THE YOUNG TRAPPER OF THE OSWEGATCHIE.
A plan of life.--Determination to procure an education.--A
substitute at the plow.--His father acquiesces in his
determination to become a trapper.--Life in the wild woods along
the Oswegatchie.--The six "dead-falls."--First success.--A
fallacious calculation.--The goal attained.--Seventy-five dollars
in hard cash!--Four terms of academic life.--The youthful
rivals.--Lessons in elocution.--A fight with hair-brushes and
chairs!--"The walking ghost of a kitchen fire."--Renewed
friendship.--Teaching to obtain means for an education.
At this period of Willard's life, he is described by Mr. Rennehan as
having acquired an appetite for the acquisition of knowledge which soon
became the controlling passion of his nature, and, "thoroughly absorbed
by this idea, he fixed upon the select school of his native town as the
institution best adapted to initiate him in the course suited to the
fulfilment of his laudable ambition."
But his determination to procure an education met with obstacles from
the outset. How to defray the necessary expenses which such a course
involved was the question which continually presented itself for his
ingenuity to solve. His father's reverses placed it quite beyond the
possibilities to hire help upon the farm, and Willard's services had
therefore come to be looked upon as something of vital importance.
In dragging from the hard soil of the Davis place the living which
necessity compelled, he performed the work of a man, and the perfect
trust which his father reposed in him gave his services additional
value.
This fact increased the difficulty of his position; but though he made
it a point to husband all his spare time for self-instruction, he was
far from satisfied with the existing state of affairs, and pondered long
and earnestly over the best means of securing the advantages of regular
instruction.
At that time the streams tributary to the St. Lawrence were supplied
with such fur-bearing animals as the mink, the musk-rat, the otter, and
the more humble rabbit, the skins of all of which were more or less
valuable and were sought by professional trappers. These men found the
business a reasonably lucrative one, and it commended itself especially
to Willard, as health and strength were the only capital required. The
grand difficulty was how to supply his place in the work of the farm.
His father was a man who always listened with patience and sympathy to
any scheme that promised to benefit his children. His son, therefore,
had no hesitation in laying the whole matter before him and seeking his
advice upon the subject. He felt, of course, that any proposal to
withdraw his personal labor from the common stock of exertion by which
the cultivation of the farm was rendered a possibility, was a direct
pecuniary tax upon his father's resources; but he believed he could to a
great extent neutralize the injury by supplying a substitute.
He also felt assured that although the step he proposed to take might be
a present loss to the family it would prove an ultimate gain. He was
thoroughly determined to make _his_ life a success, and he was just as
thoroughly determined that any success which might crown his efforts
should be shared by his parents. It is true that the road looked long
and the path rough, but he had a "heart for any fate," and his courage
never failed. A substitute at the plow he knew he could obtain for a
small sum, and the board of such a person would take the place of his
own at the home table, and he never doubted that he could earn a
sufficient surplus to pay the wages of such an assistant. At all events
he made up his mind to try the experiment.
With young Willard, to think was to act, and this project was no sooner
conceived than he proceeded to put it into execution. He laid his plans
frankly before his father, who, to his great gratification, assented to
his proposal. A man was hired for fifteen dollars a month to take
Willard's place on the farm, and the latter made his first venture as a
trapper.
His initial experiment was to set six traps of the pattern called a
"dead-fall" or "figure of four," and this resulted in the capture of two
minks worth about eight dollars. With what an exultant heart he drew out
his first mink and realized that by his own unaided exertions he had
made some money, no boy or man need be told. He at once, however,
entered into some rather fallacious calculations and built some
extremely airy castles. It occurred to him that if out of six traps he
could obtain two skins, out of one hundred he could obtain thirty-three,
and so on, in proportion.
This, however, proved to be a miscalculation, it not being so much the
number of traps set, as the quantity of game in a given locality which
regulates the amount of success for a trapper. Yet his efforts in this
new business succeeded to a gratifying degree, and the fact of having
exchanged the dull monotony of farm drudgery for the exhilarating
excitement of a hunter's life, was in itself a sufficient reward for any
amount of exertion. Indeed what mode of life could be happier or more
free, for a healthy, strong-limbed youth of fifteen, than to live as he
then did, almost entirely in the woods? Then too, his daily route lay in
the midst of some of the finest scenery to be found anywhere in New
York, even in that grand old county of St. Lawrence.
To a lover of nature nothing could be more alluring than the locality
through which Willard, at that period of his life, trapped and hunted.
To follow the winding waters of the Oswegatchie is to enjoy a perpetual
feast. That river is one of a great family of rivers, among which may be
enumerated the Rackett, the Grasse, the Indian, and the Black, all of
which take their rise far up in the recesses of the great North Woods.
Though not to any extent navigable, it is yet nearly as broad as the
lovely and "blue Juniata" of "peaceful Pennsylvania."
At times turbulent and brawling, it is often vexed in its passage to the
St. Lawrence by rapids and cataracts varying in height and volume, but
which in their infinite variety give a wild and romantic beauty to this
poetical stream. At times it glides smoothly along through low meadow
lands, and again it plunges into some dense thicket or brawls through
some briery dell where the foliage is so thick that one can only see
the glint and ripple of its waters at rare intervals, shining between
the lapping leaves and tangled vines. Then again it sweeps onward
through cleft rocks and jutting banks until, lost at last in the very
heart of the primeval forest, its twilight waters reflect the images of
giant trees which had their beginning on its banks a century ago.
[Illustration: The Young Trapper Of The Oswegatchie.]
Willard's life during that autumn passed in persevering work. Day by day
he traveled his accustomed routes, while the leaves turned from green to
red and from red to russet and brown, and at last fell from the naked
branches of the forest trees with a little farewell rustle, to be
trodden into the rich soil below.
By the time the first snow came he found himself much more robust
physically, and with seventy-five dollars clear profit in his pocket. In
addition to these advantages he also acquired the inestimable habit of
self-reliance, so that when he entered upon a course of preparation for
his academic life, it was with full faith in himself. For four terms,
beginning August thirteenth, 1857, and ending the latter part of June,
1859, he remained at the excellent institution of learning which he had
selected, and while there gained considerable credit as a hard student.
During the first of these terms a generous rivalry existed between
himself and a youth by the name of Albert Burt, as to which should lead
the class. As it turned out, however, they kept together and were both
marked "perfect." The academy was under the management of the Rev. E. C.
Bruce, M. A., Principal; and Andrew Roe, Professor of Mathematics. About
a month or six weeks after he entered the school, he arranged to take
lessons in elocution under a Professor Bronson, that gentleman having
organized a large class at the academy.
In a brief diary kept by him at the time, we find the remark that he was
"greatly pleased with the Professor's method of teaching that important
branch of study." Willard had advanced to the higher grade of Algebra
and Grammar, had added Philosophy to the list of his studies, and having
cultivated a natural turn for public speaking, was elected on the
eighteenth of December, 1857, a member of the Oratorical Society--an
association connected with the institution. His boy experiences were
very similar to those which happen to all lads in academic life. He had
his chums, among whom were Brayton Abbott and Ozias Johnson; he had his
little flirtations with misses of his own age, and he had his fights, as
all boys have.
Among the latter was one with Johnson, who was his room-mate, and who,
being four years older than himself, undertook, for fun, to rub his face
with a newly-purchased hair-brush. This kind of fun did not suit
Willard, however, and he resented it by giving Johnson a "dig" in the
ribs. Whereupon a fight ensued in earnest, and as Willard was too young
and light to keep up the contest at close quarters, he dodged his
adversary and covered his retreat by dropping chairs in front of
Johnson's legs, which brought that young gentleman to the floor more
than once, to his own intense disgust and Willard's great gratification.
At length Johnson managed to corner his opponent, and then rubbed his
face so thoroughly with the bristles that his comrades that morning
thought he had caught the scarlet-fever, or as Dickens says, that he
was the "walking ghost of a kitchen fire."
As generally happens, however, between two manly fellows, their combat
inspired a feeling of mutual respect, and from being mere acquaintances
they grew to be fast friends.
Study and sedentary habits at length so much impaired Willard's health
that, in the latter part of the month of August, 1858, he was compelled
to cease his attendance at school and go home. The thirtieth of
September following, however, found him at the Teachers' Institute of
St. Lawrence County, with the proceedings of which body he appears to
have been highly gratified, for in the diary to which we have already
referred, he speaks of it in these words:--
"I am now attending the Teachers' Institute of this county, which is in
session at Gouverneur, it having opened upon the twenty-seventh instant.
The School Commissioners are Mr. C. C. Church and Allen Wight. I am
highly pleased with the proceedings and the method of conducting the
exercises of this apparently indispensable part of a Teacher's
instruction,"--adding that it was his "intention to become a teacher the
coming winter." Indeed, to be a teacher seems to have been his favorite
scheme of life, and his highest ambition was ultimately to fill the
chair of Mathematics in one of the great institutions of learning. That
most exact of sciences was his favorite branch of study, and the
intellectual stimulus which it imparts had for him a peculiar
fascination.
In pursuance of his object, and in order, by teaching during one part of
the year, to raise means to enable him to attend school during another
portion, he set about procuring for himself a school. Fortunately for
the accomplishment of his object, it was suggested to him to apply to
the School Commissioner of his own Assembly district, and he did so. The
examination which followed his application, owing to some local rivalry,
was extremely rigid; but he passed through it with great credit and
received the appointment he desired, being assigned forthwith to duty in
the town of Edwards, St. Lawrence County. He commenced teaching in the
bleak month of November, 1858, and was very earnest in fulfilling the
duties of his position, taking every opportunity not only of instilling
knowledge into the minds of his pupils, but also striving to imbue them
with a love of self-culture. He labored hard in his efforts to earn
means with which to support himself during the coming summer at the
Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, and discovered while thus working that
teaching was as much of a discipline for himself as for his pupils.
The time does not seem to have passed unpleasantly to him at this period
of his career, for in an entry made in his diary on the twenty-eighth of
November, 1858, he says:
"I am spending the evening with Mr. Hiram Harris and family, having come
into the district this afternoon. My mission here is to teach school for
a term of three months in fulfilment of the contract existing between
the trustees and myself. In compliance with a custom that prevails, I am
expected to 'board around,' as it is styled, and Mr. Harris, being one
of the Trustees, has invited me to spend my first week at his house.
"The School Commissioner of this Assembly district is Mr. C. C. Church,
of Potsdam, from whom I received a certificate based upon the
recommendation of Commissioner Allen Wight of the first district. The
School Trustees are E. L. Beardsley, Hiram Harris, and Jeptha Clark. The
present term will be my first experience in the profession I have
adopted. I do hope it will prove a useful one, for I am of opinion that
a teacher's first experience is apt to give color to his whole future
career." The day after this entry he adds that "only a small attendance
greeted me upon opening my school," and after consoling himself with the
reflection that this will leave him plenty of time for study, he adopted
a single rule--"Do right;" and an additional motto, "A time and place
for everything and everything in its time and place."
It will thus be seen that he had already acquired a clear idea of the
importance of order in every pursuit, and knew that method gives to an
ordinary mortal Briaerean arms with which to accomplish whatever he may
desire to do. How few attain to this knowledge until it is too late!
As a writer, whose words we think worthy of remembrance, has said:
"This is an era of doing things scientifically. People make scientific
calculations of the weather, and the average number of murders for the
next year. They measure the stars and they measure the affections, both
scientifically. The only thing they fail to do scientifically is, to
manage themselves. As a rule, they _drift_, and then find fault with
fate and Providence because they don't drift into the right port. They
drift _into_ life with a multiplicity of vague dreams, which are
somehow to be realized; but they have a very dim idea of ways and means.
They drift _through_ it, carelessly, with an inadequate knowledge of
their own resources, and a still more inadequate notion of using them to
the best advantage; they drift _out_ of it with a melancholy sense of
failure, both absolutely as to themselves and relatively as to the
world. Of all their splendid possibilities, none are realized. Nothing
is completed. They start wrong or they make one fatal step, and
everything goes wrong all the way through. It seems as if most lives
were only experiments. Now and then one is turned out which fits in its
niche and is tolerably symmetrical. The rest are all awry, unfinished,
misplaced, and merely faint suggestions of what might have been. Much of
this is doubtless beyond mortal control, but a far greater portion is
due to the lack of a nice direction of forces. The human mechanism is
complicated, and a very slight flaw sets it all wrong. There may be too
much steam or too much friction, or too little power or too little
balance. But clearly the first step is to strengthen the weak points, to
gauge its capabilities, to set it running smoothly, and to give it a
definite aim. If existence were simply passive and the mission of man
was to _be_ instead of to _do_, he might perhaps be left to develop as
the trees do, according to his own will or fancy or according to certain
natural laws. But as it is the universal wish wherever one is, to be
somewhere else, a little higher in the scale, it seems to be a part of
wisdom, as well as humanity, to fit one for climbing. But many an
aspirant finds his wings clipped in the beginning of his career, through
the ignorance or carelessness of his friends, who never took the trouble
of measuring his capabilities. He is treated as a receptacle into which
a certain amount of ideas are to be poured, no matter whether they may
answer to anything within him or not. He is turned out of an educational
mill with five hundred others, and with plenty of loose knowledge, but
without the remotest idea of what to do with it, or what nature intended
him for, and with no especial fitness for any one thing. He can _think_,
probably, if he has the requisite amount of brains, but how to establish
a relation between thought and bread and butter is the problem. He has
the requisite motive power, but it is not attached to anything. _He_
does not know how to attach it, so he revolves in a circle, or makes a
series of floundering experiments, that bear meagre fruit, perhaps when
the better part of his life is gone. He knows _books_, but he does _not_
know men. He is a master of theories, but cannot apply them. If he has a
small amount of brains, his case is still more hopeless. To be sure, a
proper amount of knowledge has been poured in, but it has all slipped
through. He might have assimilated some other kind of knowledge, but
that particular kind has left him with mental dyspepsia, and a vague
feeling of hopelessness which is likely to prove fatal to all useful
effort. Or perhaps he has talent, but is destitute of the requisite tact
to make it tell upon the world. His success depends largely on his power
to move others, but he has no lever and is forced to rely upon main
strength, which involves a serious expenditure of vitality, with only
doubtful results. He works all his life against perpetual friction,
because no one had the foresight or insight to discern that this was the
flaw in his machinery.
"Another fatal point is in the choice of a vocation. Having drifted
through an education, he next drifts into his business or profession. He
rarely stops to take an inventory of his capital, or, at best, he takes
a very partial one. Chance or circumstance decides him. His grandfather
sits on the judge's bench. He thinks the judge's bench a desirable
place, so he takes to the law. He puts on his grandfather's coat without
the slightest reference to whether it will fit or not. Perhaps he
intends to grow to _it_, but a willow sapling cannot grow into an oak.
It may grow into a very respectable willow, but if it aspires to the
higher dignity, it will most likely get crushed or blown over. It may be
that he has a grand vision of commercial splendor, and plunges into
business life with a very good idea of Sophocles and Horace and no idea
whatever of trade; with a very good talent for theories, but none
whatever for facts; with some insight into metaphysics, but none at all
into people. Instead of trying his strength in shallow waters, he starts
to cross the Atlantic in a very small skiff. By the time he has reached
mid-ocean he discovers his error, but it is too late to turn back; so he
is buffeted about by winds and waves until he, too, goes down and counts
among the failures.
"Another of the few points upon which life hinges is marriage, and
people drift into that as they do into everything else. It is one of the
things to be done in order to complete the circle of human experience. A
man is caught by a pretty face and a winning smile. He takes no thought
of the new element he is adding to his life, either with reference to
his outward career or his inward needs. Caprice governs his choice, or
perhaps a hard form of self-interest. Having committed one or two of
the grand errors of life, he settles down to its serious business, and
speedily discovers that he has a dead weight to carry. He has mistaken
his vocation, whatever it may be.
"He is conscious now that it is too late to change; that he might have
attained supreme excellence in some other calling. He toils with heavy
heart and sinking spirit at the plodding pace of dull mediocrity. His
work is drudgery and wearies him body and soul. Those who once smiled
upon him pass him by. Men of far inferior capabilities distance him in
the race. Perhaps too he has made another misstep, and has a wife who
sympathizes neither with his tastes nor his trials: who has no
comprehension of him whatever, save that he is a being whose business it
is to love her and furnish her with spending money. The beauty which
fascinated him has grown faded and insipid. The pretty coquetries that
won him pall upon him; he is absolutely alone with the burden of life
pressing heavily upon him. Is it strange that he is mastered in the
battle and finally falls beneath the world's pitiless tread? This is a
sad little picture, but it is an every-day one, and the world goes on
its way as before.
"What matters it that a lonely, dissipated man has lain down in sorrow
to rise no more! The world cannot stop to weep over the remains of the
departed one it has trampled upon. Those whose business it is can take
them on one side, lay them away under the green sod out of sight, shed a
tear perhaps, and pass on until their turn comes to lay down wearily, go
to sleep, and be laid away. The world chides, the world laughs, but it
takes no cognizance of the grief--
"'That inward breaks and shows no cause without,
_Why_ the man dies.'
"Yet there is but the difference of a point in the game between the
victim and the hero. The cards are the same, or the victim, perhaps,
_may_ hold the best trumps, but he plays recklessly, loses his point,
loses his game, loses all! On such slight things does human destiny
hinge. The hero has all his resources at command--his game dimly
outlined. He knows his winning cards, and he plays them skilfully.
"Every point tells. Nothing is left to chance that can be accomplished
by foresight. He wins the game. He wins the prizes. He has the mastery
of life. The world takes off its hat to him. Fortune and people smile
upon him. Not that he is better than others--very likely he is not so
good. But the world counts results. Becky Sharp is not a model, but
Becky Sharp is a power. The world does not like her in the abstract, but
it likes her dinners, it courts her smiles, it fawns upon her, it
showers its good things upon her, all because _she has mastered it_.
Becky Sharp is not a model. Her aims are unworthy, and her means
unscrupulous; but she reads us a lesson in fact, in foresight, in
energy, in the subtle art of making the most of limited resources. So
long as life is a game, it is worth studying. The difference between
playing it well and playing it ill is the difference between light and
darkness, between joy and desolation, between life and death."
Even at that early and immature time of his life, Willard Glazier had
thought much upon this subject--examples of the disjointed successes of
all unplanned and unmethodical careers having been brought too
frequently into close proximity to his own door, not to have made an
impression upon his inquiring mind.
Hence, at the very threshold of his life as a teacher, he resolved to
have plan and purpose clearly defined in everything he did.