had no sooner unwrapped this old book than the pang began
again. I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It really seemed to
me that I should die right then and there if I did not get up and start
for home.
_Blue_ is no adequate word with which to describe what I suffered. It
came upon me with a suddenness, too, which nearly took my breath with
it. At the table were the bright, cheery faces of my cousins, and of the
Old Squire and Gram; but for the moment, how saddening, poor and dreary
everything looked to me! The thought of remaining there, month after
month, gave me heart-sink like death.
Kind parent, if you have a boy or girl off at school, or anywhere at a
distance, whom you wish to be happy and content, do not write very much
to them, and above all things do not go on to tell them of home affairs,
home scenes and familiar objects. It is mistaken kindness. It might
possibly answer--if a boy--to speak of a woodpile soon to be sawn;
or--if a girl--to allude to great heaps of dishes to be washed; but I
would not even advise much of that, nor anything else in the least
suggestive of home scenes; in fact, write as little as possible.
I remember, as I sat there at table, unable to eat, or even to swallow
my coffee, that Cousin Theodora glanced compassionately at me, and Ellen
and Addison curiously. They surmised what ailed me, from their own
previous experience, but said nothing. The Old Squire and Gram, too,
wisely forebore to stir me by foolishly expressed sympathy. How glad I
was that they did not speak to me!
The day passed drearily enough, and as evening drew on, still gloomier
shadows fell into my mind. I stole away to read my mother's letter again
and be alone with my trouble. Billow after billow of the blackest misery
broke over me. I went out into the garden, then around to the back side
of the west barn; the darkening landscape was not more somber than my
heart. How unspeakably dreary the dim, weathered old barn, the shadowy
hills and forests looked to me! Not less dreary seemed my whole future.
I felt exiled. It appeared to me that I should never know another happy
moment, that I never could, by any possibility, enjoy myself again. I
sat down on a stone, in the dark, put my head in my hands, and gave
myself up to the most somber reflections. Cold despair crept into me at
every pore. A fever of tears then filled my eyes. I laid wild plans to
escape; I would run away that very night and go home. The distance, as I
knew, was about five hundred miles; but I was sure that I could walk
twenty miles per day, perhaps thirty. In twenty days I could reach home.
I did not think much about food by the way; it did not appear to me that
I should want to touch a mouthful of anything eatable till I reached
home. If I did so far desire, I fancied that I might gather a few
berries by the wayside. Then I began to plan the details of setting off.
I would go indoors and put on my other suit of clothes, after the family
were asleep; and not to be too mean and cause too much anxiety, I
determined to write a few words on a bit of paper and slip it under
Theodora's door, advising them all not to worry about me, as I had gone
home, "for a time." These latter words I concluded to add, by way of
breaking it a little more gently to them, not that I had the slightest
intention of ever returning.
As I sat there with my hands over my face, planning, and brewing hot
tears, I heard a step in the grass, and looking up, saw a tall, shadowy
figure which I knew must be the Old Squire.
"Is that you, 'Edmund?'" he said, as I jumped up off the stone. He still
called me that sometimes. "It is a close night, I declare," he
continued. "I had about as lief be out here in the cool myself, as in
the house abed. But the mosquitoes bite a little, don't they?".
I had neither noticed that the evening was hot, nor yet that there were
any mosquitoes; I was quite insensible to ordinary physical influences.
The old gentleman lay down on the grass beside me. "Let's lay and talk a
spell," said he. "I never come round back of the barn here, but that I
think of the fox I shot when I was a young man. That fox had a 'brush'
as big 'round as your leg, the biggest fox-tail I ever saw. He had been
coming around the barns for some time; I used to hear him bark,
mornings, about four o'clock."
The Old Squire then went on, at length, to tell me how he watched for
the fox, and how he loaded the old "United-States-piece" musket for it,
and how he finally fired and shot the fox, but that the gun nearly broke
his collar-bone, he had loaded it so heavily. He was nigh half an hour
telling me all about it, and in spite of myself, I grew somewhat
interested.
"Why, how these mosquitoes do bite!" he finally exclaimed, giving one a
rousing slap. "Let's go in before they eat us up, and go to bed."
I went in with him and went to bed, but my trouble had now cankered too
deeply to be easily calmed. In the blackness of the bedchamber it beset
me again. Like other maladies, nostalgia, when once set up, must run its
course, I suppose. It never has appeared to me that I slept at all that
night, yet perhaps I did. Long before daylight, however, I was again
shedding hot tears and laying wild plans. But my thoughts had now taken
on an even gloomier and more desperate shade. What was the use of my
going home, I thought; my mother did not want me there. What was the use
of living in such a hopelessly dreary world! Live there at the Old
Squire's I could not, would not; of that I was certain. I never could
endure it. The thought of existing there, as I then felt, week after
week and month after month, was simply unbearable. Better die at once. I
began to think of various cases of suicide of which I had heard, or
read--in my happier days: the rope, poison, drowning. The latter I
believed to be the easier method of death; and I thought of the Little
Sea down where we washed the sheep and had begun to go in swimming on
warm days. There was water enough there in the deepest place;--and once
in, it would soon be over!
As the hours of the night dragged by, I began to take a morbid pleasure
in thinking about it, as if I had fully decided the question. I really
believed that I had as good as decided to drown myself; and when at
length we were called at five o'clock, I rose to dress in a very
unhealthy frame of mind.
"What's the matter with you?" exclaimed Halstead, as we were putting on
our shoes.
"Nothing," said I, heavily.
"You look as if you had lost your best friend," said he, with an
unsympathetic grin.
"I shall lose something more than that before long," I replied, with a
miserable effort at mystery.
"You don't say!" cried he, ironically, and went out with an air of hard
indifference, not at all flattering to my self-love.
How poor and undesirable the house, the farm, the whole world, looked to
me that morning. I plodded about, assisting to do the early chores; I
really had no appetite for my breakfast, and stole away from the table
after a few moments. Gram called after me, to know if I were unwell; I
did not dare trust myself to reply, lest I should burst forth weeping,
and hastening out to the Balm o' Gilead trees, stood looking down the
lane a moment, with a dreadful tumult of repressed misery raging within
me. My mental malady had reached a crisis; I was wild with anguish. It
appeared to me that I never could endure it. One thought only kept its
place in my mind--the Little Sea! I stole away down the lane, crossed
the road, then went on through the east field and pasture, till I
reached the brook.
Not that I now believe there was much likelihood of my drowning myself.
Even if I had been wretched enough to jump in, the first spoonful of
cold water in my nose would probably have sent me scrambling out, as
would have been the case with hundreds who have really drowned
themselves, if only they had not jumped into too deep water. But I
wanted to do something or other very desperate, what, I hardly knew
myself. As I ran, I debated whether I should take off my clothes, or
drown with them on; I did not remember reading how suicides of
hydropathic tendencies had managed that detail. The boys would find my
body Sunday morning when they came down to bathe, I thought. Yet some
one else might find me; and it seemed more decent and proper to drown
with them on. I walked around the Little Sea and singled out the deepest
place in it, where there was four or five feet of water. It looked to be
fully sufficient.
There was now nothing to prevent my going ahead with my project; but
since I had looked into the water and saw how aqueous it appeared,
considered as a place to spend from that morning on till Sunday in,
haste did not seem altogether so desirable, and I was not in nearly so
great a hurry. I sat down on a stone to think it over once more. It
would be unbecoming, I recollected, to take such a step without mental
preparation.
Still, I actually did half believe that when I rose from that stone, I
should plunge into the pond. I imagine that I sat there for more than
half an hour, and very likely should have remained much longer had the
Old Squire not made his appearance, glancing curiously over the dam, a
few rods below me.
It struck me as a little singular that he should be there so early and
so very soon after breakfast. He had an axe on his shoulder, however,
and it occurred to me that it might possibly be that he was there to
mend the pasture fence. When he saw me sitting there, he smiled broadly,
and coming nearer said, "Oh, this isn't nearly so good a brook for
fishing as the other one on the west side."
"'Fishing!'" thought I. "How little he knows what brought me here! Can
he not see that I haven't a pole?"
"Don't know exactly why," he continued, retrospectively, "but there
never were nearly so many trout here as in the west brook. I meant to
have given you and Addison a day to go over there before now, but work
has been rather pressing ever since you came."
I rose from the stone, thinking--and not wholly sorry to think--that
suicide must necessarily be postponed for that day, at least; for I
could not, of course, harrow the old gentleman's feelings by plunging
into the Little Sea before his very eyes. He seemed so guileless, too,
and so wholly unsuspecting of my fell design!
As we walked away, he told me of great trout which he had caught when a
boy, particularly of one big three-pound trout which he had captured at
a deep hole in the west brook, down near the lake.
My mind was still too much disturbed to enjoy these piscatorial
reminiscences, however; and noting this, after a time, Gramp opened
another subject with me.
"A man has lately made an offer for my farm and timber lands here," said
he. "I do not know that I shall accept it; but I have had some thoughts
of selling and moving out West. If I should, I suppose you would have
to go back to Philadelphia. If I went West to look for a farm, I should
call at Philadelphia on my way. You and I would make the trip there
together."
It is astonishing what an effect that last remark of grandfather's
produced upon me. The whole world changed from deepest, darkest blue to
rose color in one minute; and I said, provisionally, to myself that even
if he did not sell so that we could start for a month, I could perhaps
endure it.
Observing the cheerier light in my face, probably, the old gentleman
laughed good-naturedly. He had not forgotten what it is to be a boy and
feel a boy's intense sorrows as well as joys; and he went on to say that
a journey to Philadelphia was a mere nothing nowadays. Why, one might
start, as for instance, that morning and be at Philadelphia the next
morning at eleven o'clock!
But how glad I was that he did not notice that I was homesick! He did
not even appear to mistrust such a thing. And as for drowning myself,
well, the less said or thought about that now the better.
I walked back to the house with the Old Squire; and I got him to let me
carry the axe, for I wanted Addison and Halse to think that Gramp and I
had been off mending fence together.
At intervals, however, for a month or more, I continued to be afflicted
by transient spasms of homesickness, but none of them were as severe as
these first ones, and they gradually ceased altogether.
Dear boys and girls who are homesick, it is astonishing sometimes how
quickly the spasm will pass off, and how bright and cheery life will
look again a few moments later. So don't jump into deep water without
waiting a bit to think it over. It is a hard old world to live in. I
don't pretend to tell you that it isn't; yet life has a great many
pleasant spots, after all, if only we will have a little patience and
courage to wait and look for them. Scores of poor, desperate young
people have actually drowned themselves, from one cause or another, who
would have scrambled out and lived happily for years afterwards, if only
they had not jumped in where the water was so deep! A safe rule in all
these cases is never try to commit suicide by drowning till after you
have learned to swim.