others, brought peace and good will into the school-room, and I became
on intimate and even affectionate terms with the remainder of the
pupils, and on the last day of the term, examination day it was called,
we were all much lauded and flattered by the school committee and
assembled friends. It was my first experience of responsibility, and
settled some matters with me for life, chief of which was that the only
authority and influence of value are those that are gained by love. The
more friendly and intimate my relation with any pupil the more pleasant
was my task, the more easy his lesson, the more rapid his progress. I
also learned that all effort is lost on a stupid mind, and that it is
better to wait upon its awakening. In this I had my own experience to
support me, for I never learned anything until aroused from within; all
else is but untempered plaster that falls away as soon as it ceases to
be fresh. Outside of my school and its duties I found considerable
opportunity for improving myself. The couple, with whom I boarded, were
good souls, and, having no children of their own, showed me much kindly
attention. The table was plentiful; we had pumpkin pie three times
daily, baked in oblong tins, and the corner piece was the favorite cut.
My room was large and pleasant, and better furnished than any I had ever
occupied. My host always wore a cheerful smile and seemed the happiest
of men, although he never joked; his conversation was serious and
religious, in striking contrast to his manner and usual countenance. He
spoke of heaven and hell with the same merry twinkle in his eye, the
same smiling face. His speech was accompanied by a sort of low, half
audible whistle. He encouraged me through all my troubles, and told me
not to worry about the old cider-drinking farmers, as there were more
horsewhips than one in the "deestrict." His wife's chief dread in this
mortal life was fire. She expected the house would burn up every night.
I can see now her painful look of alarm when there was news of a
conflagration anywhere; she would immediately leave her chair, look at
the stove, examine the stovepipe and peer out into the kitchen. Then it
was not unusual for dissolute, drinking men to take revenge on the total
abstainers by setting fire to their barns. There was only one family in
the district with whom I became intimate, and whose friendship across
the continent I still keep. This was the family of a retired
Universalist clergyman. They lived in a large farmhouse, and the
clergyman was engaged in reclaiming an immense bog, and occasionally
supplying some vacant neighboring pulpit. He was a visionary of a
perfect kind. All bogs were to him prospective gardens of Eden;
impossibilities to him the only things worth attempting; all men saints
and angels. He had inherited a considerable fortune, which had mostly
disappeared in the fathomless swamps of the different towns where he had
sojourned as a clergyman. His wife was a lineal descendant of one of the
heroes of Concord Bridge; a beautiful, domestic woman full of prudent
and wise counsels, which had saved the family from being swallowed up in
her husband's Utopias. Three of their younger children were among the
brightest of my pupils; three grown up sons were still at home, working
on the land a part of the year, and in winter they made boots in a
little shop attached to the house. As formerly in Hopkinton, so here in
this shop, but with more intelligence and learning, I heard and now took
part in the discussion of all sorts of questions. Their minds seemed to
have been trained in more philosophical directions than any I had met.
Here I had some new insights which helped me forward, and I heard much
of the worthlessness of religious dogmas. It was, however, with a tin
pedler, a friend and distant relative of this family, that I turned the
newest leaf in my mental progress. He usually travelled through Grafton
twice a month, and made it his convenience to put up over night with his
friends. It was there I used to meet him. His name was Daboll, and he
claimed to be descended from that ancient Connecticut maker of
arithmetics and almanacs, Nathan Daboll. He said that was why he became
a pedler--he was born to calculate. Yet his occupation sat very lightly
upon him. It gave him abundant opportunities for reflection and
conversation. In the latter he took delight, and lost no chance of
displaying his skill in setting forth his own ideas and drawing out
those of his customers. If he sold a pan or a broom it was accompanied
by some bit of philosophy that he had evolved on the lonesome stretches
of road between farmhouse and farmhouse. I write evolved; but that was
not his own word, nor his theory of the origin of his ideas. He claimed
that they came to him when he escaped his own control. I have forgotten
many of the details and examples which he used to give in explanation of
his doctrine, and should not remember them at all after so many years,
save that at various times I have had similar experiences, and that I
have been often reminded of them by the modern discussions of
psychology, and especially of the operations of the subjective mind. He
said that he was led into his view from thinking about his dreams which
were beyond control of the will. His next step was to observe that he
sometimes dreamed when awake; that is, thoughts came into his mind
without conscious effort, and at times when his head was wholly vacant
or wholly occupied with his business. Many things were made clear to him
in this manner, and he had come to the conclusion that the best way to
get the wisdom enjoined by the Bible and learned men, was to escape from
yourself, in short, to become passive. In long summer days, slowly
travelling his circuit of some forty miles, calling at every house where
he was well known, and must needs be in no haste to trade, (for country
people were never sure of what they wanted until they looked the cart
over), he had plenty of time to resign himself to the involuntary and
dreamlike states of mind, which solved for him the questions in which he
was most interested. I was not so much impressed that such notions
should come from a tin pedler as by the notions themselves; for at that
period the democracy of our New England towns considered and treated a
pedler as a man and a brother. His business was not regarded as
demeaning, and frequently was an apprenticeship to that of a store
keeper, and he might, and sometimes did, become the rich merchant of a
great city. Many young men peddled small wares, books and pictures
between terms to help themselves in paying for their education. So
Reuben Daboll was no phenomenon; but his philosophy was phenomenal, at
least to me, and kept me awake on the nights when the evening had been
spent with him. It kept me awake, I say, for I never could reason far,
and trying to think gave me a headache. I was perplexed by a thousand
problems, my own, and those propounded by my companions and elders, and
others suggested in books; and I wondered if Daboll's way was not an
easier and shorter method of answer than the pros and cons of argument.
It is interesting now for me to reflect upon the two influences
following each other so closely, that were quickening my own faculties;
for they were in direct contrast with each other; one, the animated
debates and attempted logical presentation of a subject with its related
facts, as presented at the Worcester Academy; and this new method of
passive receptivity, this opening of the inner eye of the mind to
receive impressions. It was a long time before I could experiment with
any success in this new direction, for I was of an active and impatient
temperament, longing to hurry to an end that I might begin something
new, and wishing to arrive rather than to profit by each day's march. As
I grew to maturity, the latter method was more congenial and became of
more practical use to me, and one of my favorite mottoes has been, "Our
thoughts are a pious reception."
The winter school being over in the spring, I returned to Worcester
Academy feeling older and more sobered. I began Latin with a dim idea of
going to college, how and when, I did not dare to forecast. I was not as
happy as formerly in the school. The debates, compositions and
declamations interested me less, and I should have been quite dull
except for some young girls at the Oread Institute. This institution had
just been opened on the hill, directly opposite our academy. It was not
within speaking distance, but was within writing and signalling
distance. All intercourse between the girl students and ourselves was
prohibited. I have frequently noticed this juxtaposition of schools for
the sexes, and also that laws of non-intercourse are enacted for no
other purpose than to make their infringement the more tempting and
delightful. My chum knew one of the Oreads, a girl from his own village;
with this key we carried the citadel. We established a post office in
the neighboring stone wall and arranged many a clandestine meeting, walk
or drive. The girl whom I had chosen for my devotions was from the White
Mountains of New Hampshire. She wore her hair in long curls, that fell
over her neck and shoulders, and were constantly straggling over her
face. Then with a toss of her comely head and a pretty gesture of her
hand she would throw them back. This little trick captivated me and
fixed my fate. She constantly came between me and the Latin declensions
and conjugations that I was trying to memorize. However, I was saved
from anything like a formal attachment by her early announcement to me
that she was engaged to the son of an ex-governor of New Hampshire. I
had reason to suspect afterward that this was a subterfuge to forestall
any serious consequences from our intercourse. If so, she was a wise
maiden, and whatever claims we men may arrogate to ourselves, women are
better tacticians than we in their personal relations. With this
barrier, thus timely erected, I was kept on my good behavior and we
amused ourselves with each other's company in many a stolen woodland
walk, and in a frequent defrauding of the Worcester post-office of its
revenues. She wrote a tiny hand and could crowd more upon a page than I
could upon four. I treasured her notes in my inmost pocket, and our
secret correspondence gave me almost as deep a joy as did our
companionship.
It was at this time I began to make verses, as much from an imitative
instinct as from my sentimental relation with the pretty Oread; for
there was now in the school a young man who set up for a poet and was
much admired by us all. It seems to me he must have had a sense of
musical rhythm, for there has remained in my ear ever since a stanza of
his which I caught as he read it to a little coterie of students. There
is nothing in it save its melody.
"The while amid the greenwood
Whistled the summer breeze
Fair Mantua's maiden swore to wed
Her loving Genoese."
Those two names, Mantua and Genoese, had a wonderful, faraway
imaginative association for me, and still have. Matthew Arnold's magic
of poetry, magical words and lines, explain all its charm for me. A
feeling beyond the words or the sense is what I require in poetry. In
vain did I try to express in rhyme what I felt. The lines halted for the
last word. I never ventured to read them to my Oread or fellow students.
Thus I cherished two secrets and discovered that the private indulgence
of verse-making is almost as sweet as a hidden love. The terms of the
Academy and the Oread Institute ended on the same day, and I parted from
my sweetheart never to meet again.
FARM HAND
What to do with myself during the long summer vacation was the next
question. My money was fast wasting in spite of my economies. There were
no country schools open to male teachers in summer. My sister advised me
to find employment on a farm. I thought at once of Bellingham, and my
dear Uncle Lyman. He did not want help and eventually I hired myself to
another uncle who lived in the extreme southern part of the town, close
upon the boundary of Rhode Island. My wages were to be twelve dollars
per month with board. My uncle's wife was my father's only surviving
sister. Their children were married and settled elsewhere. All that was
left to them was a large farm and old age. The one made them rather
poorer than richer; the other brought upon them a growing habit of
penuriousness, gloom and irritability. I was expected to do all the
heavy work and most of the chores, except the milking; that, they would
allow no one to do, for fear of not squeezing out the last drop. My aunt
still made butter and cheese to sell, and in this work I usually helped
her the first thing in the morning before the regular day's work. We had
breakfast at sunrise, often before. After breakfast my uncle went into
the sitting-room where:
"He waled a portion with judicious care,
'And let us worship God,' he says, with solemn air."
I suppose that is what he did, for I could hear the low mumble of his
voice and occasionally catch a scriptural phrase, but neither my aunt
nor myself participated in this mockery of family prayers. She said she
had too much to do, and she could not spare me from the cheese tub and
the churn. She scolded her husband for his contributions to the church,
and begrudged every cent that was spent. She had Franklin's prudential
maxims at her tongue's end, besides many another gathered in the course
of her long life of thrift and hard work. She never rested from her
labors until the Sabbath. Our food was of the coarsest kind, but well
cooked, and work and hunger were sauce enough. She baked once a week in
a great brick oven; her other daily cooking was done by an open fire.
Brown bread and cheese were the staff of our life, and I became more
fond of them than of any viands I have since eaten. In vain have I
besought my household to discover the recipe of my aunt's brown loaves.
Who can recover for me the relish that went with them? With this aged
couple I led a lonely yet healthful life. I came nearer to the earth
than ever before; I mean her dirt, her stones, her odors and dews as
well as to cows, sheep and horses, whose closer relation to the soil
insensibly affects those who have the care of them. I felt myself a
brother to the ox that I yoked and guided along the furrow. My nigh ox
came from the pasture at my call and would lick my hand and stretch out
his neck to be stroked. The whole barnyard was friendly, and I took
pleasure, having none other, in the signs of it. The neighbors were few
and I saw nothing of them. One young man sometimes called, but as his
interest in me appeared to consist in a desire to save my soul his
visits distressed me. It was my singular fortune through my childhood
and early youth, to have been followed by soul savers. At last in
desperation I told him that I was not sure as yet that I had a soul to
save; when I had, I would consider his propositions. Whereupon he went
his way and reported that I was a Universalist, that being in Bellingham
the most opprobrious of names, in consequence of an ancient feud between
the Baptist and Universalist churches. The Baptists had come off
conquerers; the name, however, remained; and an indefinable name of
reproach is a convenient thing to have in a country neighborhood.
I have mentioned the penuriousness of my employers. In the case of my
uncle it was exhibited in the most extraordinary, amusing, yet harmless
ways. He never could pass by an old, bent, used-up nail, bit of string,
pin or a straight stick without picking it up and putting it away. The
collar of his coat and front of his gaudy flannel vest were stuck full
of pointless pins and eyeless needles. The shed opposite the house was a
museum of rubbish, odds and ends of the most worthless articles neatly
sorted, tied up in small bundles and hung about the sides of the
building. It was a well-developed mania with him, having acquired it
through his long years of money getting and saving, and in larger
matters, which had made him a well-to-do farmer. Although now old, he
was a well-preserved man; there was still a wholesome red spot in his
cheek, and a gleam of youth in his eye. His movements were so deliberate
and slow that it was impossible that he could ever have worn himself out
with work. He would pause between every hill that he hoed and make some
remark, or look up at the sun for the time of the day. He could not mow
a straight swath because he was always nicking in and out for some straw
left by other mowers. When he harnessed his aged horse, as reliable as
an ox to drive, and not much faster, he would go over and over every
buckle and strap to make sure that all was safe, in the meantime talking
to him in a soothing voice as if he expected every moment that he would
run away. If Jim had a strong point it was in standing still. When he
sneezed he used to say, "I guess I am good for another day," and like
his wife he had a ready proverb for everything. Seldom could I catch the
whole of it, for he sputtered in his speech and had a falsetto voice. It
was evident that he had acquired his property by exceeding thrift,
rather than labor, by that ancient all-pervading custom of the New
England farmer of doing without and making things last another year.
I had promised myself to do some studying during the summer, but found
that the long hours of labor and fatigue at their end unfitted me for
anything save rest and sleep. I scarcely opened a book of any kind. I
had a volume of Macauly's Essays with me in which I read a little on the
Sabbath. On rainy days I stole away to the hay mow and read one of Jane
Porter's novels which I found in the house. I attempted to commit to
memory the whole of the Lady of the Lake, but got no farther than the
first canto, and the songs interspersed through the others. These songs
I recited in the field, and they were a great comfort to me. Little do
the poets know in what strange, obscure places, and in what lonely,
unknown hearts their verses find lodgment. It is not necessary that one
should contend that Scott is the greatest of poets, who thought so for a
single summer.
With thirty dollars in my purse and a blue camlet suit made of a cloak,
which had been my father's best outer garment, I returned to Worcester
Academy. I made a resolution, which I kept, to have no more intimacies
with the Oreads, and to devote myself to study. I still cherished the
idea of college, although it seemed as distant as ever. I began to be
interested in public affairs and attended the first convention of the
Free Soil party which was held in Worcester. I heard Charles Sumner and
Charles Allen speak. Sumner appealed to my sympathies, Allen to my
reason. Allen argued, Sumner was eloquent. Most young men in New England
had hitherto been admirers of Webster and Clay, and termed themselves
Whigs. The truth was they were called to whatever was eloquence. They
worshipped the greatness of sounding, patriotic periods. How we admired
Kossuth, and immediately paid him the shallow compliment of wearing a
Kossuth hat. I also thought I was a Whig, much to the sorrow of my
mother, whose sympathies were with the Abolitionists. After the Free
Soil convention I was a Free Soiler, and such I continued, casting my
first vote for John C. Fremont. At this time Worcester was the favorite
place for every kind of convention of the friends of progress.
Anti-slavery, Non-resistance and Women's Rights. I heard all the strange
and strong speakers and advocates on those free and lively platforms. I
heard Garrison, Phillips, May, Quincy, Pillsbury, the Fosters, Sojourner
Truth, Burleigh, Lucretia Mott, and Ernestine Rose. The last speaker, a
handsome, modishly dressed New York Jewess, converted me to the cause of
woman. In a short time I was an enthusiastic reformer all along the
line. Probably there has been no period in our history so charged with
new and revolutionary ideas as that from 1835 to 1850. It was a good
time to be alive and to be near the center of agitation in
Massachusetts. I heard both church and state and the whole structure of
society attacked. Whatever other reform might be under discussion these
were sure to receive the hardest blows; strike, and spare not, was the
watchword. For me the great event in my personal experience and
awakening at this period, was not especially connected with the reforms
that I have named. One small book very much in common with my former
limited reading and enthusiasms for celebrated men, shook me to the
center of my being. It was Emerson's Representative Men, recently
published. Carelessly looking over the volumes on Mr. Grout's counter in
Worcester, I took it up, attracted by its title, for I was always
hungering for stories of eminent men, always hoping to find the secret
of their greatness, that I might use it for my own advancement. I stood
and read a few pages, laid down the book, but felt that I must read it
through. After some battling between my purse and desire, desire won,
and I bought the precious volume at the cost of my breakfast for several
weeks, so slender were my resources. In the course of three or four
years I added to my library Milton's poems, a volume of Tennyson and
three of Potter's translation of Euripides; the latter, not because I
wanted it, but because I happened to have made the final bid at a book
auction. In Representative Men I found the meat my nature craved. In all
previous histories and biographies that I had read, there was much going
round and about poets and heroes, an external, academic treatment; with
Emerson I seemed to come nearer the possible ideal which was already
vaguely outlined in my mind. Besides there was much else than Napoleon
and Shakespeare in the pages. There were the moral and poetic insights,
and, moreover, there was the style, the vital and penetrating
Emersonianism, which aroused, and no doubt, dazzled the youthful and
impressionable reader. Emerson's terse epigrammatic method of writing
was congenial to my inability to follow difficult logic. His style
seemed to me the poetical foil of all the prosers of all time. Through
the reading of this book eventually I became acquainted with Emerson,
Alcott and Thoreau. They became my teachers; I followed them until, by
their guidance, I was enlarged enough to find my own way into
companionship with those poets and thinkers, who have endured through
the ages. May I never forget to acknowledge my debt to those men of
Concord, my earliest masters in fidelity to ideals and the inward light.
CONCLUSION
I began to write these confidences of boyhood for my own pleasure. If I
were to continue them into manhood I could not find nor distinguish
myself. It would be like emerging suddenly from solitude into a crowd.
The bright days of childhood easily separate themselves from all later
time, and are painted with the free pencil of the imagination. I have
now come almost to the wide gateways of the world where I must join the
indistinguishable procession and begin to forget myself in its alluring
enchantments.
With the discovery of certain books of ancient history, Plutarch,
Euripides and Emerson's Essays there came an unexpected close to my
student life at the Worcester Academy. Several of my classmates and
myself agreed that we could be better fitted for college at Phillips
Academy, Andover, than where we were, and accordingly we put ourselves
under the tuition of Dr. Samuel H. Taylor, at that time the most eminent
school and drill-master in New England. Under him I just escaped
becoming a classical scholar and also nearly lost the chance of ever
acquiring a love for the classics; for it was drill, paradigms, rules,
exceptions, scansion, in short, all that pertains to the external
apparatus of the Greek and Latin tongues. Often we spent two hours on
eight lines of Homer. The father of literature became a Procrustean,
grammatical bed on which we were to be stretched, and it did nearly
exterminate every one of us. For my own part, I was possessed with an
intemperate haste to read Homer straight through as fast as I could; for
I felt, without exactly knowing, that there was something in the epic I
wanted, yes, I needed and must have. Checked in this by the rigors of
the recitation room I lost much of my interest in study, and spent the
time which was supposed to be given to text books in reading all the
classic and English poetry I could find, and in valorous attempts at
composition, both prose and verse. This I by no means now regret, and
rejoice that my tuition escaped the Spartan discipline no less than the
present pragmatical curricula.
At length I was fitted for college and admitted to Harvard. Misfortunes
culminated at the same moment. I did not remain. I was too ill for
study, and suddenly the bottom of my perfidious purse dropped out.
Bitter was my disappointment. But in another year I began a new career
which brought me happiness, new opportunities, new friends and dividends
from Utopian investments. Health and hope, my natural inheritance,
returned. Boyhood was gone, but not the invincible boy.
As in the Parable I had traveled far, uncertain of the road. My diet had
been mostly husks, but how sweet! Arriving at last at hospitable doors,
I could receive without penitence, without tears the welcome long
prepared for me. Thenceforth I submitted myself with more patience and
trust to the destiny which had been awaiting me throughout my
apprenticeships. My destiny became my choice.
AVE ATGUE VALE
I shall not pass this way again;
But near by is the town where I was born;
I loved it well.
And near my heart my mother State;
She wreathed her sword with freedom, learning, law
When tyrants fell.
Three words from Athens held me long;
Nothing-too-much, proportion, harmony;
By these excel.
I never hurried for the goal,
But like the tortoise travelled steadily,
Sans band, sans bell.
Born when the star of Spring arose,
Haply my auspices were cast for calm
Of wood and dell.
Form I admired and sounds and scents;
Motion of waters, silences of stars--
Mighty their spell!
No senate called me from the plow;
No hundred thousand readers read my books--
They did not sell.
Many the friends when life was new
Heaven sent to me, but now, alas, reclaimed;
Sound, Muse, their knell.
You, who hereafter pass this way,
Remember him who made this simple book
And say farewell.