“Aw, you found him!”
“Didn’t neither—did we, John? You come here and I’ll show you the shot
holes in him!”
So, side by side, you and Hen gallantly stepped, with the visible tokens
of your calling, homeward bound. At the entrance to your alley, however,
Hen inclined to lag; and as the back yard was being traversed he fell
further behind. Your own pace was slower and less confident, now.
Hen flung you the woodchuck.
“I’ve got to go,” he maintained. “You can take him.”
The back door opened, and mother stood and gazed upon you, even as Hen
was discreetly retiring.
“John!” she said. “What have you been doing?”
Beneath its powder grime your face paled. At once you began to realize
how your lip was puffing, and how your shoulder was aching.
“We were huntin’ woodchucks,” you quavered.
“The idea!” said mother.
“We got one, too,” you offered, in piteous defense.
“Mercy!” exclaimed mother, at the sight. “Leave it right there, and come
straight into the house!”
“Ya-a-a!” bantered Hen, gleefully, from the other side of the fence.
“You’re goin’ to ketch it!”
Here the door closed behind you, shutting you in with your shame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A BOY’S LOVES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A BOY’S LOVES
IN the utmost beginning of things—in that time when roosters were very
large, and geese were very fierce, and only mother could avert the
thousand perils, heal the thousand wounds—existed a mythical partner
established in family annals as “Your Little Sweetheart.”
[Illustration]
“Annie? Don’t you remember Annie! Why, she was Your Little Sweetheart.
You used to play together day in and day out. It was so cute to see
you!”
But no. You may catch here a bit of blue ribbon, there an echo of a
laugh, yet, try as you will, you may not recall her. Evidently when Your
Little Sweetheart Annie was put away along with dresses and curls, she
was put away so far that she was lost forever.
What space of months, or of years, elapses, you cannot tell.
Nevertheless, suddenly you do witness yourself, still of age most
immature, (you recollect that somewhere in this period you were
miserably spelled down on “fish”), laying votive offerings upon the desk
of your First Love, a girl with brown eyes and rounded, rosy cheeks.
[Illustration]
These offerings are in the shape of bright pearl buttons and carnelian
pebbles. The transfer requires much breathless daring. Down the aisle of
the school-room you march, your gift tightly clutched in your hand,
which swings carelessly by your side. Past her seat you scuttle, and,
without a single glance, you leave the treasure upon the oaken top,
beneath her eyes. Away you hurry, affrighted, ashamed, apprehensive, but
hopeful. Presently, blushing, from your seat you steal a look across at
her. She smiles roguishly. The offering is gone. It is accepted; for she
holds it up that you may see. And you grin back, as red as a beet, while
your heart, exultant, goes thumpity, thumpity, thumpity.
In company with another boy, who must have been a rival, you descry
yourself hanging about her gate, turning somersaults, wrestling, and
performing all kinds of monkey-shines, in the brazen fancy that she may
be peeking out of a window and admiring you. She is framed, for an
instant, by the pane. You and he scamper up and deposit in plain
view—you upon the right gate-post, he upon the left—a handful apiece of
hazelnuts. Then the pair of you withdraw to a discreet distance and
wait. Out she trips, and gathers in your handful; but his she
disdainfully sweeps off upon the ground.
He whooped in contempt and swaggered in derision; and you—you—what was
it you did? Alas! the picture is cut here abruptly, as by a knife; the
First Love vanishes, and the Second Love succeeds.
She is the minister’s daughter, a gentle, winsome little lass, not at
all like the saucebox of the brown eyes and the rich cheeks. In the case
of this Second Love there seems to have been no studied wooing, no
sheepish bribery by pearl buttons and carnelians and nuts. You fall in
with each other as a matter of course. In playing drop-the-handkerchief
you nearly always favor her, and she you; and when either favors some
one else the understanding between you is perfect that this is done
merely for the sake of appearances.
Your mutual affection is of the telepathic order. Others in the party
may romp and squeal and shout in the moonlight, but you and she sit
together on the wheelbarrow, and look on in tolerant, eloquent silence.
In games you have occasionally kissed just the tip of her ear, and that
was sufficient. Teasing companions may cry: “Aw, kiss her! Fraidie!
fraidie! _That_ ain’t kissin’!” But you know _she_ knows, and
smacks—those boisterous smacks current in the realm—are superfluous.
In addition to the kissing games, and the state of exaltation upon the
wheelbarrow, you are able to conjure up yourself in another rôle: at the
frozen river’s edge, strapping on her skates—your first remembered
gallantry.
Assailed by the shrill scoffings of your rude comrades, under the
refining influence of love you kneel before her as she is struggling
with a stiff buckle. Like to the manner born, she permits you to assist.
Then—then you skated, you and she, for each other’s sake enduring all
the pursuing gibes? This point is not clear. You may not further linger
with her, the minister’s daughter, your Second Love, for in a hop, skip,
and jump you are worshiping at the skirts of the Third Love.
Her eyes are black—large and black. You are desperately smitten. You
live, move, and have your being in a very ecstasy of fervor.
[Illustration]
Her name is Lillian. Somewhere, somehow, you have run upon the lines of
Tennyson:
“Airy, fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Clasps her tiny hands above me;
· · · · · · · · · ·
She’ll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.”
They appeal to you. They touch a spot which seems not to be reached by
even Oliver Optic or “The Gorilla Hunters.” You _must_ have poetry, and
you memorize them, and repeat them over and over to yourself, regardless
of the fact that she, your inspiration, is neither airy, fairy, nor
flitting, but of substantial, buxom proportions.
The Third Love, with her bold black eyes and her generous plumpness, is
not so submissive as was that gentle Second Love. She flouts you. When
the mood is upon her, she makes faces at you. At a party, when you
stammer:
“The stars are shining bright;
May I see you home to-night?”
as like as not she turns up her nose, or else she tosses her head and
snaps ungraciously: “Oh, I s’pose so!”
You never are sure of her; yet always you find yourself meekly at her
apron-strings.
You willingly go to church (you conceive that your family does not know
why, but in this you are much mistaken), because she sits in front of
you. What a blissful, comfortable feeling you have, with her safely
installed near at hand, twitching her short braids not more than three
feet before your happy nose!
When the pew is filled to overflowing, then, sometimes, you are crowded
out into her pew. Embarrassed of mien, you decorously slide into your
new location, she receiving your presence with a shrug and a sniff, and
you growing redder and redder as you imagine that all the congregation
must be reading your secret.
In a moment she darts at you a sly glance (the coquette! How vastly
superior she is to you in the wiles of love!), and you swell and swell,
until it seems to you that you are towering into the raftered heights
above.
And at the conspicuousness thus entailed you blush yet deeper.
Ah, her folks are about to leave town; she is to move away! The news
comes with sickening directness, and on top of the announcement she
pitilessly asserts that she is glad. You muster courage to declare that
you are “going to write.” She flirts her bangs, and retorts grudgingly:
“_I_ don’t care.”
Which is all the good-by that you get.
Beyond childish notes, you never have written to a girl; and what a
bothersome time this first letter gives you! The chief trouble lies in
the start. “Dear Friend,” which appears to be the address sanctioned by
society, is too common-place and formal; “Dear Lillian” may err in the
other direction, she is ridiculously touchy. You want something unique,
and in your researches you encounter “Chérie”—where, history reveals
not.
“Chérie” sounds nice; you do not know what it means, but all the better,
for consequently it is finely ambiguous; and, proud of your originality,
you take it. Once started, you occupy four pages, in your scrawling
script, with what you deem to be clever badinage. Badinage is the main
conversational stock in trade of girl-and-boy days.
[Illustration]
Principally you rail her about a certain youth of your town with whom
she used, to your torment, to run races. You hope that she will reply in
a manner to convey that really she despised that other chap and is
longing for you.
Two weeks of waiting. Then, one noon, your father, with an arch remark,
fishes from an inside pocket a little square envelope, and passes it to
you, at the dinner-table. The dinner-table, of all public places!
You endeavor calmly to receive it with a cursory glance; but you deposit
it in your jacket well aware that your trembling frame emanates
confusion.
Having bolted your dinner, you retire to the barn loft to revel in the
missive. The double sheet of miniature stationery has a rosebud
imprinted at the top.
Alas! underneath are the thorns.
FRIEND WILL: No, I don’t have George Brown to run races with any
more, but I have somebody lots better, and we run races every night.
Don’t you wish you knew who it was, smartie?
Even yet the lines rankle. They but indicate the tenor of the whole
letter—a letter from which you failed, no matter how earnestly you pored
over it, to obtain one grain of comfort.
You try her again, with another clumsy essay at wit. Answer never comes,
and for a while you sneak about afraid that the truth will leak out, and
you be made a butt by your schoolmates.
The queen is dead! Live the queen! This Fourth Love is a “new girl,” a
stranger who one morn dawns upon your vision in the school-room. She is
an adorable creature, with blue eyes, golden hair, and a bridling air
that challenges your attention. With joy you learn, at home, that your
folks know her folks; and when your mother proposes that you go with her
to make a friendly call, so that “the little girl won’t get lonesome for
want of acquaintances,” you accede unhesitatingly.
You are presented at court, and, sitting with her upon the sofa, do your
best to be entertaining while the elders chat about “help” and church.
You grasp, from her sprightly remarks, that she is well accustomed to
boy admirers. She speaks of her “fellow”! She writes to him! He “felt
awful bad” to have her leave! Beside hers, your experience in the ways
of the world—particularly boy-ways and girl-ways, mingled—appears
pitifully meager, and beneath her assertions and giggling sallies you
are ofttimes ill at ease.
Impressed with her value, you depart, escorting your mother; and that
night, before you go to sleep, you firmly resolve to win this girl or
perish.
The Fourth Love resolves into a sad thing of mawkish sentiment. You
are not given to mooning or spooning. You are too healthy.
Drop-the-handkerchief, clap-in and clap-out, post-office—these
tumultuous kissing games, open and aboveboard, are the alpha and omega
of the caresses in your set. However, the new girl instils another
element, hitherto foreign to the social intercourse.
[Illustration]
To-day you recall, with great vividness, that winter evening before
supper, when you lingered, on your way home, in the front hall at her
house, planning with her to go skating.
“Oh, isn’t it dark!” she piped suddenly. “I can’t see you at all.”
“And I can’t see you, either,” you responded.
Silence.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
“Oh, I’m here by the door. Are you ’fraid?” you bantered innocently.
Silence.
“S’posing you kissed me! Wouldn’t that be awful!” she tittered in
pretended horror.
But you—you summoned your chivalry, and went forth secure in the
knowledge that you had not taken advantage of her helplessness.
This was the end. From that evening dated her coldness. Another boy
jumped in and supplanted you. You encountered them together, and they
looked upon you and laughed. He informed you that she said you “hadn’t
any sense.” You sent back a counter-accusation, which he gladly
reported. But enough; away with this Eve. What becomes of her you are
able to decipher not. Let us consider the Fifth Love.
Her you acquire deliberately, with purpose aforethought, so to speak. A
love is now absolutely necessary to you, and casting about, you hit upon
the girl across the street. You have known her virtually all your life.
She is not very pretty; she is just a plain, jolly, wholesome lassie,
who is continually running over to your house, and with whom you are as
free as with your own sister; but she will do.
Forthwith you begin a campaign. You walk home with her; you lend her
books; you take her riding—a real, ceremonious ride, and not, as
formerly, merely a lift down-town; you strive as hard as you can to
enthuse over her and remark beauties in her. And she, meantime a little
flustered and astonished at your unwonted assiduousness, accepts your
crafty attentions and frankly confides to your sister that she wishes
_she_ had a brother.
Unsuspicious girl! She treats you with a camaraderie which should warn
you, but which only proves your undoing.
Mindful of the lesson gained at the hands of the Fourth Love, she the
sentimental, you resolve that you will not be classed, in this present
instance, as having “no sense.” Accordingly, one evening, upon parting
with the Fifth Love at her gate, you baldly propose—well, you blurt
awkwardly:
“Let’s kiss good night.”
With what scorn she spurns the suggestion! Then, while your ears are
afire and you hang your head, she administers a severe, virtuous lecture
upon the impropriety of an act such as you mention.
“But lots of boys and girls do it,” you hazard.
She does not believe you; and, anyway, _she_ never would. And she packs
you home. You trudge across the street, angry, irritated, abashed,
uncertain as to whether she was hoaxing you or whether she was sincere.
Girls are the _darndest_ creatures!
[Illustration]
Evidently here closes the episode of the Fifth Love. It was but natural
that thereafter you should be rather disconcerted when in her presence;
and although she might act as if nothing had happened, _you_ (plagued
unmercifully by your sister) could not forget.
And the Sixth Love? Yes, she followed, with scarce a decent interval,
hard upon the exit of the all too high-minded Fifth. Maybe it was in a
spirit of pique that you sought her. Whatever the preliminary
circumstance, regard yourself eventually head over heels again, immersed
in the current of a passion equaled only by your affair with that Third
Love—“cruel little Lilian.”
This Sixth Love, too, has black eyes and an engaging plumpness. Black
eyes, apparently, are the eyes most fatal to you. For the Sixth Love you
would unflinchingly die, if life without her were the alternative; and
you picture to yourself the manner in which she would mourn (you hope)
when you are lying cold and still, with just your white face showing, in
the family parlor.
No matter how circuitous it makes your route, going and coming you
always manage to pass her house.
[Illustration]
You wonder if she is proud of you because you can throw a curve. You
would like to have her see that you are strong, and skilled in all the
exercises to which boys are heir. You want to be her ideal, her knight.
Some times you suspect that she does not thoroughly appreciate your
prowess and good points, for she prates of other boys who do so and so,
whereas you can easily do as much and more.
Now, whether or not it was due to the snake-curves (every boy is
positive, soon or late, that he can throw a snake-curve), looking back
you behold yourself possessed at last of this maiden of your choice. Of
course no word of love has been uttered between you. That would be too
silly and theatrical, almost morbid; furthermore, it is unnecessary. She
has shyly confessed to you that she “likes” you, and this is sufficient.
You generously refrain from urging her beyond this maiden admission.
Aye, ’tis distance lends enchantment to the view! You have been so
accustomed to the excitement of the chase that with idleness you wax
restive. The Sixth Love verges upon being a nuisance. Her black eyes,
beaming for you alone, pall upon you. You grow callous toward her. You
tire of always having her choose you at parties; you tire of her eternal
assumption of proprietorship over you; you wish that she would not come
so much to see your sister, and thrust herself upon you in your home.
And you set out to shake her off; you skip by the back door as she
enters by the front; you avoid her at parties; you show her, in a dozen
ways, that you do not fancy her any more.
Poor anxious, forsaken Sixth Love! It is she who turns the wooer; it is
she who passes and repasses _your_ house; it is she who haunts _your_
steps, hoping that she may catch a glimpse of you. Regardless of the
fact that you yourself so often have played this game, you remain
obdurate. Finally pride rises to her rescue, and she sends notice that
she “hates you.”
“Pooh! Who cares!” you sniff, with a curl of the lip.
Thus lapses behind you the Sixth Love; and although you have a faint
vision of her parading, to meet your eyes, your most despised enemy,
whom, in bravado, she had immediately adopted, memory indicates that you
were unaffected by the sight, save to sneer, and that already the
Seventh Love was engrossing your attention.
For there was a Seventh Love, and an Eighth, and more besides, to
constitute a long train of wee, innocent heart-troubles as evanescent as
a dream, but at their time just as real; until from this series of
shallow, dancing ripples of Boy’s Love, lo! one day you suddenly emerged
upon the deep ocean of Man’s Love, and anchored in the quiet haven where
She awaited—She, the gracious embodiment of the best in these her
girlish predecessors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOON
AFTER all, it is no fun posing at being a man. It is not, as you would
inform the other boys, the pleasant sinecure that it is currently
presumed to be, amongst your kind. The picture has more depth than
appears at the distance. As you approach, you note only the surface
tints; but when you have arrived, then begin to unfold aspects
previously quite unsuspected.
So now, having had experience, you fain would turn back, and doffing for
all time those starchy, heavy, strait-jacket garments which you have
mistakenly donned, you would resume the free-and-easy blouse and
knickerbockers and tattered brim, and would rejoin your gay brethren of
school and vacation. You have learned your lesson, and you will leave
them no more.
So be it. But alas, unavailingly you stop on your way down-town, beside
the vacant lot where the other boys are playing ball, and look wistfully
in upon them. None yells:
“Come on, Jocko. You’re tenth fielder.”
Once the ball rolls your way. You toss it back—toss it awkwardly,
somehow, proving that you are out of practice. However, you can limber
up right speedily. You have been away, they should know.
“Aw, you’re out! You’re out! You are too! Ask that man. He’s out, ain’t
he, Mister?”
You wait for “that man,” wherever he may be, to reply. But you yourself
are the sole spectator, and you gaze right and left, puzzled.
“He’s out—ain’t he!”
_You!_ It is you to whom they are appealing! You nod, confusedly.
“Ya-a-a! The man says you’re out!”
The man! The word gives you a little shock. They are styling you “man”!
A sensation of disappointment and surprise sweeps through you; here you
are, Rip Van Winkle, whom nobody knows. If only these your former
cronies might see through and recognize what lies behind this thin
disguise, they would realize that you really are but ten, and one of
them.
All in the broad sun the other boys are “goin’ fishin’.” It is a prime
day. Your being tingles for the poise of the trusty old pole upon your
shoulder, and the feel of the fat bait-can in your jacket pocket. Hang
business! You repudiate its tyranny. That “engagement” may importune, in
vain. The perch are running, the kids are “all catchin’ ’em,” “fishin’”
is “dandy.” Hurrah! The old-time _wanderlust_ is stirring in your veins.
You will go. But—something holds you back. It will not be much fun to
fish alone. Something tells you that even though you “fire” your shoes
and stockings and strip to shirt and trousers, and boldly enter the
fray, still will you be an alien, and looked upon askance. You are a
“man,” and perch and bullheads are not for the likes of you.
Nevertheless, you can try. There hastens Hen—or, at least, one who might
be Hen—pattering down the street, all accoutered for the ranks of joy
and rivalry.
“Goin’ fishin’?” you demand bluffly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir!” In a word has he relegated you to your place. He knows you—knows
that you have no fish-worms in your pocket, and that to match his mighty
pole you have only a paltry jointed “rod.”
He pauses impatiently. He has little time to waste with you.
“Any good?”
“Yes, sir.”
Irksomely respectful, now with a wriggle he is off, onward into his
magic realms, leaving you to gaze after, chastened, chagrined.
Oh, this hideous disguise—this iron metamorphosis which wizard Time, the
inexorable, has laid upon you! There is no dropping it.
You turn to Nature; surely Nature has the acumen to recognize that you
have grown not at all, save, perhaps, in stature. But the sun burns, the
rain wets, the snow chills—each uncompromising and austere. The pond
that once stretched away like an ocean shrinks and shallows at your
coming, till you can almost step from bank to bank; the once limitless
wood, as wild and as romantic as the Carpathians, mischievously
contracts so that you can see through from side to side; the highroad is
dusty, and the paths refuse to lead, but are finished in a stride.
Everything conspires to remind you that you are foreign, Brobdingnagian,
a personage apart, and that too late have you faced about.
To the pleasures and to the favors that were you have forfeited the
“Open, sesame!”
You may not reinstate yourself by the company that you keep, for the
company of old—where is it? Vanished; changed, like yourself;
resistlessly urged on and ever on by the current which there is no
stemming. Hen is a “man”—he runs a grocery store. Billy Lunt is a
“man”—and an M.D., to boot. “Fat” Day is a “man”—even an alderman.
“Snoopie” Mitchell, aye, the independent, envied Snoopie, whom naught,
you believed, could coerce, is a “man”—for sometimes you are whirled
along behind his engine. They all seem to glory in their estate and its
attributes. And to them, _you_ are a “man.”
Exists only one authority to support your quest of boyhood; only one
heart, besides your own, which apparently would be glad to have you
again in blouse and knickerbockers; and to her you are still a boy, with
the freckles concealed, merely, by that pointed beard at which she
gently rails even in her pride. Mother! You can depend upon mother, as
of yore. She is no older, herself; she is the same. Mother never
changes. You are no older, yourself; you are the same. Let the other
boys call you “man” and say “sir”; let sun and rain and snow, and pond
and wood and path, deny you their one-time hospitality. To all the world
without you may be a “man,” but to mother you are her “boy.”
Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour
when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled
even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and
wait—wait—wait.