THE morning was cloudy and threatened rain; besides, it was autumn
weather, and the winds were getting harsh, and rustling among the
tree-tops that shaded the house most dismally. I did not dare to listen.
If, indeed, I were to stay by the bright fires of home, and gather the
nuts as they fell, and pile up the falling leaves to make great
bonfires, with Ben and the rest of the boys, I should have liked to
listen, and would have braved the dismal morning with the cheerfullest
of them all. For it would have been a capital time to light a fire in
the little oven we had built under the wall; it would have been so
pleasant to warm our fingers at it, and to roast the great russets on
the flat stones that made the top.
But this was not in store for me. I had bid the town boys good-by the
day before; my trunk was all packed; I was to go away—to school. The
little oven would go to ruin—I knew it would. I was to leave my home. I
was to bid my mother good-by, and Lilly, and Isabel, and all the rest;
and was to go away from them so far that I should only know what they
were all doing—in letters. It _was_ sad. And then to have the clouds
come over on that morning, and the winds sigh so dismally; oh, it was
too bad, I thought!
It comes back to me as I lie here this bright spring morning as if it
were only yesterday. I remember that the pigeons skulked under the eaves
of the carriage-house, and did not sit, as they used to do in summer,
upon the ridge; and the chickens huddled together about the stable
doors, as if they were afraid of the cold autumn. And in the garden the
white hollyhocks stood shivering, and bowed to the wind, as if their
time had come. The yellow musk-melons showed plain among the
frost-bitten vines, and looked cold and uncomfortable.
—Then they were all so kind, indoors! The cook made such nice things for
my breakfast, because little master was going; Lilly _would_ give me her
seat by the fire, and would put her lump of sugar in my cup; and my
mother looked so smiling, and so tenderly, that I thought I loved her
more than I ever did before. Little Ben was so gay, too; and wanted me
to take his jackknife, if I wished it—though he knew that I had a brand
new one in my trunk. The old nurse slipped a little purse into my hand,
tied up with a green ribbon—with money in it—and told me not to show it
to Ben or Lilly.
And cousin Isabel, who was there on a visit, would come to stand by my
chair, when my mother was talking to me; and put her hand in mine, and
look up into my face; but she did not say a word. I thought it was very
odd; and yet it did not seem odd to me that I could say nothing to her.
I dare say we felt alike.
At length Ben came running in, and said the coach had come; and there,
sure enough, out of the window, we saw it—a bright yellow coach, with
four white horses, and band-boxes all over the top, with a great pile of
trunks behind. Ben said it was a grand coach, and that he should like a
ride in it; and the old nurse came to the door, and said I should have a
capital time; but, somehow, I doubted if the nurse was talking honestly.
I believe she gave me an honest kiss though—and such a hug!
But it was nothing to my mother’s. Tom told me to be a man, and study
like a Trojan; but I was not thinking about study then. There was a tall
boy in the coach, and I was ashamed to have him see me cry; so I didn’t,
at first. But I remember, as I looked back and saw little Isabel run out
into the middle of the street to see the coach go off, and the curls
floating behind her, as the wind freshened, I felt my heart leaping into
my throat, and the water coming into my eyes, and how just then I caught
sight of the tall boy glancing at me—and how I tried to turn it off by
looking to see if I could button up my greatcoat a great deal lower down
than the buttonholes went.
But it was of no use; I put my head out of the coach window, and looked
back, as the little figure of Isabel faded, and then the house, and the
trees; and the tears did come; and I smuggled my handkerchief outside
without turning; so that I could wipe my eyes before the tall boy should
see me. They say that these shadows of morning fade, as the sun
brightens into noonday; but they are very dark shadows for all that!
Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their
boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness
and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the
boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into
his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the
texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul; to whom the
school in a distant village is but a vacation from home; and with whom a
return revives all those grosser affections which alone existed before;
just as there are plants which will bear all exposure without the
wilting of a leaf, and will return to the hot-house life as strong and
as hopeful as ever. But there are others to whom the severance from the
prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a mother, and the unseen
influences of the home altar, gives a shock that lasts forever; it is
wrenching with cruel hand what will bear but little roughness; and the
sobs with which the adieux are said are sobs that may come back in the
after years, strong, and steady, and terrible.
God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as
sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and
strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung
chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles
and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. These chords a little
rude and unnatural tension will break, and break forever. Watch your boy
then, if so be he will bear the strain; try his nature, if it be rude or
delicate; and, if delicate, in God’s name, do not, as you value your
peace and his, breed a harsh youth spirit in him that shall take pride
in subjugating and forgetting the delicacy and richness of his finer
affections!
—I see now, looking into the past, the troops of boys who were scattered
in the great play-ground, as the coach drove up at night. The school was
in a tall, stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where I
thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, they told me at home,
was kind; he said he hoped I would be a good boy, and patted me on the
head; but he did not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there was a
woman, whom they called the matron; who had a great many ribbons in her
cap, and who shook my hand—but so stiffly that I didn’t dare to look up
in her face.
One boy took me down to see the school-room, which was in the basement,
and the walls were all moldly, I remember; and when we passed a certain
door, he said: there was the dungeon; how I felt! I hated that boy; but
I believe he is dead now. Then the matron took me up to my room—a little
corner room, with two beds, and two windows, and a red table, and
closet; and my chum was about my size, and wore a queer roundabout
jacket with big bell buttons; and he called the schoolmaster “Old
Crikey”—and kept me awake half the night, telling me how he whipped the
scholars, and how they played tricks upon him. I thought my chum was a
very uncommon boy.
For a day or two, the lessons were easy, and it was sport to play with
so many “fellows.” But soon I began to feel lonely at night after I had
gone to bed. I used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me;
after school, too, I wished I could step in and tell Isabel how bravely
I had got my lessons. When I told my chum this, he laughed at me, and
said that was no place for “homesick, white-livered chaps.” I wondered
if my chum had any mother.
We had spending money once a week, with which we used to go down to the
village store, and club our funds together, to make great pitchers of
lemonade. Some boys would have money besides; though it was against the
rules; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar bill in his
wallet—and we all thought he must be very rich.
We marched in procession to the village church on Sundays. There were
two long benches in the galleries, reaching down the sides of the
meeting-house; and on these we sat. At the first, I was among the
smallest boys, and took a place close to the wall, against the pulpit;
but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to the lower end of the
first bench. This I never liked, because it was close by one of the
ushers, and because it brought me next to some country women, who wore
stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with the choir. But there was a
little black-eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, that I thought
handsome; I used to look at her very often; but was careful she should
never catch my eye.
There was another down below, in a corner pew, who was pretty; and who
wore a hat in the winter trimmed with fur. Half the boys in the school
said they would marry her some day or other. One’s name was Jane, and
that of the other, Sophia; which we thought pretty names, and cut them
on the ice, in skating time. But I didn’t think either of them so pretty
as Isabel.
Once a teacher whipped me: I bore it bravely in the school: but
afterward, at night, when my chum was asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I
thought of Isabel, and Ben, and my mother, and how much they loved me:
and laying my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In the morning
I was calm enough: it was another of the heart-ties broken, though I did
not know it then. It lessened the old attachment to home, because that
home could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympathies. Memory,
indeed, freshened and grew strong; but strong in bitterness, and in
regrets. The boy whose love you can not feed by daily nourishment will
find pride, self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to furnish
other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can not shoot his
branches into the sunshine, he will become acclimated to the shadow, and
indifferent to such stray gleams of sunshine as his fortune may
vouchsafe.
Hostilities would sometimes threaten between the school and the village
boys; but they usually passed off with such loud and harmless explosions
as belong to the wars of our small politicians. The village champions
were a hatter’s apprentice, and a thickset fellow who worked in a
tannery. We prided ourselves especially on one stout boy, who wore a
sailor’s monkey jacket. I can not but think how jaunty that stout boy
looked in that jacket; and what an Ajax cast there was to his
countenance! It certainly did occur to me to compare him with William
Wallace (Miss Porter’s William Wallace) and I thought how I would have
liked to have seen a tussle between them. Of course, we who were small
boys, limited ourselves to indignant remark, and thought “we should like
to see them do it;” and prepared clubs from the wood-shed, after a model
suggested by a New York boy, who had seen the clubs of the policemen.
There was one scholar, poor Leslie, who had friends in some foreign
country, and who occasionally received letters bearing a foreign
post-mark: what an extraordinary boy that was—what astonishing letters,
what extraordinary parents! I wondered if I should ever receive a letter
from “foreign parts?” I wondered if I should ever write one; but this
was too much—too absurd! As if I, Paul, wearing a blue jacket with gilt
buttons, and number four boots, should ever visit those countries spoken
of in the geographies, and by learned travelers! No, no; this was too
extravagant; but I knew what I would do, if I lived to come of age; and
I vowed that I would—I would go to New York!
Number seven was the hospital, and forbidden ground; we had all of us a
sort of horror of number seven. A boy died there once, and oh, how he
moaned; and what a time there was when the father came!
A scholar by the name of Tom Belton, who wore linsey gray, made a dam
across a little brook by the school, and whittled out a saw-mill that
actually sawed; he had genius. I expected to see him before now at the
head of American mechanics; but I learn with pain that he is keeping a
grocery store.
At the close of all the terms we had exhibitions, to which all the
townspeople came, and among them the black-eyed Jane, and the pretty
Sophia with fur around her hat. My great triumph was when I had the part
of one of Pizarro’s chieftains, the evening before I left the school.
How I did look!
I had a mustache put on with burned cork, and whiskers very bushy
indeed; and I had the militia coat of an ensign in the town company,
with the skirts pinned up, and a short sword very dull, and crooked,
which belonged to an old gentleman who was said to have got it from some
privateer, who was said to have taken it from some great British admiral
in the old wars; and the way I carried that sword upon the platform and
the way I jerked it out when it came to my turn to say—“Battle! battle!
then death to the armed, and chains for the defenseless!”—was
tremendous!
The morning after, in our dramatic hats—black felt, with turkey
feathers—we took our place upon the top of the coach to leave the
school. The head master, in green spectacles, came out to shake hands
with us—a very awful shaking of hands.
Poor gentleman!—he is in his grave now.
We gave three loud hurrahs “for the old school,” as the coach started;
and upon the top of the hill that overlooks the village, we gave another
round—and still another for the crabbed old fellow whose apples we had
so often stolen. I wonder if old Bulkeley is living yet?
As we got on under the pine trees, I recalled the image of the
black-eyed Jane, and of the other little girl in the corner pew—and
thought how I would come back after the college days were over—a man,
with a beaver hat, and a cane, and with a splendid barouche, and how I
would take the best chamber at the inn, and astonish the old
schoolmaster by giving him a familiar tap on the shoulder; and how I
would be the admiration, and the wonder of the pretty girl in the
fur-trimmed hat! Alas, how our thoughts outrun our deeds!
For long—long years, I saw no more of my old school; and when at length
the view came, great changes—crashing tornadoes—had swept over my path!
I thought no more of startling the villagers, or astonishing the
black-eyed girl. No, no! I was content to slip quietly through the
little town, with only a tear or two, as I recalled the dead ones, and
mused upon the emptiness of life!
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