It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about
the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. These
harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least, a
generation ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only for a
master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.
But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it is
easy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, were
expanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was the
lovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were the
great hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretching away
to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures, and
the wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempests howled,
upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the great shadows of
summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shouldering
up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,--the clouds out of
which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden dashes of rain;
and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, a
fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the eagle poised on
outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can you say how these
things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contact
with the great world? Do you think any city lad could have written
“Thanatopsis” at eighteen?
If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used straw
hat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along the river-bank of
a cool morning to see if an eel had “got on,” you would not have fancied
that he lived in an ideal world. Nor did he consciously. So far as he
knew, he had no more sentiment than a jack-knife. Although he loved
Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin
found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his
fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head,
gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make
fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no
attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after
all, only a single and a very undefined item in his general ideal
world, and there was no harm in letting his imagination play about
her illumined head. Since Cynthia had “got religion” and John had
got nothing, his love was tempered with a little awe and a feeling of
distance. He was not fickle, and yet I cannot say that he was not ready
to construct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated.
Nothing was easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage, drawn
by two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the sandy road.
There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on the
back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, on
the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy, an imp out of a story-book.
John was told that the black boy was a slave, and that the carriage
was from Baltimore. Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty,
wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part of the slender boy on the
front seat,--here was an opening into a vast realm. The high-stepping
horses and the shining harness were enough to excite John's admiration,
but these were nothing to the little girl. His eyes had never before
fallen upon that kind of girl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovely
creature could exist. Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the
brown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut
features, or the charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was
this expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing
a country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in him
what John felt himself to be? Then he would go the world over to serve
her. In a moment he was self-conscious. His trousers seemed to creep
higher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush. He hoped
that she had not seen the other side of him, for, in fact, the patches
were not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth. The vision flashed
by him in a moment, but it left him with a resentful feeling. Perhaps
that proud little girl would be sorry some day, when he had become a
general, or written a book, or kept a store, to see him go away and
marry another. He almost made up his cruel mind on the instant that he
would never marry her, however bad she might feel. And yet he could
n't get her out of his mind for days and days, and when her image was
present, even Cynthia in the singers' seat on Sunday looked a little
cheap and common. Poor Cynthia! Long before John became a general or
had his revenge on the Baltimore girl, she married a farmer and was the
mother of children, red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she
looked tired and discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none
of the romance of her youth.
Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusements John had. The
middle pier of the long covered bridge over the river stood upon a great
rock, and this rock (which was known as the swimming-rock, whence the
boys on summer evenings dove into the deep pool by its side) was a
favorite spot with John when he could get an hour or two from the
everlasting “chores.” Making his way out to it over the rocks at low
water with his fish-pole, there he was content to sit and observe the
world; and there he saw a great deal of life. He always expected to
catch the legendary trout which weighed two pounds and was believed to
inhabit that pool. He always did catch horned dace and shiners, which he
despised, and sometimes he snared a monstrous sucker a foot and a half
long. But in the summer the sucker is a flabby fish, and John was not
thanked for bringing him home. He liked, however, to lie with his
face close to the water and watch the long fishes panting in the clear
depths, and occasionally he would drop a pebble near one to see how
gracefully he would scud away with one wave of the tail into deeper
water. Nothing fears the little brown boy. The yellow-bird slants his
wings, almost touches the deep water before him, and then escapes away
under the bridge to the east with a glint of sunshine on his back; the
fish-hawk comes down with a swoop, dips one wing, and, his prey having
darted under a stone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring on
even-poised pinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle which
is sweeping the sky in widening circles.
But there is other life. A wagon rumbles over the bridge, and the farmer
and his wife, jogging along, do not know that they have startled a lazy
boy into a momentary fancy that a thunder-shower is coming up. John
can see as he lies there on a still summer day, with the fishes and
the birds for company, the road that comes down the left bank of the
river,--a hot, sandy, well-traveled road, hidden from view here and
there by trees and bushes. The chief point of interest, however, is an
enormous sycamore-tree by the roadside and in front of John's house. The
house is more than a century old, and its timbers were hewed and squared
by Captain Moses Rice (who lies in his grave on the hillside above it),
in the presence of the Red Man who killed him with arrow and tomahawk
some time after his house was set in order. The gigantic tree, struck
with a sort of leprosy, like all its species, appears much older, and of
course has its tradition. They say that it grew from a green stake which
the first land-surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight.
John was reminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of the
decrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally a
twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand when
he dropped exhausted in the square with the word “Victory!” on his lips,
announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat, where the
Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad but scanty
shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old
watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn spout
pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough. It is
fed by a spring near by, and the water is sweeter and colder than any in
the known world, unless it be the well Zem-zem, as generations of people
and horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could come
back. And if they could file along this road again, what a procession
there would be riding down the valley!--antiquated vehicles, rusty
wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest
days, lean and long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation
after generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to
meeting and to mill.
What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there are pilgrims
to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them. Here comes a
gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle buyers, probably.
Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a good draught the nag
takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown
linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute, horsey-looking man. They turn
up, of course. Ah, there is an establishment he knows well: a sorrel
horse and an old chaise. The sorrel horse scents the water afar off, and
begins to turn up long before he reaches the trough, thrusting out his
nose in anticipation of the cool sensation. No check to let down; he
plunges his nose in nearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it. Two
maiden ladies--unmistakably such, though they appear neither “anxious
nor aimless”--within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel
back. It is the deacon's horse, a meeting-going nag, with a sedate,
leisurely jog as he goes; and these are two of the “salt of the
earth,”--the brevet rank of the women who stand and wait,--going down to
the village store to dicker. There come two men in a hurry, horse driven
up smartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and the
horse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back, the
nervous man in the buggy hitches forward on his seat, as if that would
carry the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumber-wagon with load of boards;
horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and cries “G'lang,” and
the horse reluctantly goes by, turning his head wistfully towards the
flowing spout. Ah, here comes an equipage strange to these parts, and
John stands up to look; an elegant carriage and two horses; trunks
strapped on behind; gentleman and boy on front seat and two ladies on
back seat,--city people. The gentleman descends, unchecks the horses,
wipes his brow, takes a drink at the spout and looks around, evidently
remarking upon the lovely view, as he swings his handkerchief in an
explanatory manner. Judicious travelers. John would like to know who
they are. Perhaps they are from Boston, whence come all the wonderfully
painted peddlers' wagons drawn by six stalwart horses, which the driver,
using no rein, controls with his long whip and cheery voice. If so,
great is the condescension of Boston; and John follows them with an
undefined longing as they drive away toward the mountains of Zoar. Here
is a footman, dusty and tired, who comes with lagging steps. He stops,
removes his hat, as he should to such a tree, puts his mouth to the
spout, and takes a long pull at the lively water. And then he goes on,
perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
So they come and go all the summer afternoon; but the great event of
the day is the passing down the valley of the majestic stage-coach,--the
vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off the
shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, and the creaking of its
leathern braces, as the great bulk swings along piled high with trunks.
It represents to John, somehow, authority, government, the right of way;
the driver is an autocrat, everybody must make way for the stage-coach.
It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal vehicle; one can go in
it to the confines of the world,--to Boston and to Albany.
There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy's
education. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band of gypsies
who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little roadside
patch of green turf by the river-bank not far from his house. It was
shaded by elms and butternut-trees, and a long spit of sand and pebbles
ran out from it into the brawling stream. Probably they were not a very
good kind of gypsy, although the story was that the men drank and beat
the women. John didn't know much about drinking; his experience of it
was confined to sweet cider; yet he had already set himself up as a
reformer, and joined the Cold Water Band. The object of this Band was to
walk in a procession under a banner that declared,
“So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate;”
and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of a
well-curb with a long sweep. It kept John and all the little boys and
girls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age;
though perhaps a few of them died meantime from eating loaf-cake and pie
and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of curiosity
and fear. Nothing more alien could come into the New England life than
this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible that here were actually
people who lived out-doors, who slept in their covered wagon or under
their tent, and cooked in the open air; it was a visible romance
transferred from foreign lands and the remote times of the story-books;
and John took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray into
the country, trading and stealing horses and robbing hen-roosts and
cornfields, for the mysterious race who for thousands of years have done
these same things in all lands, by right of their pure blood and ancient
lineage. John was afraid to approach the camp when any of the scowling
and villainous men were lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took
more courage when only women and children were visible. The swarthy,
black-haired women in dirty calico frocks were anything but attractive,
but they spoke softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him
into bringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course
of the season. In front of the tent were planted in the ground three
poles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle. This
was the kitchen, and it was sufficient. The fuel for the fire was the
driftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require to be
sawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the “chores” about this
establishment were reduced to the minimum. And an older person than John
might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid neither rent nor
taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature. It seemed to the boy
that affairs would go more smoothly in the world if everybody would live
in this simple manner. Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, why
it is that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians.