DREAMS OF MY YOUTH.
In the early spring came the close of school term, and teacher, pupils
and parents parted with mutual regrets. My pecuniary reward was small;
but I shall always remember with pleasure the kind assurances received
that I left the intellectual status of that town much higher than I
found it. I have visited the place only once since, but my old friends
had all passed on to the higher life, and my young ones were scattered
to the four winds of heaven in search of that happiness and wealth
which is seldom found beneath the stars.
I reached the old home under the hill, delighted to see once more the
eyes which looked love to eyes that spoke again, to hear the familiar
spring chorus from the river, the first robins and bluebirds rejoicing
over the resurrection of nature, to explore each sheltered nook for
the early cowslips, violets, pussy-willows, dandelions, and crocuses;
to gossip with my old friends the chipmunks, the muskrats, and the
woodchucks; to revisit each mossy hollow and sequestered retreat in my
much loved pine woods; to whittle again the willow whistles, to caress
the opening buds and tiny green growing blades of grass; to float once
more in my little boat under the embracing arms of my chums, the oaks,
birches, and hemlocks I loved so well; to watch the first flight of
Psyche, the butterfly, so emblematic of the soaring of the immortal
soul from the body dead. The wood duck seemed to smile upon me as of
old as she sailed gracefully into the little coves in my river,
the woodpeckers beat their drums in my honor, and the heron, the
"Shu-Shugah"--screamed welcome oh, my lover.
The rapture of the returning life to nature thrilled my inmost being.
Blue waves are tossing, white wings are crossing, the earth springs
forth in the beauty of green, and the soul of the beautiful chanted to
all, the sweet refrain:
Come to me, come to me, oh my God, oh, come to me everywhere,
Let the earth mean Thee, and the mountain sod, the ocean and the air,
For Thou art so far that I sometimes fear,
As on every side I stare
Searching within, and looking without, if Thou art anywhere.
My mother brought out all her choicest treasures for her "long lost
baby"; my father and brothers "killed the fatted calf" for the
"prodigal returned," the wide old fireplace sent forth its cheering
warmth, the neighbors gathered round to swap stories, and the
apples, walnuts and home-brewed juice of the fruit contributed their
inspiration to the hearty good cheer.
Within and without the genial spirit of springtime cheered the heart
of man and the heart of nature, and all things animate and inanimate
sang the words of the poet.
"Doves on the sunny eaves are cooing,
The chip-bird trills from the apple-tree;
Blossoms are bursting and leaves renewing,
And the crocus darts up the spring to see.
Spring has come with a smile of blessing,
Kissing the earth with her soft warm breath,
Till it blushes in flowers at her gentle caressing,
And wakes from the winter's dream of death."
That summer my services were frequently utilized as substitute
preacher by our good pastor, who was much afflicted with what Mrs.
Partington calls "brown creeturs." He had harped on one string of his
vocal apparatus so long that like Jeshuran of old "it waxed fat and
kicked." Exceedingly monotonous and soporific was his voice, and it
was necessary to strain every nerve to tell whether he was preaching,
praying or reading, the words were much the same in each case.
The long cramming of Hebrew, Greek, Latin and all things dead had
driven out all the vim and enthusiasm of his youth; the dry-as-dust
drill of the theological institution had filled his mind with
arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire
exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch
dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy
morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind,
yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry
enough soon as ye begin praiching."
One hot Sunday when our clergyman was droning away as usual, a
well-to-do fat brother, who once said he had such entire confidence in
our clergyman's orthodoxy that he didn't feel obliged to keep awake
to watch him, commenced to snore like a fog horn, nearly drowning the
speaker's voice. The reverend stopped, and thinking innocently, that
some animal was making the disturbance, said: "Will the sexton please
put that dog out." This aroused fatty, who left the church in a rage,
and his subscription was lost forever.
Our pious pastor was a fair sample of the "wooden men" turned out by
the educational mills of the day; to an assembly of whom Edwin Booth
is reported to have said: "The difference between the theatre and the
church is this, you preach the gospel as if it were fiction, while
we speak fiction as if it were the gospel truth. When you give less
attention to dry theological disquisitions and much more to the graces
of elocution, you may expect to do some good in the world."
His pastoral calls were appalling; arm extended like a pump handle to
shake hands, one up and down motion, a "how do you do?"--"fine day,"
then a solemn pause, generally followed by his one story; "The day my
wife and I were married it rained, but it cleared off pleasant soon
after, and it has been pleasant ever since," then suspended animation,
finally, "let us pray," and when the same old prayer with few
variations was ended, once more the pump-handle operation and he
departed, wearing the same hopeless face. He was not a two-faced man,
for had he another face, he would surely have worn it.
This sad-eyed man was much tormented by a brother minister in the
pews, who seemed to have a strong desire to secure our pastor's poor
little salary for his own private use and behoof. His plan evidently
was to throw the stigma of heresy upon the incumbent, and to this end,
when our preacher was one day laboring hard to show us exactly where
foreordination ends and free moral agency begins, the ex-minister
arose, excitedly declaring such talk to be rank Arminianism, and
denounced it as misleading sinners to the belief that they could be
saved even if they were not so predestinated in the eternal mind of an
all-wise, all-loving Jehovah, who had foredoomed some to heaven and
others to hell. The regular speaker was dumbfounded. An argumentative
duett followed, much to the scandal of the saints and the
hilariousness of the sinners, until the pitying organist struck up
with great force: "From whence doth this union arise?" when the
disgruntled disturber left the church vowing he would never pay
another cent for such heretical sermons.
Later, a heated discussion arose among the church members as to
whether fermented wine should be used at the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, and when a vote was taken in favor of the unfermented, the
senior deacon withdrew in disgust and joined the "Pedo Baptist" church
where he could have alcohol in his.
All this of course made the judicious grieve, and the cause of
religion to languish. This was the time, famous in church history,
when a great reaction set in against Cotton Mather theology, who
proclaimed that the pleasure of the elect would be greatly enhanced
by looking down from the sublime heights of heaven upon the non-elect
writhing in hell.
Unitarianism grew apace, and Henry Ward Beecher immortalized himself
by saying: "Many preachers act like the foolish angler who goes to the
trout brook with a big pole, ugly line and naked hook, thrashes the
waters into a foam, shouting, bite or be damned, bite or be damned!
Result; they are not what their great Master commanded them to
be--successful fishers of men."
Our pastor was a good man despite his peculiarities, and led a
blameless though colorless life; but his "hard shell" theology, his
long years of monkish seclusion in the training schools, engendering
gloomy views as to the final misery of the majority of human beings,
his poverty and lack of adaptation, banished all cheerfulness from his
demeanor, and when I recall his sad, solemn face, made so largely by
his views in regard to the horrors awaiting the most of us in the next
world, I find myself repeating the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe in
the "Minister's Wooing," when she was thinking of that hell depicted
by the old theology; "Oh my wedding day, why did they rejoice? Brides
should wear mourning, every family is built over this awful pit of
despair, and only one in a thousand escapes."
When I semi-occasionally peruse one of the sermons I preached in those
days of my youth, I am strongly inclined to crawl into a den and pull
the hole in after me. I can fully believe the orator who said that a
stupid speech once saved his life.
"I went back home," he said, "last year to spend Thanksgiving with the
old folks. While waiting for the turkey to cook, I went into the woods
gunning--it would amuse me, and wouldn't hurt the game, for I couldn't
hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces. While promenading, it
commenced to rain, and not wishing to wet my best Sunday-go-to-meetings,
I crawled into a hollow log for shelter; at last the clouds rolled by
and I attempted to pull out, but to my horror, the log had contracted so
that I was stuck fast in the hole, and I gave myself up for lost. I
remembered all the sins of my youth, and conscience assured me that I
richly deserved my fate; finally, I thought of a certain unspeakably
asinine speech which I once inflicted upon a suffering audience, and I
felt so small that I rattled round in that old log like a white bean in
a washtub, and slipped like an eel out of the little pipe-stem end of
that old tree. I was saved; but the audience had been ruined for life."
Thus often in this cruel world do the innocent suffer, while the
guilty go unscathed to torture a confiding public with what the great
apostle calls the "foolishness of preaching."
This summer brought our family few smiles but many tears, and the
death-angel passed close to our doors. My eldest brother, while
at work in the hayfield, was smitten by the sun, causing a mental
aberration which made him a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and
finally led him to cut the thread of life with his own hand; my second
brother was pulled by his coat entangled in a wheel, beneath a heavy
load which crushed his thigh. This left the rest of us to struggle as
best we could with multitudinous weeds striving to choke the crops,
and the many trials incidental to wresting sustenance from the
reluctant bosom of mother earth.
My brother Mark, about this time took upon himself the joys and
sorrows of a family and home of his own, while I assumed the care of a
family of forty school children in the neighboring town of I----.
I was but "unsweetened sixteen," and lack of tact and strength brought
me many trials in my endeavors to "teach the young ideas how to shoot
correctly." The usual tacks were placed in my chair, causing the
war-dances incidental to such occasions; the customary pranks were
resorted to by young America to settle the oft mooted question as to
who is master; the inevitable interference of parents followed, who as
usual, regarded their children as cherubs whose wings they seemed to
think would soon appear were it not for the tyrannical spanks of the
unworthy teacher.
I survived the fiery ordeal after a fashion, and that winter entered a
college in the state of Maine. The same old unrest came to me there,
wearied with the dry-as-dust lectures by the faculty of superannuated
ministers, but I graduated after a two weeks' course, and vainly
endeavored for three weeks to catch the divine afflatus at the
Theological Institution, which was supposed to be necessary to enable
me to rescue the perishing as a preacher of the gospel. Then at
the suggestion of the president, who quickly discovered my mental
deficiencies, I was matriculated as a student at another university
founded by the brethren of the same "Hard-shell Persuasion." I was but
a dreamer, in the middle of my teens, dazed by conflicting opinions,
but anxious to walk "_quo dews vocat_."
"Here I stood with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and the river meet,
Manhood and childhood sweet.
"I saw shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye,
Sees the falcon downward fly.
"To me, a child of many prayers,
Life had quicksands, and many snares,
Foes, and tempters came unawares.
"Oh, let me bear through wrong and ruth,
In my heart the dew of youth,
On my lips the smile of truth."
With this prayer of the poet upon our lips, many of us entered these
"classic halls," hoping to find there in communion with the good and
great of the past and the present, that mental and spiritual "manna"
from heaven which would inspire us to lead ourselves and others to the
sublime heights of heroic endeavor.