HOW I FAILED
Somehow I can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the
Academy on the hill. Back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and
the little child from whom I grew is only one of the old boyish group
for whose sake the sun revolved and the changing seasons came and went.
It must be that for a long time I looked forward to going to the Academy
as an event in my boyish life. For I know that when I first went up the
hill, I wore a collar and a necktie and shoes,—or, rather, boots. I must
have felt then that I was growing to be a man, and that it was almost
time to put off childish things. When I went to the Academy, we called
the teacher “Professor,” and he in turn no longer called me Johnny, or
even John, but spoke to me as “Smith.” A certain dignity and
individuality had come to me from some source, I knew not where. When we
boys came from the playground into the open door, it was not quite the
mad rush of noisy and boisterous urchins that carried all before it,
like a rushing flood, in the little district school.
Almost unconsciously some new idea of duty and obligation began to dawn
upon my mind, and I had even a faint conception that the lessons of the
books would be related in some way to my future life. Among us boys, in
our relation to each other, the difference was not quite so great as
that between the teacher and ourselves; but our bearing toward the girls
was still more changed. In the district school they had seemed only
different, and rather in the way, or at least of no special interest or
importance in the scheme. Now, we stood before them quite abashed and
awed. They had put on long dresses, and had taken on a reserved and
distant air; and much that we said and did in the Academy was with the
conscious thought of how it would look to them. This, too, was a reason
why we should wear our collars and our boots, and comb our hair, and not
be found always at the bottom of the class.
I began about this time to get letters at the post-office,—letters
addressed directly to me, and which I could open first, and show to the
others or not as I saw fit. And I began to know about affairs,
especially to take an interest in politics, and to know our side—which
of course was always beaten. I, like all the rest of the boys, inherited
my politics and my religion. I said,—like all the boys; but I should
have said like all people, whether boys or men. So little do we have the
habit of thought, that our opinions on religion and politics and life
are only such as have come down to us from ignorant and remote
ancestors, influenced we know not how.
So, too, the same feeling seemed to steal over us at home and in our
family group. The old sitting-room was quieter and wore a more serious
look as we gathered round the lighted lamp on the great table with our
books. The lessons were always tasks, but we tried to get through them
for the sake of the magazine or book of travel or adventure that we
could read when the work was done. My father was as helpful and
interested as ever in our studies, and constantly told us how this task
and that would affect our future lives. More and more he made clear to
us his intense desire that we should reach the things that had been
beyond his grasp.
Almost unconsciously I grew into sympathy with his ideals and his life,
seeing faintly the grand visions that were always clear to him, and
bewailing more and more my own indolence and love of pleasure that made
them seem so hard for me to reach. I learned to understand the tragedy
of his obscure and hidden life, and the long and bitter contest he had
waged within the narrow shadow of the stubborn little town where he had
lived and struggled and hoped so long. It was many years before I came
to know fully that the smaller the world in which we move, the more
impossible it is to break the prejudices and conventions that bind us
down. And so it was many, many years before I realized what must have
been my father’s life.
As a little child, I heard my father tell of Frederick Douglass, Parker
Pillsbury, Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, and the rest of that
advance army of reformers, black and white, who went up and down the
land arousing the dulled conscience of the people to a sense of justice
to the slave. They used to make my father’s home their stopping-place,
and any sort of vacant room was the forum where they told of the black
man’s wrongs. My father lived to see these disturbers canonized by the
public opinion that is ever ready to follow in the wake of a battle
fought to a successful end. But when his little world was ready to
rejoice with him over the freedom of the slave, he had moved his soiled
and tattered tent to a new battlefield and was fighting the same
stubborn, sullen, threatening public opinion for a new and yet more
doubtful cause. The same determined band of agitators used still to come
when I had grown to be a youth. These had seen visions of a higher and
broader religious life, and a fuller measure of freedom and justice for
the poor than the world had ever known. Like the despised tramp, they
seemed to have marked my father’s gate-post, and could not pass his
door. They were always poor, often ragged, and a far-off look seemed to
haunt their eyes, as if gazing into space at something beyond the stars.
Some little room was always found where a handful of my father’s friends
would gather, sometimes coming from miles around to listen to the voices
crying in the wilderness, calling the heedless world to repent before it
should be too late. I cannot remember when I did not go to these little
gatherings of the elect and drink in every word that fell upon my ears.
Poor boy! I am almost sorry for myself. I listened so rapturously and
believed so strongly, and knew so well that the kingdom of heaven would
surely come in a little while. And though almost every night through all
these long and weary years I have looked with the same unflagging hope
for the promised star that should be rising in the east, still it has
not come; but no matter how great the trial and disappointment and
delay, I am sure I shall always peer out into the darkness for this
belated star, until I am so blind that I could not see it if it were
really there.
After these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our
home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where
they told each other of their visions and their hopes. Many and many a
time, as I lay in my bed, I listened to their words coming through the
crack with the streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until
finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant
rainbow they had painted from their dreams.
After all, I am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed
their dreams. I am glad they really lived above the sordid world, in
that ethereal realm which none but the blindly devoted ever see; for I
know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the
dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights
where he really lived and died.
And I am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to
catch one glimpse of these exalted realms, and to feel one aspiration
for the devoted life they lived; for however truly I may know that this
ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however I may have
clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, I am
sure that some part of this feeling abides with me, and that its tender
chord of sentiment and memory reaches back to that hallowed land of
childhood and of youth, and still seeks to draw me toward the heights on
which my father lived.
I never knew that I was growing from the child to the youth; that the
life and experience and even the boy of the district school was passing
forever into the realm of clouds and myth. Neither can I remember when I
grew from the youth to the man, nor when the first stoop came to my
shoulders, the first glint of white to my hair, or the first crease upon
my face. I know that I wear glasses now,—but how did my sight begin to
fail, and in what one moment of all the fleeting millions that hurried
past did I first need to put glasses on my eyes? How lightly and gently
time lays its hand upon all who live! I can dimly remember a period when
I was very small, and I can distinctly remember when I went to the
Academy on the hill and began to think of maturer things if not to think
maturer thoughts. I remember that I began to realize that my father was
growing old; he made mistakes in names, and hesitated about those he
well knew. Still, this is not a sure sign of growing years, for I find
that I am doing this myself, and many times lately have determined that
I must take more pains about my memory, and cultivate it rather than
continue to be as careless as I have always been. And only yesterday
around an accustomed table with a few choice friends, I told a long and
detailed story that I was sure was very clever and exactly to the point.
I had no doubt that the pleasant tale would set the table in a roar. But
although all the guests were most considerate and kind and seemed to
laugh with the greatest glee, still there was something in their eyes
and a certain cadence in their tones that made me sure that sometime and
somewhere I had told them this same story at least once before.
I gradually realized that many plans my father seemed to believe he
would carry out could never come to pass. I knew that for a long time he
had talked of building a new mill. True, he did not say when or how,—but
he surely would sometime build the mill. At first I used to think he
would; and we often talked of the mill, and just where it would stand,
and how many run of stones the trade demanded, and whether we should
have an engine to use when there was no water in the dam. But gradually
I came to realize that my father never would live to build another mill,
and that doubtless no one else would replace the one he had run so long.
Yet he kept talking of the mill, as if it would surely come. Nature,
after all, is not quite so brutal as she might be. However old and gray
and feeble her children grow, she never lets them give up hope until the
last spark of life has flown.
Even when my father talked with less confidence of the mill, he was sure
to build a new water-wheel, for the old one had turned over and over so
many times that there was scarce a sound place no matter where it
turned. But this, too, I slowly found would never be; yet after a while
I grew to encouraging him in his illusions of what he would sometime do,
and even in his wilder and fonder illusions of what I would sometime do.
Gradually I knew that he stooped more and rested oftener, and that his
face was whiter; and I forgot his age, and never under any circumstances
would let anyone tell me how old he was.
As I myself grew older, I came to have a stricter feeling of right and
wrong,—to see clearly the sharp lines that separate the good and the
bad, to grow hard and unforgiving and more intolerant of sin. But this,
like the measles, whooping-cough, and other childish complaints, I
luckily lived through. It is one of the errors of childhood to believe
in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and,
strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the
young. It is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there
are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right
and wrong. It is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that
teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate
that overrides all earthly schemes. It is only life that makes us know
that pity and charity and love are the chief virtues, and cruelty and
hardness and selfishness the greatest sins.
As I grew older, one characteristic of my childhood clung about me
still. My plans never came out as I expected, and none of the visions of
my brain grew into the perfect thing of which I hoped and dreamed. I
never seemed able to finish any work that I began; some more alluring
prospect ever beckoned me toward achievements grander than my brain had
conceived before. The work was contrived, the plan was formed, the
material prepared,—but the structure was only just begun.
And so this poor book but illustrates my life. Long I had hoped to write
my tale, much I had planned to tell my story; and here, after all my
hopes and plans, I have gone off in quite another way, babbling of the
schemes of my boyhood days, the thoughts and desires, the hopes and
feelings, of a little child. So long and so fondly have I lingered in
this fairy-land that now it is too late, and I must close the book
before my story really has begun.
That fatal trip back to my old home was the cause of my undoing, and has
robbed me of the fame that I had hoped to win. But I felt that I could
not write the story unless I went back once more to visit the town of my
childhood, and to see again the companions of my early life. But what a
revelation came with this simple journey to the little valley where my
father lived! I had looked at my face in the glass each day for many
years, and never felt that it had changed; but when I went back to my
old familiar haunts, and looked into the faces of the boys I once knew,
I saw scarcely a line to call back their images to my mind. These
bashful little boys were bent and gray and old, and had almost reached
their journey’s end. And when I asked for familiar names, over and over
again I was pointed to the white stones that now covered our old
playground and were persistently crawling up the hill beyond the little
rivulet that once marked the farthest limits of the yard. So many times
was I referred to the graveyard for the answer to the name I called,
that finally I did not dare to ask, “Where is John Cole?” or Thomas
Clark, but instead of this I would break the news more gently to myself,
and say, “Is John Cole living still?” or, “Is Thomas Clark yet dead?”
I am most disconsolate because I could not tell the story that I meant
to write, and I can scarce forgive this weird fantastic troop that
pushed themselves before my pencil and would not let me tell my tale.
Yet, after all,—the everlasting “after all” that excuses all, and in
some poor fashion decks even the most worthless life,—yet, after all,
there was little that I could have told had I done my very best. Even
now I might sum up my story in a few short words.
All my life I have been planning and hoping and thinking and dreaming
and loitering and waiting. All my life I have been getting ready to
begin to do something worth the while. I have been waiting for the
summer and waiting for the fall; I have been waiting for the winter and
waiting for the spring; waiting for the night and waiting for the
morning; waiting and dawdling and dreaming, until the day is almost
spent and the twilight close at hand.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed ‘it’ to ‘is’ on p. 170.
2. Silently corrected typographical errors.
3. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
5. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.