THINGS THAT HAD PASSED AWAY "STILL LIVE"
There are three things which every man persuades himself he can do
better than anyone else: poke the fire, handle the reins, and tell a
story. Unless the poker is hidden, the next man will take it and give
the embers two or three additional touches. This is a universal trait.
In case of peril, it is instinct in a man, to make motions in reaching
out to take the lines. If a story is known to another person, it is pure
nature in him on hearing it told, to show how some detail might have
been better rendered. I add a fourth thing that a person wants to
improve upon no matter who is handling it. If my splendid teacher were
again instructing me out of a book showing the difference between memory
and recollection I would have to bite my tongue to compel it to silence.
I should indeed of all men be the most miserable unless I could bear
testimony. You say the miracle of memory has been the theme of your
study. That for a summer was mine. It is common for scholars, taking
what they call a palimpsest, an ancient manuscript and applying chemical
process to so renovate it as to enable them to plainly read it. The
effusions of later profane poets and the recent chronicles of monks have
been over-spread upon the precious parchments. The orations of Cicero
and precious versions of the New Testament have been over-laid and were
regarded as lost. The early inscriptions were supposed to be effaced
from our own memories.
_Books Written by Ourselves_
But a magician, in an instant, seemed to touch, with a sponge, the whole
surface of the memory, and things that had been invisible were found to
be well embalmed and made immortal. All that had become dim was found to
be stereotyped forever. Thus every stage of one's existence leaves him
some memorial of its presence in the life of today. I did not know what
large deposits I had once been making in the bank of memory. This is
occasioned by the fact that a boy lives his first years more keenly
alive, to the things about him, than does a man. Even our food does not
later have its earlier relish. If a man thinks, that what he recalls of
a thing, when absent from it, is the whole of his memory of it, he very
much underestimates the fact. It is the glow of youth, the freshness of
heart, that give us those bright memories by which we save the past from
the extinguishing stroke of oblivion,
"Like to some dear, familiar strain,
For which we ask and ask again,
Ever, in its melodious store,
Finding a spell unheard before."
The flaming sword which once guarded the gates of our youthful paradise
is not turned against us preventing, as in the case of our first
parents, our return to our early homes, as many persons, by keeping at a
distance, appear to believe. One can approach this Eden boldly. The
password at the gate is Welcome. Any pilgrim like myself will have his
astonishment divided between the disclosure made of his own power of
recollection and of the unforeseen suggestiveness of the place, when
memory faithful to her task unties her budget.
It was a blessing to me to be well born, yet I was born with neither a
gold nor a silver spoon in my mouth. My warfare has been at my own
charges. While my classmates and associates were enjoying a winter
vacation, I taught a country school. There is a choice spot to me. To
revisit the earth without viewing that scene and unclasping, there, the
book of memory would be like quitting London before one has stood within
the shadowed aisles of Westminster or coming back from Italy without
entering the gates of the Eternal City.
_A Hard Road to Travel_
I thought I had seen mud before but slow progress to the rural
school-house gave me a deep experience of it. Any evidence of road
making could not be found. There was a track, we could not lose it, yet
you could not make much headway in it. The condition of the road
conditioned the opening of the school. The roads were three rods wide
and often three feet deep, particularly when the frost was coming out of
the ground. They then became yeasty, which heaves the sub-soil, and
stirs and mixes the surface loam, in preparation for seed sowing in the
spring. It was not a time to be abroad. Traveling was then a very
different act from that which it has now become. The conditions were
beyond conception and utterance. As memory is the recognizing faculty,
it identified, on the way, the same old farmhouse hastening indeed to
its ruin, the same old fire which glows upon the ample hearth, the same
old well thumbed Bible which lies, as ever, upon the altar, the same
"old oaken bucket" which hangs in the well. My heart made me so familiar
with the neighborhood that I could have mapped it, from recollection,
without other aid. The vividness of everything touched me. It was like
an experience of reading snowbound in Whittier's old home. It is like
standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted
only to memory for a conception of a strange reality. No words can
possibly describe the impression. All the men that lived hereabouts were
so well known to me that were my imagination strong enough I might
almost have seen their ghosts. Many of those I knew in active life had
passed the summit and were going down the hill; indeed some have already
gone out of sight. The names and works of some of them are now nearly
stranded on the stream of time. But they once exercised a powerful
influence on the local life of their day. We plodded our way to school
and all carried our dinners. At noon-tide we were brought into a fine
intimacy.
_Teaching and Learning_
I never had such close association with boys and girls. Some of the
warm-hearted little creatures would exchange portions of their dinner
with each other, not for variety only but as an expression of kindly
feeling. The generosity of the little people was a very real and fine
thing. They give what they want. They love to bestow. It is to them a
pleasure and a luxury. When they met on the first day of school it was
pathetic to see the intensity of their pleasure on being again with each
other. They lived on scattered farms, miles apart, and were gladder to
see one another than anybody should be. No one ought to feel so isolated
and detached, or, on the other hand, so yoked up with adults as if on
the principle of breaking in a colt with a cart-horse. They love to be
with those of their own age and kind. They return to the original
meaning of fellowship, fellow in the same ship. Many of their interests
are the same. Their destination is identical. A young man's social
nature craves the companionship of his mates. He is susceptible most of
all to the influences of good or evil from young persons of his own age
and tastes and ambitions in life. We are told distinctly what "the
fellowship of kindred minds" is like.
_Transported Back to the Past_
In one hand, I hold, as I write, that marvel of creative volumes
Webster's spelling book, of which more than a million copies are still
sold annually. "The boy that stole the apples," as in "Fable First," is
still in a composed attitude in the tree just where he placed himself
long years ago waiting for "The old man to try what virtue there was in
stones." It is remarkable that every individual in school recited from
Webster's spelling-book. If I could choose a picture of myself it would
be at the time when I sat in a country school-house and had a little
Abecedarian that hung down her head and kept one thumb in her mouth,
stand at my knee learning letters beginning with the "perpendicular
reading" on the alphabetical page and coming later, in an eventful day,
to "horizontal reading" beginning, of course, with the monosyllabic and
well-remembered words, "Go on." The wonder that abides with me is how
those tiny scholars that had only set foot on the first step of
learning's ladder, were kept in school after being taught only in three
or four brief intervals during the day to know their letters, by sight,
and as some one expressed it also by name, for six wearisome hours with
nothing doing to enable them to beguile their time. The Kindergarten was
yet to be. The scheme of public transportation by which all scholars are
assembled at one central point in a township and graded and given
instruction by methods adapted to their years had never then come to the
attention of the people not even in their dreams. With no slates, no
stationery, no desks in front of them, no attention from anyone, their
natures as playful as kittens, accustomed to the sweep of the fields,
full of animal spirits and frolic, packed for the day in a box-like room
when, to use their expression "school's up," out they would rush
tumultuously to enjoy God's great and good out-of-doors. To "keep
school" my implements of learning were a ruler, a bell, and a Bible. The
"district" supplied a water-pail and tin dipper. About midway to recess
after "school's in," as a reward for fine behavior, one envied scholar
was designated to pass the water. In this common sacrament we all
partook, in beautiful communion of spirit, day after day from the same
rusty dipper, microbe, baccilli, and other like organisms not being then
invented.
_A Boy a "Feeble Beginning of a Mighty End"_
As soon as the school was established civilization was safe. Many of the
scholars were almost men and women in size, but they were not as old as
their stature indicated. A real responsibility fell upon the teacher,
for all the training that some young citizens ever had, was obtained in
one of these little crowded school-houses that dot the farming
communities of the state. Many began an active useful life without
troubling any other school, college, or academy. At their freedom year,
came to many of them a point where their education stopped and their
adult life began. It gave to my work a peculiar interest, as I tried
like John Adams, when teaching in Worcester, to regard the school as the
world in miniature, that before me were the country's future jury-men,
judges, tradesmen, capitalists, law-makers and office-holders. One only
had to imagine, what might prove true, that a certain boy was to go upon
the bench of the Superior Court, as proved to be the case in one of my
classes, that another was to be a titled clergyman, as came true, that
others were to be honored in the high administration of executive
offices, it turned out to be a fact, in order to stimulate a teacher to
that course of effort, without which youth fitted for those respective
offices would be lost. What government we had was never called
government. I never happened to find any bad boys. A thorough search in
the gallery of memory has been made in vain to discover them. Anyway
they did not exist to me. I taught branches that I had never myself
taken in school. My mind was let out to its limit to keep one day ahead
of my classes.
_Human Nature Unchanged_
Life was full orbed in that little "knowledge box" as it was sometimes
used for meeting by the Society of Friends and so on "fourth day," for a
little space of time, school gave way to a Quaker wedding. The very
profound and continued silence that preceded the ceremony made it
extremely impressive. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. The
beauty of the bride, and the maxim accords with truth, she that is born
of beauty is half married, she needs to borrow nothing of her sisters,
gave her that attractiveness which conferred an immediate power over
others. This beau ideal of a young Quakeress, her simple, modest,
consistent apparel, which was chiefly drab, relieved by the use of dark
olive colored material, enlisted everyone's attention. Without the aid
of priest or magistrate, without prayer or music, after a fitting quiet
interval, they took each other by the hand and in the presence of
witnesses, among them all the school, including the teacher, solemnly
and calmly promised to take each other for husband and wife, to live
together in the fear of God, faithfully, so long as they should live. A
record was then produced for signatures. It was signed by the happy
company, the bride using her new name. After the relatives had signed,
good feeling so prevailed that the scholars down to those of few years
added their signatures, which detracted nothing from the legality of the
document.
"O! not in the halls of the noble and proud,
Where fashion assembles her glittering crowd;
Where all is in beauty and splendor arrayed,
Were the nuptials perform'd of the meek Quaker maid.
'Twas there, all unveil'd, save by modesty, stood
The Quakeress bride, in her pure satin hood;
Her charms unadorned by garland or gem,
Yet fair as the lily just pluck'd from its stem.
The building was humble, yet sacred to Him
Before whom the pomp of religion is dim;
Whose presence is not to the temple confined,
But dwells with the contrite and lowly of mind."
Here I formed my strange liking, to which I have to plead guilty, for
country boys. These sturdy little men did not complain of their lot
though at times it was hard. They had the ring of the genuine coin. With
entire naturalness they assumed that they had their own way to make.
Their calculations were not based upon a legacy. A young man in need of
money who has expectation from an unmarried aunt looks upon toil in a
different way from what he would if she had nothing to bestow. "What is
the matter with Kansas?" When this question was raised it was found that
she had been helped, and by that act she was done for.
_The Coronation of Labor_
Here is the secret of country boys when they go up to the city. They are
not done for. The reflex influence of this is often a hindrance. It is
not self help. It overlooks economy, enterprise, personal initiative,
and intense application. The young man with money usually takes a young
partner from the country to get the practical ability and energy. The
country home is like a bee-hive for industry in every profitable way.
Farm life looks toward more productiveness. Eight or ten hour limits are
not observed in days that are from morn to dusk. The country boy does a
lot of unrequited labor. He hitches up, breaks out the road, and takes
the whole bunch to the evening singing school. He takes off the wagon
body, puts it upon runners, and stows it so full of mortal souls that
they had to be cautioned, by their parents, as the sons of Jacob were by
their father, "not to fall out by the way." Lay a plank on the ground,
someone has truly said, and a million people can walk it without thought
of losing balance. Lift it twenty-five feet and only one in a thousand
will dare to walk it. Lift it one hundred feet and not more than one in
a million will venture upon it. Country boys keep their balance near the
ground. As persons grow stilted they lose their poise. If they have a
disposition to rise higher it is by the old way of climbing, step by
step, making each rise count one. They are not at first familiar with
the elevator to carry them up and so suppose that their chance is by the
stair-case. "One thing I must observe," says an Englishman, writing from
Andover, "that I think wants rectifying, and that is their pluming pride
when adjoined to apparent poverty." John G. Brady had not only "apparent
poverty," but the real thing when deserted by his father, when he was
made a ward of a Children's Aid Society. He became governor of Alaska.
Some such boys were ravenous for knowledge. They were awkward and
uncouth but possessed minds that were bright, vigorous, susceptible, and
retentive. It was a joy to teach them.
_Not Criticism, Just Description_
"You're a colt," said a farmer, "bye and bye you will grow to be a staid
old horse. Till you do steady down and lose your coltish tricks I will
enter with you into the spirit of your colthood, for I know you're not
vicious. There is not a streak of evil in your nature." I saw a fine
picture at one of the world's fairs of the School of Charlemagne, at the
moment that Alcuin is informing the emperor that the poor boys have
surpassed the rich in scholarship. It is a symbol of the way that things
level up in every country. Country boys learn to feel their way, which
is the healthiest method, and I have had frequent painful occasions to
contrast it with the plunging method that we are frequently called to
witness. At no other point, at the same exposition to which I have
referred, were gathered so dense a crowd as about the model school for
the blind. A poor girl without sight was reading about some boys that
came upon a hive of wild bees and honey. When a word seemed difficult to
her, she would instinctively apply both hands to the pages. Men coming
from all quarters into this presence would unconsciously uncover their
head. Feeling one's way excites sympathy. The poor have the gospel
preached to them. Have any of the rulers believed on Him? No, no, no, it
was the common people that heard Him gladly. City merchants advertising
for a clerk often say, "One from the country preferred." I used to see
the boys studying the map of the future and laying out work for manhood
and age. Their longings were to be men. They were panting to have a part
in the great drama of life and would rush in as soon as any door was
open. It did not occur to them that the world already owed them a
living, that they were to be fed by the raven. The man who calls upon
Jupiter was to put his own shoulder to the wheel.
_To Go to the Top, First Go to the Bottom_
It is a riddle that persons, like the Lawrences, coming from the
country, Groton, into the city out-step the natives and become their
masters. Country life and country education are at least practical and
invigorating to body and mind and hence those who are thus qualified
triumph in the race of life. Country training and experience serve as a
foothold for progress. Amos Lawrence, the initial genius in Boston in
that line of merchant princes that founded Lawrence and the mills in
Lowell and Ipswich (when one of the mills of Ipswich was losing one
hundred dollars a day, one of the Lawrences was sick and the only
comment was "too much Ipswich,") when a clerk in a dry-goods store sold
a parcel of goods, promising to have them delivered in Charlestown by
twelve o'clock M.,--the porter, who was to take them over, failed to
return as soon as was expected,--loaded the goods on a wheelbarrow and
trundled them over the long bridge, through the streets thronged with
ladies and gentlemen, and had them there on time. It was a natural act
of the country boy. A city young man would have felt an inclination to
wait. Andrew Carnegie came over from Scotland with only a sovereign in
his pocket but with sovereignty in his soul and fired a stationary
engine at two dollars and a half a week.
_The Renewal of the Face of the World_
Jeremiah says, "Pharaoh King of Egypt" is but a noise. He agitates the
atmosphere. He is a clamorous self advertiser. On the other hand a
country boy reaching the city is often obliged to raise the simple bread
and butter question. Give us this day our daily bread. I used to find
these boys extremely capable and very warmly affectionate. City boys
gave their mothers what money would buy, while the country boys gave
their mothers what money could not buy, and no one was happier than the
country mother with a letter from her boy telling her that there was so
much love in his letter that he would have trouble in getting it into
the envelope. She thought she saw that he was winning a widening way
into recognition from his employer, also from his associates. Such a man
is likeliest to realize in life all the promise he gave in boyhood. If a
country boy lost a step he felt that he must make it up. I could stand
before that boy, hat in hand, and pay him honor and respect. He is not
top heavy. He is solid. The corner stones of character are laid in
place and well laid. Splendid specimens of boyhood, first work hard to
supply their needs and then go on to make money to supply their wants.
By all the rules of the business world they have earned all that they
have gained.
_Cables Binding to Safe Moorings_
On "first day" there being no school I worshiped with Quakers and never
to this hour have departed from their heaven-born doctrines. When George
Fox prayed, the spirit bearing witness with his spirit, men trembled,
and so were called Quakers because they thus quaked. The wonder is not
that they were agitated, but that people do not quake where they sit in
profound silence until the spirit moves. When a person rises one's first
thought is, There, that's the motion of the spirit, the inner witness.
It is the responsive factor in us that makes the Quaker doctrine take
hold. They have an Inward Light which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. A friend, a lady with a serene, intelligent, illumined
face, fluent and correct in expression, with most engaging modesty,
moved by the spirit, arose and spoke, with a power stronger than human
genius, her understanding being opened, her heart enlarged, in a manner
wonderful to herself exhorting us to take heed to the light within us.
That was reasonable. Who could say nay to such entreaty assuming that
there is in us that which of itself responds to it, "as face answers to
face in a glass?" In the intense quiet, in the solemn silence, all being
retired into the presence chamber of God, the attitude being that of
Samuel when he said, "Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth" when an angel
voice speaks to us who would not follow whithersoever it leads the way?
"Go feel what I have felt" and you will know by experience how Quakers
get their name. It is a respectful doctrine; it only urges recognition
of what hath shined into our hearts to give us light.
Revisiting the earth I say now, on the site where I taught school, what
I felt then, that Quaker doctrines are as honeycomb, sweet to the soul,
and health to the bones. Even the men's manners are gentle and winsome
and kindly, and kindly enough to proceed from the spirit. When
conducting social affairs I have in uncounted cases asked that we might
imitate the Quakers who before leaving their positions, beginning in the
high seats, shake hands with those on the right and left who are next to
them, it means we are on a level and on good terms, we must be social.
_A Fashion that is Wearing Away_
When men were clad in short clothes, wearing knee buckles, laces, and
ruffles, and frills, and fringes, and finery, and frippery, the Quakers
took strong ground for plain, unaffected simplicity in male attire and
they carried the day. Honor to whom honor is due, I am with them as
usual. The weather worn, long used, hard used little one room, one story
school-house without an entry, is now in declining condition and
exceedingly infirm. It seems broken, decrepit, wears a look of great
age, seems inclined to melancholy and its dissolution is near. The dear
old seminary of letters was not young when I was introduced to it.
Change and decay have passed rapidly upon it. There is no making life
stand still. I went back to it with my heart in my eyes. Its well worn
old threshold and its battered entrance spoke of hospitality to vigorous
youngsters who had reached their freedom year, when education stopped,
and their adult life began. It was assumed that the door, exposed to the
weather, would bind a little at the bottom, and so simultaneously with
putting their hands to the latch the children would strike the door at
the bottom with one of their heavily shod feet. The act was so
unconscious and so natural that no impression was made except on the
door.
_Time Can Obliterate as Well as Create_
The floor of that little edifice wore sundry patches of new white pine
boards which were nailed over the crevices and flaws which gave the
appearance of new cloth in an old garment. This rickety fabric has
ceased forever from the name and form of a seat of learning, but it is
tight full of memories and of public favor. A child when going through a
museum said he liked the sculpture better than a painting because he
could walk around the sculpture. With that feeling of regard for sacred
places and times and things which we felt in our childhood, I viewed
that building and went round about it, that I might tell it to the
generation following. If anyone shall say,
"A bare old house with windows dim,
A bare old house is still to him,
And it is nothing more,"
I shall still look upon it with reverence. It has performed its office
and its pictured form will bring up facts and throng my vacant hours
with beautiful visions. Lord Jeffrey speaks fondly of that "dear retired
adored little window" where he labored and prepared himself for the
arrival of that brighter day which is almost sure to come to those who
are careful to fit themselves for the duties that accompany it.
_A Table of Priorities_
The progress of the allied forces in the German war seemed at first very
slow, partly because of the colossal number of men engaged, but chiefly
because Germany derived a great advantage at the start. It is a
difficult matter to make up for a bad beginning. On revisiting the earth
we seemed to be set down upon a commanding eminence, having a panoramic
view of occurences which showed distinctly the path we had trodden. If
we noticed the milestones, we observed a succession, that was unbroken,
that led directly to the place where, with different ways opened to us,
we made life's vocational adventure. In the light of that first move we
see the way to every subsequent position. Years rise up like the steps
of the Pyramids and more and more extensive becomes the review of life.
How different a landscape looks when we have simply reversed our steps
and are faced the other way. I must always remember it as one of the
pleasures of life, that all the invisible lines that connect every later
service and place of residence were set vibrating from the desk where I
taught my first term of country school when I was seventeen.
[Illustration: A SEAT OF LEARNING FULL OF MEMORIES]
_Tremendous Trifles_
Taking deliberately one's position, here, that point in life, of which
everyone's personal history has so many examples, the peak Teneriffe,
the effect of volcanic action, after much slumbering, fills all the
foreground. From such a mount of vision "see thy way in the valley."
"There's a chain of causes
Linked to effects,"
that seemed trifles, that, on a review of life, have a new significance.
It can be seen at a glance that all subsequent events are a lengthened
chain from this early landmark, at which, hat in hand, I stood. The
connection is direct, the links are distinctly interlocked. As in the
growth of a stalk of corn, each section makes a close jointure with the
next below it as well as with the next above it, so is it in any
individual career. The same school, the second winter, was needed to
give publicity to a situation, which resulted in an invitation to take
the school at the community center, an elevation which had not even in
dreams and reveries entered my mind. Out of this came an appointment to
teach in a college town and so to this hour every stage has brought
about the next step which the last one made inevitable. In that first
school was struck the medial key-note. It is the C, and the whole melody
of life rests upon it. Some people remark upon fruit and flower, as if
detached and independent of their seed. Not by God's mercy! Personal
history has its teachings, a golden thread runs through it, on which are
strung, a series of events in a logical succession, represented in
pictures unrivalled for their distinctness, delineated by time's own
hand and lifted out into powerful relief. The more widely I looked for
connected events the more I saw. It pleased the Father to command the
light to shine out of darkness. Dull and unimaginative as I am, even I
felt the divinity stir within me, and I found it difficult to suppose
otherwise than that, while the public takes no cognizance of such
things, yet a look into one's personal biography exhibits a moving
picture of Providence. To feel that we are tethered to a place of
beginning, though we live on the other side of the world, is not to say
that we would like to go back there to reside. We are viewing it only as
a factor in our past life. It was like the experience once of reading
Whittier's Hampton Beach when there. It made past history realistic. It
was like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being
indebted only to memory for your conception of its vivid character. No
words can possibly describe the impression, of thus revisiting the earth
and doing our own thinking instead of sending some neighbor to do it for
us.
_Critical Periods_
Instead of seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, how much
more self-respecting for each of us to himself stand in the actual
presence of these silent talkers and perceive the guide marks to all the
paths which led us through the tangle of life. Above all else one lesson
blazes out in letters of living light. How careful Providence is about
beginnings. It is only in looking down upon the battle field that we
can clearly discern the maneuvers that lead to victory. We must place
ourselves at a given point, not too remote from the causes, that make
our history, to justly estimate them, if we could begin again, that
tragic wish having been conceded to us, all our activity would be best
used at these clearly discerned centers. To gain greater effectiveness
opportunity here makes his call upon us and comes unawares and his
approach is invariably disguised in humble garb.
"Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait;
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate.
Those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore;
I answer not, and I return no more."