The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be
so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of
age. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up
with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded
with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks
like a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the
traveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the light
from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a
blazing fire. But it is no less a fort, into which the family retire
when the New England winter on the hills really sets in.
The boy is an important part of the garrison. He is not only one of
the best means of communicating with the outer world, but he
furnishes half the entertainment and takes two thirds of the scolding
of the family circle. A farm would come to grief without a boy-on
it, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
"That boy" brings life into the house; his tracks are to be seen
everywhere; he leaves all the doors open; he has n't half filled the
wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
brown-study by the fire and cannot be stirred, or he has fastened a
grip into some Crusoe book which cannot easily be shaken off. I
suppose that the farmer-boy's evenings are not now what they used to
be; that he has more books, and less to do, and is not half so good a
boy as formerly, when he used to think the almanac was pretty lively
reading, and the comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a
supreme delight.
Of course he had the evenings to himself, after he had done the
"chores" at the barn, brought in the wood and piled it high in the
box, ready to be heaped upon the great open fire. It was nearly dark
when he came from school (with its continuation of snowballing and
sliding), and he always had an agreeable time stumbling and fumbling
around in barn and wood-house, in the waning light.
John used to say that he supposed nobody would do his "chores" if he
did not get home till midnight; and he was never contradicted.
Whatever happened to him, and whatever length of days or sort of
weather was produced by the almanac, the cardinal rule was that he
should be at home before dark.
John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wonder
sometimes whether he was n't still in them.
Of course, John had nothing to do all the evening, after his
"chores,"--except little things. While he drew his chair up to the
table in order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on his
slate or his book, the women of the house also sat by the table
knitting and sewing. The head of the house sat in his chair, tipped
back against the chimney; the hired man was in danger of burning his
boots in the fire. John might be deep in the excitement of a bear
story, or be hard at writing a "composition" on his greasy slate; but
whatever he was doing, he was the only one who could always be
interrupted. It was he who must snuff the candles, and put on a
stick of wood, and toast the cheese, and turn the apples, and crack
the nuts. He knew where the fox-and-geese board was, and he could
find the twelve-men-Morris. Considering that he was expected to go
to bed at eight o'clock, one would say that the opportunity for study
was not great, and that his reading was rather interrupted. There
seemed to be always something for him to do, even when all the rest
of the family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a New
England household.
No wonder that John was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had been
flying about while the others had been yawning before the fire. He
would like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it
would become as the night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, to
mend his sled, to finish that chapter. Why should he go away from
that bright blaze, and the company that sat in its radiance, to the
cold and solitude of his chamber? Why did n't the people who were
sleepy go to bed?
How lonesome the old house was; how cold it was, away from that great
central fire in the heart of it; how its timbers creaked as if in the
contracting pinch of the frost; what a rattling there was of windows,
what a concerted attack upon the clapboards; how the floors squeaked,
and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame of
the candle from the boy's hand. How he shivered, as he paused at the
staircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow, upon the
stripped forest, through which he could hear the wind raving in a
kind of fury, and up at the black flying clouds, amid which the young
moon was dashing and driven on like a frail shallop at sea. And his
teeth chattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets, and
drew himself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox in
his hole.
For a little time he could hear the noises downstairs, and an
occasional laugh; he could guess that now they were having cider, and
now apples were going round; and he could feel the wind tugging at
the house, even sometimes shaking the bed. But this did not last
long. He soon went away into a country he always delighted to be in:
a calm place where the wind never blew, and no one dictated the time
of going to bed to any one else. I like to think of him sleeping
there, in such rude surroundings, ingenious, innocent, mischievous,
with no thought of the buffeting he is to get from a world that has a
good many worse places for a boy than the hearth of an old farmhouse,
and the sweet, though undemonstrative, affection of its family life.
But there were other evenings in the boy's life, that were different
from these at home, and one of them he will never forget. It opened
a new world to John, and set him into a great flutter. It produced a
revolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder if
greased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; and
he wished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as he
walked away from it, what was the effect of round patches on the
portion of his trousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and if
patches were quite stylish, even on everyday trousers. And he began
to be very much troubled about the parting of his hair, and how to
find out on which side was the natural part.
The evening to which I refer was that of John's first party. He knew
the girls at school, and he was interested in some of them with a
different interest from that he took in the boys. He never wanted to
"take it out" with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight,
and he instinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he was
with them. He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and
slide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with
cold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples into
which he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two
his lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he not
some of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate,
spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home? And yet the grand sentiment
of life was little awakened in John. He liked best to be with boys,
and their rough play suited him better than the amusements of the
shrinking, fluttering, timid, and sensitive little girls. John had
not learned then that a spider-web is stronger than a cable; or that
a pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great deal
easier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry "enough."
John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the
feat of "going home with a girl" afterwards; and he had been growing
into the habit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing
how Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as much
if Cynthia was absent as when she was present. But there was very
little sentiment in all this, and nothing whatever to make John blush
at hearing her name.
But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the
invitation, in a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparent
wafer: "Miss C. Rudd requests the pleasure of the company of," etc.,
all in blue ink, and the finest kind of pin-scratching writing. What
a precious document it was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of
perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed he could not tell. He
read it over a hundred times, and showed it confidentially to his
favorite cousin, who had beaux of her own and had even "sat up" with
them in the parlor. And from this sympathetic cousin John got advice
as to what he should wear and how he should conduct himself at the
party.