Chapter II. How To Talk
Chapter III. Talk
Chapter IV. How To Write
Chapter V. How To Read. I.
Chapter VI. How To Read. II.
Chapter VII. How To Go Into Society
Chapter VIII. How To Travel
Chapter IX. Life At School
Chapter X. Life In Vacation
Chapter XI. Life Alone
Chapter XII. Habits In Church
Chapter XIII. Life With Children
Chapter XIV. Life With Your Elders
Chapter XV. Habits Of Reading
Chapter XVI. Getting Ready
How To Do It.
Chapter I.
Introductory.--How We Met.
The papers which are here collected enter in some detail into the success
and failure of a large number of young people of my acquaintance, who are
here named as
Alice Faulconbridge,
Bob Edmeston,
Clara,
Clem Waters,
Edward Holiday,
Ellen Liston,
Emma Fortinbras,
Enoch Putnam, _brother of_ Horace,
Esther,
Fanchon,
Fanny, _cousin to_ Hatty Fielding
Florence,
Frank,
George Ferguson (Asaph Ferguson's _brother_),
Hatty Fielding,
Herbert,
Horace Putnam,
Horace Felltham (_a very different person_),
Jane Smith,
Jo Gresham,
Laura Walter,
Maud Ingletree,
Oliver Ferguson, _brother to_ Asaph _and_ George,
Pauline,
Rachel,
Robert,
Sarah Clavers,
Stephen,
Sybil,
Theodora,
Tom Rising,
Walter,
William Hackmatack,
William Withers.
It may be observed that there are thirty-four of them. They make up a
very nice set, or would do so if they belonged together. But, in truth,
they live in many regions, not to say countries. None of them are too
bright or too stupid, only one of them is really selfish, all but one or
two are thoroughly sorry for their faults when they commit them, and all
of them who are good for anything think of themselves very little. There
are a few who are approved members of the Harry Wadsworth Club. That means
that they "look up and not down," they "look forward and not back," they
"look out and not in," and they "lend a hand." These papers were first
published, much as they are now collected, in the magazine "Our Young
Folks," and in that admirable weekly paper "The Youth's Companion," which
is held in grateful remembrance by a generation now tottering off the
stage, and welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the grandchildren as
they totter on. From time to time, therefore, as the different series have
gone on, I have received pleasant notes from other young people, whose
acquaintance I have thus made with real pleasure, who have asked more
explanation as to the points involved. I have thus been told that my
friend, Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, is not governed by all my rules for young
people's composition, and that Miss Throckmorton, the governess, does not
believe Archbishop Whately is infallible. I have once and again been asked
how I made the acquaintance of such a nice set of children. And I can well
believe that many of my young correspondents would in that matter be glad
to be as fortunate as I.
Perhaps, then, I shall do something to make the little book more
intelligible, and to connect its parts, if in this introduction I tell of
the one occasion when the _dramatis personae_ met each other; and in order
to that, if I tell how they all met me.
First of all, then, my dear young friends, I began active life, as soon as
I had left college, as I can well wish all of you might do. I began in
keeping school. Not that I want to have any of you do this long, unless an
evident fitness or "manifest destiny" appear so to order. But you may be
sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, there is nothing that
will teach you your own ignorance so well as having to teach children the
few things you know, and to answer, as best you can, their questions on
all grounds. There was poor Jane, on the first day of that charming visit
at the Penroses, who was betrayed by the simplicity and cordiality of the
dinner-table--where she was the youngest of ten or twelve strangers--into
taking a protective lead of all the conversation, till at the very last I
heard her explaining to dear Mr. Tom Coram himself,--a gentleman who had
lived in Java ten years,--that coffee-berries were red when they were
ripe. I was sadly mortified for my poor Jane as Tom's eyes twinkled. She
would never have got into that rattletrap way of talking if she had kept
school for two years. Here, again, is a capital letter from Oliver
Ferguson, Asaph's younger brother, describing his life on the Island at
Paris all through the siege. I should have sent it yesterday to Mr.
Osgood, who would be delighted to print it in the Atlantic Monthly, but
that the spelling is disgraceful. Mr. Osgood and Mr. Howells would think
Oliver a fool before they had read down the first page. "L-i-n, lin,
n-e-n, nen, linen." Think of that! Oliver would never have spelled "linen"
like that if he had been two years a teacher. You can go through four
years at Harvard College spelling so, but you cannot go through two years
as a schoolmaster.
Well, I say I was fortunate enough to spend two years as an assistant
schoolmaster at the old Boston Latin School,--the oldest institution of
learning, as we are fond of saying, in the United States. And there first
I made my manhood's acquaintance with boys.
"Do you think," said dear Dr. Malone to me one day, "that my son Robert
will be too young to enter college next August?" "How old will he be?"
said I, and I was told. Then as Robert was at that moment just six months
younger than I, who had already graduated, I said wisely, that I thought
he would do, and Dr. Malone chuckled, I doubt not, as I did certainly, at
the gravity of my answer. A nice set of boys I had. I had above me two of
the most loyal and honorable of gentlemen, who screened me from all
reproof for my blunders. My discipline was not of the best, but my
purposes were; and I and the boys got along admirably.
It was the old schoolhouse. I believe I shall explain in another place,
in this volume, that it stood where Parker's Hotel stands, and my room
occupied the spot in space where you, Florence, and you, Theodora, dined
with your aunt Dorcas last Wednesday before you took the cars for
Andover,--the ladies' dining-room looking on what was then Cook's Court,
and is now Chapman Place. Who Cook was I know not. The "Province Street"
of to-day was then much more fitly called "Governor's Alley." For boys
do not know that that minstrel-saloon so long known as "Ordway's," just
now changed into Sargent's Hotel, was for a century, more or less, the
official residence of the Governor of Massachusetts. It was the
"Province House."
On the top of it, for a weathercock, was the large mechanical brazen
Indian, who, whenever he heard the Old South clock strike twelve, shot off
his brazen arrow. The little boys used to hope to see this. But just as
twelve came was the bustle of dismissal, and I have never seen one who did
see him, though for myself I know he did as was said, and have never
questioned it. That opportunity, however, was up stairs, in Mr. Dixwell's
room. In my room, in the basement, we had no such opportunity.
The glory of our room was that it was supposed, rightly or not, that a
part of it was included in the old schoolhouse which was there before the
Revolution. There were old men still living who remembered the troublous
times, the times that stirred boys' souls, as the struggle for
independence began. I have myself talked with Jonathan Darby Robbins, who
was himself one of the committee who waited on the British general to
demand that their coasting should not be obstructed. There is a reading
piece about it in one of the school-books. This general was not Gage, as
he is said to be in the histories, but General Haldimand; and his
quarters were at the house which stood nearly where Franklin's statue
stands now, just below King's Chapel. His servant had put ashes on the
coast which the boys had made, on the sidewalk which passes the Chapel as
you go down School Street. When the boys remonstrated, the servant
ridiculed them,--he was not going to mind a gang of rebel boys. So the
boys, who were much of their fathers' minds, appointed a committee, of
whom my friend was one, to wait on General Haldimand himself. They called
on him, and they told him that coasting was one of their inalienable
rights and that he must not take it away. The General knew too well that
the people of the town must not be irritated to take up his servant's
quarrel, and he told the boys that their coast should not be interfered
with. So they carried their point. The story-book says that he clasped his
hands and said, "Heavens! Liberty is in the very air! Even these boys
speak of their rights as do their patriot sires!" But of this Mr. Robbins
told me nothing, and as Haldimand was a Hessian, of no great enthusiasm
for liberty, I do not, for my part, believe it.
The morning of April 19, 1775, Harrison Gray Otis, then a little boy of
eight years old, came down Beacon Street to school, and found a brigade of
red-coats in line along Common Street,--as Tremont Street was then
called,--so that he could not cross into School Street. They were Earl
Percy's brigade. Class in history, where did Percy's brigade go that day,
and what became of them before night? A red-coat corporal told the Otis
boy to walk along Common Street, and not try to cross the line. So he did.
He went as far as Scollay's Building before he could turn their flank,
then he went down to what you call Washington Street, and came up to
school,--late. Whether his excuse would have been sufficient I do not
know. He was never asked for it. He came into school just in time to hear
old Lovel, the Tory schoolmaster, say, "War's begun and school's done.
_Dimittite libros_"--which means, "Put away your books." They put them
away, and had a vacation of a year and nine months thereafter, before the
school was open again.
Well, in this old school I had spent four years of my boyhood, and here,
as I say, my manhood's acquaintance with boys began. I taught them Latin,
and sometimes mathematics. Some of them will remember a famous Latin poem
we wrote about Pocahontas and John Smith. All of them will remember how
they capped Latin verses against the master, twenty against one, and put
him down. These boys used to cluster round my table at recess and talk.
Danforth Newcomb, a lovely, gentle, accurate boy, almost always at the
head of his class,--he died young. Shang-hae, San Francisco, Berlin,
Paris, Australia,--I don't know what cities, towns, and countries have the
rest of them. And when they carry home this book for their own boys to
read, they will find some of their boy-stories here.
Then there was Mrs. Merriam's boarding-school. If you will read the
chapter on travelling you will find about one of the vacations of her
girls. Mrs. Merriam was one of Mr. Ingham's old friends,--and he is a man
with whom I have had a great deal to do. Mrs. Merriam opened a school for
twelve girls. I knew her very well, and so it came that I knew her ways
with them. Though it was a boarding-school, still the girls had just as
"good a time" as they had at home, and when I found that some of them
asked leave to spend vacation with her I knew they had better times. I
remember perfectly the day when Mrs. Phillips asked them down to the old
mansion-house, which seems so like home to me, to eat peaches. And it was
determined that the girls should not think they were under any "company"
restraint, so no person but themselves was present when the peaches were
served, and every girl ate as many as for herself she determined best.
When they all rode horseback, Mrs. Merriam and I used to ride together
with these young folks behind or before, as it listed them. So, not
unnaturally, being a friend of the family, I came to know a good many of
them very well.
For another set of them--you may choose the names to please
yourselves--the history of my relationship goes back to the Sunday school
of the Church of the Unity in Worcester. The first time I ever preached in
that church, namely, May 3, 1846, there was but one person in it who had
gray hair. All of us of that day have enough now. But we were a set of
young people, starting on a new church, which had, I assure you, no dust
in the pulpit-cushions. And almost all the children were young, as you may
suppose. The first meeting of the Sunday school showed, I think,
thirty-six children, and more of them were under nine than over. They are
all twenty-five years older now than they were then. Well, we started
without a library for the Sunday school. But in a corner of my study Jo
Matthews and I put up some three-cornered shelves, on which I kept about a
hundred books such as children like, and young people who are no longer
children; and then, as I sat reading, writing, or stood fussing over my
fuchsias or labelling the mineralogical specimens, there would come in one
or another nice girl or boy, to borrow a "Rollo" or a "Franconia," or to
see if Ellen Liston had returned "Amy Herbert." And so we got very good
chances to find each other out. It is not a bad plan for a young minister,
if he really want to know what the young folk of his parish are. I know
it was then and there that I conceived the plan of writing "Margaret
Percival in America" as a sequel to Miss Sewell's "Margaret Percival," and
that I wrote my half of that history.
The Worcester Sunday school grew beyond thirty-six scholars; and I have
since had to do with two other Sunday schools, where, though the children
did not know it, I felt as young as the youngest of them all. And in that
sort of life you get chances to come at nice boys and nice girls which
most people in the world do not have.
And the last of all the congresses of young people which I will name,
where I have found my favorites, shall be the vacation congresses,--when
people from all the corners of the world meet at some country hotel, and
wonder who the others are the first night, and, after a month, wonder
again how they ever lived without knowing each other as brothers and
sisters. I never had a nicer time than that day when we celebrated
Arthur's birthday by going up to Greely's Pond. "Could Amelia walk so
far? She only eight years old, and it was the whole of five miles by a
wood-road, and five miles to come back again." Yes, Amelia was certain she
could. Then, "whether Arthur could walk so far, he being nine." Why, of
course he could if Amelia could. So eight-year-old, nine-year-old,
ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, and all the rest of the ages,--we tramped
off together, and we stumbled over the stumps, and waded through the mud,
and tripped lightly, like Somnambula in the opera, over the log bridges,
which were single logs and nothing more, and came successfully to Greely's
Pond,--beautiful lake of Egeria that it is, hidden from envious and lazy
men by forest and rock and mountain. And the children of fifty years old
and less pulled off shoes and stockings to wade in it; and we caught in
tin mugs little seedling trouts not so long as that word "seedling" is on
the page, and saw them swim in the mugs and set them free again; and we
ate the lunches with appetites as of Arcadia; and we stumped happily home
again, and found, as we went home, all the sketch-books and bait-boxes
and neckties which we had lost as we went up. On a day like that you get
intimate, if you were not intimate before.
O dear! don't you wish you were at Waterville now?
Now, if you please, my dear Fanchon, we will not go any further into the
places where I got acquainted with the heroes and heroines of this book.
Allow, of those mentioned here, four to the Latin school, five to the
Unity Sunday school, six to the South Congregational, seven to vacation
acquaintance, credit me with nine children of my own and ten brothers and
sisters, and you will find no difficulty in selecting who of these are
which of those, if you have ever studied the science of "Indeterminate
Analysis" in Professor Smythe's Algebra.
"Dear Mr. Hale, you are making fun of us. We never know when you are
in earnest."
Do not be in the least afraid, dear Florence. Remember that a central rule
for comfort in life is this, "Nobody was ever written down an ass, except
by himself."
Now I will tell you how and when the particular thirty-four names above
happened to come together.
We were, a few of us, staying at the White Mountains. I think no New
England summer is quite perfect unless you stay at least a day in the
White Mountains. "Staying in the White Mountains" does not mean climbing on
top of a stage-coach at Centre Harbor, and riding by day and by night for
forty-eight hours till you fling yourself into a railroad-car at
Littleton, and cry out that "you have done them." No. It means just living
with a prospect before your eye of a hundred miles' radius, as you may
have at Bethlehem or the Flume; or, perhaps, a valley and a set of hills,
which never by accident look twice the same, as you may have at the Glen
House or Dolly Cop's or at Waterville; or with a gorge behind the house,
which you may thread and thread and thread day in and out, and still not
come out upon the cleft rock from which flows the first drop of the lovely
stream, as you may do at Jackson. It means living front to front, lip to
lip, with Nature at her loveliest, Echo at her most mysterious, with
Heaven at its brightest and Earth at its greenest, and, all this time,
breathing, with every breath, an atmosphere which is the elixir of life,
so pure and sweet and strong. At Greely's you are, I believe, on the
highest land inhabited in America. That land has a pure air upon it. Well,
as I say, we were staying in the White Mountains. Of course the young
folks wanted to go up Mount Washington. We had all been up Osceola and
Black Mountain, and some of us had gone up on Mount Carter, and one or two
had been on Mount Lafayette. But this was as nothing till we had stood on
Mount Washington himself. So I told Hatty Fielding and Laura to go on to
the railroad-station and join a party we knew that were going up from
there, while Jo Gresham and Stephen and the two Fergusons and I would go
up on foot by a route I knew from Randolph over the real Mount Adams.
Nobody had been up that particular branch of Israel's run since Channing
and I did in 1841. Will Hackmatack, who was with us, had a blister on his
foot, so he went with the riding party. He said that was the reason,
perhaps he thought so. The truth was he wanted to go with Laura, and
nobody need be ashamed of that any day.
I spare you the account of Israel's river, and of the lovely little
cascade at its very source, where it leaps out between two rocks. I spare
you the hour when we lay under the spruces while it rained, and the little
birds, ignorant of men and boys, hopped tamely round us. I spare you even
the rainbow, more than a semicircle, which we saw from Mount Adams.
Safely, wetly, and hungry, we five arrived at the Tiptop House about six,
amid the congratulations of those who had ridden. The two girls and Will
had come safely up by the cars,--and who do you think had got in at the
last moment when the train started but Pauline and her father, who had
made a party up from Portland and had with them Ellen Liston and Sarah
Clavers. And who do you think had appeared in the Glen House party, when
they came, but Esther and her mother and Edward Holiday and his father. Up
to this moment of their lives some of these young people had never seen
other some. But some had, and we had not long been standing on the rocks
making out Sebago and the water beyond Portland before they were all very
well acquainted. All fourteen of us went in to supper, and were just
beginning on the goat's milk, when a cry was heard that a party of young
men in uniform were approaching from the head of Tuckerman's Ravine. Jo
and Oliver ran out, and in a moment returned to wrench us all from our
corn-cakes that we might welcome the New Limerick boat-club, who were on a
pedestrian trip and had come up the Parkman Notch that day. Nice, brave
fellows they were,--a little foot-sore. Who should be among them but Tom
himself and Bob Edmeston. They all went and washed, and then with some
difficulty we all got through tea, when the night party from the Notch
House was announced on horseback, and we sallied forth to welcome them.
Nineteen in all, from all nations. Two Japanese princes, and the Secretary
of the Dutch legation, and so on, as usual; but what was not as usual,
jolly Mr. Waters and his jollier wife were there,--she astride on her
saddle, as is the sensible fashion of the Notch House,--and, in the long
stretching line, we made out Clara Waters and Clem, not together, but
Clara with a girl whom she did not know, but who rode better than she, and
had whipped both horses with a rattan she had. And who should this girl be
but Sybil Dyer!
As the party filed up, and we lifted tired girls and laughing mothers off
the patient horses, I found that a lucky chance had thrown Maud and her
brother Stephen into the same caravan. There was great kissing when my
girls recognized Maud, and when it became generally known that I was
competent to introduce to others such pretty and bright people as she and
Laura and Sarah Clavers were, I found myself very popular, of a sudden,
and in quite general demand.
And I bore my honors meekly, I assure you. I took nice old Mrs. Van
Astrachan out to a favorite rock of mine to see the sunset, and, what was
more marvellous, the heavy thunder-cloud, which was beating up against the
wind; and I left the young folks to themselves, only aspiring to be a
Youth's Companion. I got Will to bring me Mrs. Van Astrachan's black furs,
as it grew cold, but at last the air was so sharp and the storm clearly so
near, that we were all driven in to that nice, cosey parlor at the Tiptop
House, and sat round the hot stove, not sorry to be sheltered, indeed,
when we heard the heavy rain on the windows.
We fell to telling stories, and I was telling of the last time I was
there, when, by great good luck, Starr King turned up, having come over
Madison afoot, when I noticed that Hall, one of those patient giants who
kept the house, was called out, and, in a moment more, that he returned
and whispered his partner out. In a minute more they returned for their
rubber capes, and then we learned that a man had staggered into the stable
half frozen and terribly frightened, announcing that he had left some
people lost just by the Lake of the Clouds. Of course, we were all
immensely excited for half an hour or less, when Hall appeared with a
very wet woman, all but senseless, on his shoulder, with her hair hanging
down to the ground. The ladies took her into an inner room, stripped off
her wet clothes, and rubbed her dry and warm, gave her a little brandy,
and dressed her in the dry linens Mrs. Hall kept ready. Who should she
prove to be, of all the world, but Emma Fortinbras! The men of the party
were her father and her brothers Frank and Robert.
No! that is not all. After the excitement was over they joined us in our
circle round the stove,--and we should all have been in bed, but that Mr.
Hall told such wonderful bear-stories, and it was after ten o'clock that
we were still sitting there. The shower had quite blown over, when a
cheery French horn was heard, and the cheery Hall, who was never
surprised, I believe, rushed out again, and I need not say Oliver rushed
out with him and Jo Gresham, and before long we all rushed out to welcome
the last party of the day.
These were horseback people, who had come by perhaps the most charming
route of all,--which is also the oldest of all,--from what was Ethan
Crawford's. They did not start till noon. They had taken the storm,
wisely, in a charcoal camp,--and there are worse places,--and then they
had spurred up, and here they were. Who were they? Why, there was an army
officer and his wife, who proved to be Alice Faulconbridge, and with her
was Hatty Fielding's Cousin Fanny, and besides them were Will Withers and
his sister Florence, who had made a charming quartette party with Walter
and his sister Theodora, and on this ride had made acquaintance for the
first time with Colonel Mansfield and Alice. All this was wonderful enough
to me, as Theodora explained it to me when I lifted her off her horse, but
when I found that Horace Putnam and his brother Enoch were in the same
train, I said I did believe in astrology.
For though I have not named Jane Smith nor Fanchon, that was because you
did not recognize them among the married people in the Crawford House
party,--and I suppose you did not recognize Herbert either. How should
you? But, in truth, here we all were up above the clouds on the night of
the 25th of August.
Did not those Ethan Crawford people eat as if they had never seen
biscuits? And when at last they were done, Stephen, who had been out in
the stables, came in with a black boy he found there, who had his fiddle;
and as the Colonel Mansfield party came in from the dining-room, Steve
screamed out, "Take your partners for a Virginia Reel." No! I do not know
whose partner was who; only this, that there were seventeen boys and men
and seventeen girls or women, besides me and Mrs. Van Astrachan and
Colonel Mansfield and Pauline's mother. And we danced till for one I was
almost dead, and then we went to bed, to wake up at five in the morning to
see the sunrise.
As we sat on the rocks, on the eastern side, I introduced Stephen to
Sybil Dyer,--the last two who had not known each other. And I got talking
with a circle of young folks about what the communion of saints
is,--meaning, of course, just such unselfish society as we had there. And
so dear Laura said, "Why will you not write us down something of what you
are saying, Mr. Hale?" And Jo Gresham said, "Pray do,--pray do; if it
were only to tell us
"HOW TO DO IT."