MY FATHER
My father was a great believer in education,—that is, in the learning
that is found in books. He was doubtful of any other sort, if indeed he
believed there could be any other sort. His strong faith in books,
together with the fact that there were so many of us children around the
house in my mother’s way, early drove me to the district school.
Before this time I had learned to read simple sentences; for I cannot
remember when my father began telling me how important and necessary it
was to study books. By some strange trick of fortune, he was born with a
quenchless thirst for learning. This love of books was the one great
passion of his life; but his large family began to arrive when he was at
such an early age that he never had time to prepare himself to make a
living from his learning. He always felt the hardship and irony of a
life of labor to one who loved study and contemplation; so he resolved
that his children should have a better chance. Poor man! I can see him
now as plainly as if it were yesterday. I can see him with his
books,—English, Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew,—carrying them back and
forth to the dusty mill, and snatching the smallest chance, even when
the water was spilling over the dam, to learn more of the wonders that
were held between the covers of these books.
All my life I have felt that Nature had some grudge against my father.
If she had made him a simple miller, content when he was grinding corn
and dipping the small toll from the farmer’s grist, he might have lived
a fairly useful, happy life. But day after day and year after year he
was compelled to walk the short and narrow path between the little house
and the decaying mill, while his mind was roving over scenes of great
battles, decayed empires, dead languages, and the starry heavens above.
To his dying day he lived in a walking trance; and his books and their
wondrous stories were more real to him than the turning water-wheel, the
sacks of wheat and corn, and the cunning, soulless farmers who dickered
and haggled about his hard-earned toll.
Whether or not my father had strong personal ambitions, I really never
knew; no doubt he had, but years of work and resignation had taught him
to deny them even to himself, and slowly and pathetically he must have
let go his hold upon that hope and ambition which alone make the
thoughtful man cling fast to life.
In all the country round, no man knew so much of books as he, and no man
knew less of life. The old parson and the doctor were almost the only
neighbors who seemed able even to understand the language that he spoke.
I remember now, when his work was done, how religiously he went to his
little study with his marvellous books, and worked and read far into the
night, stopping only to encourage and help his children in the tasks
that they were ever anxious to neglect and shirk. My bedroom, with its
two beds and generally four occupants, opened directly from his study
door; and no matter how often I went to sleep and awakened in the night,
I could see a little streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door that
opened into his room, which showed me that he was still dwelling in the
fairy-lands of which his old volumes told. He was no longer there in the
morning, and this was usually the first time that I missed him in my
waking moments after I had gone to bed. Often, too, he wrote, sometimes
night after night for weeks together; but I never knew what it was that
he put down,—no doubt his hopes and dreams and loves and doubts and
fears, as men have ever done since time began, as they will ever do
while time shall last, and as I am doing now; but these poor dreams of
his were never destined to see the light of day. Perhaps, with no one to
tell him that they were good, he despaired about their worth, as so many
other doubting souls have done before and since. It is not likely,
indeed, that any publisher could have been found ready to transform his
poor cramped writing into print. Whatever may have been the case, if I
could only find the pages that he wrote I would print them now with his
name upon the title-page, and pay for them myself.
I cannot remember when I learned to read. I seem always to have known
how. I am sure that I learned my letters from the red and blue blocks
that were always scattered on the floor. Of course, I did not know what
they meant; I only knew that A was A, and was content with that. Even
when I learned my first little words, and put them into simple
sentences, I fancy that I knew no more of what they meant than the poor
caged parrot that keeps saying over and over again, “Polly wants a
cracker,” when he really wants nothing of the kind. I fancy that I knew
nothing of what they meant, for as I read to-day many of the brave
lessons learned even in my later life I cannot imagine that I had any
thought of their meaning such as the language seems now to hold.
But I know that I learned my letters quickly and early,—though not so
early as an elder brother who was always kept steadily before my eyes.
It must be that my father gave me little chance to tarry long from one
simple book to another, for I remember that at a very early age I was
told again and again that John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he
was only three years old. I thought then, as I do to-day, that he must
have had a cruel father, and that this unnatural parent not only made
miserable the life of his little boy, but of thousands of other boys
whose fathers could see no reason why their sons should be outdone by
John Stuart Mill. I have no doubt that my good father thought that all
his children ought to be able to do anything that was ever accomplished
by John Stuart Mill; and so he did his part, and more, to make us try.
But, after all, I feel to-day just as I did long years ago, when with
reluctant ear and rebellious heart I heard of the great achievements of
John Stuart Mill. I look back to those early years, and still regret the
beautiful play-spells that were broken and the many fond childish
schemes for pleasure that were shattered because John Stuart Mill began
studying Greek when three years old.
I would often shed bitter tears, and mutter exclamations and protests
which no one heard, but which were none the less terrible because they
were spoken underneath my breath,—and all on account of John Stuart
Mill. It was long before I could forgive my gentle honest father for
having tried so hard to make me learn those books. I am sure that no
good fortune can ever compensate me for the wasted joys, the broken
playtimes, the interrupted childish pleasures, which I should have had.
If I were writing this story as I feel to-day, and if I could not recall
the little child who had so lately come from the great heart of Nature
that he still must have remembered what she felt and thought and knew, I
might not regret those broken childish joys. I might rather mourn and
lament, with all the teachers and parents and authors, that I was so
profligate of my time when I was yet a child, and that I was not more
studious in those far-off years. But as I look back to my childhood
days, my sluggish heart beats quicker, and I can feel the warm young
blood rush to my tingling feet and hands, and I realize once more the
strange thrill of delight and joy that life and activity alone bring to
all the young. And so I cling to-day to the childish thought that I was
right and my poor father wrong. “When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I
put away childish things,” said the apostle twenty centuries ago. The
mistake of maturity and age has ever been that it lives so wholly in the
present and so completely forgets the childhood that is past. To guard
infancy and youth as a precious heritage, to keep them as long as we
can, seems to me the true philosophy of life. For, after all, life is
mostly illusions, and the illusions of infancy and childhood and youth
are more alluring than those of later years.
But I fancy now that I can understand my father’s thoughts. A strange
fate had set him down beside the little winding creek and kept him at
his humble task of tolling his neighbors’ grist. He looked at the high
hills to the east, and at the high hills to the west, and up and down
the narrow country road that led to the outside world. He knew that
beyond the high hills was a broad inviting plain, with opportunity and
plenty, with fortune and fame; but as he looked at the hills he could
see no way to pass beyond. It is possible that he could have walked over
them, or even around them, had he been alone; but there was the
ever-growing brood that held him in the narrow place. No doubt as he
grew older he often looked up and down the long dusty road, half
expecting some fairy or genie to come along and take him away where he
might realize his dreams; but of course no such thing ever happened,—for
this is a real story,—and so he stayed and ground the grain in the old
decaying mill.
My father must have been quite advanced in years before he wholly gave
up his ambitions to do something in life besides grinding the farmers’
corn. Indeed, I am not sure that he ever gave them up; but doubtless, as
the task seemed more hopeless and the chain grew stronger, he slowly
looked to his children to satisfy the dreams that life once held out to
him; and so this thought mingled with the rest in his strong endeavor
that we should all have the best education he could get for us, so that
we need not be millers as he had been. Well, none of us are millers! The
old family is scattered far and wide; the last member of the little band
long since passed down the narrow road, and out between the great high
hills into the far-off land of freedom and opportunity of which my
father dreamed. But I should be glad to believe to-day that a single one
over whom he watched with such jealous care ever gave as much real
service to the world as this simple, kindly man whose name was heard
scarcely farther than the water that splashed and tumbled on the turning
wheel.
I started bravely to tell about my life,—to write my story as it seems
to me; and here I am halting and rambling like a garrulous old man over
the feelings and remembrances of long ago. By a strange trick of memory
I seem to stand for a few moments out in the old front yard, a little
barefoot child. The long summer twilight has grown dim, and the quiet
country evening is at hand. Beyond the black trees I hear the falling
water spilling over the wooden dam; and farther on, around the edges of
the pond, the hoarse croak of the frogs sounds clear and harsh in the
still night air. Above the little porch that shelters the front door is
my father’s study window. I look in and see him sitting at his desk with
his shaded lamp; before him is his everlasting book, and his pale face
and long white hair bend over the infatuating pages with all the
confidence and trust of a little child. For a simple child he always
was, from the time when he first saw the light until his friends and
comrades lowered him into the sandy loam of the old churchyard. I see
him through the little panes of glass, as he bends above the book. The
chapter is finished and he wakens from his reverie into the world in
which he lives and works; he takes off his iron-framed spectacles, lays
down his book, comes downstairs and calls me away from my companions
with the old story that it is time to come into the house and get my
lessons. For the hundredth time I protest that I want to play,—to finish
my unending game; and again he tells me no, that John Stuart Mill began
studying Greek when he was only three years old. And with heavy heart
and muttered imprecations on John Stuart Mill, I am taken away from my
companions and my play, and set down beside my father with my book. I
can feel even now my sorrow and despair, as I leave my playmates and
turn the stupid leaves. But I would give all that I possess to-day to
hear my father say again, as in that far-off time, “John Stuart Mill
began studying Greek when he was only three years old.”