SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE
1840-1844
I went to school, of course, for this was a part of the serious business
of New England life. Our schoolhouse was two and a half miles distant,
and the path to it lay across half a dozen farms and ran through the
forest for a mile. There I was taught the "three R's," and nothing else.
There was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the little
'rithmetic, no mathematics. I learned to cipher, read, and write; but I
learned these rudimentary branches very rapidly. At night, in the old
farmhouse, my aunts would go over the tasks of the day with me.
Our principal diversions were in the winter, when we had delightful
sleighing parties. The school-children always had one great picnic.
There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher would be in charge of
the party. We visited the surrounding towns, and it was a great affair
to us. We looked forward to it from the very commencement of the school
year. On examination day, at the close of the term, we children had to
clean the schoolhouse. There was no janitor, as now. But we enjoyed the
work, and took a certain childish pride in it.
I remember that one of my earliest ambitions was gratified at that
period when I was chosen leader of the school. I stood at the head of
everything. And it was no idle compliment. Boys are not, like their
elders, influenced by envy or jealousy. They invariably try to select
the best "man" among them for their leader. Jealousies, envy, and
heart-burnings come afterward.
Reading the account of the collision between the Priscilla and the
Powhatan in the Sound off Newport, this year, and the peril that
threatened five hundred passengers, there came to my mind the
recollection of a catastrophe that happened sixty-two years ago, and how
the tidings were brought to me. I can live over again the horror of that
day. I recall that it was in January, '40.
It was a stormy, bitter day, and I was in the little schoolhouse at Pond
End, two and a half miles from the farm. The snow had been falling a
long while, and everything was covered with it. As the day advanced, and
the snow piled deeper and ever deeper about the little house, and
covered the forests and fields with a thicker blanket of white, we began
to grow anxious. Now and then a sleigh would drive up through the
drifting, flying snow, and the father and mother of some child in the
school would come in and take away the little boy or girl and disappear
in the storm. I began to think, with dread, of how I, a little fellow,
would be able to find my way home through the blinding snow, when
suddenly there came a tap on the door. The teacher went to the door, and
called to me: "George, your uncle Emery Bemis has just arrived from
Boston in his sleigh, and wants to take you home with him."
When I got into the sleigh he seemed to be very sad. He sat quiet for
some little time, and then turned to me and said: "George, I have some
terrible news for your grandmother. She is at the farmhouse now, waiting
to see her youngest daughter, your aunt Alice. Your grandmother expects
me to bring her. She was coming from New York on the steamer Lexington,
with the dead body of her husband [and his brother and father], which
she wanted to bury in the family graveyard. There were three hundred
passengers on the ship. The Lexington was wrecked and burned in the
Sound, and three hundred persons were lost--burned or drowned. Your aunt
was lost. Only five passengers were saved."
Such were the horrible tidings my uncle was bearing to my grandmother
and my aunts, instead of the living presence they were expecting. This
incident left an ineradicable impression upon my mind. There was one
peculiar thing about the accident of the Lexington that struck me at
the time as being weird and unforgettable. When the ship went to pieces
the pilot-house was shattered, and a portion of it floated away and
lodged against the rocks near the shore. The bell itself was uninjured,
and still swung from its hangings, and there it remained, clanging
dolorously in every wind. It seemed to my boyish fancy to be tolling
perpetually for the dead of the Lexington.
Years afterward, while making a speech in a political campaign, I made
use of this incident. I said the Democratic party of the day was adrift
from its ancient moorings, and was always calling up something of the
remote past. It was like the bell of the Lexington, caught upon the
rocks that had wrecked the ship and tolling forever for the dead.
George Ripley, who was the leader at Brook Farm and, long afterward, was
associated with Charles A. Dana in the preparation of the American
Cyclopedia, was at one time my school-teacher on Waltham Plains. General
Nathaniel P. Banks, who was a few years older than I, was chairman of
our library committee. We used to have lectures in Rumford Hall. (By the
way, this hall was named for Count Rumford, whom most persons take to
have been a German or other foreigner, on account of his foreign title;
but he was an American.) The lecture night was always a great event in
Waltham. One day a man came to me and said, "Here is a remarkable
letter." He read it to me, and it was as follows:
"_To the Library Committee, Waltham:_
"I will come to lecture for $5 for myself, but ask you for four
quarts of oats for my horse.
"RALPH WALDO EMERSON."
The lecture that Mr. Emerson delivered for us boys of the library
committee in Waltham was entitled "Nature." We paid him $5 and four
quarts of oats for it. He delivered it many times afterward, when his
name was on every lip in the civilized world, and he received $150 to
$500 for each delivery. He was just as great then, in that hour in the
little old town of Waltham; it was the same lecture, with the same
exquisite thought and marvelous wisdom; but it took years for the world
to recognize the greatness and the beauty and the wisdom of him, and to
value them at their higher worth. The world paid for the name, not for
the lecture or the truth and beauty.
During this period I attended school for three months every summer. My
grandparents wanted to make a clergyman of me. But that sort of thing
was not in me. I was sent up to Mr. Leonard Frost, at Framingham, ten
miles distant, and lived with him. Certainly my board could not have
been more than $2 a week, and the tuition amounted to scarcely anything.
I was with Mr. Frost just three months, at a total expenditure for
educational purposes of about $25! This constituted my college
education. I was then fourteen years old; and this is all the school
education I have ever had.
The chief game we played when I was a boy was what we called "round
ball," which has now developed into the national game of baseball. I was
quite an adept at the game, as I took great interest always in all
sports and easily excelled in them. I had also a fancy for chemistry,
and my first experiment was the result of sitting down upon a bottle of
chemicals. It cost me certain portions of my clothing, and made a
lasting impression upon me. It effectually put an end to my desire to
study chemistry further.
About this time a sweeping change came in my life. One day I happened to
overhear my aunts talking about my future. The good ladies had come to
the conclusion that a clergyman's life was not the life for me; so they
were debating the question of sending me out to learn a trade. They said
it was evident that I would not be a clergyman, a doctor, or a lawyer;
so I must be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or a mason. Now I did not
want to be any of these things.
As soon as I got an opportunity I told my aunts that I did not intend to
be a carpenter, or a mason, or a blacksmith. I said I was going down to
Boston--not to the market, but to get a position somewhere. They were
astounded. They could not believe their ears. But I went.
The city seemed bigger than ever, now that I had to face it and conquer
it, or have it conquer me. But I was not beaten before the fight. I
began walking through the streets with as bold a heart as I could
summon, and kept searching the windows and doors for any sign of "Boy
wanted." I had seen such notices pasted up in windows when I came into
the town on marketing trips.
Finally I saw such a sign on a drug-store in Washington Street, and
walked in. I told the druggist I should like to go to work. He offered
me my board and lodging for looking after the place. I asked him what
sort of clothes he wanted me to wear, and he replied that the suit I had
on--my Sunday clothes--would do for every day. I was quite happy and
started to work.
The first night I slept in the same building with the store, but above
it. About one o'clock in the morning the bell rang. Some one wanted the
doctor at once. I said I wasn't a doctor, and that the doctor was not
there. The messenger ran off. This was bad enough, to be routed up in
the middle of the night that way. The next day the druggist went away
from the store on some business. I sampled everything edible in the
place. I tried the different kinds of candy, and sirups, and then went
out and bought some lemonade and a dozen raw oysters. The result may be
imagined. After a few minutes of Mont Pelee, I decided that I had had
enough of the drug business. I told the druggist my decision, shut the
door, and left the store, a disappointed and lonely little fellow.
I hesitated as to my next step. But there was the old farmhouse--and it
invited me very tenderly just then to return. I was not conquered yet,
but would fight on. I turned, as if by instinct, toward Cambridgeport,
the scene of my traffickings with the grocer. My uncle Clarke lived
there, the uncle that had brought me on from New Orleans; but I could
not make up my mind to go to him, either. The family would laugh at me.
No! I would get another place--but it would not be in a drug-store!
Then I had an inspiration. There was the grocer named Holmes! Why not
try him? I would. So I went to the store of Joseph A. Holmes, at the
corner of Main Street and Brighton Road. To my eager inquiry, Mr. Holmes
said: "You have come just in time. We want a boy." Then he asked me what
wages I wanted. "Just enough to live on," I said. "You can live with
us," he said; "and I will give you one dollar a week." That meant $50 a
year. It was a great sum to me. I began to work at once.
This was the winter of '43-'44, and I was fourteen. My work was to drive
the grocery wagon up to Old Cambridgeport, take orders, and fill them. I
had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to look after the horse,
just as I had done on the farm, and to get everything ready for the
trip. I had the orders of the day before to fill and to deliver at the
college. Besides, I had to work in the store after I came back from Old
Cambridgeport. In the evening I had to look after the lamps, sweep out,
put up the shutters, and do numberless other little things about the
store. The store was closed at ten o'clock at night. Then I would put
out the lights, which were old-fashioned oil lamps.
It was a long day for a boy--or for a man. I worked eighteen hours every
day. And the laborers in the Pennsylvania coal-mines are now striking
for an eight-hour day! I had six hours of night in which to go to bed
and to find what sleep I could. This life continued for about two years.
In that time I had learned to do almost everything that was to be done
about a grocery store. I had really learned this in the first six
months.
One of my many little duties was to make paper bags. I had to cut the
paper and paste it together. Another task was to take a hogshead of
hams, put each ham in bagging, and sew it up. Then I had to whitewash
each particular ham. That was a nice business! It went against my nature
more than any other part of my manifold labors in the store.
Mr. Holmes was a Baptist deacon, but the only thing about him to which
my youthful taste objected was that he chewed tobacco all the time.
Yes, there was another objection. He insisted upon my joining the Bible
class in his Sunday-school. This I would not do. I could not explain it
all to him; but the Santa Claus matter had not yet worn out of my mind.
One day at the grocery store, Mr. Holmes brought in an elderly gentleman
and said to me: "George, I want you to take this gentleman" (naming him)
"up to the college, and walk about with him." The gentleman seemed to me
to be about sixty years old. Mr. Holmes cautioned me about keeping him
out of any danger, as he was not very well. "Don't talk to him," he said
to me, "unless he wants to talk to you."
The thing was like a holiday to me. I walked with him up to the college,
and all around, as much as he wanted to; and it never occurred to me, in
all the days I was with him in this way, to find out who he was, or to
think about it at all.
He was John Jacob Astor, Jr., eldest son of the founder of the great
house of the Astors. He was practically an invalid. He was then in
charge of a Mr. Dowse, who generally left him to the care of Mr. Holmes,
and who, in turn, left him to me. After this, he came to New York, where
he was taken in charge by his brother, William B. Astor.