The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, by any
means; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any part of
the year. There is a difference in boys: some are always jolly, and some
go scowling always through life as if they had a stone-bruise on each
heel. I like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses candy,
offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fifty cents a day to
see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is now the owner of
a large town at the West. To be sure, there are no houses in it except
his own; but there is a map of it, and roads and streets are laid out
on it, with dwellings and churches and academies and a college and
an opera-house, and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or
Hartford,--on paper. He and all his family have the fever and ague,
and shake worse than the people at Lebanon; but they do not mind it; it
makes them lively, in fact. Ed May is just as jolly as he used to be.
He calls his town Mayopolis, and expects to be mayor of it; his wife,
however, calls the town Maybe.
The farmer-boy likes to have winter come for one thing, because it
freezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it; and it is covered
with snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cows to
pasture. He would have a very easy time if it were not for the getting
up before daylight to build the fires and do the “chores.” Nature
intended the long winter nights for the farmer-boy to sleep; but in my
day he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the cock crew, get out
of the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his cold pantaloons,
and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone down to zero,
rake open the coals on the hearth and start the morning fire, and then
go to the barn to “fodder.” The frost was thick on the kitchen windows,
the snow was drifted against the door, and the journey to the barn, in
the pale light of dawn, over the creaking snow, was like an exile's trip
to Siberia. The boy was not half awake when he stumbled into the cold
barn, and was greeted by the lowing and bleating and neighing of cattle
waiting for their breakfast. How their breath steamed up from the
mangers, and hung in frosty spears from their noses. Through the
great lofts above the hay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind
whistled, and the snow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated.
I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should be
tight and warm, with a fire in it, if necessary, in order to keep the
temperature somewhere near the freezing-point. I couldn't see how the
cattle could live in a place where a lively boy, full of young blood,
would freeze to death in a short time if he did not swing his arms and
slap his hands, and jump about like a goat. I thought I would have a
sort of perpetual manger that should shake down the hay when it was
wanted, and a self-acting machine that should cut up the turnips and
pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing for the cattle and
horses to drink. With these simple arrangements I could lie in bed,
and know that the “chores” were doing themselves. It would also be
necessary, in order that I should not be disturbed, that the crow should
be taken out of the roosters, but I could think of no process to do it.
It seems to me that the hen-breeders, if they know as much as they say
they do, might raise a breed of crowless roosters for the benefit of
boys, quiet neighborhoods, and sleepy families.
There was another notion that I had about kindling the kitchen fire,
that I never carried out. It was to have a spring at the head of my
bed, connecting with a wire, which should run to a torpedo which I would
plant over night in the ashes of the fireplace. By touching the spring
I could explode the torpedo, which would scatter the ashes and cover
the live coals, and at the same time shake down the sticks of wood which
were standing by the side of the ashes in the chimney, and the fire
would kindle itself. This ingenious plan was frowned on by the whole
family, who said they did not want to be waked up every morning by an
explosion. And yet they expected me to wake up without an explosion! A
boy's plans for making life agreeable are hardly ever heeded.
I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the district school
in the winter. There is such a chance for learning, that he must be a
dull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater, an accurate
snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with or without a
board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet. Take a moderate
hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a “go-round”
of boys on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling away
boot-leather. The boy is the shoemaker's friend. An active lad can wear
down a pair of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice will scrape his
toes. Sledding or coasting is also slow fun compared to the “bareback”
sliding down a steep hill over a hard, glistening crust. It is not only
dangerous, but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to
make a tailor laugh. If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a
schoolboy wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one once
a month. In a country district-school patches were not by any means a
sign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition.
Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet-iron
seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out his trousers on
the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering hard sums. For that
extraordinary statement he received two castigations,--one at home, that
was mild, and one from the schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod
upon the boy's sliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it,
on a sliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history,--early
history,--the Indian wars. We studied it mostly at noontime, and we had
it illustrated as the children nowadays have “object-lessons,” though
our object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive real
history.
Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said,
had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by the settlers for
defense against the Indians. For the Indians had the idea that the
whites were not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle them
with a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It was very steep on each
side, and the river ran close by. It was a charming place in summer,
where one could find laurel, and checkerberries, and sassafras roots,
and sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across the river,
and listening to the murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built a
meeting-house there afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter
that the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it
blew nearly all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards
heard of in the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came down
into the valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards.
It used to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought to
stand as near heaven as possible.
The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one was the
Early Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the most numerous.
The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a strong fortress
it was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast size (larger than
the cyclopean blocks of stone which form the ancient Etruscan walls in
Italy), piled one upon another, and the whole cemented by pouring on
water which froze and made the walls solid. The Pequots helped the
whites build it. It had a covered way under the snow, through which only
could it be entered, and it had bastions and towers and openings to
fire from, and a great many other things for which there are no names in
military books. And it had a glacis and a ditch outside.
When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in the
schoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and await
the attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison,
while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that they
should be barbarous. And it was in this light that the great question
was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soaked
over night in water and let freeze. They were as hard as cobble-stones,
and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them, he could not tell
whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It was considered as
unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it is to use poisoned
ammunition in real war. But as the whites were protected by the fort,
and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the
latter might use the hard missiles.
The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideous war-whoops,
attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and a shower of balls.
The garrison replied with yells of defiance and well-directed shots,
hurling back the invaders when they attempted to scale the walls.
The Settlers had the advantage of position, but they were sometimes
overpowered by numbers, and would often have had to surrender but for
the ringing of the school-bell. The Pequots were in great fear of the
school-bell.
I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and
surrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried by
storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of the
fortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was to scalp
him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There were a great
many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it was in
the cause of our early history. The history of Greece and Rome was stuff
compared to this. And we had many boys in our school who could imitate
the Indian war whoop enough better than they could scan arma, virumque
cano.