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A BUSY YEAR AT THE OLD SQUIRE'S
by
C. A. STEPHENS
Published by
The Old Squire's Bookstore
Norway, Maine
Copyright, 1922
By C. A. Stephens
All rights reserved
Electrotyped and Printed by
The Colonial Press
Clinton, Mass., U. S. A.
DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL BEST WISHES TO THE THOUSANDS OF READERS WHO HAVE
REQUESTED THIS Memorial Edition OF THE C. A. STEPHENS BOOKS
Contents
CHAPTER
I. Master Pierson Comes Back
II. Cutting Ice at 14° Below Zero
III. A Bear's "Pipe" in Winter
IV. White Monkey Week
V. When Old Zack Went to School
VI. The Sad Abuse of Old Mehitable
VII. Bear-Tone
VIII. When We Hunted the Striped Catamount
IX. The Lost Oxen
X. Bethesda
XI. When We Walked the Town Lines
XII. The Rose-Quartz Spring
XIII. Fox Pills
XIV. The Unpardonable Sin
XV. The Cantaloupe Coaxer
XVI. The Strange Disappearance of Grandpa Edwards
XVII. Our Fourth of July at the Den
XVIII. Jim Doane's Bank Book
XIX. Grandmother Ruth's Last Load of Hay
XX. When Uncle Hannibal Spoke at the Chapel
XXI. That Mysterious Daguerreotype Saloon
XXII. "Rainbow in the Morning"
XIII. When I Went After the Eyestone
XXIV. Borrowed for a Bee Hunt
XXV. When the Lion Roared
XXVI. Uncle Solon Chase Comes Along
XVII. On the Dark of the Moon
XXVIII. Halstead's Gobbler
XXIX. Mitchella Jars
XXX. When Bears Were Denning Up
XXXI. Czar Brench
XXII. When Old Peg Led the Flock
XXXIII. Witches' Brooms
XXXIV. The Little Image Peddlers
XXXV. A January Thaw
XXXVI. Uncle Billy Murch's Hair-Raiser
XXXVII. Addison's Pocketful of Auger Chips
A Busy Year at the Old Squire's
CHAPTER I
MASTER PIERSON COMES BACK
Master Joel Pierson arrived the following Sunday afternoon, as he had
promised in his letter of Thanksgiving Day eve, and took up his abode
with us at the old Squire's for the winter term of school.
Cousin Addison drove to the village with horse and pung to fetch him;
and the pung, I remember, was filled with the master's belongings,
including his school melodeon, books and seven large wall maps for
teaching geography. For Master Pierson brought a complete outfit, even
to the stack of school song-books which later were piled on the top of
the melodeon that stood in front of the teacher's desk at the
schoolhouse. Every space between the windows was covered by those wall
maps. No other teacher had ever made the old schoolhouse so attractive.
No other teacher had ever entered on the task of giving us instruction
with such zeal and such enthusiasm. It was a zeal, too, and an
enthusiasm which embraced every pupil in the room and stopped at nothing
short of enlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.
Master Pierson put life and hard work into everything that went on at
school--even into the old schoolhouse itself. Every morning he would be
off from the old Squire's at eight o'clock, to see that the schoolhouse
was well warmed and ready to begin lessons at nine; and if there had
been any neglect in sweeping or dusting, he would do it himself, and
have every desk and bench clean and tidy before school time.
What was more, Master Pierson possessed the rare faculty of
communicating his own zeal for learning to his pupils. We became so
interested, as weeks passed, that of our own accord we brought our
school books home with us at night, in order to study evenings; and we
asked for longer lessons that we might progress faster.
My cousin Halstead was one of those boys (and their name is Legion) who
dislike study and complain of their lessons that they are too long and
too hard. But strange to say, Master Joel Pierson somehow led Halse to
really like geography that winter. Those large wall maps in color were
of great assistance to us all. In class we took turns going to them with
a long pointer, to recite the lesson of the day. I remember just how the
different countries looked and how they were bounded--though many of
these boundaries are now, of course, considerably changed.
When lessons dragged and dullness settled on the room, Master Joel was
wont to cry, "Halt!" then sit down at the melodeon and play some school
song as lively as the instrument admitted of, and set us all singing for
five or ten minutes, chanting the multiplication tables, the names of
the states, the largest cities of the country, or even the Books of the
Bible. At other times he would throw open the windows and set us
shouting Patrick Henry's speech, or Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean. In
short, "old Joel" was what now would be called a "live wire." He was
twenty-two then and a student working his own way through Bates College.
After graduating he migrated to a far western state where he taught for
a year or two, became supervisor of schools, then State Superintendent,
and afterwards a Representative to Congress. He is an aged man now and
no word of mine can add much to the honors which have worthily crowned
his life. None the less I want to pay this tribute to him--even if he
did rub my ears at times and cry, "Wake up, Round-head! Wake up and find
out what you are in this world for." (More rubs!) "You don't seem to
know yet. Wake up and find out about it. We have all come into the world
to do something. Wake up and find out what you are here for!"--and then
more rubs!
It wasn't his fault if I never fairly waked up to my vocation--if I
really had one. For the life of me I could never feel sure what I was
for! Cousin Addison seemed to know just what he was going to do, from
earliest boyhood, and went straight to it. Much the same way, cousin
Theodora's warm, generous heart led her directly to that labor of love
which she has so faithfully performed. As for Halstead, he was perfectly
sure, cock-sure, more than twenty times, what he was going to do in
life; but always in the course of a few weeks or months, he discovered
he was on the wrong trail. What can be said of us who either have no
vocation at all, or too many? What are we here for?
In addition to our daily studies at the schoolhouse, we resumed Latin,
in the old sitting-room, evenings, Thomas and Catherine Edwards coming
over across the field to join us. To save her carpet, grandmother Ruth
put down burlap to bear the brunt of our many restless feet--for there
was a great deal of trampling and sometimes outbreaks of scuffling
there.
Thomas and I, who had forgotten much we had learned the previous winter,
were still delving in _Æsop's Fables_. But Addison, Theodora and
Catherine were going on with the first book of Cæsar's _Gallic War_.
Ellen, two years younger, was still occupied wholly by her English
studies. Study hours were from seven till ten, with interludes for
apples and pop-corn.
Halstead, who had now definitely abandoned Latin as something which
would never do him any good, took up Comstock's _Natural Philosophy_, or
made a feint of doing so, in order to have something of his own that was
different from the rest of us. Natural philosophy, he declared, was far
and away more important than Latin.
Memory goes back very fondly to those evenings in the old sitting-room,
they were so illumined by great hopes ahead. Thomas and I, at a
light-stand apart from the others, were usually puzzling out a
Fable--_The Lion, The Oxen, The Kid and the Wolf, The Fox and the Lion_,
or some one of a dozen others--holding noisy arguments over it till
Master Pierson from the large center table, called out, "Less noise over
there among those Latin infants! Cæsar is building his bridge over the
Rhine. You are disturbing him."
Addison, always very quiet when engrossed in study, scarcely noticed or
looked up, unless perhaps to aid Catherine and Theodora for a moment,
with some hard passage. It was Tom and I who made Latin noisy,
aggravated at times by pranks from Halstead, whose studies in natural
philosophy were by no means diligent. At intervals of assisting us with
our translations of Cæsar and the Fables, Master Pierson himself was
translating the Greek of Demosthenes' Orations, and also reviewing his
Livy--to keep up with his Class at College. But, night or day, he was
always ready to help or advise us, and push us on. "Go ahead!" was "old
Joel's" motto, and "That's what we're here for." He appeared to be
possessed by a profound conviction that the human race has a great
destiny before it, and that we ought all to work hard to hurry it up and
realize it.
It is quite wonderful what an influence for good a wide-awake teacher,
like Master Pierson, can exert in a school of forty or fifty boys and
girls like ours in the old Squire's district, particularly where many of
them "don't know what they are in the world for," and have difficulty in
deciding on a vocation in life.
At that time there was much being said about a Universal Language. As
there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say
nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel
freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language
for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. At
present, months and years of our short lives are spent learning foreign
languages. A complete education demands that the American whose mother
tongue is the English, must learn French, German, Spanish and Italian,
to say nothing of the more difficult languages of eastern Europe and the
Orient. Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make
himself understood, and do business outside his own country.
The want of a common means of communication therefore has long been
recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat
imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody
learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands
without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty
different languages.
The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a considerable
popularity for a time. But practically this was soon found to be a
clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other drawbacks
attended its adoption.
But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak,
Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great success.
The same disadvantages attend them, each and all.
In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old
Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical
plan for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward.
"Latin is the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he
said. "Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them.
Law, theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their
descriptive terms. Without Latin words, modern science would be a jargon
which couldn't be taught at all. Without Latin, the English language,
itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of our
ancestors. No one can claim to be well educated till he has studied
Latin.
"Now as we have need to learn Latin anyway, why not kill two birds with
one stone, and make Latin our universal language? Why not have a
colloquial, every-day Latin, such as the Romans used to speak in Italy?
In point of fact, Latin was the universal language with travelers and
educated people all through the Middle Ages. We need to learn it anyhow,
so why not make it our needed form of common speech?"
I remember just how earnest old Joel became as he set forth this new idea
of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He rubbed my
ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both her hands and
went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down the table, lamp
and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just what's wanted for a
Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old Squire to hear about
it; and the old Squire admitted that it sounded reasonable. "For I can
see," he said, "that it would keep Latin, and the derivation of words
from it, fresh in our minds. It would prove a constant review of the
words from which our language has been formed.
"But Latin always looked to me rather heavy and perhaps too clumsy for
every-day talk," the old gentleman remarked. "Think you could talk it?"
"Sure!" Master Pierson cried. "The old Romans spoke it. So can we. And
that's just what I will do. I will get up a book of conversational
Latin--enough to make a Common Language for every-day use." And in point
of fact that was what old Joel was doing, for four or five weeks
afterwards. He had Theodora and Catherine copy out page after page of
it--as many as twenty pages. He wanted us each to have a copy of it; and
for a time at least, he intended to have it printed.
A few days ago I came upon some of those faded, yellow pages, folded up
in an old text book of Æsop's Latin Fables--the one Tom and I were then
using; and I will set down a few of the sentences here, to illustrate
what Master Pierson thought might be done with Latin as a universal
language.
Master Pierson's Universal Language in Latin, which he named _Dic_
from _dico_, meaning to speak.
1 It is time to get up. = Surgendi tempus est.
2 The sun is up already. = Sol jamdudum ortus.
3 Put on your shoes. = Indue tibi ocreas.
4 Comb your head. = Pecte caput tuum.
5 Light a candle and build a fire. = Accende lucernum, et fac ut
luceat faculus.
6 Carry the lantern. We must water = Vulcanum in cornu geras.
the horses. Equi aquatum agenda sunt.
7 It is a very hot day. = Dies est ingens æstus.
8 Let's go to the barn. = Jam imus horreum.
9 Grind the axes. = Acuste ascias.
10 It is near twelve o'clock. = Instat hora duodecima.
11 It is time for dinner. = Prandenti tempus adest.
12 Please take dinner with us. = Quesso nobiscum hodie sumas
prandiolum.
13 Make a good fire. = Instruas optimum focum.
14 This chimney smokes. = Male fumat hic caminus.
15 The wood is green. = Viride est hoc lignum.
16 Fetch kindling wood. = Affer fomitem.
17 Lay the table cloth. = Sterne mappam.
18 Dinner is ready. = Cibus est appositus.
19 Don't spoil it by delay. = Ne corrumpatur mora vestra.
20 Sit down. = Accumbe.
21 This is my place. = Hic mihi locus.
22 Let him sit next me. = Assideat mihi.
23 Say grace, or ask a blessing. = Recita consecrationem.
24 Give me brown bread. = Da mihi panem atrum.
25 I am going to school. = Eo ad scholam.
26 What time is it? = Quota est hora?
27 It is past seven. = Præteriit hora septima.
28 The bell has rung. = Sonuit tintinnabulum.
29 Go with me. = Vade mecum.
30 The master will soon be here. = Brevi præceptor aderit.
31 I am very cold. = Valde frigeo.
32 My hands are numb. = Obtorpent manus.
33 Mend the fire. = Apta ignem.
I have copied out only a few of the shorter sentences. There were, as I
have said, fully twenty pages of it, enough for quite a respectable
"Universal Language," or at least the beginnings of one. Perhaps some
ambitious linguist will yet take it up in earnest.