WILLARD GLAZIER AT HOME.
Out of boyhood.--Days of adolescence.--True family pride.--Schemes
for the future.--Willard as a temperance advocate.--Watering his
grandfather's whiskey.--The pump behind the hill. The sleigh-ride
by night.--The "shakedown" at Edwards.--Intoxicated by tobacco
fumes.--The return ride.--Landed in a snow-bank.--Good-bye horses
and sleigh!--Plodding through the snow.
Ward Glazier--putting his theories to the test of practice--believed it
best to allow the error of his son to work out its own punishment,
without adding a word to indicate that he knew it had been committed.
The wisdom of such reticence is not often recognized by parents placed
in similar circumstances, but it would perhaps be better for the
children if it were. At the same time the father thought it expedient to
apprise Allen Wight of the matter. That gentleman readily acquiescing in
his plans, saw in the recoil which would probably succeed such an
escapade in the mind of a sensitive and generous boy, the opportunity he
sought to arouse him to a sense of the duties that lay before him in his
future career, in living a useful and worthy life.
One afternoon, therefore, when they were enjoying a quiet chat after
school hours, he managed--without the slightest allusion to the runaway
freak--to turn the conversation to the subject of "self-made men." Not,
be it understood, that species of fungi who only love their maker,
because being
"_Self_-made, _self_-trained, _self_-satisfied,"
they are
"Themselves their only daily boast and pride."
Not the Randall Leslies, or the Peter Firkins of the world or that other
"Score of Peter Funks,
Of the mock-mining stamp, who deal in chunks
Of confidence, ores and metals as examples
And sell the bowels of the earth by samples;"
but that higher race who have achieved noble things despite all the
drawbacks of poverty and friendlessness.
He spoke of Clive, the Shropshire farmer's son, who, according to the
greatest of modern historians, equalled Lucullus in war and Tergot in
peace; that reformer who out of the discordant elements of an Indian
oligarchy consolidated and perfected an empire, one of the most splendid
the world contains.
He spoke, too, of that other Indian ruler who as he lay dreaming a boy's
day-dream one holiday, upon the bank of a stream that flowed through
Daylesford Manor--the manor which one ancestor's sword had won and
another ancestor's folly had lost--who formed a scheme of life that
culminated in the extension of the same empire beyond all previous
expectation, and in linking his own name so inseparably with the story
of his country, that no man can write the history of England without
writing the life of Warren Hastings.
Other examples of great ends achieved with little means, by men in our
own land, were talked over.
Franklin the _boy_, walking up Market street, Philadelphia, a
penny-roll under each arm and munching a third, under the laughing
observation of Miss Read, his future wife--and Franklin the sage and
Minister, representing his government at the most elegant court in
Europe, were contrasted for his edification. Various modern instances
were added, Mr. Wight keeping in view Pope's axiom that
"Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot."
When the boy's mind had been sufficiently awakened he followed the
advice of the old adage to "strike while the iron is hot," and impressed
upon him the fact that being the eldest son he was naturally the prop of
his house; nor did he ignore the truth, unpalatable as it might be, that
Willard could hope for no material aid from the hands of his parents. He
must carve his own way. He must build even the ladder up which he was to
climb. Others had done so--why not he? And then he told him that the way
to do it successfully was to acquire knowledge and cultivate wisdom; for
"Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have, oft times, no connection.
Knowledge dwells in the thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own."
Working upon what he rightly conjectured to be the boy's newly awakened
sense of the kindness of his father, he spoke of that good man's
pecuniary reverses, and professed his faith in Willard as the future
regenerator of the fallen fortunes of Ward Glazier's family.
The boy's generous enthusiasm was awakened at once. His ordinary school
tasks and home duties no longer looked commonplace, and were no longer
distasteful to him. They were but incidents in a general plan of
usefulness, and he performed them with an air of cheerfulness that
pleased his teacher and delighted his parents. He volunteered to help
his father in the fields, and while but a boy in years, he yet performed
the work of a man. In fact, he had discovered that every duty of life
has its heroic side, and needs only the impulse of high and noble
motives to be invested with dignity and interest.
Meanwhile, he did not neglect his studies. The idea of intellectual
culture was no longer a mere abstraction. Books were not only what they
always had been--reservoirs of knowledge, alluring to his imagination,
and fascinating to his mind--but they were now looked upon as levers,
with which he was to move the world. Knowledge _now_ meant the means
whereby, in the days to come, he was to acquire the power to make his
father and mother comfortable for the balance of their lives; and to
surround his sisters with those luxuries which go far towards making
existence a thing of grace and refinement. When, therefore, he worked
during the warm days of summer, aiding his father in the care of the
farm, the summer evenings found him poring earnestly over his
books--practical and useful ones now--and the harvest once gathered, he
was back again in his old place at school, where he studied steadily and
hard. His teacher, Allen Wight, looked on and was satisfied. And yet
Willard was a wild boy--as wild as any in the school. His relish for fun
and frolic was as keen as ever, but it was now subordinated to his
judgment. His practical jokes were fewer, and the peculiarities of his
father no longer furnished him with a subject for their perpetration.
Now and then, however, the old exuberance of mischief _would_ break out,
and upon one occasion his grandfather became its victim.
As that mosaic styled "character" is nothing more than an aggregate of
just such trivial things, we trust our readers will pardon us if we
relate the incident in point.
When Willard was over nine years of age, his father moved from the Old
Homestead and purchased a place named the Goodrich Farm, where he opened
a country store. The venture proved to be an unfortunate one, and, after
a series of pecuniary vicissitudes, he left it, and, at the period to
which we refer, was the occupant of a farm known in that section as the
Davis Place.
This farm and the Glazier Homestead occupied positions upon opposite
sides of the same public road--the former being one mile nearer the town
of Fullersville.
Meantime, the Homestead was occupied and cultivated by Jabez Glazier,
the grandfather of Willard, and upon certain occasions the boy was sent
over to stay for a few days at that place, to help the old gentleman in
many little ways connected with its cultivation.
At that time and in that locality it was customary during the haying
season to deal out to the men employed stated rations of whiskey every
day. A bottle was filled for each one, and, being placed by the
recipient in a swathe of the newly-cut grass, frequent visits were made
to the spot and frequent libations indulged in. Ward Glazier and his
wife being determinedly opposed to the use of ardent spirits under any
circumstances whatever, the custom was dispensed with at the Davis
Place; but at the Old Homestead, under the rule of Jabez Glazier, the
time-honored usage was staunchly maintained. Young Willard had been so
deeply inoculated with his parents' opinions on this subject, that he
had delivered an address before the society of "Sons of Temperance" at
Fullerville even at that early age, and his disgust may be imagined when
he found himself selected by his grandfather to go to the village tavern
for the necessary quantity of "Old Rye." He asked that some other
messenger might be sent, but the old gentleman was inflexible. Nobody
but Willard would satisfy his whim--perhaps because he felt that, in the
custody of his grandson, the "fire-water" would not be tampered with on
its return to the farm. Willard did not openly rebel against his
grandfather's commands--since it was the fashion in those days for
children to be obedient--but turned his attention to gaining his object
by means of a little stratagem. Not far from the house on the road
leading to the store stood an old pump, concealed from view by an
intervening building and a rising hill. Here this youthful disciple of
Father Matthew made it a practice regularly to stop, and pouring out
half the contents of the jug he carried, refilled it with the crystal
liquid from the pump.
At first this _improvement_ in their potations seemed hardly to attract
the attention of the individuals interested; but, as each day the
proportion of water increased, the dilution at last forced itself upon
their attention, and every one agreed that the tavern-keeper was
cheating Jabez in the "Rye" business. The result of it all was the
withdrawal of Jabez Glazier's custom from the establishment in
question, and the future purchase of "spiritual" goods by Mr. Jabez
himself in person.
Thus Willard's object was attained, and the cold-water people were no
longer vexed by the inconsistent spectacle of a son of temperance
playing Ganymede to a set of drinking, though by no means drunken,
hay-makers.
Not often, now, did young Willard figure as chief in any mad scrape or
wild boyish adventure. Those times were left behind. Once, indeed, his
uncle Henry, the patron of the great chief "_Kaw-shaw-gan-ce_," swooped
down upon the household, and, in an enormous four-horse sleigh of his
own construction, took him, together with a gay and festive party of
lads and lasses, off to Edwards, a village nine miles away. Here the
rustic party had a "shake-down," and young Willard got fearfully sick in
a dense atmosphere of tobacco smoke. The feast over, he was tightly
packed in the sleigh with the buxom country girls and their muscular
attendants, while Henry Glazier drove across country through a blinding
snow-storm and over measureless drifts. The party was stranded at last
on a rail fence under the snow, and the living freight flung bodily
forth and buried in the deep drifts. They emerged from their snowy
baptism with many a laugh and scream and shout, and tramped the
remainder of the distance home. The horses having made good their
escape, Willard was carried forward on his uncle Henry's back.