When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast
the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of
childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The
absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me
by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's hearth,--
the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave,
sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a passion
for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the
dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read
with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind
was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love
for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often
wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My
fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm
was to smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-
susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from
that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my
father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from
Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life
of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the
daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman's daughter can
boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite
perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than
boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music,
her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of
dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to
act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale
and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.
"Tonics!" said Mr. Squills; "and don't let him sit over his book. Send
him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are
growing too large;" and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
hand on my forehead. "Gad, sir, here's an ideality for you; and, bless
my soul, what a, constructiveness!"
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
gone.
"My dear," then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my
aching ideality--"my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
earnest."
"Bless me, Austin!--at his age?"
"He is nearly eight years old."
"But he is so forward."
"It is for that reason he must go to school."
"I don't quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--"
My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--"
"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"
"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
almost sadly. "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and
you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? 'To prevent their bearing
too soon.' There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last."
"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.