into the house and told the family that he was in an anxious state of
mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and the
little boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and to
become that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told to read
the Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the texts
of Scripture and hymns he could think of. John did this, and said
over and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about in a
real discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing the
hypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough in wanting to feel, as
the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner. He tried to
think of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him, indeed, it often came
to his mind. It was a lie,—a deliberate, awful lie, that never injured
anybody but himself. John knew he was not wicked enough to tell a lie
to injure anybody else.
This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's class
was to recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a young lady he held
in great love and respect, came in to visit the school. John was a
favorite with her, and she had come to hear him recite. As it happened,
John felt shaky in the geographical lesson of that day, and he feared
to be humiliated in the presence of his cousin; he felt embarrassed to
that degree that he couldn't have "bounded" Massachusetts. So he stood
up and raised his hand, and said to the schoolma'am, "Please, ma'am,
I've got the stomach-ache; may I go home?" And John's character for
truthfulness was so high (and even this was ever a reproach to him)
that his word was instantly believed, and he was dismissed without
any medical examination. For a moment John was delighted to get out
of school so early; but soon his guilt took all the light out of the
summer sky and the pleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly,
without a single hop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a
woodchuck at a distance from his well-known hole tempted John, but he
restrained himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing
a woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. He was acting a
miserable part, but it had to be gone through with. He went home and
told his mother the reason he had left school, but he added that he
felt "some" better now. The "some" didn't save him. Genuine sympathy
was lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty "picra,"
the horror of all childhood, and he was put in bed immediately. The
world never looked so pleasant to John, but to bed he was forced to
go. He was excused from all chores; he was not even to go after the
cows. John said he thought he ought to go after the cows,—much as
he hated the business usually, he would now willingly have wandered
over the world after cows,—and for this heroic offer, in the condition
he was, he got credit for a desire to do his duty; and this unjust
confidence in him added to his torture. And he had intended to set his
hooks that night for eels. His cousin came home, and sat by his bedside
and condoled with him; his schoolma'am had sent word how sorry she was
for him, John was such a good boy. All this was dreadful. He groaned
in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; it would be very
dangerous to eat a morsel. The prospect was appalling. Never was there
such a long twilight; never before did he hear so many sounds outdoors
that he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illness was a
horrible condition. And he began to have real stomach-ache now; and it
ached because it was empty. John was hungry enough to have eaten the
New England Primer. But by and by sleep came, and John forgot his woes
in dreaming that he knew where Madagascar was just as easy as anything.
[Illustration: FORCED TO GO TO BED]
It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying to
be affected by the revival. And he was very much ashamed of it, and
believed he would never tell another. But then he fell thinking whether
with the "picra," and the going to bed in the afternoon, and the loss
of his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it. And in this
unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer to
realizing the terrors he desired to feel. But he was a conscientious
boy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of the
season. He not only put himself away from them all, but he refrained
from doing almost everything that he wanted to do. There came at that
time a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a long account
of the Long Island races, in which the famous horse "Lexington" was a
runner. John was fond of horses, he knew about Lexington, and he had
looked forward to the result of this race with keen interest. But
to read the account of it now he felt might destroy his seriousness
of mind, and—in all reverence and simplicity he felt it—be a means
of "grieving away the Holy Spirit." He therefore hid away the paper
in a table drawer, intending to read it when the revival should be
over. Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was not to be
found, and John never knew what "time" Lexington made, nor anything
about the race. This was to him a serious loss, but by no means so
deep as another feeling that remained with him; for when his little
world returned to its ordinary course, and long after, John had an
uneasy apprehension of his own separateness from other people in his
insensibility to the revival. Perhaps the experience was a damage to
him; and it is a pity that there was no one to explain that religion
for a little fellow like him is not a "scheme."
XVII
WAR
Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. The scientists
who want to study the primitive man, and have so much difficulty in
finding one anywhere in this sophisticated age, couldn't do better than
to devote their attention to the common country boy. He has the primal,
vigorous instincts and impulses of the African savage, without any of
the vices inherited from a civilization long ago decayed, or developed
in an unrestrained barbaric society. You want to catch your boy young,
and study him before he has either virtues or vices, in order to
understand the primitive man.
Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before
children were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with the
word "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing,
and war. The military instinct, which is the special mark of barbarism,
is strong in him. It arises not alone from his love of fighting, for
the boy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, but from his fondness
for display,—the same that a corporal or a general feels in decking
himself in tinsel and tawdry colors and strutting about in view of the
female sex. Half the pleasure in going out to murder another man with
a gun would be wanting if one did not wear feathers and gold lace and
stripes on his pantaloons. The law also takes this view of it, and will
not permit men to shoot each other in plain clothes. And the world also
makes some curious distinctions in the art of killing. To kill people
with arrows is barbarous; to kill them with smooth-bores and flintlock
muskets is semi-civilized; to kill them with breech-loading rifles is
civilized. That nation is the most civilized which has the appliances
to kill the most of another nation in the shortest time. This is the
result of six thousand years of constant civilization. By and by, when
the nations cease to be boys, perhaps they will not want to kill each
other at all. Some people think the world is very old; but here is an
evidence that it is very young, and, in fact, has scarcely yet begun to
be a world. When the volcanoes have done spouting, and the earthquakes
are quaked out, and you can tell what land is going to be solid and
keep its level twenty-four hours, and the swamps are filled up, and the
deltas of the great rivers, like the Mississippi and the Nile, become
_terra firma_, and men stop killing their fellows in order to get
their land and other property, then perhaps there will be a world that
an angel wouldn't weep over. Now one half the world are employed in
getting ready to kill the other half, some of them by marching about in
uniform, and the others by hard work to earn money to pay taxes to buy
uniforms and guns.
John was not naturally very cruel, and it was probably the love of
display quite as much as of fighting that led him into a military
life; for he in common with all his comrades had other traits of the
savage. One of them was the same passion for ornament that induces
the African to wear anklets and bracelets of hide and of metal, and to
decorate himself with tufts of hair, and to tattoo his body. In John's
day there was a rage at school among the boys for wearing bracelets
woven of the hair of the little girls. Some of them were wonderful
specimens of braiding and twist. These were not captured in war, but
were sentimental tokens of friendship given by the young maidens
themselves. John's own hair was kept so short (as became a warrior)
that you couldn't have made a bracelet out of it, or anything except
a paint-brush; but the little girls were not under military law, and
they willingly sacrificed their tresses to decorate the soldiers they
esteemed. As the Indian is honored in proportion to the scalps he can
display, the boy at John's school was held in highest respect who could
show the most hair trophies on his wrist. John himself had a variety
that would have pleased a Mohawk, fine and coarse and of all colors.
There were the flaxen, the faded straw, the glossy black, the lustrous
brown, the dirty yellow, the undecided auburn, and the fiery red.
Perhaps his pulse beat more quickly under the red hair of Cynthia Rudd
than on account of all the other wristlets put together; it was a sort
of gold-tried-in-the-fire color to John, and burned there with a steady
flame. Now that Cynthia had become a Christian, this band of hair
seemed a more sacred if less glowing possession (for all detached hair
will fade in time), and if he had known anything about saints he would
have imagined that it was a part of the aureole that always goes with
a saint. But I am bound to say that, while John had a tender feeling
for this red string, his sentiment was not that of the man who becomes
entangled in the meshes of a woman's hair; and he valued rather the
number than the quality of these elastic wristlets.
John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the
breast of any slaughterer of his fellows. He liked to read of war,
of encounters with the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing in
glittering uniform, to the noise of the terribly exciting fife and
drum, which maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the
wounded. In his future he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword
and snug-fitting, decorated clothes,—very different from his somewhat
roomy trousers and country-cut roundabout, made by Aunt Ellis, the
village tailoress, who cut out clothes, not according to the shape of
the boy, but to what he was expected to grow to,—going where glory
awaited him. In his observation of pictures, it was the common soldier
who was always falling and dying, while the officer stood unharmed in
the storm of bullets and waved his sword in a heroic attitude. John
determined to be an officer.
It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the military
company of his village. He had risen from the grade of corporal to that
of first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father was captain
of the grown militia company, and consequently had inherited military
aptness and knowledge. The old captain was a flaming son of Mars, whose
nose militia war, general training, and New England rum had painted
with the color of glory and disaster. He was one of the gallant old
soldiers of the peaceful days of our country, splendid in uniform, a
martinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious object when he marched
at the head of his company of flintlock muskets, with the American
banner full high advanced, and the clamorous drum defying the world.
In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen, faithfully teaching his
uniformed companions how to march by the left leg, and to get reeling
drunk by sundown; otherwise he didn't amount to much in the community;
his house was unpainted, his fences were tumbled down, his farm was a
waste, his wife wore an old gown to meeting, to which the captain never
went; but he was a good trout-fisher, and there was no man in town who
spent more time at the country store and made more shrewd observations
upon the affairs of his neighbors. Although he had never been in an
asylum any more than he had been in war, he was almost as perfect a
drunkard as he was soldier. He hated the British, whom he had never
seen, as much as he loved rum, from which he was never separated.
The company which his son commanded, wearing his father's belt and
sword, was about as effective as the old company, and more orderly.
It contained from thirty to fifty boys, according to the pressure of
"chores" at home, and it had its great days of parade and its autumn
manoeuvres, like the general training. It was an artillery company,
which gave every boy a chance to wear a sword; and it possessed a small
mounted cannon, which was dragged about and limbered and unlimbered
and fired, to the imminent danger of everybody, especially of the
company. In point of marching, with all the legs going together, and
twisting itself up and untwisting, breaking into single-file (for
Indian fighting) and forming platoons, turning a sharp corner, and
getting out of the way of a wagon, circling the town pump, frightening
horses, stopping short in front of the tavern, with ranks dressed and
eyes right and left, it was the equal of any military organization
I ever saw. It could train better than the big company, and I think
it did more good in keeping alive the spirit of patriotism and desire
to fight. Its discipline was strict. If a boy left the ranks to jab a
spectator, or make faces at a window, or "go for" a striped snake, he
was "hollered" at no end.
It was altogether a very serious business; there was no levity about
the hot and hard marching, and as boys have no humor nothing ludicrous
occurred. John was very proud of his office, and of his ability to
keep the rear ranks closed up and ready to execute any manoeuvre when
the captain "hollered," which he did continually. He carried a real
sword, which his grandfather had worn in many a militia campaign on
the village green, the rust upon which John fancied was Indian blood;
he had various red and yellow insignia of military rank sewed upon
different parts of his clothes, and though his cocked hat was of
pasteboard, it was decorated with gilding and bright rosettes, and
floated a red feather that made his heart beat with martial fury
whenever he looked at it. The effect of this uniform upon the girls was
not a matter of conjecture. I think they really cared nothing about
it, but they pretended to think it fine, and they fed the poor boys'
vanity,—the weakness by which women govern the world.
The exalted happiness of John in this military service I dare say was
never equalled in any subsequent occupation. The display of the company
in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. There was nothing
wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had by half the
company staining themselves with elderberry juice and going into the
woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind trees with bows
and arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners. This, however,
was made to seem very like real war. Traditions of Indian cruelty
were still fresh in Western Massachusetts. Behind John's house in the
orchard were some old slate tombstones, sunken and leaning, which
recorded the names of Captain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms, who had been
killed by Indians in the last century while at work in the meadow by
the river, and who slept there in the hope of a glorious resurrection.
Phineas Arms—martial name—was long since dust; and even the mortal
part of the great Captain Moses Rice had been absorbed in the soil,
and passed perhaps with the sap up into the old but still blooming
apple-trees. It was a quiet place where they lay, but they might have
heard—if hear they could—the loud, continuous roar of the Deerfield,
and the stirring of the long grass on that sunny slope. There was a
tradition that years ago an Indian, probably the last of his race, had
been seen moving along the crest of the mountain, and gazing down into
the lovely valley which had been the favorite home of his tribe, upon
the fields where he grew his corn and the sparkling stream whence he
drew his fish. John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he
could see that red spectre gliding among the trees on the hill; and
if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not
separate it from the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear
of Phineas Arms. The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop;
and this was an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with the
elderberry Indians. It was warned in time. If there was no war-whoop,
the killing didn't count; the artilleryman got up and killed the
Indian. The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not only got killed
by the regulars, but he got whipped by the home-guard at night for
staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.
But once a year the company had a superlative parade. This was when
the military company from the north part of the town joined the
villagers in a general muster. This was an infantry company, and not
to be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions. There
was a great and natural hatred between the north town boys and the
centre. I don't know why, but no contiguous African tribes could be
more hostile. It was all right for one of either section to "lick" the
other if he could, or for half a dozen to "lick" one of the enemy if
they caught him alone. The notion of honor, as of mercy, comes into
the boy only when he is pretty well grown; to some, neither ever comes.
And yet there was an artificial military courtesy (something like that
existing in the feudal age, no doubt) which put the meeting of these
two rival and mutually detested companies on a high plane of behavior.
It was beautiful to see the seriousness of this lofty and studied
condescension on both sides. For the time, everything was under martial
law. The village company being the senior, its captain commanded the
united battalion in the march, and this put John temporarily into the
position of captain, with the right to march at the head and "holler;"
a responsibility which realized all his hopes of glory.
I suppose there has yet been discovered by man no gratification like
that of marching at the head of a column in uniform on parade,—unless
perhaps it is marching at their head when they are leaving a field of
battle. John experienced all the thrill of this conspicuous authority,
and I dare say that nothing in his later life has so exalted him
in his own esteem; certainly nothing has since happened that was so
important as the events of that parade day seemed. He satiated himself
with all the delights of war.
XVIII
COUNTRY SCENES
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?
[Illustration: SLIPPERY WORK]
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 fish-hooks, 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
couldn'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.
[Illustration: RIGGING UP THE FISHING TACKLE]