THE SUMMER VACATION
If I were to pick out the happiest time of my life, I should name the
first few days of the summer vacation after the district school was out.
In those few rare days all thoughts of restraint were thrown away. For
months we had been compelled to get up at a certain time in the morning,
do our tasks, and then go to school. Every hour of the day had been laid
out with the precision of the clock, and each one had its work to do.
Day after day, and week after week, the steady grind went on, until
captivity almost seemed our natural state. It was hard enough through
the long fall and winter months and in the early spring; but when the
warm days came on, and the sun rose high and hot and stayed in the
heavens until late at night, when the grass had spread over all the
fields and the leaves had covered all the twigs and boughs until each
tree was one big spot of green, when the birds sang on the branches
right under the schoolhouse eaves, and the lazy bee flew droning in
through the open door, then the schoolhouse prison was more than any boy
could stand.
In the first few days of vacation our freedom was wholly unrestrained.
We chased the squirrels and chipmunks into the thickest portions of the
woods; we roamed across the fields with the cattle and the sheep; we
followed the devious ways of the winding creek, clear to where it joined
the river far down below the covered bridge; we looked into every
fishing-pool and swimming-hole, and laid our plans for the summer
campaign of sports just coming on; we circled the edges of the pond, and
lay down on our backs under the shade of the willow-trees and looked up
at the chasing clouds, while we listened to the water falling on the
wheel and the dozy hum of the grinding mill. In short, we were free
children once again, left to roam the fields and woods to suit our whims
and wills.
But even our liberty grew monotonous in a little while, as all things
will to the very young,—and, for that matter, to the very old, or to
anyone who has the chance to gain freedom and monotony. So in a short
time we thought we were ready to do some work. We wished to work; for
this was new, and therefore not work but play.
When I told my father of my desire to work, he seemed much pleased, and
took me to the mill. But I noticed that as we left the house he put a
small thin book in the pocket of his coat. Later in the day, I found
that this was a Latin grammar, and that he had really taken me to the
mill to study Latin instead of work. I protested that I did not want to
study Latin; that I wished to work; that school was out, and our
vacation-time had come; and that I had studied quite enough until the
fall term should begin. But my father insisted that I ought to study at
least a portion of the day, and that I really should be making some
progress in my Latin grammar. Of course the district school did not
teach Latin; the teacher knew nothing about Latin, and, indeed, that
study did not belong to district school.
I argued long with my father about the Latin, and begged and protested
and cried; but it was all of no avail. I can see him now, as he gravely
stood by the high white dusty desk in the little office of the mill.
Inside the desk were the account-books that were supposed to record the
small transactions of the mill; but these were rarely used. The toll was
taken from the hopper, and that was all that was required. Even the
small amount of book-keeping necessary for the mill, my father scarcely
did,—for on the desk and inside were other books more important far to
him than the ones which told only of the balancing of accounts.
My father stands beside the dusty desk with the Latin grammar in his
hand, and tells me what great service it will be to me in future years
if I learn the Latin tongue. And then he tells me how great my
advantages are compared with his, and how much he could have done if
only his father had been able to teach him Latin while he was yet a
child. In vain I say that I do not want to be a scholar; that I never
shall have any use for Latin; that it is spoken only by foreigners,
anyhow, and they will never come to Farmington, and I shall never go to
visit them. I ask my father if he has ever seen a Latin, much less
talked with one; and when he tells me that the language has been dead
for a thousand years, I feel still more certain that I am right. But he
persists that I cannot be a scholar unless I master Latin.
It was of no avail to argue with my father; for fathers only argue
through courtesy, and when the proper time comes round they cease the
argument and say the thing must be done. And so, against my judgment and
my will, I climbed upon the high stool in the little office and opened
the Latin grammar, while the old miller bent over my shoulder and taught
me my first lesson.
Can I ever forget the time I began to study Latin? Outside of the little
door stands the hopper full of grain; a tiny stream is running down the
centre, like the sands in an hourglass, and slowly and inevitably each
kernel is ground fine between the great turning stones. All around, on
every bag and bin and chute, on every piece of furniture and on the
floor, lies the thick white dust that rises from the new-ground flour.
Outside the windows I can see the water running down the mill-race and
through the flume, before it tumbles on the wheel. The hopper is filled
with grain, the wheat is tolled, the water keeps falling over the great
wheel, the noise of the turning stones and moving pulleys fills the air
with a constant whir. My father leaves the mill at its work, comes into
the little office, shuts the door, and tells me that _mensa_ is the
Latin word for “table.” This is more important to him than the need of
rain, or the growing wheat, or the low water in the pond. Then he tells
me how many different cases the Latin language had, and exactly how the
Romans spoke the word for “table” in every case; and he bids me decline
_mensa_ after him. Slowly and painfully I learn _mensa_, _mensæ_,
_mensæ_, _mensam_, _mensa_, _mensa_, and after this I must learn the
plural too. And so with the whirring of the mill is mingled my father’s
voice, saying slowly over and over again, “_mensa_, _mensæ_, _mensæ_,
_mensam_, _mensa_, _mensa_.” I stammer and stutter, and cry and mutter,
and think, until I can scarcely distinguish between the whirring of the
mill and the measured tones of my father’s voice repeating the various
cases of the wondrous Latin word.
Sometimes he lets me leave my lesson and go to the great pile of cobs
that fall from the corn-sheller, and go over these to take off the
kernels that the sheller left. But in a little while my hands are so red
and sore that I am glad to go back to my Latin word again. Then he lets
me cut the weeds along the edges of the mill-race; but the constant
stooping hurts my back, and the sun is hot, and this, too, soon grows to
be like work, and no easier than sitting on the high stool with the
Latin grammar in my hand. Now and then a farmer drives up to the mill
with his team of horses or slow heavy oxen, and I try to make myself
useful in helping him to unload the grain. This is easier than shelling
corn or cutting weeds or learning Latin; for it is only a little time
until the farmer is gone, and then perhaps another takes his place.
Somehow I never want these farmers or the boys to know that I am
studying Latin at the mill, for they would wonder why my father made me
study Latin, and what he could possibly see in me to make him think it
worth the while. I wondered, too, when I was young; I could not
understand why he should make me study it, as if his life and mine
depended on the Latin that I learned. Surely he knew that I did not like
Latin, and at best learned it slowly and with the greatest pains, and
there was little promise in the efforts that he made in my behalf.
I could not then know why my father took all this trouble for me to
learn my grammar; but I know to-day. I know that, all unconsciously, it
was the blind persistent effort of the parent to resurrect his own
buried hopes and dead ambitions in the greater opportunities and broader
life that he would give his child. Poor man! I trust the lingering spark
of hope for me never left his bosom while he lived, and that he died
unconscious that the son on whom he lavished so much precious time and
care never learned Latin after all, and never could.
But still, all unconsciously, I did learn something from my lessons at
the mill. From the little Latin grammar my father passed to the Roman
people, to their struggles and conquests, their triumphs and decline, to
the civilization that has ever hovered around the Mediterranean Sea. He,
alas! had scarce ever gone outside the walls of Farmington, and had
seldom done as much as to peep over the high hills that held the little
narrow valley in its place. But through his precious books and his still
more precious dreams he had sailed the length and breadth of the
Mediterranean Sea,—and though since then I have stood upon the deck of a
ship that skims along between the blue waters below and the soft blue
sky above, and have looked off at the sloping, fertile uplands to the
high mountain-tops of Italy, and even over to Africa on the other side,
still my Roman empire will ever be the mighty kingdom of which my father
talked, and my Mediterranean that far-off blue sea of which he told when
he tried so hard to make me study Latin in the little office of the
mill; and ever and ever the soft murmur of the blue white-crested waves
crawling up the long Italian beach will be mingled with the lazy whir of
the turning stones and my father’s gentle eager voice.
The dust and mould of many ages lie over Cæsar and Virgil and Horace and
Ovid. The great empire of the Roman world long since passed to ruin and
decay. The waves of the blue Mediterranean have sung their requiem over
this mighty Mistress of the Sea, and many others, great and small, since
then. The Latin tongue lives only as a memory of the language of these
once proud conquerors of a world. And no less dead and past are the
turning wheel, the groaning mill, the crumbling dam, and the kindly
voice that told me of the wonders of the Roman world. And as my mind
goes back to the Latin grammar and the little dusty office in the mill,
I cannot suppress the longing hope that somewhere out beyond the stars
my patient father has found a haven where they still can speak the Latin
tongue, and where he comes nearer to Cæsar and Virgil and Ovid and to
the blue Mediterranean Sea than while the high hills and stern
conditions of his life kept him busy grinding corn. At all events, I am
sure that when my ears are dulled to all earthly sounds, I shall fancy
that I hear the falling water and the turning wheel and the groaning
mill, and with them the long-silenced voice repeating, in grave, almost
religious tones,—
_Mensa_, _mensæ_, _mensæ_, _mensam_, _mensa_, _mensa_.