and peeps over the bank. "Golly, ain't he a big one!" Perhaps he is
eighteen inches long, and weighs two or three pounds. He lies there
among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a school of them,
perhaps a district school, that only keeps in warm days in the summer.
The pupils seem to have little to learn, except to balance themselves
and to turn gracefully with a flirt of the tail. Not much is taught
but "deportment," and some of the old suckers are perfect Turveydrops
in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line, and on the end
of it a brass wire bent into a hoop, which is a slipnoose, and slides
together when anything is caught in it. The boy approaches the bank
and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale. The boy devours him
with his eyes. He is almost too much excited to drop the snare into
the water without making a noise. A puff of wind comes and ruffles the
surface, so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm again, and there
he still is, moving his fins in peaceful security. The boy lowers his
snare behind the fish and slips it along. He intends to get it around
him just back of the gills and then elevate him with a sudden jerk. It
is a delicate operation, for the snare will turn a little, and if it
hits the fish he is off. However, it goes well, the wire is almost in
place, when suddenly the fish, as if he had a warning in a dream, for
he appears to see nothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out
of the loop, and, with no seeming appearance of frustrating any one's
plans, lounges over to the other side of the pool; and there he reposes
just as if he was not spoiling the boy's holiday.
[Illustration: SNARING SUCKERS]
This slight change of base on the part of the fish requires the boy to
reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new
line of approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can
lower his line. This time, cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop
encircles the unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his
head as he gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that
he has got him fast. Out he comes, up he goes in the air, and the boy
runs to look at him. In this transaction, however, no one can be more
surprised than the sucker.
VII
FICTION AND SENTIMENT
The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as
his city cousin. When school keeps he has only to "do chores and go
to school,"—but between terms there are a thousand things on the
farm that have been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in the
pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them. Some lots
appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the
surface, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft garden soil;
it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys this
sort of fall work. And very lively work it was on frosty mornings for
the barefooted boys, who were continually turning up the larger stones
in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that had been covered
from the frost. A boy can stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork;
and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole of his foot was likely
to stand in it until the words, "Come, stir your stumps," broke in
discordantly upon his meditations. For the boy is very much given to
meditations. If he had his way he would do nothing in a hurry; he likes
to stop and think about things, and enjoy his work as he goes along. He
picks up potatoes as if each one was a lump of gold just turned out of
the dirt, and requiring careful examination.
[Illustration: PICKING UP POTATOES]
Although the country boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as
he does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he
is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school
is his opening into the world,—his romance. Its opportunities for
enjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set at
books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs,
standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of
consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as
something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but
not at all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But
recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy rushes
out of the school-house door for the ten minutes of recess? He is
like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer; he can nearly
fly; and he throws himself into play with entire self-forgetfulness,
and an energy that would overturn the world if his strength were
proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is absolutely his;
the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own
master for that brief time,—as he never again will be if he lives
to be as old as the king of Thule, and nobody knows how old he was.
And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast projects can be
carried out which have been slyly matured during the school-hours;
expeditions are undertaken, wars are begun between the Indians on one
side and the settlers on the other, the military company is drilled
(without uniforms or arms), or games are carried on which involve
miles of running, and an expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the
spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
[Illustration: LEAP FROG AT RECESS]
Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent if not enduring, and
enmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot,
after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases
of long credit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys;
boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered
much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if
the explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and then
take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The country
boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he
knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a copy of
the Arabian Nights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, and the
last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly read under the
desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents disapprove
of novel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the house except a
pious fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latest comic
almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the treasures out
of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in the land of
enchantment open before him. He tells at home that he has seen the most
wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has promised to lend it to
him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks the grandmother; "because if it
isn't true, it is the worst thing that a boy can read." (This happened
years ago.) John cannot answer as to the truth of the book, and so does
not bring it home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and conceals it in
the barn, and lying in the hay-mow is lost in its enchantments many an
odd hour when he is supposed to be doing chores. There were no chores
in the Arabian Nights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon
a genius, who would feed the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood
in a minute. It was through this emblazoned portal that the boy walked
into the world of books, which he soon found was larger than his own,
and filled with people he longed to know.
And the farmer-boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets, though
he has never been at a children's party in his life, and, in fact,
never has heard that children go into society when they are seven, and
give regular wine-parties when they reach the ripe age of nine. But one
of his regrets at having the summer school close is dimly connected
with a little girl, whom he does not care much for,—would a great deal
rather play with a boy than with her at recess,—but whom he will not
see again for some time,—a sweet little thing, who is very friendly
with John, and with whom he has been known to exchange bits of candy
wrapped up in paper, and for whom he cut in two his lead-pencil, and
gave her half. At the last day of school she goes part way with John,
and then he turns and goes a longer distance towards her home, so that
it is late when he reaches his own. Is he late? He didn't know he was
late, he came straight home when school was dismissed, only going a
little way home with Alice Linton to help her carry her books. In a box
in his chamber, which he has lately put a padlock on, among fish-hooks
and lines and bait-boxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet
apples, popcorn, beech-nuts, and other articles of value, are some
little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-cornered or otherwise,
and written, I will warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These
little notes are parting gifts at the close of school, and John, no
doubt, gave his own in exchange for them, though the writing was an
immense labor, and the folding was a secret bought of another boy for a
big piece of sweet flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used
to carry in his pantaloons pocket until his pocket was in such a state
that putting his fingers into them was about as good as dipping them
into the sugar-bowl at home. Each precious note contained a lock or
curl of girl's hair,—a rare collection of all colors, after John had
been in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting
scenes,—black, brown, red, tow-color, and some that looked like spun
gold and felt like silk. The sentiment contained in the notes was that
which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy foreboding
of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enough this side
the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance. With little
variation, the poetry that made the hair precious was in the words,
and, as a Cockney would say, set to the hair, following:—
"This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead."
John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and fresh
impression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they were
for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used
when he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And it did
not occur to him until he was a great deal older and less innocent to
smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep every lock of hair
intrusted to him, though death should come on the wings of cholera and
take away every one of these sad, red-ink correspondents. When John's
big brother one day caught sight of these treasures, and brutally told
him that he "had hair enough to stuff a horse-collar," John was so
outraged and shocked, as he should have been, at this rude invasion
of his heart, this coarse suggestion, this profanation of his most
delicate feeling, that he was only kept from crying by the resolution
to "lick" his brother as soon as ever he got big enough.
VIII
THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
hickory-nuts, butternuts, and even beech-nuts, in the late fall,
after the frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have
shaken them, and the colored leaves have strewn the ground. On a
bright October day, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there is
nothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor is the pleasure of
it altogether destroyed for the boy by the consideration that he is
making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winter household.
The getting-in of potatoes and corn is a different thing; that is the
prose, but nutting is the poetry, of farm life. I am not sure but the
boy would find it very irksome, though, if he were obliged to work at
nut-gathering in order to procure food for the family. He is willing
to make himself useful in his own way. The Italian boy, who works day
after day at a huge pile of pine-cones, pounding and cracking them and
taking out the long seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and
which are almost as good as pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the
Italians), probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the
farmer-boy here were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening
the prickly chestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used
boy. What a hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he
digs them out with his jack-knife, and he enjoys the process, on the
whole. The boy is willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the
boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they
leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-years locusts. To climb
a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit and pass
to the next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion of
boys scamper over our grassplot under the chestnut-trees, each one
as active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, sweeping the
ground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could go to
the door and speak to them about it. Indeed, I have noticed that boys
don't care much for conversation with the owners of fruit-trees. They
could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in
cotton-fields. I have never seen anything like it except a flock of
turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.
[Illustration: POUNDING OFF SHUCKS]
Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of
our best military manoeuvres from the turkey. The deploying of the
skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major
of our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey
gobbler; he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step,
and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces
in the field, but goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment,
so that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements.
This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural
history. I like to watch the gobbler manoeuvring his forces in a
grasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a
crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed at equal distances,
while he walks majestically in the rear. They advance rapidly, picking
right and left, with military precision, killing the foe and disposing
of the dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody has yet discovered how
many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but he is very much like a boy at
a Thanksgiving dinner,—he keeps on eating as long as the supplies last.
The gobbler, in one of these raids, does not condescend to grab a
single grasshopper,—at least, not while anybody is watching him. But I
suppose he makes up for it when his dignity cannot be injured by having
spectators of his voracity; perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when
they are driven into a corner of the field. But he is only fattening
himself for destruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad
end. And if the turkeys had any Sunday-school, they would be taught
this.
The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great
event of the year. He was apt to get stents set him,—so much corn to
husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extra
play-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at his
task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He had the day after
Thanksgiving always as a holiday, and this was the day he counted on.
Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival,—very much like
Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his imagination
for months before as completely as it did his stomach for that day and
a week after. There was an impression in the house that that dinner
was the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower.
Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who
had prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous banquets in
Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and liked peacocks
stuffed with asafoetida, for one thing), never had anything like
a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or Sardanapalus
either, ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie at one dinner?
Therein many a New England boy is greater than the Roman emperor or the
Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxurious eaters of their
day and generation. But something more is necessary to make good men
than plenty to eat, as Heliogabalus no doubt found when his head was
cut off. Cutting off the head was a mode the people had of expressing
disapproval of their conspicuous men. Nowadays they elect them to a
higher office, or give them a mission to some foreign country, if they
do not do well where they are.
For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work
evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not being
allowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of
fragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,—a world that he
was only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house
was with the most delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made!
If John had been shut in solid walls with them piled about him, he
couldn't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were dainties
enough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire year luscious
with good living, if they had been scattered along in it. But people
were probably all the better for scrimping themselves a little in order
to make this a great feast. And it was not by any means over in a day.
There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and other pastry. The cold buttery
was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to excavate all its
riches.
Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy day, the hilarity of it being
so subdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of the
Sunday clothes, that the boy couldn't see it. But if he felt
little exhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the
real holiday. Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps the
skatings and sleighrides, for the freezing weather came before the
governor's proclamation in many parts of New England. The night after
Thanksgiving occurred, perhaps, the first real party that the boy had
ever attended, with live girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And
there he heard those philandering songs, and played those sweet games
of forfeits, which put him quite beside himself, and kept him awake
that night till the rooster crowed at the end of his first chicken-nap.
What a new world did that party open to him! I think it likely that
he saw there, and probably did not dare say ten words to, some tall,
graceful girl, much older than himself, who seemed to him like a new
order of being. He could see her face just as plainly in the darkness
of his chamber. He wondered if she noticed how awkward he was, and how
short his trousers-legs were. He blushed as he thought of his rather
ill-fitting shoes; and determined, then and there, that he wouldn't
be put off with a ribbon any longer, but would have a young man's
necktie. It was somewhat painful thinking the party over, but it was
delicious too. He did not think, probably, that he would die for that
tall, handsome girl; he did not put it exactly in that way. But he
rather resolved to live for her,—which might in the end amount to the
same thing. At least, he thought that nobody would live to speak twice
disrespectfully of her in his presence.
IX
THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
What John said was, that he didn't care much for pumpkin-pie; but that
was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince
would be better.
The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie has never been properly
considered. There is an air of festivity about its approach in the
fall. The boy is willing to help pare and cut up the pumpkin, and
he watches with the greatest interest the stirring-up process and
the pouring into the scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the
baking reaches his nostrils, he is filled with the most delightful
anticipations. Why should he not be? He knows that for months to come
the buttery will contain golden treasures, and that it will require
only a slight ingenuity to get at them.
The fact is, that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part
of farming. His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is
a very coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a world
that is full of good things to eat, and there is on the whole a very
short time in which to eat them; at least he is told, among the first
information he receives, that life is short. Life being brief, and pie
and the like fleeting, he very soon decides upon an active campaign. It
may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fifty
years, but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin
as it comes, as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them very
thin. I knew a place where they were not thicker than the poor man's
plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better
fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up
by the great oven-full and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened
and dried to a toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time
ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the
race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would
have stopped coming into the world.
The truth is, that boys have always been so plenty that they are
not half appreciated. We have shown that a farm could not get along
without them, and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of the
most amusing things is their effort to acquire personal property. The
boy has the care of the calves; they always need feeding or shutting
up or letting out; when the boy wants to play, there are those calves
to be looked after,—until he gets to hate the name of calf. But in
consideration of his faithfulness, two of them are given to him. There
is no doubt that they are his; he has the entire charge of them. When
they get to be steers, he spends all his holidays in breaking them in
to a yoke. He gets them so broken in that they will run like a pair
of deer all over the farm, turning the yoke, and kicking their heels,
while he follows in full chase, shouting the ox language till he is
red in the face. When the steers grow up to be cattle, a drover one
day comes along and takes them away, and the boy is told that he can
have another pair of calves; and so, with undiminished faith, he goes
back and begins over again to make his fortune. He owns lambs and young
colts in the same way, and makes just as much out of them.
There are ways in which the farmer-boy can earn money, as by gathering
the early chestnuts and taking them to the Corner store, or by finding
turkeys' eggs and selling them to his mother; and another way is to
go without butter at the table,—but the money thus made is for the
heathen. John read in Dr. Livingstone that some of the tribes in
Central Africa (which is represented by a blank spot in the atlas) use
the butter to grease their hair, putting on pounds of it at a time;
and he said he had rather eat his butter than have it put to that use,
especially as it melted away so fast in that hot climate.
Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do not
actually carry butter to Africa, and that they must usually go without
it themselves there, it being almost impossible to make it good from
the milk in the cocoanuts. And it was further explained to him that,
even if the heathen never received his butter or the money for it, it
was an excellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit of self-denial
and of benevolence, and if the heathen never heard of him he would be
blessed for his generosity. This was all true.
But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of his
butter, and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eating
butter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know where the
other members of the family got their money to send to the heathen; and
his mother said that he was about half right, and that self-denial was
just as good for grown people as it was for little boys and girls.