intently at something and came up to see what it was. Three or four
people in that little village formed an attractive crowd, and in
fifteen or twenty minutes the greater part of the population of
Pardeeville stood gazing in a circle around my strange hickory
belongings. I kept outside of the circle to avoid being seen, and had
the advantage of hearing the remarks without being embarrassed. Almost
every one as he came up would say, “What’s that? What’s it for? Who
made it?” The landlord would answer them all alike, “Why, a young man
that lives out in the country somewhere made it, and he says it’s a
thing for keeping time, getting up in the morning, and something that I
didn’t understand. I don’t know what he meant.” “Oh, no!” one of the
crowd would say, “that can’t be. It’s for something else—something
mysterious. Mark my words, you’ll see all about it in the newspapers
some of these days.” A curious little fellow came running up the
street, joined the crowd, stood on tiptoe to get sight of the wonder,
quickly made up his mind, and shouted in crisp, confident, cock-crowing
style, “I know what that contraption’s for. It’s a machine for taking
the bones out of fish.”
This was in the time of the great popular phrenology craze, when the
fences and barns along the roads throughout the country were plastered
with big skull-bump posters, headed, “Know Thyself,” and advising
everybody to attend schoolhouse lectures to have their heads explained
and be told what they were good for and whom they ought to marry. My
mechanical bundle seemed to bring a good deal of this phrenology to
mind, for many of the onlookers would say, “I wish I could see that
boy’s head,—he must have a tremendous bump of invention.” Others
complimented me by saying, “I wish I had that fellow’s head. I’d rather
have it than the best farm in the State.”
I stayed overnight at this little tavern, waiting for a train. In the
morning I went to the station, and set my bundle on the platform. Along
came the thundering train, a glorious sight, the first train I had ever
waited for. When the conductor saw my queer baggage, he cried, “Hello!
What have we here?”
“Inventions for keeping time, early rising, and so forth. May I take
them into the car with me?”
“You can take them where you like,” he replied, “but you had better
give them to the baggage-master. If you take them into the car they
will draw a crowd and might get broken.”
So I gave them to the baggage-master and made haste to ask the
conductor whether I might ride on the engine. He good-naturedly said:
“Yes, it’s the right place for you. Run ahead, and tell the engineer
what I say.” But the engineer bluntly refused to let me on, saying: “It
don’t matter what the conductor told you. _I_ say you can’t ride on my
engine.”
By this time the conductor, standing ready to start his train, was
watching to see what luck I had, and when he saw me returning came
ahead to meet me.
“The engineer won’t let me on,” I reported.
“Won’t he?” said the kind conductor. “Oh! I guess he will. You come
down with me.” And so he actually took the time and patience to walk
the length of that long train to get me on to the engine.
“Charlie,” said he, addressing the engineer, “don’t you ever take a
passenger?”
“Very seldom,” he replied.
“Anyhow, I wish you would take this young man on. He has the strangest
machines in the baggage-car I ever saw in my life. I believe he could
make a locomotive. He wants to see the engine running. Let him on.”
Then in a low whisper he told me to jump on, which I did gladly, the
engineer offering neither encouragement nor objection.
As soon as the train was started, the engineer asked what the “strange
thing” the conductor spoke of really was.
“Only inventions for keeping time, getting folk up in the morning, and
so forth,” I hastily replied, and before he could ask any more
questions I asked permission to go outside of the cab to see the
machinery. This he kindly granted, adding, “Be careful not to fall off,
and when you hear me whistling for a station you come back, because if
it is reported against me to the superintendent that I allow boys to
run all over my engine I might lose my job.”
Assuring him that I would come back promptly, I went out and walked
along the foot-board on the side of the boiler, watching the
magnificent machine rushing through the landscapes as if glorying in
its strength like a living creature. While seated on the cow-catcher
platform, I seemed to be fairly flying, and the wonderful display of
power and motion was enchanting. This was the first time I had ever
been on a train, much less a locomotive, since I had left Scotland.
When I got to Madison, I thanked the kind conductor and engineer for my
glorious ride, inquired the way to the Fair, shouldered my inventions,
and walked to the Fair Ground.
When I applied for an admission ticket at a window by the gate I told
the agent that I had something to exhibit.
“What is it?” he inquired.
“Well, here it is. Look at it.”
When he craned his neck through the window and got a glimpse of my
bundle, he cried excitedly, “Oh! _you_ don’t need a ticket,—come right
in.”
When I inquired of the agent where such things as mine should be
exhibited, he said, “You see that building up on the hill with a big
flag on it? That’s the Fine Arts Hall, and it’s just the place for your
wonderful invention.”
So I went up to the Fine Arts Hall and looked in, wondering if they
would allow wooden things in so fine a place.
I was met at the door by a dignified gentleman, who greeted me kindly
and said, “Young man, what have we got here?”
“Two clocks and a thermometer,” I replied.
“Did you make these? They look wonderfully beautiful and novel and
must, I think, prove the most interesting feature of the fair.”
“Where shall I place them?” I inquired.
“Just look around, young man, and choose the place you like best,
whether it is occupied or not. You can have your pick of all the
building, and a carpenter to make the necessary shelving and assist you
every way possible!”
So I quickly had a shelf made large enough for all of them, went out on
the hill and picked up some glacial boulders of the right size for
weights, and in fifteen or twenty minutes the clocks were running. They
seemed to attract more attention than anything else in the hall I got
lots of praise from the crowd and the newspaper-reporters. The local
press reports were copied into the Eastern papers. It was considered
wonderful that a boy on a farm had been able to invent and make such
things, and almost every spectator foretold good fortune. But I had
been so lectured by my father above all things to avoid praise that I
was afraid to read those kind newspaper notices, and never clipped out
or preserved any of them, just glanced at them and turned away my eyes
from beholding vanity. They gave me a prize of ten or fifteen dollars
and a diploma for wonderful things not down in the list of exhibits.
Many years later, after I had written articles and books, I received a
letter from the gentleman who had charge of the Fine Arts Hall. He
proved to be the Professor of English Literature in the University of
Wisconsin at this Fair time, and long afterward he sent me clippings of
reports of his lectures. He had a lecture on me, discussing style,
etcetera, and telling how well he remembered my arrival at the Hall in
my shirt-sleeves with those mechanical wonders on my shoulder, and so
forth, and so forth. These inventions, though of little importance,
opened all doors for me and made marks that have lasted many years,
simply, I suppose, because they were original and promising.
I was looking around in the mean time to find out where I should go to
seek my fortune. An inventor at the Fair, by the name of Wiard, was
exhibiting an iceboat he had invented to run on the upper Mississippi
from Prairie du Chien to St. Paul during the winter months, explaining
how useful it would be thus to make a highway of the river while it was
closed to ordinary navigation by ice. After he saw my inventions he
offered me a place in his foundry and machine-shop in Prairie du Chien
and promised to assist me all he could. So I made up my mind to accept
his offer and rode with him to Prairie du Chien in his iceboat, which
was mounted on a flat car. I soon found, however, that he was seldom at
home and that I was not likely to learn much at his small shop. I found
a place where I could work for my board and devote my spare hours to
mechanical drawing, geometry, and physics, making but little headway,
however, although the Pelton family, for whom I worked, were very kind.
I made up my mind after a few months’ stay in Prairie du Chien to
return to Madison, hoping that in some way I might be able to gain an
education.
At Madison I raised a few dollars by making and selling a few of those
bedsteads that set the sleepers on their feet in the morning,—inserting
in the footboard the works of an ordinary clock that could be bought
for a dollar. I also made a few dollars addressing circulars in an
insurance office, while at the same time I was paying my board by
taking care of a pair of horses and going errands. This is of no great
interest except that I was thus winning my bread while hoping that
something would turn up that might enable me to make money enough to
enter the State University. This was my ambition, and it never wavered
no matter what I was doing. No University, it seemed to me, could be
more admirably, situated, and as I sauntered about it, charmed with its
fine lawns and trees and beautiful lakes, and saw the students going
and coming with their books, and occasionally practising with a
theodolite in measuring distances, I thought that if I could only join
them it would be the greatest joy of life. I was desperately hungry and
thirsty for knowledge and willing to endure anything to get it.
One day I chanced to meet a student who had noticed my inventions at
the Fair and now recognized me. And when I said, “You are fortunate
fellows to be allowed to study in this beautiful place. I wish I could
join you.” “Well, why don’t you?” he asked. “I haven’t money enough,” I
said. “Oh, as to money,” he reassuringly explained, “very little is
required. I presume you’re able to enter the Freshman class, and you
can board yourself as quite a number of us do at a cost of about a
dollar a week. The baker and milkman come every day. You can live on
bread and milk.” Well, I thought, maybe I have money enough for at
least one beginning term. Anyhow I couldn’t help trying.
With fear and trembling, overladen with ignorance, I called on
Professor Stirling, the Dean of the Faculty, who was then Acting
President, presented my case, and told him how far I had got on with my
studies at home, and that I hadn’t been to school since leaving
Scotland at the age of eleven years, excepting one short term of a
couple of months at a district school, because I could not be spared
from the farm work. After hearing my story, the kind professor welcomed
me to the glorious University—next, it seemed to me, to the Kingdom of
Heaven. After a few weeks in the preparatory department I entered the
Freshman class. In Latin I found that one of the books in use I had
already studied in Scotland. So, after an interruption of a dozen
years, I began my Latin over again where I had left off; and, strange
to say, most of it came back to me, especially the grammar which I had
committed to memory at the Dunbar Grammar School.
During the four years that I was in the University, I earned enough in
the harvest-fields during the long summer vacations to carry me through
the balance of each year, working very hard, cutting with a cradle four
acres of wheat a day, and helping to put it in the shock. But, having
to buy books and paying, I think, thirty-two dollars a year for
instruction, and occasionally buying acids and retorts, glass tubing,
bell-glasses, flasks, etc., I had to cut down expenses for board now
and then to half a dollar a week.
One winter I taught school ten miles south of Madison, earning
much-needed money at the rate of twenty dollars a month, “boarding
round,” and keeping up my University work by studying at night. As I
was not then well enough off to own a watch, I used one of my hickory
clocks, not only for keeping time, but for starting the school fire in
the cold mornings, and regulating class-times. I carried it out on my
shoulder to the old log schoolhouse, and set it to work on a little
shelf nailed to one of the knotty, bulging logs. The winter was very
cold, and I had to go to the schoolhouse and start the fire about eight
o’clock to warm it before the arrival of the scholars. This was a
rather trying job, and one that my clock might easily be made to do.
Therefore, after supper one evening I told the head of the family with
whom I was boarding that if he would give me a candle I would go back
to the schoolhouse and make arrangements for lighting the fire at eight
o’clock, without my having to be present until time to open the school
at nine. He said, “Oh! young man, you have some curious things in the
school-room, but I don’t think you can do that.” I said, “Oh, yes! It’s
easy,” and in hardly more than an hour the simple job was completed. I
had only to place a teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of potash and
sugar on the stove-hearth near a few shavings and kindling, and at the
required time make the clock, through a simple arrangement, touch the
inflammable mixture with a drop of sulphuric acid. Every evening after
school was dismissed, I shoveled out what was left of the fire into the
snow, put in a little kindling, filled up the big box stove with heavy
oak wood, placed the lighting arrangement on the hearth, and set the
clock to drop the acid at the hour of eight; all this requiring only a
few minutes.
The first morning after I had made this simple arrangement I invited
the doubting farmer to watch the old squat schoolhouse from a window
that overlooked it, to see if a good smoke did not rise from the
stovepipe. Sure enough, on the minute, he saw a tall column curling
gracefully up through the frosty air, but instead of congratulating me
on my success he solemnly shook his head and said in a hollow,
lugubrious voice, “Young man, you will be setting fire to the
schoolhouse.” All winter long that faithful clock fire never failed,
and by the time I got to the schoolhouse the stove was usually red-hot.
At the beginning of the long summer vacations I returned to the Hickory
Hill farm to earn the means in the harvest-fields to continue my
University course, walking all the way to save railroad fares. And
although I cradled four acres of wheat a day, I made the long, hard,
sweaty day’s work still longer and harder by keeping up my study of
plants. At the noon hour I collected a large handful, put them in water
to keep them fresh, and after supper got to work on them and sat up
till after midnight, analyzing and classifying, thus leaving only four
hours for sleep; and by the end of the first year, after taking up
botany, I knew the principal flowering plants of the region.
I received my first lesson in botany from a student by the name of
Griswold, who is now County Judge of the County of Waukesha, Wisconsin.
In the University he was often laughed at on account of his anxiety to
instruct others, and his frequently saying with fine emphasis,
“Imparting instruction is my greatest enjoyment.” One memorable day in
June, when I was standing on the stone steps of the north dormitory,
Mr. Griswold joined me and at once began to teach. He reached up,
plucked a flower from an overspreading branch of a locust tree, and,
handing it to me, said, “Muir, do you know what family this tree
belongs to?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t know anything about botany.”
“Well, no matter,” said he, “what is it like?”
“It’s like a pea flower,” I replied.
“That’s right. You’re right,” he said, “it belongs to the Pea Family.”
“But how can that be,” I objected, “when the pea is a weak, clinging,
straggling herb, and the locust a big, thorny hardwood tree?”
“Yes, that is true,” he replied, “as to the difference in size, but it
is also true that in all their essential characters they are alike, and
therefore they must belong to one and the same family. Just look at the
peculiar form of the locust flower; you see that the upper petal,
called the banner, is broad and erect, and so is the upper petal of the
pea flower; the two lower petals, called the wings, are outspread and
wing-shaped; so are those of the pea; and the two petals below the
wings are united on their edges, curve upward, and form what is called
the keel, and so you see are the corresponding petals of the pea
flower. And now look at the stamens and pistils. You see that nine of
the ten stamens have their filaments united into a sheath around the
pistil, but the tenth stamen has its filament free. These are very
marked characters, are they not? And, strange to say, you will find
them the same in the tree and in the vine. Now look at the ovules or
seeds of the locust, and you will see that they are arranged in a pod
or legume like those of the pea. And look at the leaves. You see the
leaf of the locust is made up of several leaflets, and so also is the
leaf of the pea. Now taste the locust leaf.”
I did so and found that it tasted like the leaf of the pea. Nature has
used the same seasoning for both, though one is a straggling vine, the
other a big tree.
“Now, surely you cannot imagine that all these similar characters are
mere coincidences. Do they not rather go to show that the Creator in
making the pea vine and locust tree had the same idea in mind, and that
plants are not classified arbitrarily? Man has nothing to do with their
classification. Nature has attended to all that, giving essential unity
with boundless variety, so that the botanist has only to examine plants
to learn the harmony of their relations.”
This fine lesson charmed me and sent me to the woods and meadows in
wild enthusiasm. Like everybody else I was always fond of flowers,
attracted by their external beauty and purity. Now my eyes were opened
to their inner beauty, all alike revealing glorious traces of the
thoughts of God, and leading on and on into the infinite cosmos. I
wandered away at every opportunity, making long excursions round the
lakes, gathering specimens and keeping them fresh in a bucket in my
room to study at night after my regular class tasks were learned; for
my eyes never closed on the plant glory I had seen.
Nevertheless, I still indulged my love of mechanical inventions. I
invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in
order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on
my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter
mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then,
after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard
and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the
top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of
minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to
drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the
next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the
times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study.
Besides this, I thought it would be a fine thing in the summer-time
when the sun rose early, to dispense with the clock-controlled bed
machinery, and make use of sunbeams instead. This I did simply by
taking a lens out of my small spy-glass, fixing it on a frame on the
sill of my bedroom window, and pointing it to the sunrise; the sunbeams
focused on a thread burned it through, allowing the bed machinery to
put me on my feet. When I wished to arise at any given time after
sunrise, I had only to turn the pivoted frame that held the lens the
requisite number of degrees or minutes. Thus I took Emerson’s advice
and hitched my dumping-wagon bed to a star.
MY DESK
MY DESK
Made and used at the Wisconsin State UniversityToList
I also invented a machine to make visible the growth of plants and the
action of the sunlight, a very delicate contrivance, enclosed in glass.
Besides this I invented a barometer and a lot of novel scientific
apparatus. My room was regarded as a sort of show place by the
professors, who oftentimes brought visitors to it on Saturdays and
holidays. And when, some eighteen years after I had left the
University, I was sauntering over the campus in time of vacation, and
spoke to a man who seemed to be taking some charge of the grounds, he
informed me that he was the janitor; and when I inquired what had
become of Pat, the janitor in my time, and a favorite with the
students, he replied that Pat was still alive and well, but now too old
to do much work. And when I pointed to the dormitory room that I long
ago occupied, he said: “Oh! then I know who you are,” and mentioned my
name. “How comes it that you know my name?” I inquired. He explained
that “Pat always pointed out that room to newcomers and told long
stories about the wonders that used to be in it.” So long had the
memory of my little inventions survived.
Although I was four years at the University, I did not take the regular
course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most
useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, and
mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and geology.
I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have
stayed longer. Anyhow I wandered away on a glorious botanical and
geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not
yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of
a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless,
inspiring, Godful beauty.
From the top of a hill on the north side of Lake Mendota I gained a
last wistful, lingering view of the beautiful University grounds and
buildings where I had spent so many hungry and happy and hopeful days.
There with streaming eyes I bade my blessed Alma Mater farewell. But I
was only leaving one University for another, the Wisconsin University
for the University of the Wilderness.
THE END
_Index_ToC
America,
early interest in, 51-53;
emigration to, 53-59.
Anderson, Mr., 216, 217.
_Anemone patens_ var. _Nuttalliana_, 119-121.
Animals,
man’s tyranny over, 83, 84, 109, 110, 181;
accidents to, 133-136;
the taming of, 185, 186;
cleanliness, 187, 188;
endurance of cold, 189, 190.
Apples, wild, 124.
Audubon, John James, on the passenger pigeon, 52, 53, 162-166.
Aurora borealis, 205, 206.
Badgers, 183.
Bathing, 16, 17;
of animals, 187, 188;
of man, 188, 189.
_See also_ Swimming.
Bear, black, 171, 183, 184.
Bees, 234-239.
Beetle, whirligig, 114.
Berries, 122, 123.
Bible, the, 242-244.
Birds,
removing their eggs, 64, 65;
met with in Wisconsin, 64-75, 137-167;
accidents to, 131-135;
bathing, 187, 188.
Birds’-nesting, 27, 28, 44-48.
Blackbird,
red-winged, 142, 143;
hunting, 175.
Blacksmith,
the minister, 108;
his cruelty to his brother, 214-217.
Bluebird,
nest, 62, 139;
a favorite, 138, 139.
Boat, 115.
Boatmen (insects), 115.
Bobolink, 140, 141.
Bob-white, or quail,
accidents to, 133-135;
habits, 151, 152.
Books, 241-245.
Botany, first lessons in, 280-283.
Boys, savagery of, 23-26.
Brush fires, 76, 77.
Bull-bat, or nighthawk, 69-71.
Bullfrogs, 74.
Butterfly-weed, 122.
Cats,
a boy’s cruel prank, 23-26;
a cat with kittens, 77, 78;
old Tom and the loon, 155-158.
Charlie, the feeble-minded man, 214-217.
Chickadee, 143, 144.
Chickens, prairie, 145, 146.
Chipmunk, 193, 194.
Choke-damp, 232, 233.
Chores, 202-204.
_Christian Philosopher_, _The_, by Thomas Dick, 242.
Clocks, 252-258.
Clover, 199, 200.
Combe’s Physiology, 188.
Consumption, 212, 213.
Coons, 170, 184, 185.
Copperhead, 110, 111.
Corn, husking, 105, 106.
Cows, sympathy with, 94.
Crane, sandhill, 68, 97.
Crops, Wisconsin, 199, 200.
Cypripedium, 121, 122.
Dandy Doctor terror, the, 6-9.
Davel Brae, 28-30.
Deer, 169-174.
Desk, a student’s, 283, 284.
Dick, Thomas, his _Christian Philosopher_, 242.
Dog, Watch, the mongrel, 77-83.
Duck, wood, 147, 148.
Ducks, wild, 147, 148.
Dunbar, Scotland,
a boyhood in, 1-55;
later visit to, 37, 38.
Dunbar Castle, 17.
Duncan, William, 233.
Eagle, bald, and fish hawk, 51, 52.
Early-rising machine, 252-256, 284.
Ferns, 122.
Fiddler, story of a Scotch, 130, 131.
Fighting, boys’, 28-30, 33-37.
Fireflies, 71, 72.
Fires,
brush, 76, 77;
household, 204;
grass, 230;
lighting the schoolhouse fire, 277-279.
Fishes, 115-117.
Fishing, 116, 117.
Flicker, 66.
Flowers,
at Dunbar, 12-14;
wild, in Wisconsin, 118-122.