the master; and when at the general English lesson, he used to address
to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative
of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had not
entered. "That, sir," he has said, after the class had just perused,
in the school collection, a "Tatler" or "Spectator,"--"that, sir, is a
good paper; it's an Addison"; or, "That's one of Steele's, sir"; and
on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with
rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on Peace," he brought it to his desk,
and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his
closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in one hand, and the
copy-book brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his
criticism. "That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting the
knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelled word; and
there's another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation;
but the general sense of the piece is good,--very good, indeed, sir."
And then he added, with a grim smile, "_Care_, sir, is, I dare say, as
you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more
of it on your spelling and your grammar."
[Illustration]
WALTER SCOTT,
POET, HISTORIAN, AND NOVELIST OF SCOTLAND.
It was at Sandy Knowe, at the home of my father's father, that I had
the first knowledge of life; and I recollected distinctly that my
situation and appearance were a little whimsical. I was lame, and
among the old remedies for lameness some one had recommended that, as
often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be
stripped and wrapped up in the warm skin as it was taken from the
carcass of the animal. In this Tartar-like dress I well remember lying
upon the floor of the little parlor of the farm-house, while my
grandfather, an old man with snowy hair, tried to make me crawl. And I
remember a relation of ours, Colonel MacDougal, joining with him to
excite and amuse me. I recollect his old military dress, his small
cocked hat, deeply laced, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light-colored
coat, and milk-white locks, as he knelt on the ground before me, and
dragged his watch along the carpet to make me follow it. This must
have happened about my third year, for both the old men died soon
after. My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of the
farm, assisted by my uncle Thomas Scott. This was during the American
war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle's weekly visits (for
we had no news at another time) to hear of the defeat of Washington,
as if I had some personal cause for hating him. I got a strange
prejudice in favor of the Stuart family from the songs and tales I
heard about them. One or two of my own relations had been put to death
after the battle of Culloden, and the husband of one of my aunts used
to tell me that he was present at their execution. My grandmother used
to tell me many a tale of Border chiefs, like Watt of Harden, Wight
Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead. My kind aunt,
Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will always be dear to me, used to read
to me with great patience until I could repeat long passages by heart.
I learned the old ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of our
almost only visitor, Dr. Duncan, the worthy clergyman of the parish,
who had no patience to have his sober chat disturbed by my shouting
for this ditty. Methinks I see now his tall, emaciated figure, legs
cased in clasped gambadoes, and his very long face, and hear him
exclaim, "One might as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where
that child is!"
I was in my fourth year when my father was told that the waters of
Bath might be of some advantage to my lameness. My kind aunt, though
so retiring in habits as to make such a journey anything but pleasure
or amusement, undertook to go with me to the wells, as readily as if
she expected all the delight the prospect of a watering-place held out
to its most impatient visitors. My health was by this time a good
deal better from the country air at my grandmother's. When the day was
fine, I was carried out and laid beside the old shepherd among the
crags and rocks, around which he fed his sheep. Childish impatience
inclined me to struggle with my lameness, and I began by degrees to
stand, walk, and even run.
I lived at Bath a year without much advantage to my lameness. The
beauties of the Parade, with the river Avon winding around it, and the
lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my
recollection, and are only exceeded by the splendors of a toy-shop
near the orange grove. I was afraid of the statues in the old abbey
church, and looked with horror upon the image of Jacob's ladder with
its angels.
* * * * *
My mother joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn for
poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her
religion, as became her sex, was of a cast less severe than my
father's. My hours of leisure from school study were spent in reading
with her Pope's translation of Homer, which, with a few ballads and
the songs of Allan Ramsay, was the first poetry I possessed. My
acquaintance with English literature gradually extended itself. In the
intervals of my school-hours I read with avidity such books of history
or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented, not forgetting
fairy-tales and Eastern stories and romances. I found in my mother's
dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of
Shakespeare, nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in my
shirt reading them by the firelight.
In my thirteenth year I first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's
"Reliques of Ancient Poetry." As I had been from infancy devoted to
legendary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my
attention, from the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those
which I possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be described, with
what delight I saw pieces of the same kind which had amused my
childhood, and still continued in secret the Delilahs of my
imagination, considered as the subject of sober research, grave
commentary, and apt illustration, by an editor who showed his poetical
genius was capable of emulating the best qualities of what his pious
labor preserved. I remember well the spot where I read these volumes
for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus-tree, in the ruins
of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden
adjoining the house. The summer day sped onward so fast that,
notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of
dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still entranced in
my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance
the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all
who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of
Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings
together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto
myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a
book half so frequently or with half the enthusiasm.
To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of that
delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never
since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if
not the most romantic, village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to
awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves,
but venerable from their association. The meeting of two superb
rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song; the ruins of
an ancient abbey; the more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle; the
modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to combine the ideas
of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern taste,--are in
themselves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed, united, and
melted among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent
description, that they harmonize into one general picture, and please
rather by unison than by concord.
FREDERIC DOUGLASS,
THE SLAVE-BOY OF MARYLAND, NOW ONE OF THE ABLEST CITIZENS AND MOST
ELOQUENT ORATORS OF THE UNITED STATES.
I was born in what is called Tuckahoe, on the eastern shore of
Maryland, a worn-out, desolate, sandy region. Decay and ruin are
everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would have
quitted it long ago, but for the Choptauk River, which runs through,
from which they take abundance of shad and herring, and plenty of
fever and ague. My first experience of life began in the family of my
grandparents. The house was built of logs, clay, and straw. A few
rough fence-rails thrown loosely over the rafters answered the purpose
of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads. It was a long time before I
learned that this house was not my grandparents', but belonged to a
mysterious personage who was spoken of as "Old Master"; nay, that my
grandmother and her children and grandchildren, myself among them, all
belonged to this dreadful personage, who would only suffer me to live
a few years with my grandmother, and when I was big enough would carry
me off to work on his plantation.
The absolute power of this distant Old Master had touched my young
spirit with but the point of its cold cruel iron, yet it left me
something to brood over. The thought of being separated from my
grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me. I dreaded
the idea of going to live with that strange Old Master whose name I
never heard mentioned with affection, but always with fear. My
grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut and the joyous circle
under her care, but especially _she_, who made us sorry when she left
us but for an hour, and glad on her return,--how could we leave her
and the good old home!
But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after-life, are
transient. The first seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are
as full of content as those of the most favored white children of the
slaveholder. The slave-boy escapes many troubles which vex his white
brother. He is never lectured for improprieties of behavior. He is
never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or
awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never scolded for soiling the
table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor. He never has
the misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or tearing his
clothes, for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is never expected
to act like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a rude little
slave.
Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can be, in his life and
conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish nature suggests;
enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks of horses, dogs,
pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner compromising his
dignity or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs wild; has
no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery; no nice little
speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins, to show how smart he
is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of the way of the heavy
feet and fists of the older slave-boys, he may trot on, in his joyous
and roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen under the
palm-trees of Africa.
To be sure, he is occasionally reminded, when he stumbles in the way
of his master,--and this he early learns to avoid,--that he is eating
his _white bread_, and that he will be made to _see sights_ by and by.
The threat is soon forgotten, the shadow soon passes, and our sable
boy continues to roll in the dust, or play in the mud, as best suits
him, and in the veriest freedom. If he feels uncomfortable, from mud
or from dust, the coast is clear; he can plunge into the river or the
pond, without the ceremony of undressing or the fear of wetting his
clothes; his little tow-linen shirt--for that is all he has on--is
easily dried; and it needed washing as much as did his skin. His food
is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of corn-meal
mush, which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his mouth in
an oyster-shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are spent in the
pure, open air and in the bright sunshine. He eats no candies; gets no
lumps of loaf-sugar; always relishes his food; cries but little, for
nobody cares for his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight,
because others so think them.
In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight years of his
life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom
troubles fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy, so far
as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now
telling.
I gradually learned that the plantation of Old Master was on the river
Wye, twelve miles from Tuckahoe. About this place and about that queer
Old Master, who must be something more than man and something worse
than an angel, I was eager to know all that could be known. Unhappily,
all that I found out only increased my dread of being carried thither.
The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that I
wished to remain little forever; for I knew, the taller I grew, the
shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads
up stairs, and its clay floor down stairs, and its dirt chimney and
windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship of all
the rest, the ladder stairway, and the hole curiously dug in front of
the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy placed the sweet potatoes to
keep them from the frost, was MY HOME,--the only home I ever had; and
I loved it, and all connected with it. The old fences around it, and
the stumps in the edge of the woods near it, and the squirrels that
ran, skipped, and played upon them, were objects of interest and
affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old
well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed
between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely
balanced, that I could move it up and down with only one hand, and
could get a drink myself without calling for help. Where else in the
world could such a well be found, and where could such another home be
met with? Down in a little valley, not far from grandmamma's cabin,
stood a mill, where the people came often, in large numbers, to get
their corn ground. It was a water-mill; and I never shall be able to
tell the many things thought and felt while I sat on the bank and
watched that mill, and the turning of its ponderous wheel. The
mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pin-hook and thread line I
could get _nibbles_, if I could catch no fish. But, in all my sports
and plays, and in spite of them, there would, occasionally, come the
painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there, and that I
must soon be called away to the home of Old Master.
I was A SLAVE,--born a slave; and though the fact was strange to me,
it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of
_somebody_ I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been
made to fear this Somebody above all else on earth. Born for another's
benefit, as the _firstling_ of the cabin flock I was soon to be
selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable Old Master,
whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood's
imagination. When the time of my departure was decided upon, my
grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me
ignorant of the dreaded event about to happen. Up to the morning (a
beautiful summer morning) when we were to start, and, indeed, during
the whole journey,--a journey which, child as I was, I remember as
well as if it were yesterday,--she kept the sad fact hidden from me.
This reserve was necessary, for, could I have known all, I should have
given grandmother some trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was
helpless, and she--dear woman!--led me along by the hand, resisting,
with the reserve and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks
to the last.
The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye River, where Old Master lived, was
full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance
of my young legs. The journey would have proved too hard for me, but
that my dear old grandmother--blessings on her memory!--afforded
occasional relief by "toting" me on her shoulder. My grandmother,
though old in years,--as was evident from more than one gray hair, which
peeped from between the ample and graceful folds of her newly-ironed
bandanna turban,--was marvellously straight in figure, elastic, and
muscular. I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have "toted"
me farther, but that I felt myself too much of a man to allow it, and
insisted on walking. Releasing dear grandmamma from carrying me did not
make me altogether independent of her, when we happened to pass through
portions of the sombre woods which lay between Tuckahoe and Wye River.
She often found me increasing the energy of my grip, and holding her
clothing, lest something should come out of the woods and eat me up.
Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me, and got themselves taken
for wild beasts. I could see their legs, eyes, and ears till I got close
enough to them to know that the eyes were knots, washed white with rain,
and the legs were broken boughs, and the ears only fungous growths on
the bark.
As the day went on the heat grew; and it was not until the afternoon
that we reached the much-dreaded end of the journey. I found myself in
the midst of a group of children of many colors,--black, brown,
copper-colored, and nearly white. I had not seen so many children
before. Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a great
many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry, noise,
and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe. As a
new-comer, I was an object of special interest; and, after laughing
and yelling around me, and playing all sorts of wild tricks, the
children asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused to do,
preferring to stay with grandmamma. I could not help feeling that our
being there boded no good to me. Grandmamma looked sad. She was soon
to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before. I
knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell on me, though I knew not the
cause.
All suspense, however, must have an end, and the end of mine was at
hand. Affectionately patting me on the head, and telling me to be a
good boy, grandmamma bade me to go and play with the little children.
"They are kin to you," said she; "go and play with them." Among a
number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve, and Jerry, Nance and Betty.
Grandmother pointed out my brother and sisters who stood in the group.
I had never seen brother nor sisters before; and though I had
sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really
did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were
brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to
me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but _slavery_
had made us strangers. I heard the words "brother" and "sisters," and
knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of
their true meaning. The experience through which I was passing, they
had passed through before. They had already learned the mysteries of
Old Master's home, and they seemed to look upon me with a certain
degree of compassion; but my heart clave to my grandmother. Think it
not strange that so little sympathy of feeling existed between us. The
conditions of brotherly and sisterly feeling were wanting; we had
never nestled and played together. My poor mother, like many other
slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY! The domestic hearth,
with its holy lessons and precious endearments, is abolished in the
case of a slave-mother and her children. "Little children, love one
another," are words seldom heard in a slave-cabin.
I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters, but they were
strangers to me, and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave
without taking me with her. Entreated to do so, however, and that,
too, by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house, to
play with them and the other children. _Play_, however, I did not, but
stood with my back against the wall, witnessing the mirth of the
others. At last, while standing there, one of the children, who had
been in the kitchen, ran up to me, in a sort of roguish glee,
exclaiming, "Fed, Fed! grandmammy gone! grandmammy gone!" I could not
believe it; yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen, to see
for myself, and found it even so. Grandmamma had indeed gone, and was
now far away, clean out of sight. I need not tell all that happened
now. Almost heartbroken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground, and
wept a boy's bitter tears, refusing to be comforted.
[Illustration]
CHARLES DICKENS,
FIRST NOVELIST OF THE PERIOD.
I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree.
[Illustration]
Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house
awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not
care to resist, to my own childhood. Straight in the middle of the
room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or
soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the
dreamy brightness of its top,--for I observe in this tree the singular
property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth,--I look
into my youngest Christmas recollections.
All toys at first, I find. But upon the branches of the tree, lower
down, how thick the books begin to hang! Thin books, in themselves, at
first, but many of them, with deliciously smooth covers of bright red
or green. What fat black letters to begin with!
"A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an
apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his
time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so
little versatility that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or
Xantippe: like Y, who was always confined to a yacht or a yew-tree;
and Z, condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany.
But now the very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk,--the
marvellous bean-stalk by which Jack climbed up to the giant's house.
Jack,--how noble, with his sword of sharpness and his shoes of
swiftness!
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy color of the cloak in which, the
tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through with her
basket, Little Red-Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas eve, to give
me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling wolf
who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his
appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his
teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married
Little Red-Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But it was
not to be, and there was nothing for it but to look out the wolf in
the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table,
as a monster who was to be degraded.
[Illustration]
O the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a
washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed
to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in even
there; and then ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door,
which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch; but what was
that against it?
Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant; the
lady-bird, the butterfly,--all triumphs of art! Consider the goose,
whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent that he
usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the animal creation!
consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how
the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the
larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits
of string.
Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree,--not Robin Hood, not
Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf,--I have passed him and all Mother
Bunch's wonders without mention,--but an Eastern king with a
glittering scymitar and turban. It is the setting-in of the bright
Arabian Nights.