Transcriber’s Note:
A number of words have been inconsistently hyphenated in this text.
For a complete list, please see the end of this document.
cover
THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
BY
_John Muir_
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SKETCHES
BY THE AUTHOR
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1912 AND 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY JOHN MUIR
_Published March 1913_
FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
John Muir
John MuirToList
Contents
I. A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND
Earliest Recollections—The “Dandy Doctor” Terror—Deeds
of Daring—The Savagery of Boys—School and
Fighting—Birds’-nesting.
II. A NEW WORLD
Stories of America—Glorious News—Crossing the
Atlantic—The New Home—A Baptism in Nature—New
Birds—The Adventures of Watch—Scotch
Correction—Marauding Indians.
III. LIFE ON A WISCONSIN FARM 90
Humanity in Oxen—Jack, the Pony—Learning to Ride—Nob
and Nell—Snakes—Mosquitoes and their Kin—Fish and
Fishing—Considering the Lilies—Learning to Swim—A
Narrow Escape from Drowning and a Victory—Accidents to
Animals.
IV. A PARADISE OF BIRDS
Bird Favorites—The Prairie Chickens—Water-Fowl—A Loon
on the Defensive—Passenger Pigeons.
V. YOUNG HUNTERS
American Head-Hunters—Deer—A Resurrected
Woodpecker—Muskrats—Foxes and Badgers—A Pet
Coon—Bathing—Squirrels—Gophers—A Burglarious Shrike.
VI. THE PLOUGHBOY
The Crops—Doing Chores—The Sights and Sounds of
Winter—Road-making—The Spirit-rapping
Craze—Tuberculosis among the Settlers—A Cruel
Brother—The Rights of the Indians—Put to the Plough at
the Age of Twelve—In the Harvest-Field—Over-Industry
among the Settlers—Running the Breaking-Plough—Digging
a Well—Choke-Damp—Lining Bees.
VII. KNOWLEDGE AND INVENTIONS
Hungry for Knowledge—Borrowing Books—Paternal
Opposition—Snatched Moments—Early Rising proves a Way
out of Difficulties—The Cellar Workshop—Inventions—An
Early-Rising Machine—Novel Clocks—Hygrometers, etc.—A
Neighbor’s Advice.
VIII. THE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSITY
Leaving Home—Creating a Sensation in Pardeeville—A Ride
on a Locomotive—At the State Fair in Madison—Employment
in a Machine-Shop at Prairie du Chien—Back to
Madison—Entering the University—Teaching School—First
Lesson in Botany—More Inventions—The University of the
Wilderness.
INDEX
_Illustrations_
John Muir _Frontispiece_
Muir’s Lake (Fountain Lake) and the Garden Meadow 62
Our First Wisconsin Home 100
Clock with Hand rising and setting with the Sun, invented
by the Author in his Boyhood 132
Barometer invented by the Author in his Boyhood 164
Combined Thermometer, Hygrometer, Barometer, and
Pyrometer, invented by the Author in his Boyhood 196
The Hickory Hill House, built in 1857 230
Thermometer invented by the Author in his Boyhood 258
Self-Setting Sawmill. Model built in Cellar. Invented by
the Author in his Boyhood 258
My Desk, made and used at the Wisconsin State University 284
_The Story of My Boyhood and Youth_
IToC
A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND
Earliest Recollections—The “Dandy Doctor” Terror—Deeds of Daring—The
Savagery of Boys—School and Fighting—Birds’-nesting.
When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild,
and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and
wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the
stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the
land lay in smooth cultivation. With red-blooded playmates, wild as
myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and
along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels
and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best
of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black
headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and
the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. We
never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six years old
I ran away to the seashore or the fields almost every Saturday, and
every day in the school vacations except Sundays, though solemnly
warned that I must play at home in the garden and back yard, lest I
should learn to think bad thoughts and say bad words. All in vain. In
spite of the sure sore punishments that followed like shadows, the
natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious course
as invincible and unstoppable as stars.
My earliest recollections of the country were gained on short walks
with my grandfather when I was perhaps not over three years old. On one
of these walks grandfather took me to Lord Lauderdale’s gardens, where
I saw figs growing against a sunny wall and tasted some of them, and
got as many apples to eat as I wished. On another memorable walk in a
hay-field, when we sat down to rest on one of the haycocks I heard a
sharp, prickly, stinging cry, and, jumping up eagerly, called
grandfather’s attention to it. He said he heard only the wind, but I
insisted on digging into the hay and turning it over until we
discovered the source of the strange exciting sound,—a mother field
mouse with half a dozen naked young hanging to her teats. This to me
was a wonderful discovery. No hunter could have been more excited on
discovering a bear and her cubs in a wilderness den.
I was sent to school before I had completed my third year. The first
schoolday was doubtless full of wonders, but I am not able to recall
any of them. I remember the servant washing my face and getting soap in
my eyes, and mother hanging a little green bag with my first book in it
around my neck so I would not lose it, and its blowing back in the
sea-wind like a flag. But before I was sent to school my grandfather,
as I was told, had taught me my letters from shop signs across the
street. I can remember distinctly how proud I was when I had spelled my
way through the little first book into the second, which seemed large
and important, and so on to the third. Going from one book to another
formed a grand triumphal advancement, the memories of which still stand
out in clear relief.
The third book contained interesting stories as well as plain
reading-and spelling-lessons. To me the best story of all was
“Llewellyn’s Dog,” the first animal that comes to mind after the
needle-voiced field mouse. It so deeply interested and touched me and
some of my classmates that we read it over and over with aching hearts,
both in and out of school and shed bitter tears over the brave faithful
dog, Gelert, slain by his own master, who imagined that he had devoured
his son because he came to him all bloody when the boy was lost, though
he had saved the child’s life by killing a big wolf. We have to look
far back to learn how great may be the capacity of a child’s heart for
sorrow and sympathy with animals as well as with human friends and
neighbors. This auld-lang-syne story stands out in the throng of old
schoolday memories as clearly as if I had myself been one of that Welsh
hunting-party—heard the bugles blowing, seen Gelert slain, joined in
the search for the lost child, discovered it at last happy and smiling
among the grass and bushes beside the dead, mangled wolf, and wept with
Llewellyn over the sad fate of his noble, faithful dog friend.
Another favorite in this book was Southey’s poem “The Inchcape Bell,” a
story of a priest and a pirate. A good priest in order to warn seamen
in dark stormy weather hung a big bell on the dangerous Inchcape Rock.
The greater the storm and higher the waves, the louder rang the warning
bell, until it was cut off and sunk by wicked Ralph the Rover. One fine
day, as the story goes, when the bell was ringing gently, the pirate
put out to the rock, saying, “I’ll sink that bell and plague the Abbot
of Aberbrothok.” So he cut the rope, and down went the bell “with a
gurgling sound; the bubbles rose and burst around,” etc. Then “Ralph
the Rover sailed away; he scoured the seas for many a day; and now,
grown rich with plundered store, he steers his course for Scotland’s
shore.” Then came a terrible storm with cloud darkness and night
darkness and high roaring waves, “Now where we are,” cried the pirate,
“I cannot tell, but I wish I could hear the Inchcape bell.” And the
story goes on to tell how the wretched rover “tore his hair,” and
“curst himself in his despair,” when “with a shivering shock” the stout
ship struck on the Inchcape Rock, and went down with Ralph and his
plunder beside the good priest’s bell. The story appealed to our love
of kind deeds and of wildness and fair play.
A lot of terrifying experiences connected with these first schooldays
grew out of crimes committed by the keeper of a low lodging-house in
Edinburgh, who allowed poor homeless wretches to sleep on benches or
the floor for a penny or so a night, and, when kind Death came to their
relief, sold the bodies for dissection to Dr. Hare of the medical
school. None of us children ever heard anything like the original
story. The servant girls told us that “Dandy Doctors,” clad in long
black cloaks and supplied with a store of sticking-plaster of wondrous
adhesiveness, prowled at night about the country lanes and even the
town streets, watching for children to choke and sell. The Dandy
Doctor’s business method, as the servants explained it, was with
lightning quickness to clap a sticking-plaster on the face of a
scholar, covering mouth and nose, preventing breathing or crying for
help, then pop us under his long black cloak and carry us to Edinburgh
to be sold and sliced into small pieces for folk to learn how we were
made. We always mentioned the name “Dandy Doctor” in a fearful whisper,
and never dared venture out of doors after dark. In the short winter
days it got dark before school closed, and in cloudy weather we
sometimes had difficulty in finding our way home unless a servant with
a lantern was sent for us; but during the Dandy Doctor period the
school was closed earlier, for if detained until the usual hour the
teacher could not get us to leave the schoolroom. We would rather stay
all night supperless than dare the mysterious doctors supposed to be
lying in wait for us. We had to go up a hill called the Davel Brae that
lay between the schoolhouse and the main street. One evening just
before dark, as we were running up the hill, one of the boys shouted,
“A Dandy Doctor! A Dandy Doctor!” and we all fled pellmell back into
the schoolhouse to the astonishment of Mungo Siddons, the teacher. I
can remember to this day the amused look on the good dominie’s face as
he stared and tried to guess what had got into us, until one of the
older boys breathlessly explained that there was an awful big Dandy
Doctor on the Brae and we couldna gang hame. Others corroborated the
dreadful news. “Yes! We saw him, plain as onything, with his lang black
cloak to hide us in, and some of us thought we saw a sticken-plaister
ready in his hand.” We were in such a state of fear and trembling that
the teacher saw he wasn’t going to get rid of us without going himself
as leader. He went only a short distance, however, and turned us over
to the care of the two biggest scholars, who led us to the top of the
Brae and then left us to scurry home and dash into the door like
pursued squirrels diving into their holes.
Just before school skaled (closed), we all arose and sang the fine hymn
“Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing.” In the spring when the swallows
were coming back from their winter homes we sang—
“Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
Welcome from a foreign shore;
Safe escaped from many a danger ...”
and while singing we all swayed in rhythm with the music. “The Cuckoo,”
that always told his name in the spring of the year, was another
favorite song, and when there was nothing in particular to call to mind
any special bird or animal, the songs we sang were widely varied, such
as
“The whale, the whale is the beast for me,
Plunging along through the deep, deep sea.”
But the best of all was “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,” though at
that time the most significant part I fear was the first three words.
With my school lessons father made me learn hymns and Bible verses. For
learning “Rock of Ages” he gave me a penny, and I thus became suddenly
rich. Scotch boys are seldom spoiled with money. We thought more of a
penny those economical days than the poorest American schoolboy thinks
of a dollar. To decide what to do with that first penny was an
extravagantly serious affair. I ran in great excitement up and down the
street, examining the tempting goodies in the shop windows before
venturing on so important an investment. My playmates also became
excited when the wonderful news got abroad that Johnnie Muir had a
penny, hoping to obtain a taste of the orange, apple, or candy it was
likely to bring forth.
At this time infants were baptized and vaccinated a few days after
birth. I remember very well a fight with the doctor when my brother
David was vaccinated. This happened, I think, before I was sent to
school. I couldn’t imagine what the doctor, a tall, severe-looking man
in black, was doing to my brother, but as mother, who was holding him
in her arms, offered no objection, I looked on quietly while he
scratched the arm until I saw blood. Then, unable to trust even my
mother, I managed to spring up high enough to grab and bite the
doctor’s arm, yelling that I wasna gan to let him hurt my bonnie
brither, while to my utter astonishment mother and the doctor only
laughed at me. So far from complete at times is sympathy between
parents and children, and so much like wild beasts are baby boys,
little fighting, biting, climbing pagans.
Father was proud of his garden and seemed always to be trying to make
it as much like Eden as possible, and in a corner of it he gave each of
us a little bit of ground for our very own in which we planted what we
best liked, wondering how the hard dry seeds could change into soft
leaves and flowers and find their way out to the light; and, to see how
they were coming on, we used to dig up the larger ones, such as peas
and beans, every day. My aunt had a corner assigned to her in our
garden which she filled with lilies, and we all looked with the utmost
respect and admiration at that precious lily-bed and wondered whether
when we grew up we should ever be rich enough to own one anything like
so grand. We imagined that each lily was worth an enormous sum of money
and never dared to touch a single leaf or petal of them. We really
stood in awe of them. Far, far was I then from the wild lily gardens of
California that I was destined to see in their glory.
When I was a little boy at Mungo Siddons’s school a flower-show was
held in Dunbar, and I saw a number of the exhibitors carrying large
handfuls of dahlias, the first I had ever seen. I thought them
marvelous in size and beauty and, as in the case of my aunt’s lilies,
wondered if I should ever be rich enough to own some of them.
Although I never dared to touch my aunt’s sacred lilies, I have good
cause to remember stealing some common flowers from an apothecary,
Peter Lawson, who also answered the purpose of a regular physician to
most of the poor people of the town and adjacent country. He had a pony
which was considered very wild and dangerous, and when he was called
out of town he mounted this wonderful beast, which, after standing long
in the stable, was frisky and boisterous, and often to our delight
reared and jumped and danced about from side to side of the street
before he could be persuaded to go ahead. We boys gazed in awful
admiration and wondered how the druggist could be so brave and able as
to get on and stay on that wild beast’s back. This famous Peter loved
flowers and had a fine garden surrounded by an iron fence, through the
bars of which, when I thought no one saw me, I oftentimes snatched a
flower and took to my heels. One day Peter discovered me in this
mischief, dashed out into the street and caught me. I screamed that I
wouldna steal any more if he would let me go. He didn’t say anything
but just dragged me along to the stable where he kept the wild pony,
pushed me in right back of its heels, and shut the door. I was
screaming, of course, but as soon as I was imprisoned the fear of being
kicked quenched all noise. I hardly dared breathe. My only hope was in
motionless silence. Imagine the agony I endured! I did not steal any
more of his flowers. He was a good hard judge of boy nature.
I was in Peter’s hands some time before this, when I was about two and
a half years old. The servant girl bathed us small folk before putting
us to bed. The smarting soapy scrubbings of the Saturday nights in
preparation for the Sabbath were particularly severe, and we all
dreaded them. My sister Sarah, the next older than me, wanted the
long-legged stool I was sitting on awaiting my turn, so she just tipped
me off. My chin struck on the edge of the bath-tub, and, as I was
talking at the time, my tongue happened to be in the way of my teeth
when they were closed by the blow, and a deep gash was cut on the side
of it, which bled profusely. Mother came running at the noise I made,
wrapped me up, put me in the servant girl’s arms and told her to run
with me through the garden and out by a back way to Peter Lawson to
have something done to stop the bleeding. He simply pushed a wad of
cotton into my mouth after soaking it in some brown astringent stuff,
and told me to be sure to keep my mouth shut and all would soon be
well. Mother put me to bed, calmed my fears, and told me to lie still
and sleep like a gude bairn. But just as I was dropping off to sleep I
swallowed the bulky wad of medicated cotton and with it, as I imagined,
my tongue also. My screams over so great a loss brought mother, and
when she anxiously took me in her arms and inquired what was the
matter, I told her that I had swallowed my tongue. She only laughed at
me, much to my astonishment, when I expected that she would bewail the
awful loss her boy had sustained. My sisters, who were older than I,
oftentimes said when I happened to be talking too much, “It’s a pity
you hadn’t swallowed at least half of that long tongue of yours when
you were little.”
It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the
Scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary
bathing for health terrible to us. I well remember among the awful
experiences of childhood being taken by the servant to the seashore
when I was between two and three years old, stripped at the side of a
deep pool in the rocks, plunged into it among crawling crawfish and
slippery wriggling snake-like eels, and drawn up gasping and shrieking
only to be plunged down again and again. As the time approached for
this terrible bathing, I used to hide in the darkest corners of the
house, and oftentimes a long search was required to find me. But after
we were a few years older, we enjoyed bathing with other boys as we
wandered along the shore, careful, however, not to get into a pool that
had an invisible boy-devouring monster at the bottom of it. Such pools,
miniature maelstroms, were called “sookin-in-goats” and were well known
to most of us. Nevertheless we never ventured into any pool on strange
parts of the coast before we had thrust a stick into it. If the stick
were not pulled out of our hands, we boldly entered and enjoyed
plashing and ducking long ere we had learned to swim.
One of our best playgrounds was the famous old Dunbar Castle, to which
King Edward fled after his defeat at Bannockburn. It was built more
than a thousand years ago, and though we knew little of its history, we
had heard many mysterious stories of the battles fought about its
walls, and firmly believed that every bone we found in the ruins
belonged to an ancient warrior. We tried to see who could climb highest
on the crumbling peaks and crags, and took chances that no cautious
mountaineer would try. That I did not fall and finish my
rock-scrambling in those adventurous boyhood days seems now a
reasonable wonder.
Among our best games were running, jumping, wrestling, and scrambling.
I was so proud of my skill as a climber that when I first heard of hell
from a servant girl who loved to tell its horrors and warn us that if
we did anything wrong we would be cast into it, I always insisted that
I could climb out of it. I imagined it was only a sooty pit with stone
walls like those of the castle, and I felt sure there must be chinks
and cracks in the masonry for fingers and toes. Anyhow the terrors of
the horrible place seldom lasted long beyond the telling; for natural
faith casts out fear.
Most of the Scotch children believe in ghosts, and some under peculiar
conditions continue to believe in them all through life. Grave ghosts
are deemed particularly dangerous, and many of the most credulous will
go far out of their way to avoid passing through or near a graveyard in
the dark. After being instructed by the servants in the nature, looks,
and habits of the various black and white ghosts, boowuzzies, and
witches we often speculated as to whether they could run fast, and
tried to believe that we had a good chance to get away from most of
them. To improve our speed and wind, we often took long runs into the
country. Tam o’ Shanter’s mare outran a lot of witches,—at least until
she reached a place of safety beyond the keystone of the bridge,—and we
thought perhaps we also might be able to outrun them.
Our house formerly belonged to a physician, and a servant girl told us
that the ghost of the dead doctor haunted one of the unoccupied rooms
in the second story that was kept dark on account of a heavy
window-tax. Our bedroom was adjacent to the ghost room, which had in it
a lot of chemical apparatus,—glass tubing, glass and brass retorts,
test-tubes, flasks, etc.,—and we thought that those strange articles
were still used by the old dead doctor in compounding physic. In the
long summer days David and I were put to bed several hours before
sunset. Mother tucked us in carefully, drew the curtains of the big
old-fashioned bed, and told us to lie still and sleep like gude bairns;
but we were usually out of bed, playing games of daring called
“scootchers,” about as soon as our loving mother reached the foot of
the stairs, for we couldn’t lie still, however hard we might try. Going
into the ghost room was regarded as a very great scootcher. After
venturing in a few steps and rushing back in terror, I used to dare
David to go as far without getting caught.
The roof of our house, as well as the crags and walls of the old
castle, offered fine mountaineering exercise. Our bedroom was lighted
by a dormer window. One night I opened it in search of good scootchers
and hung myself out over the slates, holding on to the sill, while the
wind was making a balloon of my nightgown. I then dared David to try
the adventure, and he did. Then I went out again and hung by one hand,
and David did the same. Then I hung by one finger, being careful not to
slip, and he did that too. Then I stood on the sill and examined the
edge of the left wall of the window, crept up the slates along its side
by slight finger-holds, got astride of the roof, sat there a few
minutes looking at the scenery over the garden wall while the wind was
howling and threatening to blow me off, then managed to slip down,
catch hold of the sill, and get safely back into the room. But before
attempting this scootcher, recognizing its dangerous character, with
commendable caution I warned David that in case I should happen to slip
I would grip the rain-trough when I was going over the eaves and hang
on, and that he must then run fast downstairs and tell father to get a
ladder for me, and tell him to be quick because I would soon be tired
hanging dangling in the wind by my hands. After my return from this
capital scootcher, David, not to be outdone, crawled up to the top of
the window-roof, and got bravely astride of it; but in trying to return
he lost courage and began to greet (to cry), “I canna get doon. Oh, I
canna get doon.” I leaned out of the window and shouted encouragingly,
“Dinna greet, Davie, dinna greet, I’ll help ye doon. If you greet,
fayther will hear, and gee us baith an awfu’ skelping.” Then, standing
on the sill and holding on by one hand to the window-casing, I directed
him to slip his feet down within reach, and, after securing a good
hold, I jumped inside and dragged him in by his heels. This finished
scootcher-scrambling for the night and frightened us into bed.
In the short winter days, when it was dark even at our early bedtime,
we usually spent the hours before going to sleep playing voyages around
the world under the bed-clothing. After mother had carefully covered
us, bade us good-night and gone downstairs, we set out on our travels.
Burrowing like moles, we visited France, India, America, Australia, New
Zealand, and all the places we had ever heard of; our travels never
ending until we fell asleep. When mother came to take a last look at
us, before she went to bed, to see that we were covered, we were
oftentimes covered so well that she had difficulty in finding us, for
we were hidden in all sorts of positions where sleep happened to
overtake us, but in the morning we always found ourselves in good
order, lying straight like gude bairns, as she said.
Some fifty years later, when I visited Scotland, I got one of my Dunbar
schoolmates to introduce me to the owners of our old home, from whom I
obtained permission to go upstairs to examine our bedroom window and
judge what sort of adventure getting on its roof must have been, and
with all my after experience in mountaineering, I found that what I had
done in daring boyhood was now beyond my skill.
Boys are often at once cruel and merciful, thoughtlessly hard-hearted
and tender-hearted, sympathetic, pitiful, and kind in ever changing
contrasts. Love of neighbors, human or animal, grows up amid savage
traits, coarse and fine. When father made out to get us securely locked
up in the back yard to prevent our shore and field wanderings, we had
to play away the comparatively dull time as best we could. One of our
amusements was hunting cats without seriously hurting them. These
sagacious animals knew, however, that, though not very dangerous, boys
were not to be trusted. One time in particular I remember, when we
began throwing stones at an experienced old Tom, not wishing to hurt
him much, though he was a tempting mark. He soon saw what we were up
to, fled to the stable, and climbed to the top of the hay manger. He
was still within range, however, and we kept the stones flying faster
and faster, but he just blinked and played possum without wincing
either at our best shots or at the noise we made. I happened to strike
him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he still blinked and sat
still as if without feeling. “He must be mortally wounded,” I said,
“and now we must kill him to put him out of pain,” the savage in us
rapidly growing with indulgence. All took heartily to this sort of cat
mercy and began throwing the heaviest stones we could manage, but that
old fellow knew what characters we were, and just as we imagined him
mercifully dead he evidently thought the play was becoming too serious
and that it was time to retreat; for suddenly with a wild whirr and
gurr of energy he launched himself over our heads, rushed across the
yard in a blur of speed, climbed to the roof of another building and
over the garden wall, out of pain and bad company, with all his lives
wideawake and in good working order.
After we had thus learned that Tom had at least nine lives, we tried to
verify the common saying that no matter how far cats fell they always
landed on their feet unhurt. We caught one in our back yard, not Tom
but a smaller one of manageable size, and somehow got him smuggled up
to the top story of the house. I don’t know how in the world we managed
to let go of him, for as soon as we opened the window and held him over
the sill he knew his danger and made violent efforts to scratch and
bite his way back into the room; but we determined to carry the thing
through, and at last managed to drop him. I can remember to this day
how the poor creature in danger of his life strained and balanced as he
was falling and managed to alight on his feet. This was a cruel thing
for even wild boys to do, and we never tried the experiment again, for
we sincerely pitied the poor fellow when we saw him creeping slowly
away, stunned and frightened, with a swollen black and blue chin.
Again—showing the natural savagery of boys—we delighted in dog-fights,
and even in the horrid red work of slaughter-houses, often running long
distances and climbing over walls and roofs to see a pig killed, as
soon as we heard the desperately earnest squealing. And if the butcher
was good-natured, we begged him to let us get a near view of the
mysterious insides and to give us a bladder to blow up for a foot-ball.
But here is an illustration of the better side of boy nature. In our
back yard there were three elm trees and in the one nearest the house a
pair of robin-redbreasts had their nest. When the young were almost
able to fly, a troop of the celebrated “Scottish Grays,” visited
Dunbar, and three or four of the fine horses were lodged in our stable.
When the soldiers were polishing their swords and helmets, they
happened to notice the nest, and just as they were leaving, one of them
climbed the tree and robbed it. With sore sympathy we watched the young
birds as the hard-hearted robber pushed them one by one beneath his
jacket,—all but two that jumped out of the nest and tried to fly, but
they were easily caught as they fluttered on the ground, and were
hidden away with the rest. The distress of the bereaved parents, as
they hovered and screamed over the frightened crying children they so
long had loved and sheltered and fed, was pitiful to see; but the
shining soldier rode grandly away on his big gray horse, caring only
for the few pennies the young songbirds would bring and the beer they
would buy, while we all, sisters and brothers, were crying and sobbing.
I remember, as if it happened this day, how my heart fairly ached and
choked me. Mother put us to bed and tried to comfort us, telling us
that the little birds would be well fed and grow big, and soon learn to
sing in pretty cages; but again and again we rehearsed the sad story of
the poor bereaved birds and their frightened children, and could not be
comforted. Father came into the room when we were half asleep and still
sobbing, and I heard mother telling him that, “a’ the bairns’ hearts
were broken over the robbing of the nest in the elm.”
After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or six years, very
few of my schooldays passed without a fist fight, and half a dozen was
no uncommon number. When any classmate of our own age questioned our
rank and standing as fighters, we always made haste to settle the
matter at a quiet place on the Davel Brae. To be a “gude fechter” was
our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school. To
be a good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard
to hold high places in our classes and gloried in being Dux. We fairly
reveled in the battle stories of glorious William Wallace and Robert
the Bruce, with which every breath of Scotch air is saturated, and of
course we were all going to be soldiers. On the Davel Brae battleground
we often managed to bring on something like real war, greatly more
exciting than personal combat. Choosing leaders, we divided into two
armies. In winter damp snow furnished plenty of ammunition to make the
thing serious, and in summer sand and grass sods. Cheering and shouting
some battle-cry such as “Bannockburn! Bannockburn! Scotland forever!
The Last War in India!” we were led bravely on. For heavy battery work
we stuffed our Scotch blue bonnets with snow and sand, sometimes mixed
with gravel, and fired them at each other as cannon-balls.
Of course we always looked eagerly forward to vacation days and thought
them slow in coming. Old Mungo Siddons gave us a lot of gooseberries or
currants and wished us a happy time. Some sort of special
closing-exercises—singing, recitations, etc.—celebrated the great day,
but I remember only the berries, freedom from school work, and
opportunities for run-away rambles in the fields and along the
wave-beaten seashore.
An exciting time came when at the age of seven or eight years I left
the auld Davel Brae school for the grammar school. Of course I had a
terrible lot of fighting to do, because a new scholar had to meet every
one of his age who dared to challenge him, this being the common
introduction to a new school. It was very strenuous for the first month
or so, establishing my fighting rank, taking up new studies, especially
Latin and French, getting acquainted with new classmates and the master
and his rules. In the first few Latin and French lessons the new
teacher, Mr. Lyon, blandly smiled at our comical blunders, but
pedagogical weather of the severest kind quickly set in, when for every
mistake, everything short of perfection, the taws was promptly applied.
We had to get three lessons every day in Latin, three in French, and as
many in English, besides spelling, history, arithmetic, and geography.
Word lessons in particular, the wouldst-couldst-shouldst-have-loved
kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed
the whole of the French, Latin, and English grammars to memory, and in
connection with reading-lessons we were called on to recite parts of
them with the rules over and over again, as if all the regular and
irregular incomprehensible verb stuff was poetry. In addition to all
this, father made me learn so many Bible verses every day that by the
time I was eleven years of age I had about three fourths of the Old
Testament and all of the New by heart and by sore flesh. I could recite
the New Testament from the beginning of Matthew to the end of
Revelation without a single stop. The dangers of cramming and of making
scholars study at home instead of letting their little brains rest were
never heard of in those days. We carried our school-books home in a
strap every night and committed to memory our next day’s lessons before
we went to bed, and to do that we had to bend our attention as closely
on our tasks as lawyers on great million-dollar cases. I can’t conceive
of anything that would now enable me to concentrate my attention more
fully than when I was a mere stripling boy, and it was all done by
whipping,—thrashing in general. Old-fashioned Scotch teachers spent no
time in seeking short roads to knowledge, or in trying any of the
new-fangled psychological methods so much in vogue nowadays. There was
nothing said about making the seats easy or the lessons easy. We were
simply driven pointblank against our books like soldiers against the
enemy, and sternly ordered, “Up and at ’em. Commit your lessons to
memory!” If we failed in any part, however slight, we were whipped; for
the grand, simple, all-sufficing Scotch discovery had been made that
there was a close connection between the skin and the memory, and that
irritating the skin excited the memory to any required degree.
Fighting was carried on still more vigorously in the high school than
in the common school. Whenever any one was challenged, either the
challenge was allowed or it was decided by a battle on the seashore,
where with stubborn enthusiasm we battered each other as if we had not
been sufficiently battered by the teacher. When we were so fortunate as
to finish a fight without getting a black eye, we usually escaped a
thrashing at home and another next morning at school, for other traces
of the fray could be easily washed off at a well on the church brae, or
concealed, or passed as results of playground accidents; but a black
eye could never be explained away from downright fighting. A good
double thrashing was the inevitable penalty, but all without avail;
fighting went on without the slightest abatement, like natural storms;
for no punishment less than death could quench the ancient inherited
belligerence burning in our pagan blood. Nor could we be made to
believe it was fair that father and teacher should thrash us so
industriously for our good, while begrudging us the pleasure of
thrashing each other for our good. All these various thrashings,
however, were admirably influential in developing not only memory but
fortitude as well. For if we did not endure our school punishments and
fighting pains without flinching and making faces, we were mocked on
the playground, and public opinion on a Scotch playground was a
powerful agent in controlling behavior; therefore we at length managed
to keep our features in smooth repose while enduring pain that would
try anybody but an American Indian. Far from feeling that we were
called on to endure too much pain, one of our playground games was
thrashing each other with whips about two feet long made from the
tough, wiry stems of a species of polygonum fastened together in a
stiff, firm braid. One of us handing two of these whips to a companion
to take his choice, we stood up close together and thrashed each other
on the legs until one succumbed to the intolerable pain and thus lost
the game. Nearly all of our playground games were
strenuous,—shin-battering shinny, wrestling, prisoners’ base, and dogs
and hares,—all augmenting in no slight degree our lessons in fortitude.
Moreover, we regarded our punishments and pains of every sort as
training for war, since we were all going to be soldiers. Besides
single combats we sometimes assembled on Saturdays to meet the scholars
of another school, and very little was required for the growth of
strained relations, and war. The immediate cause might be nothing more
than a saucy stare. Perhaps the scholar stared at would insolently
inquire, “What are ye glowerin’ at, Bob?” Bob would reply, “I’ll look
where I hae a mind and hinder me if ye daur.” “Weel, Bob,” the outraged
stared-at scholar would reply, “I’ll soon let ye see whether I daur or
no!” and give Bob a blow on the face. This opened the battle, and every
good scholar belonging to either school was drawn into it. After both
sides were sore and weary, a strong-lunged warrior would be heard above
the din of battle shouting, “I’ll tell ye what we’ll dae wi’ ye. If
ye’ll let us alane we’ll let ye alane!” and the school war ended as
most wars between nations do; and some of them begin in much the same
way.
Notwithstanding the great number of harshly enforced rules, not very
good order was kept in school in my time. There were two schools within
a few rods of each other, one for mathematics, navigation, etc., the
other, called the grammar school, that I attended. The masters lived in
a big freestone house within eight or ten yards of the schools, so that
they could easily step out for anything they wanted or send one of the
scholars. The moment our master disappeared, perhaps for a book or a
drink, every scholar left his seat and his lessons, jumped on top of
the benches and desks or crawled beneath them, tugging, rolling,
wrestling, accomplishing in a minute a depth of disorder and din
unbelievable save by a Scottish scholar. We even carried on war, class
against class, in those wild, precious minutes. A watcher gave the
alarm when the master opened his house-door to return, and it was a
great feat to get into our places before he entered, adorned in awful
majestic authority, shouting “Silence!” and striking resounding blows
with his cane on a desk or on some unfortunate scholar’s back.
Forty-seven years after leaving this fighting school, I returned on a
visit to Scotland, and a cousin in Dunbar introduced me to a minister
who was acquainted with the history of the school, and obtained for me
an invitation to dine with the new master. Of course I gladly accepted,
for I wanted to see the old place of fun and pain, and the battleground
on the sands. Mr. Lyon, our able teacher and thrasher, I learned, had
held his place as master of the school for twenty or thirty years after
I left it, and had recently died in London, after preparing many young
men for the English Universities. At the dinner-table, while I was
recalling the amusements and fights of my old schooldays, the minister
remarked to the new master, “Now, don’t you wish that you had been
teacher in those days, and gained the honor of walloping John Muir?”
This pleasure so merrily suggested showed that the minister also had
been a fighter in his youth. The old freestone school building was
still perfectly sound, but the carved, ink-stained desks were almost
whittled away.
The highest part of our playground back of the school commanded a view
of the sea, and we loved to watch the passing ships and, judging by
their rigging, make guesses as to the ports they had sailed from, those
to which they were bound, what they were loaded with, their tonnage,
etc. In stormy weather they were all smothered in clouds and spray, and
showers of salt scud torn from the tops of the waves came flying over
the playground wall. In those tremendous storms many a brave ship
foundered or was tossed and smashed on the rocky shore. When a wreck
occurred within a mile or two of the town, we often managed by running
fast to reach it and pick up some of the spoils. In particular I
remember visiting the battered fragments of an unfortunate brig or
schooner that had been loaded with apples, and finding fine unpitiful
sport in rushing into the spent waves and picking up the red-cheeked
fruit from the frothy, seething foam.
All our school-books were extravagantly illustrated with drawings of
every kind of sailing-vessel, and every boy owned some sort of craft
whittled from a block of wood and trimmed with infinite pains,—sloops,
schooners, brigs, and full-rigged ships, with their sails and string
ropes properly adjusted and named for us by some old sailor. These
precious toy craft with lead keels we learned to sail on a pond near
the town. With the sails set at the proper angle to the wind, they made
fast straight voyages across the pond to boys on the other side, who
readjusted the sails and started them back on the return voyages.
Oftentimes fleets of half a dozen or more were started together in
exciting races.
Our most exciting sport, however, was playing with gunpowder. We made
guns out of gas-pipe, mounted them on sticks of any shape, clubbed our
pennies together for powder, gleaned pieces of lead here and there and
cut them into slugs, and, while one aimed, another applied a match to
the touch-hole. With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach
and fired at the gulls and solan-geese as they passed us. Fortunately
we never hurt any of them that we knew of. We also dug holes in the
ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a fuse
made of a wheat-stalk, and, reaching cautiously forward, touched a
match to the straw. This we called making earthquakes. Oftentimes we
went home with singed hair and faces well peppered with powder-grains
that could not be washed out. Then, of course, came a correspondingly
severe punishment from both father and teacher.
Another favorite sport was climbing trees and scaling garden-walls.
Boys eight or ten years of age could get over almost any wall by
standing on each other’s shoulders, thus making living ladders. To make
walls secure against marauders, many of them were finished on top with
broken bottles imbedded in lime, leaving the cutting edges sticking up;
but with bunches of grass and weeds we could sit or stand in comfort on
top of the jaggedest of them.
Like squirrels that begin to eat nuts before they are ripe, we began to
eat apples about as soon as they were formed, causing, of course,
desperate gastric disturbances to be cured by castor oil. Serious were
the risks we ran in climbing and squeezing through hedges, and, of
course, among the country folk we were far from welcome. Farmers
passing us on the roads often shouted by way of greeting: “Oh, you
vagabonds! Back to the toon wi’ ye. Gang back where ye belang. You’re
up to mischief, Ise warrant. I can see it. The gamekeeper’ll catch ye,
and maist like ye’ll a’ be hanged some day.”
Breakfast in those auld-lang-syne days was simple oatmeal porridge,
usually with a little milk or treacle, served in wooden dishes called
“luggies,” formed of staves hooped together like miniature tubs about
four or five inches in diameter. One of the staves, the lug or ear, a
few inches longer than the others, served as a handle, while the number
of luggies ranged in a row on a dresser indicated the size of the
family. We never dreamed of anything to come after the porridge, or of
asking for more. Our portions were consumed in about a couple of
minutes; then off to school. At noon we came racing home ravenously
hungry. The midday meal, called dinner, was usually vegetable broth, a
small piece of boiled mutton, and barley-meal scone. None of us liked
the barley scone bread, therefore we got all we wanted of it, and in
desperation had to eat it, for we were always hungry, about as hungry
after as before meals. The evening meal was called “tea” and was served
on our return from school. It consisted, as far as we children were
concerned, of half a slice of white bread without butter, barley scone,
and warm water with a little milk and sugar in it, a beverage called
“content,” which warmed but neither cheered nor inebriated. Immediately
after tea we ran across the street with our books to Grandfather
Gilrye, who took pleasure in seeing us and hearing us recite our next
day’s lessons. Then back home to supper, usually a boiled potato and
piece of barley scone. Then family worship, and to bed.
Our amusements on Saturday afternoons and vacations depended mostly on
getting away from home into the country, especially in the spring when
the birds were calling loudest. Father sternly forbade David and me
from playing truant in the fields with plundering wanderers like
ourselves, fearing we might go on from bad to worse, get hurt in
climbing over walls, caught by gamekeepers, or lost by falling over a
cliff into the sea. “Play as much as you like in the back yard and
garden,” he said, “and mind what you’ll get when you forget and
disobey.” Thus he warned us with an awfully stern countenance, looking
very hard-hearted, while naturally his heart was far from hard, though
he devoutly believed in eternal punishment for bad boys both here and
hereafter. Nevertheless, like devout martyrs of wildness, we stole away
to the seashore or the green, sunny fields with almost religious
regularity, taking advantage of opportunities when father was very
busy, to join our companions, oftenest to hear the birds sing and hunt
their nests, glorying in the number we had discovered and called our
own. A sample of our nest chatter was something like this: Willie
Chisholm would proudly exclaim—“I ken (know) seventeen nests, and you,
Johnnie, ken only fifteen.”
“But I wouldna gie my fifteen for your seventeen, for five of mine are
larks and mavises. You ken only three o’ the best singers.”
“Yes, Johnnie, but I ken six goldies and you ken only one. Maist of
yours are only sparrows and linties and robin-redbreasts.”
Then perhaps Bob Richardson would loudly declare that he “kenned mair
nests than onybody, for he kenned twenty-three, with about fifty eggs
in them and mair than fifty young birds—maybe a hundred. Some of them
naething but raw gorblings but lots of them as big as their mithers and
ready to flee. And aboot fifty craw’s nests and three fox dens.”
“Oh, yes, Bob, but that’s no fair, for naebody counts craw’s nests and
fox holes, and then you live in the country at Belle-haven where ye
have the best chance.”
“Yes, but I ken a lot of bumbee’s nests, baith the red-legged and the
yellow-legged kind.”
“Oh, wha cares for bumbee’s nests!”
“Weel, but here’s something! Ma father let me gang to a fox hunt, and
man, it was grand to see the hounds and the lang-legged horses lowpin
the dykes and burns and hedges!”