OF MY CHILDHOOD
I forgot to mention that my name is John Smith. Of course this is a very
plebeian name, but I am in no way responsible for it. As long as I can
remember, I answered to the call of “John” or “Johnny” many a time in my
childhood, and even later, when I would much have preferred not to hear
the call. My father’s name was John Smith, too. No doubt he, and his
father before him, could see no way to avoid the Smith, and thought it
could not make much difference to add the John. The chief trouble that I
have experienced from the name has come from getting my letters mixed up
with other people’s,—mainly my father’s,—which often caused me
embarrassment in my younger days.
I have tried very hard to remember when I first knew my name was John.
Indeed, I have often wondered when it was that I first knew that I was
I, and how that fact dawned upon my mind. Over and over again I have
tried to remember my first thoughts and experiences of life, but have
always failed in the attempt. If I could only tell of my first
sensations, as I looked at the blue sky, and felt the warm sun, and
heard the singing birds in my infancy, I am sure they would interest the
reader. But I can give no testimony upon these important points. I have
no doubt, however, that when I looked upon the heavens and the earth for
the first time I must have felt the same ignorance and awe and wonder
that possess my mind to-day when I try to understand the same
unexplainable mysteries that have always filled me with queries, doubts,
and fears.
Neither can I tell just what I first came to remember; and when I look
back to that little home beside the creek I am not quite sure whether
the feelings that I have are of things that I actually saw and felt and
lived, or whether some imaginings of my young brain have taken the form
and semblance of real life.
I was only one of a large family, mostly older than myself; but while I
was only one, I was the chief one, and the rest were important only as
they affected me. It must have been the rule of our family that each of
the children should have the right to give orders to those younger than
himself; at any rate, all the older ones told me what to do, and I in
turn claimed the same privilege with those younger than myself.
My early remembrances have little sequence or logical connection. I am
quite unable to tell which events came first of those that must have
happened when I was very young.
Among my earliest impressions is one of a hill in our back yard, and of
our going down it to bring water from the well. I am sure that the hill
is not a dream, for I have been back since and found it there, although
not near as long and steep as it seemed in those far-off years. I
remember that we children used to slide down this hill and then walk up
again. Even then I was willing to do a great deal of work for a very
small amount of fun. Somehow, in looking back, it seems as if I were
always sliding downhill and tugging my sled back to the top in the dusk
of the evening. I cannot quite understand how it is that I remember the
evening best, but there it is as I unroll the scroll,—there are the
dents in my memory, and there is the little boy pulling his sled uphill
and looking in at the lighted kitchen window at the top. There, too, are
the older and wiser members of the family,—those who have learned that
the short sensation of sliding down the hill is not worth the long tug
up; a lesson which, although I am growing old and gray, I never have
been wise enough to learn. There are the older ones gathered around the
table with their books, or busy with their household work,—the old
family circle that I see so plainly now in the lamplight through the
window, perhaps more plainly for the years that lie between. This magic
circle was long since broken and scattered, and lives only in the memory
of the man-child who knew so little then of what life really meant, and
who knows so little now.
It is strange, but somehow I have no such distinct recollection of our
home as I have of the other objects that were familiar to my childish
mind. I can see the little muddy brook that ran just back of the garden
fence. Down the hill on the edge of the stream stood a log
cheese-house,—at least, it seems so now,—and back of this cheese-house
beside the brook must have been a favorite spot for me to wade and fish,
although I have no remembrance that I ever caught anything, which fact I
am happy to record. Beyond the stream was an orchard. I am uncertain
whether or not it belonged to my father, although I rather think it must
have been owned by somebody else, the apples always looked so tempting
and so red,—which reminds me that all through life it has seemed to me
that no fruit was quite so sweet as that which was just beyond my reach.
Anyhow, this orchard stands out very plainly in my mind. It was a very
large orchard,—in fact, a great forest of trees; and I remember that I
always stole over the fence intending to get the apples on the nearest
tree, but they did not taste so sweet nor look so red as some others
farther on, which in turn were passed by for others yet a little farther
off, until I had gone quite through the orchard in my endeavor to get
the very best. Although I have been grown up for many a year, somehow
this habit of seeing something better further on has clung to me through
life. So tenacious is this habit, that I fancy I have missed much that
is valuable and good in my eager haste to get something better still. I
am not quite certain about the orchard, perhaps it was not so very large
after all; at least, when I went back a few years ago there was no
cheese-house, and no orchard, and even the brook was grown up to grass
and weeds. I know that in my childhood my parents moved from the old
house to another slightly better, and nearer town; but though I can
clearly remember certain incidents of both, still I have no recollection
of our moving, and it is utterly impossible to keep the impressions of
each separate and distinct.
My first memory of a schoolhouse seems quite clear. It may be that the
things I remember never really happened, although the impression of them
is very strong upon my mind. I must have been very young, hardly more
than three or four years old, and was doubtless taken to school by an
elder brother or sister; certainly I was too young to be a pupil. The
schoolhouse was a long way from home,—miles and miles it seemed to me.
After being in school for hours, I must have grown weary and restless,
sitting so motionless and still, for I know that I was boxed on the ears
either by the teacher’s hand or with a slate. I ran out of the room
sobbing and crying, and went down the long white road to my home. I
shall never forget that journey in the heat and dust. It must have been
the greatest pain and sorrow I had ever known. Doubtless it was the
humiliation of being boxed on the ears before the whole school that
broke my heart; at least, I felt as if I never would reach home, and I
must have sprinkled every foot of the way with my bitter tears. I
remember that teacher’s name to-day, and I never forgave her, until a
short time ago, after I read Tolstoi. Now I only realize how stupid and
ignorant she was to awaken such hatred in the heart of a little child.
In those days whipping was a part, and a very large part, of the regular
course of the district school, and I learned in a few years not to mind
it very much,—in fact, rather to enjoy it, for it gave me such good
standing with the other children of the school.
How full of illusions and delusions we children were! Since I have grown
to man’s estate, I have travelled the same road over which I sobbed in
that far-off day, and it was really but a very little way,—a short
half-mile,—and still, as I look back to that little crying child, it
seems as if he must have walked across a desert beneath a tropical sun,
and borne all the despair and anguish of the world inside his little
jacket.
Another memory that has become a part of my being grows out of the great
Civil War. I was probably four or five years old, and was playing under
the big maple-trees in our old front yard. The scene all comes back to
me as I write. I have a stick or hoop, or perhaps both, in my little
hand. No one else is anywhere about. I hear a drum and fife coming over
the hill, and I run to the fence and look down the gravelly road. A
two-horse wagon loaded with men and boys, whose names and perhaps faces
I seem to know, drives past me as I peer through the palings of the
fence. They are dressed in uniform, and are proud and gay. In the centre
of the wagon is one boy standing up; I see his face plainly, and catch
its boyish smile. They drive past the house to the railroad station, on
their way to the Southern battle-fields. I must have been told a great
deal about these men and about the war, for my people were
abolitionists, who looked upon the rebels as some sort of monsters, and
had no thought that there could be any side but ours. However, I now
remember nothing at all of what was said to me, but I hear the martial
music, I see the horses and wagons and men, and clear and distinct from
all the rest is this one boy’s face that I knew so well. Even more
distinctly do I remember a day some months later. I must then have begun
going to the district school, for I remember that there was no school
that day. I recall a great throng of people, and among them all the boys
and girls from school, and we are gathered inside the burying-ground
where they are carrying the young soldier who rode past our house a few
months before. I cannot remember what was said at the funeral, but this
is the first impression that I can recall of the grim spectre Death.
What it meant to my childish mind I cannot now conceive. I remember only
the hushed awe and the deep dread that fell upon us all when we realized
that they were putting this boy into the ground and that we should never
see his face again. Whatever the feeling, I fancy that time and years
have not changed or modified it, or made it any easier to reconcile or
understand.
But with the memory of the funeral there lingers an impression that we
all thought this young man a glorious, brave, and noble boy, and that
his widowed mother and brothers and sisters ought to have felt happy and
proud that he was buried in the ground. I remembered the mother for many
years, and how she always mourned her son; but it was a long, long time
before I came to understand that the fact that the boy was killed upon
the field of battle really did not make the sorrow any less for the
family left behind. And it was still longer before I came to realize
that it is no more noble or honorable to die fighting on the field of
battle than in any other way.