was sown. I now began to spend all my leisure time in reading, and to be
more and more aware of my unprofitable and aimless life. Books carried
me this way and that. I was wholly overcome by them as by a strong
personal influence, especially when I read Byron. The student whom I
have mentioned had a few books of poetry, and among them the complete
works of Byron in one thick volume bound in calf, and printed on cheap,
thin paper. He himself had written verses before his conversion. He now
looked upon his poets as witnesses of his former sinful state. He wanted
to sell them to me with all their sins, and eventually I did buy his
copy of Byron for fifty cents, after borrowing and becoming so enamoured
of it that I felt I could not live without the book. The Byronic moods
and fashion I imitated to the best of my ability. I began to turn down
my Sunday linen collar which had stood up to my ears, and to wear my
hair long and careless; whereas formerly, I had brushed it back and
upward as straight as possible, after the manner of ministers and
school-masters, now I let it hang as it would over my forehead and neck.
Melancholy was the wear, and for this, in my present temper, not much
effort was required. I did not, as Alexander and Chrysostom had done,
put my favorite author under my pillow; but often having to sleep on the
floor, this volume of Byron served as my pillow. In turn one book after
another held me like a captive lover, and I endeavored to conform my
life to what I read, no sooner enthralled by one than I found another
more enchanting. I formed a taste for reading that has lasted all my
life, in which, if there be any education, any mental discipline, is the
only consistent part of my development. Our critics and literary mentors
extol such books as are fit to be read a second time. I have a still
better reason for a second reading, because I forget the first. When I
strictly examine myself I cannot say that the contents of any book
remain long with me, not even the Greek and Latin grammars over which I
spent years of terrible toil. Somewhat survives the years, vague,
inexact and never at hand when wanted. Enough for me that I know pretty
well where to find what I have once read. I have been drawn to the
authors, who have written especially for me, by a certain, recurrent
impulse and appetite. Then I can go to the shelf in the dark. I find
that memory is a faculty over which we cannot use the whip and spur to
much purpose. It goes its own gait through barren or fertile fields,
gathering many a weed with its flowers. How many trifles one carries
through life from childhood days, by no effort of his own, things of the
senses mostly, when these were unwritten tablets and blank for the first
impressions. Upon these tablets are indelibly retained a certain box, a
spool, a pair of stairs, the smell of a neighbor's house, when, with all
my efforts, I cannot recover my father's voice and countenance, nor many
another thing that would make a golden treasury of memory. Instead, it
is more like the lumber of an old attic, or the contents of a boy's
pocket. From much reading I began to observe the difference between
written and spoken languages, and to single out the people who used the
best speech in their common conversation. I tried myself to talk like
the books I read. Never before had I noticed any difference between men
as to education. All were on the same plane, only separable by some
personal relation to myself. Little by little they became distinct so
that I attempted to classify them in a crude and bookish way. Character
and the moral point of view, with their manifold applications to life,
were as yet hidden from me. I judged men and women by their speech, even
by their pronunciation, and thought that I could detect the accent of
the educated. In short, education became all in all to my mind; the one
desirable possession, and its end the writing of books, its reward fame.
As was natural I tried to write, but my rude penmanship, my inability to
spell the words, which I was ambitious to use, the difficulty of
beginning a sentence, and still greater perplexity of ending it,
completely disgusted me and filled me with despair. It was more evident
than ever that education was the ladder for my enterprise. There was, at
that time, in Worcester a learned blacksmith, who knew fifty languages;
he might have been an example to me; yet I had never heard of him. I
knew only the great men of Whelpley's ancient history, and the poet
Byron. Schools and colleges assumed great and greater importance. I saw
no way of educating myself: I expected it to be done for me, as
everything thus far had been. I was nearly sixteen years old, barely
able to read and write, but no more advanced than the average boy of ten
or twelve.
STUDENT LIFE
After much solicitation I persuaded my sister to send me for one term to
the Worcester Academy. This was a school then in the suburbs of the city
under the patronage of the Baptists. It had formerly been a manual labor
school; that is, students could pay their expenses by labor on a farm
belonging to the institution. This feature had been given up, and it was
conducted like other institutions of a similar character. It was
essentially a country academy, intended primarily for youths who, having
gone through the common schools, desired some further education at small
expense. One or two terms were considered sufficient to round off the
culture of farmers' sons. The school pretended to teach Latin and Greek,
and occasionally sent a student to college. A few, having acquired a
taste for study, remained long enough to fit themselves to become
teachers of common schools, or to enter one of the professions, which at
that time did not place so much importance as at present upon lengthy
preparation and a degree. The expenses were as light as was the fare.
The rooms were scantily furnished; chairs, tables and beds were in the
last stages of dilapidation from the rough usage of a generation of
students. No one felt or was held responsible for their condition. Some
of the students boarded themselves in the dormitory, which did not add
to the tidiness and order of their rooms. Books, clothing, plates and
pots, wood and food were scattered about promiscuously. Each room was a
citadel, neither teachers nor steward ever entered it; a servant made up
the bed, and that was the extent of her function. We filled our own
water pails, cut our own wood and swept the room when we happened to
think of it, and could borrow a broom. As I have said, the common table
was meagerly kept. How could it have been otherwise at the rate of one
dollar per week? We often rose in rebellion at the cooking, when we
drove the waitress from the room, hurling the food, and after it, the
dishes, upon the floor. No punishments ever followed these out-breaks,
nor any of our pranks with the bell, the steward's horse and cow and the
principal's desk. The discipline was mild; or rather there was none. And
yet there were many diligent students and a few who distinguished
themselves in later life. The best features of the institution were its
unbounded freedom, the close democratic companionship of the students,
the affectionate attachments formed, and the tremendous interest we took
in the meetings of the Philomathean society for debates, and the reading
of essays and poetry, exhibited also in a lesser degree in the Saturday
declamations and compositions. How deep and real were our personal
attachments I may illustrate in mentioning that I have maintained two of
them for fifty years. Others that faded out of my life I still remember
with grateful and tender feelings, especially a young man considerably
older than myself, to whom I was passionately devoted. He was a
handsome, reserved fellow with the eyes and lips of genius. He played
the violin, and well do I recall the sensitive twitchings of his mouth
at any strain of unusual thrilling sweetness. It made my heart beat
faster when he spoke to me, which was rarely; and never before had I
felt such a deep emotion as when coming from the city one evening he
asked me to take his arm. It was the common custom with all of us when
walking or strolling about the grounds to lock arms or put them about
each other's necks. Only with him, the violinist, it was less usual than
with the others. How often have I wondered what was the subsequent
career of him whom we thought the greatest man among us.
With such freedom, such slight discipline, and so little pressure in the
classroom, it was nevertheless the best arena for the development of the
whole man which I have ever known. Our debates were exciting, often
fierce; sometimes we almost came to blows, and instead of being merely
practice and forensics, they were very real and vital, so much so, that
we generally resumed them when two or three met in their rooms or on
their walks. They were sure to continue until the next meeting, when a
new question would be proposed. Usually the topics for debate and the
principal disputants were selected a week in advance. Much time was
given to preparation, to the complete neglect of our studies. The
debates were extemporaneous, and after the preliminary speeches, the
question was open to all. The topics of debate were generally on the
social and political issues of the time; anti-slavery, temperance,
women's rights; these questions often led into religious and theological
controversies. Not who was the better scholar, but who was the better
speaker, and next the better writer, was the popular estimate of
reputation and settlement of rank in school. We strove above everything
to be eloquent, to become orators; that being at the time the aim set
before us by ambitious public men, inspired by the examples of Webster,
Clay, Calhoun and others. It is my belief that, at this period, one of
the great public prizes of glory, which young students set before
themselves, was to deliver a Fourth of July oration. Meanwhile no
instruction was given in elocution, rhetoric or composition. The
required exercises in declamation and writing were conducted with almost
no criticism. They neither added nor subtracted from our standing with
the teachers by any sign known to us. We were left to our own
self-instruction, which, on account of our enthusiasm, emulation and
rivalries, was the very best of school-masters. We studied parliamentary
law from a little volume called Cushing's manual; for who could tell
when he might be called upon to be an officer of the club, or at what
point he could with safety move the previous question? Very amusing were
some of the attempts of the students to speak extemporaneously; the
stammering, the hesitation, the confusion and final flunk; the
confidence with which some one would spring to his feet, as if full to
the muzzle, and the entire inconsequence and futility of his words,
ending in apparent abject paralysis of speech. We dealt liberally in
jeers at any exhibition of bathos or fustian; in laughter and applause
at any touch of eloquence or wit. What better training was there than
this? I have always had a fond lingering desire to be an orator, but
when before an audience found myself as cold as a clod. Toward essay
writing and reading our attitude was somewhat different. Yet here we
looked for and were only satisfied with eloquence--good, resounding
periods with plentiful classical allusion and quotations of poetry. We
always expected at least one apostrophe to "Science Hill," which was the
consecrated name of the eminence on which the academy building stood.
Progress, liberty, the Fathers of the Republic and other patriotic
themes were those on which we sharpened our pens. For purely literary
subjects there was no interest whatever; and, because of this
indifference, occurred what was, to me, one of the most mortifying
episodes of my youth. I had come into the possession of Milton's poetry,
and though untouched by his Paradise Lost, his Lycidas was a revelation
to me of the music and rhythm and allusions possible to poetry. I
committed it to memory and startled my class one day by reciting it as a
part of the regular exercises. It was customary for some criticism to
follow such exercises; but, to my distress, my beautiful poem, that had
filled me with delight, was received in absolute silence. It had fallen
like a bolt from heaven on those young wights. Covered with confusion, I
went to my seat feeling that I had committed the unpardonable sin of
attempting to do something beyond my capacity. No comment on my effort
was made at the time; I was not even rallied about it outside the class
room; and only after fifty years had passed did I learn the reason of
the extraordinary silence that had followed my rhetorical outbreak. Said
one of my classmates at a reunion, "I shall never forget the day you
recited Lycidas; none of the fellows had ever done such a thing; they
neither knew nor cared for poetry, and your recitation was a revelation
to us all. It came like a shock and thrilled us to bigger things. We
never forgot it."
So impressionable and plastic is youth in its formative period that it
only takes one great poem to unlock for it the higher mysteries.
We taught ourselves patriotism in season, and before the days of
attenuated and hypersensitive politics. Rough fellows were we, dressed
in cheap coats, eating coarse food, sleeping on hard beds in cold rooms,
and I fear the well was not much called upon for baths. We read but
little. There was not a newspaper nor magazine taken in the whole
establishment, and how we knew what was going on in the world I cannot
tell; yet in some way it penetrated our seclusion. In such a small and
socially affiliated school, what one knew, all the others soon imbibed.
We were every one of us Yankee boys, acquisitive and resolved to make
the most of ourselves and our small opportunities. The library of the
institution contained about a hundred volumes, and of these some were
religious books. There was a ragged, greasy Shakespeare in eight volumes
which I tried to read through, but found the task too much for me.
However, I did have a glimpse of something for which I found myself
unprepared; and such is the constitution of my mind, that I have seldom
been able to grasp dramatic writing with complete enjoyment; I am apt to
dwell too long on its beauty spots. For this reason I prefer the Greek
drama, because of the simplicity of its construction. The characters are
fewer, and, I may say, not so personal, and there are not so many
threads to keep in hand. I am in no perplexity when I begin Agamemnon
and Antigone; there is a clear, simple and straight path for action. The
one book which we all read with greatest diligence was Todd's Student's
Manual. As we did not really study much, it seemed best to know all
about the methods and rules for study. The book was stuffed full of
sound advice in regard to the regulations of the student's time, diet,
sleep and exercise; in short, what may, without offense, be called the
mechanical apparatus for the acquirement of education and character. I
am sure I profited much from this manual, although I could never observe
a tithe of its instructions. It was something to know there was a path
especially laid out for the student, if he could not always keep it. It
prompted the searching of one's self, and in consequence, many of us
began to keep a diary, which, I think in my own case, stimulated
observation and reflection. Feeble as the young child's first effort to
walk were my entries in my first diary. How is one to write without a
definite subject, or one selected for him? But with each day's practice
it became easier, and at last a pleasure to hold a silent intercourse
with myself, to recover and merely to catalogue the day's doings and try
to discriminate them. In vain thus far were my attempts at logic in the
debating club, and the sentences in my diary seemed even more wanting in
connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and
wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb
in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to
know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and
what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have
heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of
nothing so dead and so precipitating as the look into an early youthful
diary. Not much more encouraging is the book one has written and
published, and some time after has the temerity to open.
SCHOOLMASTER
After a few terms at Worcester Academy, during which I contrived in
different ways to support myself on a single meal a day, at one time by
ringing the bell for morning prayers and sweeping the general recitation
room, at another by delivering a daily newspaper, the _Worcester Spy_,
to one hundred and twenty-five subscribers, I thought myself competent
to teach a common school, by which I hoped to earn enough to carry me
through another year of study. I was examined as to my qualifications
for teaching by the chairman of the school committee of the town of
Grafton, having applied for one of the district schools. Between fright
and incompetency I passed a most inadequate examination. What little I
did know deserted me at the pinch. The reverend gentleman, who conducted
me through questions in the various common school studies, was one of
the most amiable souls in the world, as I had many subsequent
opportunities of knowing, for he continued my friend as long as he
lived. He told me frankly that he was hardly warranted in giving me a
certificate, but would allow me to make a trial of the school, and, as
my sister had such a high reputation as a teacher, he had no doubt I
would succeed if I was in earnest and studied diligently. The school
consisted of fifty pupils of all ages; some were just learning to read,
others had been through again and again all the text books in use and
went to school in winter for fun, and because they had nothing else to
do. There were six young men four years older than myself. These older
pupils thought they knew their school books well enough, and had no
occasion to study them again. They were much inclined to match their
proficiency with that of their teacher, which was a good way of putting
him on his mettle. A few appeared to be present only to make trouble,
and to try their pugilism against that of the master. I was not
especially athletic; yet, when my temper was up, I was a dangerous
antagonist. I soon discovered the work cut out for me. I spent every
evening in preparation for the next day's lessons, and I introduced some
new exercises for those older boys and girls whose familiarity with
their books gave them little to do. My troubles began soon enough, not
in the school, but among the parents, which was shortly reflected in
their children. In every New England school district there are generally
factions and parties as in larger political divisions; it divides on all
kinds of issues, political, religious or social. I am giving my
experience, not for its personal value, but as the average picture of
the average school district. This particular district was sharply split
by the temperance party and the rummies. It so happened that the
prudential committeeman, as he was called, that is, the agent whose
office it was to hire a teacher and have the general care of all the
business concerns of the school for the year, was an ardent temperance
worker, and I boarded with him. This was reason enough for the other
party to stir up antagonism against the teacher. It was not long before
I became aware of the situation, and learned to my surprise and
amusement that I was a strong temperance man, and in the habit of making
temperance speeches. The rummies, I found, were men addicted only to
their cider barrels; hard working citizens with red faces and rather
lurid speech. On the whole, I thought them much more interesting
characters than the faction to which I was supposed to belong. But they
would have none of me, and I had not sufficient tact to win them to
myself. The crisis came when I thrashed the son of one of them, my first
and last experiment in corporal punishment. The boy's father threatened
and sent me word that the first time he met me I might look out for his
horse whip. I fully expected it, and carried a stick on my way to and
from school. He turned out to be a great coward, for one day we met on
the road and he slunk the other side of his load of wood as we came
opposite each other. He took his boy out of school, and several others
followed him, complaining that I did not know enough arithmetic to teach
them, which was quite true, only I was learning; and gladly would I
learn and gladly teach, if they could have had patience. I think my most
successful teaching has been with those with whom I was also studying
and learning, having a double incitement and interest. The teacher who
knows it all beforehand, and rests in his knowledge is soon dulled and
wearied.