Being a Boy..........................................................................................................................................................1

Charles D. Warner...................................................................................................................................1

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, though it needs some practice to

be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it is soon over; just as

you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so

much fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy with the restrictions that are put upon

him as a boy. Good fun as it is to yoke up the calves and play work, there is not a boy on a farm but would

rather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glorious feeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for the first time

given the long whip and permitted to drive the oxen, walking by their side, swinging the long lash, and

shouting "Gee, Buck!" " Haw, Golden!" "Whoa, Bright!" and all the rest of that remarkable language, until he

is red in the face, and all the neighbors for half a mile are aware that something unusual is going on. If I were

a boy, I am not sure but I would rather drive the oxen than have a birthday. The proudest day of my life was

one day when I rode on the neap of the cart, and drove the oxen, all alone, with a load of apples to the

cidermill. I was so little that it was a wonder that I did n't fall off, and get under the broad wheels. Nothing

could make a boy, who cared anything for his appearance, feel flatter than to be run over by the broad tire of

a cartwheel. But I never heard of one who was, and I don't believe one ever will be. As I said, it was a great

day for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. They sagged along in their great clumsy

way, switching their tails in my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side of the

road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I "came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me

to use such a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that Julius Caesar ever drove

cattle, though he must often have seen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round the

Forum (of course in Latin, a language that those cattle understood as well as ours do English); but what I

mean is, that I stood up and "hollered" with all my might, as everybody does with oxen, as if they were born

deaf, and whacked them with the long lash over the head, just as the big folks did when they drove. I think

now that it was a cowardly thing to crack the patient old fellows over the face and eyes, and make them wink

in their meek manner. If I am ever a boy again on a farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen, and not go

screaming round the farm like a crazy man; and I shall not hit them a cruel cut with the lash every few

minutes, because it looks big to do so and I cannot think of anything else to do. I never liked lickings myself,

and I don't know why an ox should like them, especially as he cannot reason about the moral improvement he

Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my cows Latin. I don't mean that I taught them to read it, for

it is very difficult to teach a cow to read Latin or any of the dead languages,a cow cares more for her cud

than she does for all the classics put together. But if you begin early, you can teach a cow, or a calf (if you

can teach a calf anything, which I doubt), Latin as well as English. There were ten cows, which I had to

escort to and from pasture night and morning. To these cows I gave the names of the Roman numerals,

beginning with Unus and Duo, and going up to Decem. Decem was, of course, the biggest cow of the party,

or at least she was the ruler of the others, and had the place of honor in the stable and everywhere else. I

admire cows, and especially the exactness with which they define their social position. In this case, Decem

could "lick" Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so on down to Unus, who could n't lick anybody,

except her own calf. I suppose I ought to have called the weakest cow Una instead of Unus, considering her

sex; but I did n't care much to teach the cows the declensions of adjectives, in which I was not very well up

myself; and, besides, it would be of little use to a cow. People who devote themselves too severely to study of

the classics are apt to become dried up; and you should never do anything to dry up a cow. Well, these ten

cows knew their names after a while, at least they appeared to, and would take their places as I called them.

At least, if Octo attempted to get before Novem in going through the bars (I have heard people speak of a

"pair of bars" when there were six or eight of them), or into the stable, the matter of precedence was settled

then and there, and, once settled, there was no dispute about it afterwards. Novem either put her horns into

Octo's ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, or else the two locked horns and tried the game of push and gore

until one gave up. Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a party of cows. There is nothing in royal courts

equal to it; rank is exactly settled, and the same individuals always have the precedence. You know that at

Windsor Castle, if the Royal ThreePly Silver Stick should happen to get in front of the Most Royal

DoubleandTwisted Golden Rod, when the court is going in to dinner, something so dreadful would happen

that we don't dare to think of it. It is certain that the soup would get cold while the Golden Rod was pitching

the Silver Stick out of the Castle window into the moat, and perhaps the island of Great Britain itself would

split in two. But the people are very careful that it never shall happen, so we shall probably never know what

the effect would be. Among cows, as I say, the question is settled in short order, and in a different manner

from what it sometimes is in other society. It is said that in other society there is sometimes a great scramble

for the first place, for the leadership, as it is called, and that women, and men too, fight for what is called

position; and in order to be first they will injure their neighbors by telling stories about them and by

backbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas. But in cow society

there is nothing of this detraction in order to get the first place at the crib, or the farther stall in the stable. If

the question arises, the cows turn in, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that ends it. I have

Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, and it is a very good plan. It does not do the cows

much good, but it is very good exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory as good short poems as

I could find (the cows liked to listen to "Thanatopsis" about as well as anything), and repeat them when I

went to the pasture, and as I drove the cows home through the sweet ferns and down the rocky slopes. It

It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he is milking, that operation acquires a certain

Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notions about farming were not so very different

from those they entertain. What passes for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in a particular way.

For instance, some morning in early summer John is told to catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring

wagon, and put in the buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to drive over to the "Corners, to see a

man" about some cattle, to talk with the road commissioner, to go to the store for the "women folks," and to

attend to other important business; and very likely he will not be back till sundown. It must be very pressing

business, for the old gentleman drives off in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day, and appears to

Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up the chores. As if the chores could ever be

"done up" on a farm. He is first to clean out the horsestable; then to take a billhook and cut down the

thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowinglot and along the road towards the village; to

dig up the docks round the garden patch; to weed out the beetbed; to hoe the early potatoes; to rake the

sticks and leaves out of the front yard; in short, there is work enough laid out for John to keep him busy, it

seems to him, till he comes of age; and at half an hour to sundown he is to go for the cows "and mind he don't

"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting;

John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore more cheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant

day, it is rubbing the sprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mounts his wagon and

drives away down the enticing road, with the dog bounding along beside the wagon, and refusing to come

back at John's call. John half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of farming that suits him. He

likes to run along the road and see all the dogs and other people, and he likes best of all to lie on the store

steps at the Cornerswhile his master's horse is dozing at the post and his master is talking politics in the

storewith the other dogs of his acquaintance, snapping at mutually annoying flies, and indulging in that

delightful dog gossip which is expressed by a wag of the tail and a sniff of the nose. Nobody knows how

many dogs' characters are destroyed in this gossip, or how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion by a wag

of the tail as a man can by a shrug of the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man can suggest one by raising his

John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the odorous buffalorobe and the new whip, and

he thinks that is the sort of farming he would like to do. And he cries after his departing parent,

"Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt the cattle?" John knows that he could spend half a

day very pleasantly in going over to that pasture, looking for bird's nests and shying at red squirrels on the

way, and who knows but he might "see" a sucker in the meadow brook, and perhaps get a "jab" at him with a

sharp stick. He knows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of his plans in life is to go some day and

snare him, and bring him home in triumph. It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the cattle

"No, they don't need salting any more 'n you do!" And the old equipage goes rattling down the road, and John

whistles his disappointment. When I was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were never salted

John goes to his chores, and gets through the stable as soon as he can, for that must be done; but when it

comes to the outdoor work, that rather drags. There are so many things to distract the attentiona

chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a neartree, and a hen hawk circling high in the air over the barnyard. John

loses a little time in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and in watching the bird, to find

where its nest is; and he convinces himself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon the chickens,

and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteen minutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows

it away out of sight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again. And then a carriage with two

horses, and a trunk on behind, goes along the road; and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John,

who is suddenly aware that his trousers are patched on each knee and in two places behind; and he wonders if

she is rich, and whose name is on the trunk, and how much the horses cost, and whether that nice looking

man is the girl's father, and if that boy on the seat with the driver is her brother, and if he has to do chores;

and as the gay sight disappears, John falls to thinking about the great world beyond the farm, of cities, and

people who are always dressed up, and a great many other things of which he has a very dim notion. And

then a boy, whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the boy makes a face at John, and

John returns the greeting with a twist of his own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things take

time. The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although it is not very disagreeable, or would

not be if it were play. John imagines that yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom he has read in

a fairy book, and he advances on him with "Die, ruffian!" and slashes off his head with the billhook; or he

charges upon the rows of mulleinstalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, and hews them down

without mercy. What fun it might be if there were only another boy there to help. But even war, single

handed, gets to be tiresome. It is dinnertime before John finishes the weeds, and it is cowtime before John

This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn all day than work in it. Father seems to think

that it is easy work that John can do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan in this life is to go

fishing. When there comes a rainy day, he attempts to carry it out. But ten chances to one his father has

different views. As it rains so that work cannot be done outdoors, it is a good time to work in the garden. He

can run into the house between the heavy showers. John accordingly detests the garden; and the only time he

works briskly in it is when he has a stent set, to do so much weeding before the Fourth of July. If he is spry,

he can make an extra holiday the Fourth and the day after. Two days of gunpowder and ballplaying! When I

was a boy, I supposed there was some connection between such and such an amount of work done on the

farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there could be any Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at

There are so many bright spots in the life of a farmboy, that I sometimes think I should like to live the life

over again; I should almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a great comfort to a

boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an

errand, he who leads the school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and there is so much to

take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything. Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is

sent to the neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is not exactly cruel, but be wants to see if he

can hit 'em. No other living thing can go so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless

he happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase to it like a deer; and it is a curious

fact about boys, that two will be a great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you have to

help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a great power of helping each other to do

nothing; and they are so innocent about it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could," says the boy:

his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he has been absent three hours on a tenminute errand.

Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a hill, which was covered with wild

strawberries in the season. Could any boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture

there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens

of things good to eat or to smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climb a tree to

look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try if I could see the steeple of the village church. It

became very important sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in the midst of my investigations the tin

horn would blow a great blast from the farmhouse, which would send a cold chill down my back in the

hottest days. I knew what it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at all like the sweet note that

called us to dinner from the hayfield. It said, "Why on earth does n't that boy come home? It is almost dark,

and the cows ain't milked!" And that was the time the cows had to start into a brisk pace and make up for lost

time. I wonder if any boy ever drove the cows home late, who did not say that the cows were at the very

farther end of the pasture, and that "Old Brindle" was hidden in the woods, and he couldn't find her for ever

No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farmboy does; and his best ones are of a peculiar

kind. Going fishing is of course one sort. The excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and the

anticipation of great luck! These are pure pleasures, enjoyed because they are rare. Boys who can go

afishing any time care but little for it. Tramping all day through bush and brier, fighting flies and

mosquitoes, and branches that tangle the line, and snags that break the hook, and returning home late and

hungry, with wet feet and a string of speckled trout on a willow twig, and having the family crowd out at the

kitchen door to look at 'em, and say, "Pretty well done for you, bub; did you catch that big one yourself?"

this is also pure happiness, the like of which the boy will never have again, not if he comes to be selectman

But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring and fall, when we went to the distant

pastureland, in a neighboring town, maybe, to drive thither the young cattle and colts, and to bring them

back again. It was a wild and rocky upland where our great pasture was, many miles from home, the road to it

running by a brawling river, and up a dashing brookside among great hills. What a day's adventure it was! It

was like a journey to Europe. The night before, I could scarcely sleep for thinking of it! and there was no

trouble about getting me up at sunrise that morning. The breakfast was eaten, the luncheon was packed in a

large basket, with bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel, which packing I superintended with the greatest

interest; and then the cattle were to be collected for the march, and the horses hitched up. Did I shirk any

duty? Was I slow? I think not. I was willing to run my legs off after the frisky steers, who seemed to have an

idea they were going on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing into all gates, and through all bars except the

It was a glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heard any public speaker on the stump or at

campmeeting who could make more noise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount of noise in a

boy does not increase in proportion to his size; if it did, the world could not contain it.

The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. We were away from the farm, which to a boy is one of

the best parts of farming; we saw other farms and other people at work; I had the pleasure of marching along,

and swinging my whip, past boys whom I knew, who were picking up stones. Every turn of the road, every

bend and rapid of the river, the great bowlders by the wayside, the wateringtroughs, the giant pine that had

been struck by lightning, the mysterious covered bridge over the river where it was, most swift and rocky and

foamy, the chance eagle in the blue sky, the sense of going somewhere,why, as I recall all these things I

feel that even the Prince Imperial, as he used to dash on horseback through the Bois de Boulogne, with fifty

mounted hussars clattering at his heels, and crowds of people cheering, could not have been as happy as was

I, a boy in short jacket and shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust that day behind the steers and colts,

I wish the journey would never end; but at last, by noon, we reach the pastures and turn in the herd; and after

making the tour of the lots to make sure there are no breaks in the fences, we take our luncheon from the

wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring. This is the supreme moment of the day. This is the way to live;

this is like the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the rest of my delightful acquaintances in romance. Baked

beans, ryeandindian bread (moist, remember), doughnuts and cheese, pie, and root beer. What richness!

You may live to dine at Delmonico's, or, if those Frenchmen do not eat each other up, at Philippe's, in Rue

Montorgueil in Paris, where the dear old Thackeray used to eat as good a dinner as anybody; but you will get

there neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer, nor anything so good as that luncheon at noon in the old

pasture, high among the Massachusetts hills! Nor will you ever, if you live to be the oldest boy in the world,

have any holiday equal to the one I have described. But I always regretted that I did not take along a fishline,

Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, it is my impression that a farm without a boy would

very soon come to grief. What the boy does is the life of the farm. He is the factotum, always in demand,

always expected to do the thousand indispensable things that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds

and ends, the most difficult things. After everybody else is through, he has to finish up. His work is like a

woman's,perpetual waiting on others. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner than it

is to wash the dishes afterwards. Consider what a boy on a farm is required to do; things that must be done, or

It is understood, in the first place, that he is to do all the errands, to go to the store, to the post office, and to

carry all sorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would tire before night. His two short

limbs seem to him entirely inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes,

and rotate about in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turning

cart wheels" along the side of the road have supposed that he was amusing himself, and idling his time; he

was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do his errands

with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head, in order to accustom himself to any position.

Leapfrog is one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go an errand any

distance if he could leapfrog it with a few other boys. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with

business. This is the reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water, and the family are

waiting at the dinnertable, he is absent so long; for he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or, if there

is a penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirt the water a little while. He is the one who spreads the

grass when the men have cut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse to cultivate the corn, up and

down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the potatoes when they are dug; he drives the cows night and morning;

he brings wood and water and splits kindling; he gets up the horse and puts out the horse; whether he is in the

house or out of it, there is always something for him to do. Just before school in winter he shovels paths; in

summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of wintergreens and sweet flagroot, but

instead of going for them, he is to stay indoors and pare apples and stone raisins and pound something in a

mortar. And yet, with his mind full of schemes of what he would like to do, and his hands full of occupations,

he is an idle boy who has nothing to busy himself with but school and chores! He would gladly do all the

work if somebody else would do the chores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if any boy ever amounted to anything

in the world, or was of much use as a man, who did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal education in the way

A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and probably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and

guineahens. A guineahen suits a boy. It is entirely useless, and makes a more disagreeable noise than a

Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young fox which a neighbor had caught. It is a mistake to suppose the

fox cannot be tamed. Jacko was a very clever little animal, and behaved, in all respects, with propriety. He

kept Sunday as well as any day, and all the ten commandments that he could understand. He was a very

graceful playfellow, and seemed to have an affection for me. He lived in a woodpile in the dooryard, and

when I lay down at the entrance to his house and called him, he would come out and sit on his tail and lick

my face just like a grown person. I taught him a great many tricks and all the virtues. That year I had a large

number of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect indifference, never looking on them

to lust after them, as I could see, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I

would have trusted him in the henroost in the dark without counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated,

and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what

affectionate treatment would do in subduing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with

much patience, taught to go up a long hill alone and surround the cows, and drive them home from the remote

pasture. He liked the fun of it at first, but by and by he seemed to get the notion that it was a "chore," and

when I whistled for him to go for the cows, he would turn tail and run the other way, and the more I whistled

and threw stones at him, the faster he would run. His name was Turk, and I should have sold him if he had

not been the kind of dog that nobody will buy. I suppose he was not a cowdog, but what they call a

sheepdog. At least, when he got big enough, he used to get into the pasture and chase the sheep to death.

That was the way he got into trouble, and lost his valuable life. A dog is of great use on a farm, and that is the

reason a boy likes him. He is good to bite peddlers and small children, and run out and yelp at wagons that

pass by, and to howl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were a boy again, the first thing I would

have should be a dog; for dogs are great companions, and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing. They

A good dog will bark at a woodchuckhole long after the animal has retired to a remote part of his residence,

and escaped by another hole. This deceives the woodchuck. Some of the most delightful hours of my life

have been spent in hiding and watching the hole where the dog was not. What an exquisite thrill ran through

my frame when the timid nose appeared, was withdrawn, poked out again, and finally followed by the entire

animal, who looked cautiously about, and then hopped away to feed on the clover. At that moment I rushed

in, occupied the "home base," yelled to Turk, and then danced with delight at the combat between the spunky

woodchuck and the dog. They were about the same size, but science and civilization won the day. I did not

reflect then that it would have been more in the interest of civilization if the woodchuck had killed the dog. I

do not know why it is that boys so like to hunt and kill animals; but the excuse that I gave in this case for the

murder was, that the woodchuck ate the clover and trod it down, and, in fact, was a woodchuck. It was not till

long after that I learned with surprise ,that he is a rodent mammal, of the species Arctomys monax, is called

But I have forgotten my beautiful fox. Jacko continued to deport himself well until the young chickens came;

he was actually cured of the fox vice of chickenstealing. He used to go with me about the coops, pricking up

his ears in an intelligent manner, and with a demure eye and the most virtuous droop of the tail. Charming

fox! If he had held out a little while longer, I should have put him into a Sundayschool book. But I began to

miss chickens. They disappeared mysteriously in the night. I would not suspect Jacko at first, for he looked

so honest, and in the daytime seemed to be as much interested in the chickens as I was. But one morning,

when I went to call him, I found feathers at the entrance of his hole, chicken feathers. He couldn't deny it.

He was a thief. His fox nature had come out under severe temptation. And he died an unnatural death. He had

a thousand virtues and one crime. But that crime struck at the foundation of society. He deceived and stole;

he was a liar and a thief, and no pretty ways could hide the fact. His intelligent, bright face couldn't save him.

Sunday in the New England hill towns used to begin Saturday night at sundown; and the sun is lost to sight

behind the hills there before it has set by the almanac. I remember that we used to go by the almanac

Saturday night and by the visible disappearance Sunday night. On Saturday night we very slowly yielded to

the influences of the holy time, which were settling down upon us, and submitted to the ablutions which were

as inevitable as Sunday; but when the sun (and it never moved so slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night, the

effect upon the watching boy was like a shock from a galvanic battery; something flashed through all his

limbs and set them in motion, and no "play" ever seemed so sweet to him as that between sundown and dark

Sunday night. This, however, was on the supposition that he had conscientiously kept Sunday, and had not

gone in swimming and got drowned. This keeping of Saturday night instead of Sunday night we did not very

well understand; but it seemed, on the whole, a good thing that we should rest Saturday night when we were

tired, and play Sunday night when we were rested. I supposed, however, that it was an arrangement made to

suit the big boys who wanted to go "courting" Sunday night. Certainly they were not to be blamed, for

Sunday was the day when pretty girls were most fascinating, and I have never since seen any so lovely as

those who used to sit in the gallery and in the singers' seats in the bare old meetinghouses.

Sunday to the country farmerboy was hardly the relief that it was to the other members of the family; for the

same chores must be done that day as on others, and he could not divert his mind with whistling,

handsprings, or sending the dog into the river after sticks. He had to submit, in the first place, to the restraint

of shoes and stockings. He read in the Old Testament that when Moses came to holy ground, he put off his

shoes; but the boy was obliged to put his on, upon the holy day, not only to go to meeting, but while he sat at

home. Only the emancipated countryboy, who is as agile on his bare feet as a young kid, and rejoices in the

pressure of the warm soft earth, knows what a hardship it is to tie on stiff shoes. The monks who put peas in

their shoes as a penance do not suffer more than the countryboy in his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the

Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmerboy. He must rise tolerably early, for the cows were to be

milked and driven to pasture; family prayers were a little longer than on other days; there were the

Sundayschool verses to be relearned, for they did not stay in mind over night; perhaps the wagon was to be

greased before the neighbors began to drive by; and the horse was to be caught out of the pasture, ridden

This catching the horse, perhaps two of them, was very good fun usually, and would have broken the Sunday

if the horse had not been wanted for taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful and still in the pasture on

Sunday morning; but the horses were never so playful, the colts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the

boy went calling, in an entreating Sunday voice, "Jock, jock, jock, jock," and shaking his saltdish, while the

horses, with heads erect, and shaking tails and flashing heels, dashed from corner to corner, and gave the boy

a pretty good race before he could coax the nose of one of them into his dish. The boy got angry, and came

The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the set of his turnover collar, the parting

of his hair, and his memory of the Sundayschool verses; and what a wild confusion there was through the

house in getting off for meeting, and how he was kept running hither and thither, to get the hymnbook, or a

palmleaf fan, or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch of carawayseed.

Already the deacon's mare, with a wagonload of the deacon's folks, had gone shambling past, head and tail

drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the good deacon sat jerking the reins, in an

automatic way, and the "womenfolks" patiently saw the dust settle upon their best summer finery. Wagon

after wagon went along the sandy road, and when our boy's family started, they became part of a long

procession, which sent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pious smell of buffalo robes. There were fiery

horses in the trail which had to be held in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to pass anybody on Sunday.

It was a great delight to the farmerboy to see all this procession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with

the other boys, who leaned over the wagonseats for that purpose. Occasionally a boy rode behind, with his

back to the family, and his pantomime was always some thing wonderful to see, and was considered very

The meetinghouse which our boy remembers was a high, square building, without a steeple. Within it had a

lofty pulpit, with doors underneath and closets where sacred things were kept, and where the tithingmen

were supposed to imprison bad boys. The pews were square, with seats facing each other, those on one side

low for the children, and all with hinges, so that they could be raised when the congregation stood up for

prayers and leaned over the backs of the pews, as horses meet each other across a pasture fence. After prayers

these seats used to be slammed down with a longcontinued clatter, which seemed to the boys about the best

part of the exercises. The galleries were very high, and the singers' seats, where the pretty girls sat, were the

most conspicuous of all. To sit in the gallery away from the family, was a privilege not often granted to the

boy. The tithingman, who carried a long rod and kept order in the house, and outdoors at noontime, sat in

the gallery, and visited any boy who whispered or found curious passages in the Bible and showed them to

another boy. It was an awful moment when the bushyheaded tithingman approached a boy in

sermontime. The eyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the guilt ooze out of his

At noon was Sundayschool, and after that, before the afternoon service, in summer, the boys had a little

time to eat their luncheon together at the wateringtrough, where some of the elders were likely to be

gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle; or they went over to a neighboring barn to see the calves; or

they slipped off down the roadside to a place where they could dig sassafras or the root of the sweetflag,

roots very fragrant in the mind of many a boy with religious associations to this day. There was often an odor

of sassafras in the afternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as a substitute for the Old Testament incense

of the Jews. Something in the same way the big bassviol in the choir took the place of "David's harp of

The going home from meeting was more cheerful and lively than the coming to it. There was all the bustle of

getting the horses out of the sheds and bringing them round to the meetinghouse steps. At noon the boys

sometimes sat in the wagons and swung the whips without cracking them: now it was permitted to give them

a little snap in order to bring the horses up in good style; and the boy was rather proud of the horse if it

pranced a little while the timid "women folks" were trying to get in. The boy had an eye for whatever life

and stir there was in a New England Sunday. He liked to drive home fast. The old house and the farm looked

pleasant to him. There was an extra dinner when they reached home, and a cheerful consciousness of duty

performed made it a pleasant dinner. Long before sundown the Sundayschool book had been read, and the

boy sat waiting in the house with great impatience the signal that the "day of rest" was over. A boy may not

be very wicked, and yet not see the need of "rest." Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of older farmers.

If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the farmerboy, it is the grindstone. Turning

grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit.

It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation.

There is a great deal of poetry about hayingI mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the

whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the

fence and superintends the cutting of the dewladen grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a

rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively

business "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, while the boy

has the whole hayfield on his hands. He has little time for the poetry of haying, as he struggles along, filling

the air with the wet mass which he shakes over his head, and picking his way with short legs and bare feet

But if the scythes cut well and swing merrily, it is due to the boy who turned the grindstone. Oh, it was

nothing to do, just turn the grindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast; any "hired man"

was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone. How they did bear on, those great strapping fellows!

Turn, turn, turn, what a weary go it was. For my part, I used to like a grindstone that "wabbled" a good deal

on its axis, for when I turned it fast, it put the grinder on a lively lookout for cutting his hands, and entirely

satisfied his desire that I should "turn faster." It was some sport to make the water fly and wet the grinder,

suddenly starting up quickly and surprising him when I was turning very slowly. I used to wish sometimes

that I could turn fast enough to make the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Steady turning is what the grinders

like, and any boy who turns steadily, so as to give an even motion to the stone, will be much praised, and will

be in demand. I advise any boy who desires to do this sort of work to turn steadily. If he does it by jerks and

in a fitful manner, the "hired men" will be very apt to dispense with his services and turn the grindstone for

This is one of the most disagreeable tasks of the boy farmer, and, hard as it is, I do, not know why it is

supposed to belong especially to childhood. But it is, and one of the certain marks that second childhood has

come to a man on a farm is, that he is asked to turn the grindstone as if he were a boy again. When the old

man is good for nothing else, when he can neither mow nor pitch, and scarcely "rake after," he can turn

grindstone, and it is in this way that he renews his youth. "Ain't you ashamed to have your granther turn the

grindstone?" asks the hired man of the boy. So the boy takes hold and turns himself, till his little back aches.

When he gets older, he wishes he had replied, "Ain't you ashamed to make either an old man or a little boy do

Doing the regular work of this world is not much, the boy thinks, but the wearisome part is the waiting on the

people who do the work. And the boy is not far wrong. This is what women and boys have to do on a farm,

wait upon everybody whoworks." The trouble with the boy's life is, that he has no time that he can call his

own. He is, like a barrel of beer, always on draft. The menfolks, having worked in the regular hours, lie

down and rest, stretch themselves idly in the shade at noon, or lounge about after supper. Then the boy, who

has done nothing all day but turn grindstone, and spread hay, and rake after, and run his little legs off at

everybody's beck and call, is sent on some errand or some household chore, in order that time shall not hang

heavy on his hands. The boy comes nearer to perpetual motion than anything else in nature, only it is not

altogether a voluntary motion. The time that the farmboy gets for his own is usually at the end of a stent.

We used to be given a certain piece of corn to hoe, or a certain quantity of corn to husk in so many days. If

we finished the task before the time set, we had the remainder to ourselves. In my day it used to take very

sharp work to gain anything, but we were always anxious to take the chance. I think we enjoyed the holiday

in anticipation quite as much as we did when we had won it. Unless it was trainingday, or Fourth of July, or

the circus was coming, it was a little difficult to find anything big enough to fill our anticipations of the fun

we would have in the day or the two or three days we had earned. We did not want to waste the time on any

common thing. Even going fishing in one of the wild mountain brooks was hardly up to the mark, for we

could sometimes do that on a rainy day. Going down to the village store was not very exciting, and was, on

the whole, a waste of our precious time. Unless we could get out our military company, life was apt to be a

little blank, even on the holidays for which we had worked so hard. If you went to see another boy, he was

probably at work in the hay field or the potatopatch, and his father looked at you askance. You sometimes

took hold and helped him, so that he could go and play with you; but it was usually time to go for the cows

before the task was done. The fact is, or used to be, that the amusements of a boy in the country are not many.

Snaring "suckers" out of the deep meadow brook used to be about as good as any that I had. The North

American sucker is not an engaging animal in all respects; his body is comely enough, but his mouth is

puckered up like that of a purse. The mouth is not formed for the gentle angleworm nor the delusive fly of

the fishermen. It is necessary, therefore, to snare the fish if you want him. In the sunny days he lies in the

deep pools, by some big stone or near the bank, poising himself quite still, or only stirring his fins a little now

and then, as an elephant moves his ears. He will lie so for hours, or rather float, in perfect idleness and

apparent bliss. The boy who also has a holiday, but cannot keep still, comes along and peeps over the bank.

"Golly, ain't he a big one!" Perhaps he is eighteen inches long, and weighs two or three pounds. He lies there

among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a school of them, perhaps a district school, that only keeps in

warm days in the summer. The pupils seem to have little to learn, except to balance themselves and to turn

gracefully with a flirt of the tail. Not much is taught but "deportment," and some of the old suckers are

perfect Turveydrops in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line, and on the end of it a brass wire

bent into a hoop, which is a slipnoose, and slides together when anything is caught in it. The boy approaches

the bank and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale. The boy devours him with his eyes. He is almost too

much excited to drop the snare into the water without making a noise. A puff of wind comes and ruffles the

surface, so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm again, and there he still is, moving his fins in peaceful

security. The boy lowers his snare behind the fish and slips it along. He intends to get it around him just back

of the gills and then elevate him with a sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation, for the snare will turn a little,

and if it hits the fish, he is off. However, it goes well; the wire is almost in place, when suddenly the fish, as

if he had a warning in a dream, for he appears to see nothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out of the loop,

and with no seeming appearance of frustrating any one's plans, lounges over to the other side of the pool; and

there he reposes just as if he was not spoiling the boy's holiday. This slight change of base on the part of the

fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new line of

approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time, cunning and

patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as

he gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the deadweight that he has got him fast. Out he comes, up he goes

in the air, and the boy runs to look at him. In this transaction, however, no one can be more surprised than the

The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his city cousin. When school keeps, he has

only to "do chores and go to school," but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm that have

been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in the pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them.

Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the surface, as it coaxes the round

cantelopes out of the soft garden soil; it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys this sort of

fall work. And very lively work it was on frosty mornings for the barefooted boys, who were continually

turning up the larger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that had been covered from the

frost. A boy can stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork; and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole

of his foot was likely to stand in it until the words, "Come, stir your stumps," broke in discordantly upon his

meditations. For the boy is very much given to meditations. If he had his way, he would do nothing in a

hurry; he likes to stop and think about things, and enjoy his work as he goes along. He picks up potatoes as if

each one were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, and requiring careful examination.

Although the countryboy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as he does when anything breaks up, or

any change takes place), since he is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school is his

opening into the world,his romance. Its opportunities for enjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly

know what he is set at books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs, standing up and

shouting out the words with entire recklessness of consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and

geography as something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not at all with the zest he

would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy

rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess? He is like to burst with animal spirits; he

runs like a deer; he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entire self forgetfulness, and an

energy that would overturn the world if his strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is

absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own master for that brief

time,as he never again will be if he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,and nobody knows how old he

was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast projects can be carried out which have been slyly

matured during the schoolhours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between the Indians on one

side and the settlers on the other; the military company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are

carried on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the spellingbook

Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and enmities contracted which are frequently

"taken out" on the spot, after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases of long credit,

either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys; boot on jackknives must be paid on the nail; and it is

considered much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if the explanation is made

with the fists, than to pretend fair, and then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The

countryboy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways.

Some big boy brings to school a copy of the Arabian Nights, a dogeared copy, with cover, titlepage, and

the last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly read under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little

boy whose parents disapprove of novelreading, and have no work of fiction in the house except a pious

fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latest comic almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some

of the treasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in the land of enchantment open

before him. He tells at home that he has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has

promised to lend it to him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks the grandmother; because, if it is n't true, it is the

worst thing that a boy can read." (This happened years ago.) John cannot answer as to the truth of the book,

and so does not bring it home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and conceals it in the barn and, lying in the

hay mow, is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he is supposed to be doing chores. There were

no chores in the Arabian Nights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius, who would feed

the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood in a minute. It was through this emblazoned portal that the

boy walked into the world of books, which he soon found was larger than his own, and filled with people he

And the farmerboy is not without his sentiment and his secrets, though he has never been at a children's

party in his life, and, in fact, never has heard that children go into society when they are seven, and give

regular wineparties when they reach the ripe age of nine. But one of his regrets at having the summer school

close is dimly connected with a little girl, whom he does not care much for, would a great deal rather play

with a boy than with her at recess, but whom he will not see again for some time,a sweet little thing, who

is very friendly with John, and with whom he has been known to exchange bits of candy wrapped up in

paper, and for whom he cut in two his leadpencil, and gave her half. At the last day of school she goes part

way with John, and then he turns and goes a longer distance towards her home, so that it is late when he

reaches his own. Is he late? He did n't know he was late; he came straight home when school was dismissed,

only going a little way home with Alice Linton to help her carry her books. In a box in his chamber, which he

has lately put a padlock on, among fishhooks and lines and baitboxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet

apples, popcorn, beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billetsdoux, fancifully folded,

threecornered or otherwise, and written, I will warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These little notes are

parting gifts at the close of school, and John, no doubt, gave his own in exchange for them, though the

writing was an immense labor, and the folding was a secret bought of another boy for a big piece of sweet

flagroot baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry in his pantaloonspocket until his pocket was

in such a state that putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the sugarbowl at home.

Each precious note contained a lock or curl of girl's hair,a rare collection of all colors, after John had been

in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting scenes,black, brown, red, towcolor,

and some that looked like spun gold and felt like silk. The sentiment contained in the notes was that which

was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy foreboding of early death, and a touching desire to

leave hair enough this side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance. With little variation, the

poetry that made the hair precious was in the words, and, as a Cockney would say, set to the hair, following:

"This lock of hair, Which I did wear, Was taken from my head; When this you see, Remember me, Long after

John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and fresh impression with each lock of hair, and he

was not critical; they were for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used when he

inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And it did not occur to him) until he was a great deal older

and less innocent, to smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep every lock of hair intrusted to him,

though death should come on the wings of cholera and take away every one of these sad, redink

correspondents. When John's big brother one day caught sight of these treasures, and brutally told him that he

"had hair enough to stuff a horsecollar," John was so outraged and shocked, as he should have been, at this

rude invasion of his heart, this coarse suggestion, this profiination of his most delicate feeling, that he was

kept from crying only by the resolution to "lick" his brother as soon as ever he got big enough.

One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts, hickorynuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts, in

the late fall, after the frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shaken them, and the colored

leaves have strewn the ground. On a bright October day, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there is

nothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor is the pleasure of it altogether destroyed for the boy by the

consideration that he is making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winter household. The gettingin

of potatoes and corn is a different thing; that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry, of farm life. I am not sure

but the boy would find it very irksome, though, if he were obliged to work at nutgathering in order to

procure food for the family. He is willing to make himself useful in his own way. The Italian boy, who works

day after day at a huge pile of pinecones, pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds, which

are sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are almost as good as pumpkinseeds, another favorite with the

Italians), probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmerboy here were set at pounding off the

walnutshucks and opening the prickly chestnutburs as a task, he would think himself an illused boy.

What a hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out with his jackknife, and

enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy is willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.

In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm

over a chestnutgrove; they leave a desert behind them like the seventeenyear locusts. To climb a tree and

shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass to the next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion

of boys scamper over our grassplot under the chestnuttrees, each one as active as if he were a new patent

pickingmachine, sweeping the ground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could go to the door

and speak to them about it. Indeed, I have noticed that boys don't care much for conversation with the owners

of fruittrees. They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cottonfields. I have

never seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.

Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our best military maneuvers from the

turkey. The deploying of the skirmishline in advance of an army is one of them. The drummajor of our

holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler; he has the same splendid appearance,

the same proud step, and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but goes

behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements.

This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the gobbler

maneuvering his forces in a grasshopperfield. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a

crescentshaped skirmishline, the number disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically in the

rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with military precision, killing the foe and disposing of the

dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but

he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner,he keeps on eating as long as the supplies last. The

gobbler, in one of these raids, does not condescend to grab a single grasshopper,at least, not while anybody

is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when his dignity cannot be injured by having spectators of

his voracity; perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of the field. But he is

only fattening himself for destruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if the turkeys had

The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great event of the year. He was apt to get

stents set him,so much corn to husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extra

playspell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at his task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys.

He always had the day after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted on. Thanksgiving

itself was rather an awful festival,very much like Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his

imagination for months before as completely as it did his stomach for that day and a week after. There was an

impression in the house that that dinner was the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower.

Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who had prepared for himself in his day some

very sumptuous banquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and liked peacocks stuffed

with asafetida, for one thing), never had anything like a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or

Sardanapalus either, ever had twentyfour different kinds of pie at one dinner? Therein many a New England

boy is greater than the Roman emperor or the Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxurious eaters

of their day and generation. But something more is necessary to make good men than plenty to eat, as

Heliogabalus no doubt found when his head was cut off. Cutting off the head was a mode the people had of

expressing disapproval of their conspicuous men. Nowadays they elect them to a higher office, or give them a

For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work evenings, pounding and paring and cutting

up and mixing (not being allowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of fragrant spices,

green fruit, raisins, and pastry,a world that he was only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled

the house was with the most delicious smells! The mincepies that were made! If John had been shut in solid

walls with them piled about him, he could n't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were dainties

enough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire year luscious with good living, if they had been

scattered along in it. But people were probably all the better for scrimping themselves a little in order to make

this a great feast. And it was not by any means over in a day. There were weeks deep of chickenpie and

other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to excavate all its riches.

Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being so subdued by going to meeting, and the

universal wearing of the Sunday clothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt little exhilaration, he ate a

great deal. The next day was the real holiday. Then were the merrymaking parties, and perhaps the skatings

and sleighrides, for the freezing weather came before the governor's proclamation in many parts of New

England. The night after Thanksgiving occurred, perhaps, the first real party that the boy had ever attended,

with live girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And there he heard those philandering songs, and played those

sweet games of forfeits, which put him quite beside himself, and kept him awake that night till the rooster

crowed at the end of his first chickennap. What a new world did that party open to him! I think it likely that

he saw there, and probably did not dare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older than himself,

who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see her face just as plainly in the darkness of his

chamber. He wondered if she noticed how awkward he was, and how short his trouserslegs were. He

blushed as he thought of his rather illfitting shoes; and determined, then and there, that he wouldn't be put

off with a ribbon any longer, but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhat painful, thinking the

party over, but it was delicious, too. He did not think, probably, that he would die for that tall, handsome girl;

he did not put it exactly in that way. But he rather resolved to live for her, which might in the end amount to

the same thing. At least, he thought that nobody would live to speak twice disrespectfully of her in his

What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkinpie; but that was after he had eaten a whole one.

The feeling of a boy towards pumpkinpie has never been properly considered. There is an air of festivity

about its approach in the fall. The boy is willing to help pare and cut up the pumpkin, and he watches with the

greatest interest the stirringup process and the pouring into the scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the

baking reaches his nostrils, he is filled with the most delightful anticipations. Why should he not be? He

knows that for months to come the buttery will contain golden treasures, and that it will require only a slight

The fact is, that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part of farming. His elders say that the boy is

always hungry; but that is a very coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a world that is full of

good things to eat, and there is, on the whole, a very short time in which to eat them; at least, he is told,

among the first information he receives, that life is short. Life being brief, and pie and the like fleeting, he

very soon decides upon an active campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty

or fifty years, but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin as it comes, as to pie, for instance.

Some people do make them very thin. I knew a place where they were not thicker than the poor man's plaster;

they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They

used to be made up by the great ovenfull and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened and dried to a

toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkinpie in the

country better now, or the race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped

The truth is, that boys have always been so plenty that they are not half appreciated. We have shown that a

farm could not get along without them, and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of the most amusing

things is their effort to acquire personal property. The boy has the care of the calves; they always need

feeding, or shutting up, or letting out; when the boy wants to play, there are those calves to be looked

after,until he gets to hate the name of calf. But in consideration of his faithfulness, two of them are given

to him. There is no doubt that they are his: he has the entire charge of them. When they get to be steers he

spends all his holidays in breaking them in to a yoke. He gets them so broken in that they will run like a pair

of deer all over the farm, turning the yoke, and kicking their heels, while he follows in full chase, shouting

the ox language till he is red in the face. When the steers grow up to be cattle, a drover one day comes along

and takes them away, and the boy is told that he can have another pair of calves; and so, with undiminished

faith, he goes back and begins over again to make his fortune. He owns lambs and young colts in the same

There are ways in which the farmerboy can earn money, as by gathering the early chestnuts and taking them

to the corner store, or by finding turkeys' eggs and selling them to his mother; and another way is to go

without butter at the tablebut the money thus made is for the heathen. John read in Dr. Livingstone that

some of the tribes in Central Africa (which is represented by a blank spot in the atlas) use the butter to grease

their hair, putting on pounds of it at a time; and he said he had rather eat his butter than have it put to that use,

Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do not actually carry butter to Africa, and that they

must usually go without it themselves there, it being almost impossible to make it good from the milk in the

cocoanuts. And it was further explained to him that even if the heathen never received his butter or the money

for it, it was an excellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit of selfdenial and of benevolence, and if the

heathen never heard of him, he would be blessed for his generosity. This was all true.

But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of his butter, and he wished the rest of the

family would also stop eating butter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know where the other

members of the family got their money to send to the heathen; and his mother said that he was about half

right, and that selfdenial was just as good for grown people as it was for little boys and girls.

The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights. Speaking of those thin pumpkinpies kept in

the cellar cupboard. I used to know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, and brushed his hair

straight up like General Jackson, and went to the legislature, where he always voted against every measure

that was proposed, in the most honest manner, and got the reputation of being the "watchdog of the

treasury." Rats in the cellar were nothing to be compared to this boy for destructiveness in pies. He used to go

down whenever he could make an excuse, to get apples for the family, or draw a mug of cider for his dear old

grandfather (who was a famous storyteller about the Revolutionary War, and would no doubt have been

wounded in battle if he had not been as prudent as he was patriotic), and come upstairs with a tallow candle

in one hand and the apples or cider in the other, looking as innocent and as unconscious as if he had never

done anything in his life except deny himself butter for the sake of the heathen. And yet this boy would have

buttoned under his jacket an entire round pumpkinpie. And the pie was so well made and so dry that it was

not injured in the least, and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more than if it had been inside of him instead

of outside; and this boy would retire to a secluded place and eat it with another boy, being never suspected

because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and he never appeared to have one about him. But

he did something worse than this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she told the family that

she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said a word, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired

man was probably regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his days, and if he had been accused of

I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse now about that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is

buttoned up under his jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like a round

and redhot nightmare, eating into his vitals. Perhaps not. It is difficult to say exactly what was the sin of

stealing that kind of pie, especially if the one who stole it ate it. It could have been used for the game of

pitching quoits, and a pair of them would have made very fair wheels for the dogcart. And yet it is probably

as wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one; and it made no difference because it was easy to steal this sort.

Easy stealing is no better than easy lying, where detection of the lie is difficult. The boy who steals his

mother's pies has no right to be surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons. Stealing is like charity

If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,the best kind of boy to be in the summer,I would

be about ten years of age. As soon as I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boy is, that just as he

begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has to be set to doing something else. If a country boy were wise,

he would stay at just that age when he could enjoy himself most, and have the least expected of him in the

Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do "chores" for his father and errands for

his mother and sisters, rather than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one such boy. He lived in

the town of Goshen,not the place where the butter is made, but a much better Goshen than that. And I

never saw him, but I heard of him; and being about the same age, as I supposed, I was taken once from Zoah,

where I lived, to Goshen to see him. But he was dead. He had been dead almost a year, so that it was

impossible to see him. He died of the most singular disease: it was from not eating green apples in the season

of them. This boy, whose name was Solomon, before he died, would rather split up kindlingwood for his

mother than go afishing,the consequence was, that he was kept at splitting kindlingwood and such work

most of the time, and grew a better and more useful boy day by day. Solomon would not disobey his parents

and eat green apples,not even when they were ripe enough to knock off with a stick, but he had such a

longing for them, that he pined, and passed away. If he had eaten the green apples, he would have died of

them, probably; so that his example is a difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to get a moral

from. All his little playmates who ate green apples came to Solomon's funeral, and were very sorry for what

John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, nor half so dead. He was a farmer's boy, as

Solomon was, but he did not take so much interest in the farm. If John could have had his way, he would

have discovered a cave full of diamonds, and lots of nail kegs full of goldpieces and Spanish dollars, with

a pretty little girl living in the cave, and two beautifully caparisoned horses, upon which, taking the jewels

and money, they would have ridden off together, he did not know where. John had got thus far in his studies,

which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but were in reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of

high and mighty adventure. He was a simple countryboy, and did not know much about the world as it is,

but he had one of his own imagination, in which he lived a good deal. I daresay he found out soon enough

what the world is, and he had a lesson or two when he was quite young, in two incidents, which I may as well

If you had seen John at this time, you might have thought he was only a shabbily dressed country lad, and

you never would have guessed what beautiful thoughts he sometimes had as he went stubbing his toes along

the dusty road, nor what a chivalrous little fellow he was. You would have seen a short boy, barefooted, with

trousers at once too big and too short, held up perhaps by one suspender only, a checked cotton shirt, and a

hat of braided palmleaf, frayed at the edges and bulged up in the crown. It is impossible to keep a hat neat if

you use it to catch bumblebees and whisk 'em; to bail the water from a leaky boat; to catch minnows in; to put

over honeybees' nests, and to transport pebbles, strawberries, and hens' eggs. John usually carried a sling in

his hand, or a bow, or a limber stick, sharp at one end, from which he could sling apples a great distance. If

he walked in the road, he walked in the middle of it, shuffling up the dust; or if he went elsewhere, he was

likely to be running on the top of the fence or the stone wall, and chasing chipmunks.

John knew the best place to dig sweetflag in all the farm; it was in a meadow by the river, where the

bobolinks sang so gayly. He never liked to hear the bobolink sing, however, for he said it always reminded

him of the whetting of a scythe, and that reminded him of spreading hay; and if there was anything he hated,

it was spreading hay after the mowers. "I guess you would n't like it yourself," said John, "with the stubbs

getting into your feet, and the hot sun, and the men getting ahead of you, all you could do."

Towards evening, once, John was coming along the road home with some stalks of the sweetflag in his

hand; there is a succulent pith in the end of the stalk which is very good to eat,tender, and not so strong as

the root; and John liked to pull it, and carry home what he did not eat on the way. As he was walking along

he met a carriage, which stopped opposite to him; he also stopped and bowed, as country boys used to bow in

She seemed to be the most beautiful woman John had ever seen; with light hair, dark, tender eyes, and the

sweetest smile. There was that in her gracious mien and in her dress which reminded John of the beautiful

castle ladies, with whom he was well acquainted in books. He felt that he knew her at once, and he also

seemed to be a sort of young prince himself. I fancy he did n't look much like one. But of his own appearance

he thought not at all, as he replied to the lady's question, without the least embarrassment:

"Indeed, I should like to taste it," said the lady, with a most winning smile. "I used to be very fond of it when

John was delighted that the lady should like sweetflag, and that she was pleased to accept it from him. He

thought himself that it was about the best thing to eat he knew. He handed up a large bunch of it. The lady

"Thank you, thank you," said the lady; and as the carriage started, she reached out her hand to John. He did

not understand the motion, until he saw a cent drop in the road at his feet. Instantly all his illusion and his

John was intensely mortified. "I suppose," he said, "she thought I was a sort of beggarboy. To think of

At any rate, he walked away and left the cent in the road, a humiliated boy. The next day he told Jim Gates

about it. Jim said he was green not to take the money; he'd go and look for it now, if he would tell him about

where it dropped. And Jim did spend an hour poking about in the dirt, but he did not find the cent. Jim,

however, had an idea; he said he was going to dig sweetflag, and see if another carriage wouldn't come

John's next rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort. He was again walking the road at twilight,

when he was overtaken by a wagon with one seat, upon which were two pretty girls, and a young gentleman

sat between them, driving. It was a merry party, and John could hear them laughing and singing as they

approached him. The wagon stopped when it overtook him, and one of the sweetfaced girls leaned from the

John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the young lady, but he thought that she

And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter, and dashed on.

It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and it hurt him dreadfully. His selfrespect

was injured somehow, and he felt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would like to have

"You're a nice...." but he could n't think of any hard, bitter words quick enough.

Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady, never knew what a cruel thing she

The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmerboy, by any means; yet he contrives to get as

much fun out of it as from any part of the year. There is a difference in boys: some are always jolly, and some

go scowling always through life as if they had a stonebruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.

I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses candy, offering two sticks for a cent

apiece; it was worth fifty cents a day to see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is now the owner

of a large town at the West. To be sure, there are no houses in it except his own; but there is a map of it, and

roads and streets are laid out on it, with dwellings and churches and academies and a college and an

operahouse, and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hartford,on paper. He and all his family

have the fever and ague, and shake worse than the people at Lebanon; but they do not mind it; it makes them

lively, in fact. Ed May is just as jolly as he used to be. He calls his town Mayopolis, and expects to be mayor

The farmerboy likes to have winter come for one thing, because it freezes up the ground so that he can't dig

in it; and it is covered with snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cows to pasture. He

would have a very easy time if it were not for the getting up before daylight to build the fires and do the

"chores." Nature intended the long winter nights for the farmerboy to sleep; but in my day he was expected

to open his sleepy eyes when the cock crew, get out of the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his cold

pantaloons, and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone down to zero, rake open the coals

on the hearth and start the morning fire, and then go to the barn to "fodder." The frost was thick on the

kitchen windows, the snow was drifted against the door, and the journey to the barn, in the pale light of dawn,

over the creaking snow, was like an exile's trip to Siberia. The boy was not half awake when he stumbled into

the cold barn, and was greeted by the lowing and bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for their breakfast.

How their breath steamed up from the mangers, and hung in frosty spears from their noses. Through the great

lofts above the hay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind whistled, and the snow sifted. Those old

I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should be tight and warm, with a fire in it, if

necessary, in order to keep the temperature somewhere near the freezingpoint. I could n't see how the cattle

could live in a place where a lively boy, full of young blood, would freeze to death in a short time if he did

not swing his arms and slap his hands, and jump about like a goat. I thought I would have a sort of perpetual

manger that should shake down the hay when it was wanted, and a selfacting machine that should cut up the

turnips and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing for the cattle and horses to drink. With

these simple arrangements I could lie in bed, and know that the "chores" were doing themselves. It would

also be necessary, in order that I should not be disturbed, that the crow should be taken out of the roosters,

but I could think of no process to do it. It seems to me that the henbreeders, if they know as much as they

say they do, might raise a breed of crowless roosters for the benefit of boys, quiet neighborhoods, and sleepy

There was another notion that I had about kindling the kitchen fire, that I never carried out. It was to have a

spring at the head of my bed, connecting with a wire, which should run to a torpedo which I would plant over

night in the ashes of the fireplace. By touching the spring I could explode the torpedo, which would scatter

the ashes and cover the live coals, and at the same time shake down the sticks of wood which were standing

by the side of the ashes in the chimney, and the fire would kindle itself. This ingenious plan was frowned on

by the whole family, who said they did not want to be waked up every morning by an explosion. And yet

they expected me to wake up without an explosion! A boy's plans for making life agreeable are hardly ever

I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the district school in the winter. There is such a chance

for learning, that he must be a dull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater, an accurate

snowballer, and an accomplished sliderdownhill, with or without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or

on his feet. Take a moderate hill, with a footslide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a "goround" of

boys on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling away bootleather. The boy is the shoemaker's friend. An

active lad can wear down a pair of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice will scrape his toes. Sledding or

coasting is also slow fun compared to the "bareback" sliding down a steep hill over a hard, glistening crust. It

is not only dangerous, but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to make a tailor laugh. If any

other animal wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one

once a month. In a country districtschool patches were not by any means a sign of poverty, but of the boy's

courage and adventurous disposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheetiron

seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering

hard sums. For that extraordinary statement he received two castigations,one at home, that was mild, and

one from the schoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's sliding place, punishing him, as he

jocosely called it, on a sliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.

What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history, early history,the Indian wars. We studied

it mostly at noontime, and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have "object lessons," though our

Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said, had stood in colonial times a

blockhouse, built by the settlers for defense against the Indians. For the Indians had the idea that the whites

were not settled enough, and used to come nights to settlethem with a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It

was very steep on each side, and the river ran close by. It was a charming place in summer, where one could

find laurel, and checkerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across

the river, and listening to the murmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built a meetinghouse there

afterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter that the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so

fiercely that it blew nearly all the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards heard of in the

West), and finally the meetinghouse itself came down into the valley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself

ever afterwards. It used to be a notion in New England that a meetinghouse ought to stand as near heaven as

The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one was the Early Settlers and the other the

Pequots, the latter the most numerous. The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and a strong fortress it

was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vast size (larger than the cyclopean blocks of stone which form

the ancient Etruscan walls in Italy), piled one upon another, and the whole cemented by pouring on water

which froze and made the walls solid. The Pequots helped the whites build it. It had a covered way under the

snow, through which only could it be entered, and it had bastions and towers and openings to fire from, and a

great many other things for which there are no names in military books. And it had a glacis and a ditch

When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in the schoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used

to retire into it, and await the attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison, while the

Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that they should be barbarous. And it was in this light

that the great question was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soaked over night in

water and let freeze. They were as hard as cobblestones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of

them, he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It was considered as unfair to use these

iceballs in open fight, as it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But as the whites were protected by

the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the latter might use the hard missiles.

The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideous war whoops, attacking the fort on all sides

with great noise and a shower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance and well directed shots,

hurling back the invaders when they attempted to scale the walls. The Settlers had the advantage of position,

but they were sometimes overpowered by numbers, and would often have had to surrender but for the ringing

I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and surrendered voluntarily; but once or twice

the fort was carried by storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of the fortress, having

been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was to scalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There

were a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it was in the cause of our early

history. The history of Greece and Rome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our school

who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could scan arma, virumque cano.

The winter evenings of the farmerboy 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 boyon it, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in

"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 woodbox; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a brownstudy 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 farmerboy'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,

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

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

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

foxandgeese board was, and he could find the twelvemenMorris. 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

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

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 lookingglass, 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

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 standup 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 leadpencil 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, sprucegum, 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 spiderweb 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 spellingschools, 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

But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the invitation., in a threecornered 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 pinscratching writing. What a precious document it was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of

perfume, whether of lavender or carawayseed 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

It turned out that John did not go after all to Cynthia Rudd's party, having broken through the ice on the river

when he was skating that day, and, as the boy who pulled him out said, "come within an inch of his life." But

he took care not to tumble into anything that should keep him from the next party, which was given with due

John had been many a time to the house of Deacon Mayhew, and never with any hesitation, even if he knew

that both the deacon's daughtersMelinda and Sophronia were at home. The only fear he had felt was of the

deacon's big dog, who always surlily watched him as he came up the tanbark walk, and made a rush at him

if he showed the least sign of wavering. But upon the night of the party his courage vanished, and he thought

The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging before the front door, by the lilacbush,

he could hear the sound of voicesgirls' voiceswhich set his heart in a flutter. He could face the whole

district school of girls without flinching,he didn't mind 'em in the meetinghouse in their Sunday best; but

he began to be conscious that now he was passing to a new sphere, where the girls are supreme and superior,

and he began to feel for the first time that he was an awkward boy. The girl takes to society as naturally as a

duckling does to the placid pond, but with a semblance of shy timidity; the boy plunges in with a great splash,

When John entered, the company had nearly all come. He knew them every one, and yet there was something

about them strange and unfamiliar. They were all a little afraid of each other, as people are apt to be when

they are well dressed and met together for social purposes in the country. To be at a real party was a novel

thing for most of them, and put a constraint upon them which they could not at once overcome. Perhaps it

was because they were in the awful parlor,that carpeted room of haircloth furniture, which was so seldom

opened. Upon the wall hung two certificates framed in black, one certifying that, by the payment of fifty

dollars, Deacon Mayhew was a life member of the American Tract Society, and the other that, by a like

outlay of bread cast upon the waters, his wife was a life member of the A. B. C. F. M., a portion of the

alphabet which has an awful significance to all New England childhood. These certificates are a sort of

receipt in full for charity, and are a constant and consoling reminder to the farmer that he has discharged his

There was a fire on the broad hearth, and that, with the tallow candles on the mantelpiece, made quite an

illumination in the room, and enabled the boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to see the girls,

who were on the other, quite plainly. How sweet and demure the girls looked, to be sure! Every boy was

thinking if his hair was slick, and feeling the full embarrassment of his entrance into fashionable life. It was

queer that these children, who were so free everywhere else, should be so constrained now, and not know

what to do with themselves. The shooting of a spark out upon the carpet was a great relief, and was

accompanied by a deal of scrambling to throw it back into the fire, and caused much giggling. It was only

gradually that the formality was at all broken, and the young people got together and found their tongues.

John at length found himself with Cynthia Rudd, to his great delight and considerable embarrassment, for

Cynthia, who was older than John, never looked so pretty. To his surprise he had nothing to say to her. They

had always found plenty to talk about beforebut now nothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at

"No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking," said Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.

John hoped it would be slipperyverywhen he walked home with Cynthia, as he determined to do, but he

did not dare to say so, and the conversation ran aground again. John thought about his dog and his sled and

his yoke of steers, but he didn't see any way to bring them into conversation. Had she read the "Swiss Family

Robinson"? Only a little ways. John said it was splendid, and he would lend it to her, for which she thanked

him, and said, with such a sweet expression, she should be so glad to have it from him. That was

And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the husking at their house, when Sally

"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it pretty well. But did John like the color of

"Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show her teeth."

John did n't know but it was better than her nose, and he should like her looks better if her hair was n't so

But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked black hair, and she wished hers was dark.

And Cynthia said that Sally was a dear, good girl, and she did n't believe one word of the story that she only

really found one red ear at the husking that night, and hid that and kept pulling it out as if it were a new one.

And so the conversation, once started, went on as briskly as possible about the paringbee, and the

spellingschool, and the new singing master who was coming, and how Jack Thompson had gone to

Northampton to be a clerk in a store, and how Elvira Reddington, in the geography class at school, was asked

what was the capital of Massachusetts, and had answered "Northampton," and all the school laughed. John

enjoyed the conversation amazingly, and he half wished that he and Cynthia were the whole of the party.

But the party had meantime got into operation, and the formality was broken up when the boys and girls had

ventured out of the parlor into the more comfortable livingroom, with its easychairs and everyday things,

and even gone so far as to penetrate the kitchen in their frolic. As soon as they forgot they were a party, they

But the real pleasure only began with the games. The party was nothing without the games, and, indeed, it

was made for the games. Very likely it was one of the timid girls who proposed to play something, and when

the ice was once broken, the whole company went into the business enthusiastically. There was no dancing.

We should hope not. Not in the deacon's house; not with the deacon's daughters, nor anywhere in this good

Puritanic society. Dancing was a sin in itself, and no one could tell what it would lead to. But there was no

reason why the boys and girls shouldn't come together and kiss each other during a whole evening

occasionally. Kissing was a sign of peace, and was not at all like taking hold of hands and skipping about to

In the games there was a great deal of clasping hands, of going round in a circle, of passing under each other's

elevated arms, of singing about my true love, and the end was kisses distributed with more or less partiality,

according to the rules of the play; but, thank Heaven, there was no fiddler. John liked it all, and was quite

brave about paying all the forfeits imposed on him, even to the kissing all the girls in the room; but he

thought he could have amended that by kissing a few of them a good many times instead of kissing them all

But John was destined to have a damper put upon his enjoyment. They were playing a most fascinating game,

in which they all stand in a circle and sing a philandering song, except one who is in the center of the ring,

and holds a cushion. At a certain word in the song, the one in the center throws the cushion at the feet of

some one in the ring, indicating thereby the choice of a "mate" and then the two sweetly kneel upon the

cushion, like two meek angels, andand so forth. Then the chosen one takes the cushion and the delightful

play goes on. It is very easy, as it will be seen, to learn how to play it. Cynthia was holding the cushion, and

at the fatal word she threw it down, not before John, but in front of Ephraim Leggett. And they two kneeled,

and so forth. John was astounded. He had never conceived of such perfidy in the female heart. He felt like

wiping Ephraim off the face of the earth, only Ephraim was older and bigger than he. When it came his turn

at length,thanks to a plain little girl for whose admiration he did n't care a straw,he threw the cushion

down before Melinda Mayhew with all the devotion he could muster, and a dagger look at Cynthia. And

Cynthia's perfidious smile only enraged him the more. John felt wronged, and worked himself up to pass a

When supper came, he never went near Cynthia, and busied himself in carrying different kinds of pie and

cake, and red apples and cider, to the girls he liked the least. He shunned Cynthia, and when he was

accidentally near her, and she asked him if he would get her a glass of cider, he rudely told herlike a goose

as he wasthat she had better ask Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got more and more

Girls have a great deal more good sense in such matters than boys. Cynthia went to John, at length, and asked

him simply what the matter was. John blushed, and said that nothing was the matter. Cynthia said that it

wouldn't do for two people always to be together at a party; and so they made up, and John obtained

It was after halfpast nine when the great festivities at the Deacon's broke up, and John walked home with

Cynthia over the shining crust and under the stars. It was mostly a silent walk, for this was also an occasion

when it is difficult to find anything fit to say. And John was thinking all the way how he should bid Cynthia

good night; whether it would do and whether it wouldn't do, this not being a game, and no forfeits attaching

to it. When they reached the gate, there was an awkward little pause. John said the stars were uncommonly

bright. Cynthia did not deny it, but waited a minute and then turned abruptly away, with "Goodnight, John!"

And the party was over, and Cynthia was gone, and John went home in a kind of dissatisfaction with himself.

It was long before he could go to sleep for thinking of the new world opened to him, and imagining how he

would act under a hundred different circumstances, and what he would say, and what Cynthia would say; but

a dream at length came, and led him away to a great city and a brilliant house; and while he was there, he

I think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than the making of maple sugar; it is better than

"blackberrying," and nearly as good as fishing. And one reason he likes this work is, that somebody else does

the most of it. It is a sort of work in which he can appear to be very active, and yet not do much.

And it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busy about nothing. If the power, for instance,

that is expended in play by a boy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied to some industry,

we should see wonderful results. But a boy is like a galvanic battery that is not in connection with anything;

he generates electricity and plays it off into the air with the most reckless prodigality. And I, for one, would

n't have it otherwise. It is as much a boy's business to play off his energies into space as it is for a flower to

In my day maplesugarmaking used to be something between picnicking and being shipwrecked on a fertile

island, where one should save from the wreck tubs and augers, and great kettles and pork, and hen's eggs and

ryeandindian bread, and begin at once to lead the sweetest life in the world. I am told that it is something

different nowadays, and that there is more desire to save the sap, and make good, pure sugar, and sell it for a

large price, than there used to be, and that the old fun and picturesqueness of the business are pretty much

gone. I am told that it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and bring it to the house, where there are built

brick arches, over which it is evaporated in shallow pans, and that pains is taken to keep the leaves, sticks,

and ashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar is clarified; and that, in short, it is a moneymaking business,

in which there is very little fun, and that the boy is not allowed to dip his paddle into the kettle of boiling

sugar and lick off the delicious sirup. The prohibition may improve the sugar, but it is cruel to the boy.

As I remember the New England boy (and I am very intimate with one), he used to be on the qui vive in the

spring for the sap to begin running. I think he discovered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he knew it by a

feeling of something starting in his own veins,a sort of spring stir in his legs and arms, which tempted him

to stand on his head, or throw a handspring, if he could find a spot of ground from which the snow had

melted. The sap stirs early in the legs of a countryboy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get

tired of boots, and want to come out and touch the soil just as soon as the sun has warmed it a little. The

countryboy goes barefoot just as naturally as the trees burst their buds, which were packed and varnished

over in the fall to keep the water and the frost out. Perhaps the boy has been out digging into the mapletrees

with his jackknife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery as he comes running into the

house in a great state of excitementas if he had heard a hen cackle in the barnwith "Sap's runnin'!"

And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sapbuckets, which have been stored in the garret over

the woodhouse, and which the boy has occasionally climbed up to look at with another boy, for they are full

of sweet suggestions of the annual spring frolic,the sapbuckets are brought down and set out on the south

side of the house and scalded. The snow is still a foot or two deep in the woods, and the oxsled is got out to

make a road to the sugar camp, and the campaign begins. The boy is everywhere present, superintending

It is a great day when the cart is loaded with the buckets and the procession starts into the woods. The sun

shines almost unobstructedly into the forest, for there are only naked branches to bar it; the snow is soft and

beginning to sink down, leaving the young bushes spindling up everywhere; the snowbirds are twittering

about, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far and wide. This is spring, and the boy

In the first place, the men go about and tap the trees, drive in the spouts, and hang the buckets under. The boy

watches all these operations with the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, when a hole is bored in a

tree, the sap would spout out in a stream as it does when a ciderbarrel is tapped; but it never does, it only

drops, sometimes almost in a stream, but on the whole slowly, and the boy learns that the sweet things of the

world have to be patiently waited for, and do not usually come otherwise than drop by drop.

Then the camp is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is recovered with boughs. In front of it two enormous

logs are rolled nearly together, and a fire is built between them. Forked sticks are set at each end, and a long

pole is laid on them, and on this are hung the great caldron kettles. The huge hogsheads are turned right side

up, and cleaned out to receive the sap that is gathered. And now, if there is a good "sap run," the

The great fire that is kindled up is never let out, night or day, as long as the season lasts. Somebody is always

cutting wood to feed it; somebody is busy most of the time gathering in the sap; somebody is required to

watch the kettles that they do not boil over, and to fill them. It is not the boy, however; he is too busy with

things in general to be of any use in details. He has his own little sapyoke and small pails, with which he

gathers the sweet liquid. He has a little boilingplace of his own, with small logs and a tiny kettle. In the

great kettles the boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, as it thickens, is dipped from one to another, until in

the end kettle it is reduced to sirup, and is taken out to cool and settle, until enough is made to "sugar off." To

"sugar off" is to boil the sirup until it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is the grand event, and is

But the boy's desire is to "sugar off" perpetually. He boils his kettle down as rapidly as possible; he is not

particular about chips, scum, or ashes; he is apt to burn his sugar; but if he can get enough to make a little

wax on the snow, or to scrape from the bottom of the kettle with his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal

is wasted on his hands, and the outside of his face, and on his clothes, but he does not care; he is not stingy.

To watch the operations of the big fire gives him constant pleasure. Sometimes he is left to watch the boiling

kettles, with a piece of pork tied on the end of a stick, which he dips into the boiling mass when it threatens to

go over. He is constantly tasting of it, however, to see if it is not almost sirup. He has a long round stick,

whittled smooth at one end, which he uses for this purpose, at the constant risk of burning his tongue. The

smoke blows in his face; he is grimy with ashes; he is altogether such a mass of dirt, stickiness, and

He likes to boil eggs in the hot sap with the hired man; he likes to roast potatoes in the ashes, and he would

live in the camp day and night if he were permitted. Some of the hired men sleep in the bough shanty and

keep the fire blazing all night. To sleep there with them, and awake in the night and hear the wind in the trees,

and see the sparks fly up to the sky, is a perfect realization of all the stories of adventures he has ever read.

He tells the other boys afterwards that he heard something in the night that sounded very much like a bear.

The great occasions for the boy, though, are the times of "sugaring off." Sometimes this used to be done in

the evening, and it was made the excuse for a frolic in the camp. The neighbors were invited; sometimes even

the pretty girls from the village, who filled all the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter and little

affectations of fright. The white snow still lies on all the ground except the warm spot about the camp. The

tree branches all show distinctly in the light of the fire, which sends its ruddy glare far into the darkness, and

lights up the bough shanty, the hogsheads, the buckets on the trees, and the group about the boiling kettles,

until the scene is like something taken out of a fairy play. If Rembrandt could have seen a sugar party in a

New England wood, he would have made out of its strong contrasts of light and shade one of the finest

pictures in the world. But Rembrandt was not born in Massachusetts; people hardly ever do know where to be

born until it is too late. Being born in the right place is a thing that has been very much neglected.

At these sugar parties every one was expected to eat as much sugar as possible; and those who are practiced

in it can eat a great deal. It is a peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you may eat so much

of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it, you will want it the next day more than ever. At the

"sugaringoff " they used to pour the hot sugar upon the snow, where it congealed, without crystallizing, into

a sort of wax, which I do suppose is the most delicious substance that was ever invented. And it takes a great

while to eat it. If one should close his teeth firmly on a ball of it, he would be unable to open his mouth until

it dissolved. The sensation while it is melting is very pleasant, but one cannot converse.

The boy used to make a big lump of it and give it to the dog, who seized it with great avidity, and closed his

jaws on it, as dogs will on anything. It was funny the next moment to see the expression of perfect surprise on

the dog's face when he found that he could not open his jaws. He shook his head; he sat down in despair; he

ran round in a circle; he dashed into the woods and back again. He did everything except climb a tree, and

howl. It would have been such a relief to him if he could have howled. But that was the one thing he could

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary, or a peddler. Most of

them used to. There is everything in the heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy,

and excite his longing for strange countries. I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and

attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from all the sweet

delights of his home to become a roamer in literature and in the world, a poet and a wanderer. There is

something in the soil and the pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, that excites

the imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of adventure. And the prosaic life of the sweet

home does not at all correspond to the boy's dreams of the world. In the good old days, I am told, the boys on

the coast ran away and became sailors; the countryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries,

and then they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports. John used to spend hours in the top of a

slender hickorytree that a little detached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of the steep and lofty

pasture behind his house. He was sent to make war on the bushes that constantly encroached upon the

pastureland; but John had no hostility to any growing thing, and a very little bushwhacking satisfied him.

When he had grubbed up a few laurels and young tree sprouts, he was wont to retire into his favorite post of

observation and meditation. Perhaps he fancied that the wideswaying stem to which he clung was the mast

of a ship; that the tossing forest behind him was the heaving waves of the sea; and that the wind which

moaned over the woods and murmured in the leaves, and now and then sent him a wide circuit in the air, as if

he had been a blackbird on the tip top of a spruce, was an ocean gale. What life, and action, and heroism

there was to him in the multitudinous roar of the forest, and what an eternity of existence in the monologue of

the river, which brawled far, far below him over its wide stony bed! How the river sparkled and danced and

went on, now in a smooth amber current, now fretted by the pebbles, but always with that continuous busy

song! John never knew that noise to cease, and he doubted not, if he stayed here a thousand years, that same

On it went, under the wide spans of the old wooden, covered bridge, swirling around the great rocks on which

the piers stood, spreading away below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples that lined the

green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him, except now and then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge,

or the muffled faroff voices of some chance passers on the road. Seen from this high perch, the familiar

village, sending its brown roofs and white spires up through the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and was

like some town in a book, say a village nestled in the Swiss mountains, or something in Bohemia. And there,

beyond the purple hills of Bozrah, and not so far as the stony pastures of Zoah, whither John had helped drive

the colts and young stock in the spring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John had himself once been to the

land of Canaan with his grandfather, when he was a very small boy; and he had once seen an actual,

nomistake Jew, a mysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who sold scythe snaths in that region,

and about whom there was a rumor that he was once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who

apprehended in his long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the world had vast possibilities for

John. Away to the south, up a vast basin of forest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line

of woods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an army might appear, perhaps British,

perhaps Turks, and banners of red and of yellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose,

and open on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute, winding down the mountain road, deploying in

the meadows, and giving the valley to pillage and to flame. In which event his position would be an excellent

one for observation and for safety. While he was in the height of this engagement, perhaps the horn would be

blown from the back porch, reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brush and go for the cows. As if

there were no better use for a warrior and a poet in New England than to send him for the cows!

John knew a boya bad enough boy I daresaywho afterwards became a general in the war, and went to

Congress, and got to be a real governor, who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures, and hated

it in his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast what kind of a man he would be. This boy, as soon as

he had cut about one brush, would seek for one of several holes in the ground (and he was familiar with

several), in which lived a whiteandblack animal that must always be nameless in a book, but an animal

quite capable of the most pungent defense of himself. This young aspirant to Congress would cut a long stick,

with a little crotch in the end of it, and run it into the hole; and when the crotch was punched into the fur and

skin of the animal, he would twist the stick round till it got a good grip on the skin., and then he would pull

the beast out; and when he got the whiteandblack just out of the hole so that his dog could seize him, the

boy would take to his heels, and leave the two to fight it out, content to scent the battle afar off. And this boy,

who was in training for public life, would do this sort of thing all the afternoon, and when the sun told him

that he had spent long enough time cutting brush, he would industriously go home as innocent as anybody.

There are few such boys as this nowadays; and that is the reason why the New England pastures are so much

John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special grudge against this clovereater,

beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a woodchuck

crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The woodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a

small appletree. John thought this a most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood under the tree and taunted

the animal and stoned it. Thereupon the woodchuck dropped down on John and seized him by the leg of his

trousers. John was both enraged and scared by this dastardly attack; the teeth of the enemy went through the

cloth and met; and there he hung. John then made a pivot of one leg and whirled himself around, swinging

the woodchuck in the air, until he shook him off; but in his departure the woodchuck carried away a large

piece of John's summer trousersleg. The boy never forgot it. And whenever he had a holiday, he used to

expend an amount of labor and ingenuity in the pursuit of woodchucks that would have made his for tune in

any useful pursuit. There was a hill pasture, down on one side of which ran a small brook, and this pasture

was full of woodchuckholes. It required the assistance of several boys to capture a woodchuck. It was first

necessary by patient watching to ascertain that the woodchuck was at home. When one was seen to enter his

burrow, then all the entries to it except onethere are usually threewere plugged up with stones. A boy

and a dog were then left to watch the open hole, while John and his comrades went to the brook and began to

dig a canal, to turn the water into the residence of the woodchuck. This was often a difficult feat of

engineering, and a long job. Often it took more than half a day of hard labor with shovel and hoe to dig the

canal. But when the canal was finished and the water began to pour into the hole, the excitement began. How

long would it take to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it seemed as if the hole was a

bottomless 1pit. But sooner or later the water would rise in it, and then there was sure to be seen the nose of

the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level with the rising flood. It was piteous to see the anxious look of the

hunted, halfdrowned creature asit came to the surface and caught sight of the dog. There the dog stood, at

the mouth of the hole, quivering with excitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him were the

cruel boys dancing with joy and setting the dog on. The poor creature would disappear in the water in terror;

but he must breathe, and out would come his nose again, nearer the dog each time. At last the water ran out of

the hole as well as in, and the soaked beast came with it, and made a desperate rush. But in a trice the dog had

him, and the boys stood off in a circle, with stones in their hands, to see what they called "fair play." They

maintained perfect "neutrality" so long as the dog was getting the best of the woodchuck; but if the latter was

likely to escape, they "interfered " in the interest of peace and the "balance of power," and killed the

woodchuck. This is a boy's notion of justice; of course, he'd no business to be a

I used the word "aromatic " in relation to the New England soil. John knew very well all its sweet, aromatic,

pungent, and medicinal products, and liked to search for the scented herbs and the wild fruits and exquisite

flowers; but he did not then know, and few do know, that there is no part of the globe where the subtle

chemistry of the earth produces more that is agreeable to the senses than a New England hillpasture and the

green meadow at its foot. The poets have succeeded in turning our attention from it to the comparatively

barren Orient as the land of sweetsmelling spices and odorous gums. And it is indeed a constant surprise

that this poor and stony soil elaborates and grows so many delicate and aromatic products.

John, it is true, did not care much for anything that did not appeal to his taste and smell and delight in brilliant

color; and he trod down the exquisite ferns and the wonderful mosseswithout compunction. But he

gathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the

highflavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, and foxgrapes;

he brought home armfuls of the pinkandwhite laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the

fragrant sassafras and of the sweetflag; he ate the tender leaves of the wintergreen and its red berries; he

gathered the peppermint and the spearmint; he gnawed the twigs of the black birch; there was a stout fern

which he called "brake," which he pulled up, and found that the soft end "tasted good;" he dug the amber gum

from the sprucetree, and liked to smell, though he could not chew, the gum of the wild cherry; it was his

melancholy duty to bring home such medicinal herbs for the garret as the goldthread, the tansy, and the

loathsome "boneset; " and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel, stores of beechnuts, hazelnuts,

hickorynuts, chestnuts, and butternuts. But that which lives most vividly in his memory and most strongly

draws him back to the New England hills is the aromatic sweetfern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to

crush in his hands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of New England.

The New England countryboy of the last generation never heard of Christmas. There was no such day in his

calendar. If John ever came across it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word.

If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders about it, he might have got the dim impression

that it was a kind of Popish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as "card playing," or

being a "Democrat." John knew a couple of desperately bad boys who were reported to play "sevenup" in a

barn, on the haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had. once seen a pack of

greasy "playingcards," and it seemed to him to contain the quintessence of sin. If he had desired to defy all

Divine law and outrage all human society, he felt that he could do it by shuffling them. And he was quite

right. The two bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the most

wicked thing they could do. If it had been as sinless as playing marbles, they would n't have cared for it. John

sometimes drove past a brown, tumbledown farmhouse, whose shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were

cardplaying people; and it is impossible to describe how wicked that house appeared to John. He almost

expected to see its shingles stand on end. In the old New England one could not in any other way so express

There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than there was of Easter; and probably nobody

about him could have explained Easter; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmas gifts.

Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on his birthday or any other day. He expected nothing

that he did not earn, or make in the way of "trade" with another boy. He was taught to work for what he

received. He even earned, as I said, the extra holidays of the day after the Fourth and the day after

Thanksgiving. Of the free grace and gifts of Christmas he had no conception. The single and melancholy

association he had with it was the quaking hymn which his grandfather used to sing in a cracked and

The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of itthe doleful voice always repeating, "and glory shone

around "made John as miserable as "Hark! from the tombs." It was all one dreary expectation of something

uncomfortable. It was, in short, "religion." You'd got to have it some time; that John believed. But it lay in his

unthinking mind to put off the "Hark! from the tombs" enjoyment as long as possible. He experienced a kind

John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his wickedness consisted. He had no

inclination to steal, nor much to lie; and he despised "meanness" and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feeling

toward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him that there was any virtue in not stealing and lying, for

honesty and veracity were in the atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he "got mad" easily; but he did

work, and he was always ashamed when he was over his fit of passion. In short, you couldn't find a much

When the "revival" came, therefore, one summer, John was in a quandary. Sunday meeting and

Sundayschool he did n't mind; they were a part of regular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy's

pleasures. But when there began to be evening meetings at the different houses, a new element came into

affairs. There was a kind of solemnity over the community, and a seriousness in all faces. At first these

twilight assemblies offered a little relief to the monotony of farm life; and John liked to meet the boys and

girls, and to watch the older people coming in, dressed in their second best. I think John's imagination was

worked upon by the sweet and mournful hymns that were discordantly sung in the stiff old parlors. There was

a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity too, in the odor of caraway seed that pervaded the room. The windows

were wide open also, and the scent of June roses came in, with all the languishing sounds of a summer night.

All the little boys had a scared look, but the little girls were never so pretty and demure as in this their

susceptible seriousness. If John saw a boy who did not come to the evening meeting, but was wandering off

with his sling down the meadow, looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster of wickedness.

After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under the general impression of fright and seriousness.

All the talk was of "getting religion," and he heard over and over again that the probability was if he did not

get it now, he never would. The chance did not come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would be

given over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that he was not one of the elect. John fancied that

he could feel his heart hardening, and he began to look with a wistful anxiety into the faces of the Christians

to see what were the visible signs of being one of the elect. John put on a good deal of a manner that he "did

n't care," and he never admitted his disquiet by asking any questions or standing up in meeting to be prayed

for. But he did care. He heard all the time that all he had to do was to repent and believe. But there was

nothing that he doubted, and he was perfectly willing to repent if he could think of anything to repent of.

It was essential he learned, that he should have a "conviction of sin." This he earnestly tried to have. Other

people, no better than he, had it, and he wondered why he could n't have it. Boys and girls whom he knew

were "under conviction," and John began to feel not only panicky, but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been

anxious for days and days, and not able to sleep at night, but now she had given herself up and found peace.

There was a kind of radiance in her face that struck John with awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulf

between him and Cynthia. Everybody was going away from him, and his heart was getting harder than ever.

He could n't feel wicked, all he could do. And there was Ed Bates) his intimate friend, though older than he, a

"whaling," noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction and sure he was going to be lost. How John envied

him! And pretty soon Ed "experienced religion." John anxiously watched the change in Ed's face when he

became one of the elect. And a change there was. And John wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to

go trout fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a meadow brook near the river; and when the trout didn't

bite right off, Ed wouldget mad," and as soon as one took hold he would give an awful jerk, sending the

fish more than three hundred feet into the air and landing it in the bushes the other side of the meadow, crying

out, "Gul darn ye, I'll learn ye." And John wondered if Ed would take the little trout out any more gently now.

John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of his playmates came out and made a profession.

Cynthia (she too was older than John) sat on Sunday in the singers' seat; her voice, which was going to be a

contralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and he heard it with a heartache. "There she is," thought John,

"singing away like an angel in heaven, and I am left out." During all his after life a contralto voice was to

John one of his most bitter and heartwringing pleasures. It suggested the immaculate scornful, the

If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction of sin, John tried. And what made him

miserable was, that he couldn't feel miserable when everybody else was miserable. He even began to pretend

to be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like the others. He pretended he did n't care for play; he

refrained from chasing chipmunks and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and the bright vivacity of the

summertime that used to make him turn hand springs smote him as a discordant levity. He was not a

hypocrite at all, and he was getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed at himself. Every day and night he

heard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving with him, and leave him out. The phrase

was that he would "grieve away the Holy Spirit." John wondered if he was not doing it. He did everything to

put himself in the way of conviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore a grave face, refrained from

play, and tried to feel anxious. At length he concluded that he must do something.

One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several of his little playmates had "come

forward," he felt that he could force the crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was an enchanting summer

night; the stars danced overhead, and by his side the broad and shallow river ran over its stony bed with a

loud but soothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty. John did not then know that it sang, "But I go

on forever," yet there was in it for him something of the solemn flow of the eternal world. When he came in

sight of the house, he knelt down in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed. He prayed that he might feel bad,

and be distressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly, and yet not as a disturbance, the

multitudinous croaking of the frogs by the meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in it

a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted. What is there in this sound that suggests

the tenderness of spring, the despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years after it

happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on the edge of the Ravenna marshes. A little way over

the purple plain he saw the darkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola." The Holy Pontiff Pius IX.

was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood in that serene and moist region. As the train waited, John heard

from miles of marshes round about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and more melancholy and

entreating than the vesper call of the bells. And instantly his mind went back for the association of sound is as

subtle as that of odorto the prayer, years ago, by the roadside and the plaintive appeal of the unheeded

frogs, and he wondered if the little Pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps, when he thought of

John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperately into the house, and told the family that

he was in an anxious state of mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, and the little boy

was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, and to become that night a Christian; he was prayed over,

and told to read the Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all the texts of Scripture and hymns he

could think of. John did this, and said over and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed about in a real

discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playing the hypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough

in wanting to feel, as the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner. He tried to think of his evil

deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed, it often came to his mind. It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie, that

never injured anybody but himself John knew he was not wicked enough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.

This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's class was to recite in geography, his pretty

cousin, a young lady he held in great love and respect, came in to visit the school. John was a favorite with

her, and she had come to hear him recite. As it happened, John felt shaky in the geographical lesson of that

day, and he feared to be humiliated in the presence of his cousin; he felt embarrassed to that degree that he

could n't have "bounded " Massachusetts. So he stood up and raised his hand, and said to the schoolma'am,

"Please, ma'am, I 've got the stomachache; may I go home?" And John's character for truthfulness was so

high (and even this was ever a reproach to him), that his word was instantly believed, and he was dismissed

without any medical examination. For a moment John was delighted to get out of school so early; but soon

his guilt took all the light out of the summer sky and the pleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly,

without a single hop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a woodchuck at a distance from his

wellknown hole tempted John, but he restrained himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that

chasing a woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomachache. He was acting a miserable part, but it had to

be gone through with. He went home and told his mother the reason he had left school, but he added that he

felt "some" better now. The "some" did n't save him. Genuine sympathy was lavished on him. He had to

swallow a stiff dose of nasty "picra,"the horror of all childhood, and he was put in bed immediately. The

world never looked so pleasant to John, but to bed he was forced to go. He was excused from all chores; he

was not even to go after the cows. John said he thought he ought to go after the cows,much as he hated the

business usually, he would now willingly have wandered over the world after cows,and for this heroic

offer, in the condition he was, he got credit for a desire to do his duty; and this unjust confidence in him

added to his torture. And he had intended to set his hooks that night for eels. His cousin came home, and sat

by his bedside and condoled with him; his schoolma'am had sent word how sorry she was for him, John was

He groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; it would be very dangerous to eat a morsel.

The prospect was appalling. Never was there such a long twilight; never before did he hear so many sounds

outdoors that he wanted to investigate. Being ill without any illness was a horrible condition. And he began to

have real stomachache now; and it ached because it was empty. John was hungry enough to have eaten the

New England Primer. But by and by sleep came, and John forgot his woes in dreaming that he knew where

It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying to be affected by the revival. And he was very

much ashamed of it, and believed he would never tell another. But then he fell thinking whether, with the

"picra," and the going to bed in the afternoon, and the loss of his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for

And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer to realizing the terrors he desired to feel.

But he was a conscientious boy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of the season. He not

only put himself away from them all, but he refrained from doing almost everything that he wanted to do.

There came at that time a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a long account of the Long Island

races, in which the famous horse "Lexington" was a runner. John was fond of horses, he knew about

Lexington, and he had looked forward to the result of this race with keen interest. But to read the account of it

how he felt might destroy his seriousness of mind, and in all reverence and simplicity he felt itbe a means

of "grieving away the Holy Spirit." He therefore hid away the paper in a tabledrawer, intending to read it

when the revival should be over. Weeks after, when he looked for the newspaper, it was not to be found, and

John never knew what "time " Lexington made nor anything about the race. This was to him a serious loss,

but by no means so deep as another feeling that remained with him; for when his little world returned to its

ordinary course, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehension of his own separateness from other people,

in his insensibility to the revival. Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pity that there was

Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. The scientists who want to study the primitive man,

and have so much difficulty in finding one anywhere in this sophisticated age, couldn't do better than to

devote their attention to the common countryboy. He has the primal, vigorous instincts and impulses of the

African savage, without any of the vices inherited from a civilization long ago decayed or developed in an

unrestrained barbaric society. You want to catch your boy young, and study him before he has either virtues

Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before children were born sophisticated, with

a large library, and with the word "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing, and war. The

military instinct, which is the special mark of barbarism, is strong in him. It arises not alone from his love of

fighting, for the boy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, but from his fondness for display,the same that

a corporal or a general feels in decking himself in tinsel and tawdry colors and strutting about in view of the

female sex. Half the pleasure in going out to murder another man with a gun would be wanting if one did not

wear feathers and goldlace and stripes on his pantaloons. The law also takes this view of it, and will not

permit men to shoot each other in plain clothes. And the world also makes some curious distinctions in the art

of killing. To kill people with arrows is barbarous; to kill them with smoothbores and flintlock muskets is

semicivilized; to kill them with breechloading rifles is civilized. That nation is the most civilized which

has the appliances to kill the most of another nation in the shortest time. This is the result of six thousand

years of constant civilization. By and by, when the nations cease to be boys, perhaps they will not want to kill

each other at all. Some people think the world is very old; but here is an evidence that it is very young, and,

in fact, has scarcely yet begun to be a world. When the volcanoes have done spouting, and the earthquakes

are quaked out, and you can tell what land is going to be solid and keep its level twentyfour hours, and the

swamps are filled up, and the deltas of the great rivers, like the Mississippi and the Nile, become terra firma,

and men stop killing their fellows in order to get their land and other property, then perhaps there will be a

world that an angel would n't weep over. Now one half the world are employed in getting ready to kill the

other half, some of them by marching about in uniform, and the others by hard work to earn money to pay

John was not naturally very cruel, and it was probably the love of display quite as much as of fighting that led

him into a military life; for he, in common with all his comrades, had other traits of the savage. One of them

was the same passion for ornament that induces the African to wear anklets and bracelets of hide and of

metal, and to decorate himself with tufts of hair, and to tattoo his body. In John's day there was a rage at

school among the boys for wearing bracelets woven of the hair of the little girls. Some of them were

wonderful specimens of braiding and twist. These were not captured in war, but were sentimental tokens of

friendship given by the young maidens themselves. John's own hair was kept so short (as became a warrior)

that you couldn't have made a bracelet out of it, or anything except a paintbrush; but the little girls were not

under military law, and they willingly sacrificed their tresses to decorate the soldiers they esteemed. As the

Indian is honored in proportion to the scalps he can display, at John's school the boy was held in highest

respect who could show the most hair trophies on his wrist. John himself had a variety that would have

pleased a Mohawk, fine and coarse and of all colors. There were the flaxen, the faded straw, the glossy black,

the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the undecided auburn, and the fiery red. Perhaps his pulse beat more

quickly under the red hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account of all the other wristlets put together; it was a sort

of goldtriedinthefirecolor to John, and burned there with a steady flame. Now that Cynthia had

become a Christian, this band of hair seemed a more sacred if less glowing possession (for all detached hair

will fade in time), and if he had known anything about saints, he would have imagined that it was a part of

the aureole that always goes with a saint. But I am bound to say that while John had a tender feeling for this

red string, his sentiment was not that of the man who becomes entangled in the meshes of a woman's hair;

John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the breast of any slaughterer of his fellows. He

liked to read of war, of encounters with the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing in glittering uniform, to

the noise of the terribly exciting fife and drum, which maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the

wounded. In his future he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword and snugfitting, decorated

clothes,very different from his somewhat roomy trousers and countrycut roundabout, made by Aunt Ellis,

the village tailoress, who cut out clothes, not according to the shape of the boy, but to what he was expected

to grow to,going where glory awaited him. In his observation of pictures, it was the common soldier who

was always falling and dying, while the officer stood unharmed in the storm of bullets and waved his sword

It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the military company of his village. He had risen from

the grade of corporal to that of first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father was captain of the grown

militia company, and consequently had inherited military aptness and knowledge. The old captain was a

flaming son of Mars, whose nose militia, war, general training, and New England rum had painted with the

color of glory and disaster. He was one of the gallant old soldiers of the peaceful days of our country,

splendid in uniform, a martinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious object when he marched at the head of his

company of flintlock muskets, with the American banner full high advanced, and the clamorous drum defying

the world. In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen, faithfully teaching his uniformed companions how to

march by the left leg, and to get reeling drunk by sundown; otherwise he did n't amount to much in the

community; his house was unpainted, his fences were tumbled down, his farm was a waste, his wife wore an

old gown to meeting, to which the captain never went; but he was a good trout fisher, and there was no man

in town who spent more time at the country store and made more shrewd observations upon the affairs of his

neighbors. Although he had never been in an asylum any more than he had been in war, he was almost as

perfect a drunkard as he was soldier. He hated the British, whom he had never seen, as much as he loved rum,

The company which his son commanded, wearing his father's belt and sword, was about as effective as the

old company, and more orderly. It contained from thirty to fifty boys, according to the pressure of "chores" at

home, and it had its great days of parade and its autumn maneuvers, like the general training. It was an

artillery company, which gave every boy a chance to wear a sword, and it possessed a small mounted cannon,

which was dragged about and limbered and unlimbered and fired, to the imminent danger of everybody,

especially of the company. In point of marching, with all the legs going together, and twisting itself up and

untwisting breaking into single file (for Indian fighting), and forming platoons, turning a sharp corner, and

getting out of the way of a wagon, circling the town pump, frightening horses, stopping short in front of the

tavern, with ranks dressed and eyes right and left, it was the equal of any military organization I ever saw. It

could train better than the big company, and I think it did more good in keeping alive the spirit of patriotism

and desire to fight. Its discipline was strict. If a boy left the ranks to jab a spectator, or make faces at a

It was altogether a very serious business; there was no levity about the hot and hard marching, and as boys

have no humor, nothing ludicrous occurred. John was very proud of his office, and of his ability to keep the

rear ranks closed up and ready to execute any maneuver when the captain "hollered," which he did

continually. He carried a real sword, which his grandfather had worn in many a militia campaign on the

village green, the rust upon which John fancied was Indian blood; he had various red and yellow insignia of

military rank sewed upon different parts of his clothes, and though his cocked hat was of pasteboard, it was

decorated with gilding and bright rosettes, and floated a red feather that made his heart beat with martial fury

whenever he looked at it. The effect of this uniform upon the girls was not a matter of conjecture. I think they

really cared nothing about it, but they pretended to think it fine, and they fed the poor boy's vanity, the

The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay was never equaled in any subsequent

occupation. The display of the company in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. There was nothing

wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had by half the company staining themselves with

elderberry juice and going into the woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind trees with bows and

arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners. This, however, was made to seem very like real war.

Traditions of Indian cruelty were still fresh in western Massachusetts. Behind John's house in the orchard

were some old slate tombstones, sunken and leaning, which recorded the names of Captain Moses Rice and

Phineas Arms, who had been killed by Indians in the last century while at work in the meadow by the river,

and who slept there in the hope of the glorious resurrection. Phineas Arms martial namewas long since

dust, and even the mortal part of the great Captain Moses Rice had been absorbed in the soil and passed

perhaps with the sap up into the old but still blooming appletrees. It was a quiet place where they lay, but

they might have heardif hear they couldthe loud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the

long grass on that sunny slope. There was a tradition that years ago an Indian, probably the last of his race,

had been seen moving along the crest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley which had

been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he grew his corn, and the sparkling stream whence

he drew his fish. John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter gliding among

the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it

from the warwhoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. The Indian always preceded

murder by the warwhoop; and this was an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with the elderberry

Indians. It was warned in time. If there was no war whoop, the killing did n't count; the artillery man got up

and killed the Indian. The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not only got killed by the regulars, but he got

whipped by the home guard at night for staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.

But once a year the company had a superlative parade. This was when the military company from the north

part of the town joined the villagers in a general muster. This was an infantry company, and not to be

compared with that of the village in point of evolutions. There was a great and natural hatred between the

north town boys and the center. I don't know why, but no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile. It

was all right for one of either section to "lick" the other if he could, or for half a dozen to "lick" one of the

enemy if they caught him alone. The notion of honor, as of mercy, comes into the boy only when he is pretty

well grown; to some neither ever comes. And yet there was an artificial military courtesy (something like that

existing in the feudal age, no doubt) which put the meeting of these two rival and mutually detested

companies on a high plane of behavior. It was beautiful to see the seriousness of this lofty and studied

condescension on both sides. For the time everything was under martial law. The village company being the

senior, its captain commanded the united battalion in the march, and this put John temporarily into the

position of captain, with the right to march at the head and "holler;" a responsibility which realized all his

hopes of glory. I suppose there has yet been discovered by man no gratification like that of marching at the

head of a column in uniform on parade, unless, perhaps, it is marching at their head when they are leaving a

field of battle. John experienced all the thrill of this conspicuous authority, and I daresay that nothing in his

later life has so exalted him in his own esteem; certainly nothing has since happened that was so important as

the events of that parade day seemed. He satiated himself with all the delights of war.

It is impossible to say at what age a New England countryboy becomes conscious that his trouserslegs are

too short, and is anxious about the part of his hair and the fit of his womanmade roundabout. These

harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least, a generation ago he served a long

apprenticeship with nature only for a master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.

But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it is easy to underestimate the influences that,

unconsciously to him, were expanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was the lovely but

narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were the great hills which he climbed, only to see other

hills stretching away to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures, and the wide sweeps of

forest through which the winter tempests howled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the

great shadows of summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shouldering up above the peaks,

hurrying across the narrow sky,the clouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden

dashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, a fathomless vault of heaven

where the henhawk and the eagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can you say how

these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contact with the great world? Do you

If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and illused straw hat, picking his barefooted way over

the rocks along the river bank of a cool morning to see if an eel had "got on," you would not have fancied

that he lived in an ideal world. Nor did he consciously. So far as he knew, he had no more sentiment than a

jackknife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a

lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flagroot, tickets of

standing at the head, gimlet, billetsdoux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other

precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's troutfishing.

She was, after all, only a single and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, and there was no harm

in letting his imagination play about her illumined head. Since Cynthia had "got religion" and John had got

nothing, his love was tempered with a little awe and a feeling of distance. He was not fickle, and yet I cannot

say that he was not ready to construct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated. Nothing was

easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage, drawn by two splendid horses in plated harness, driven

along the sandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on the back seat a

handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, on the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy, an imp

out of a storybook. John was told that the black boy was a slave, and that the carriage was from Baltimore.

Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part of the slender

boy on the front seat,here was an opening into a vast realm. The highstepping horses and the shining

harness were enough to excite John's admiration, but these were nothing to the little girl. His eyes had never

before fallen upon that kind of girl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovely creature could exist. Was it the

soft and dainty toilet, was it the brown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut features, or

the charming little figure of this fairylike person? Was this expression on her mobile face merely that of

amusement at seeing a countryboy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in him what John felt

himself to be? Then he would go the world over to serve her. In a moment he was selfconscious. His

trousers seemed to creep higher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush. He hoped that she had

not seen the other side of him, for, in fact, the patches were not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth. The

vision flashed by him in a moment, but it left him with a resentful feeling. Perhaps that proud little girl would

be sorry some day, when he had become a general, or written a book, or kept a store, to see him go away and

marry another. He almost made up his cruel mind on the instant that he would never marry her, however bad

she might feel. And yet he could n't get her out of his mind for days and days, and when her image was

present, even Cynthia in the singers' seat on Sunday looked a little cheap and common. Poor Cynthia! Long

before John became a general or had his revenge on the Baltimore girl, she married a farmer and was the

mother of children, redheaded; and when John saw her years after, she looked tired and discouraged, as one

Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusements John had. The middle pier of the long covered

bridge over the river stood upon a great rock, and this rock (which was known as the swimmingrock,

whence the boys on summer evenings dove into the deep pool by its side) was a favorite spot with John when

he could get an hour or two from the everlasting "chores." Making his way out to it over the rocks at low

water with his fishpole, there he was content to sit and observe the world; and there he saw a great deal of

life. He always expected to catch the legendary trout which weighed two pounds and was believed to inhabit

that pool. He always did catch horned dace and shiners, which he despised, and sometimes he snared a

monstrous sucker a foot and a half long. But in the summer the sucker is a flabby fish, and John was not

thanked for bringing him home. He liked, however, to lie with his face close to the water and watch the long

fishes panting in the clear depths, and occasionally he would drop a pebble near one to see how gracefully he

would scud away with one wave of the tail into deeper water. Nothing fears the little brown boy. The

yellowbird slants his wings, almost touches the deep water before him, and then escapes away under the

bridge to the east with a glint of sunshine on his back; the fishhawk comes down with a swoop, dips one

wing, and, his prey having darted under a stone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring on evenpoised

pinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle which is sweeping the sky in widening circles.

But there is other life. A wagon rumbles over the bridge, and the farmer and his wife, jogging along, do not

know that they have startled a lazy boy into a momentary fancy that a thundershower is coming up. John

can see as he lies there on a still summer day, with the fishes and the birds for company, the road that comes

down the left bank of the river,a hot, sandy, welltraveled road, hidden from view here and there by trees

and bushes. The chief point of interest, however, is an enormous sycamoretree by the roadside and in front

of John's house. The house is more than a century old, and its timbers were hewed and squared by Captain

Moses Rice (who lies in his grave on the hillside above it), in the presence of the Red Man who killed him

with arrow and tomahawk some time after his house was set in order. The gigantic tree, struck with a sort of

leprosy, like all its species, appears much older, and of course has its tradition. They say that it grew from a

green stake which the first land surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight. John was reminded of it

years after when he sat under the shade of the decrepit limetree in Freiburg and was told that it was

originally a twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand when he dropped exhausted

in the square with the word "Victory!" on his lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat,

where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad but scanty shade of the great buttonball

tree (as it was called) stood an old wateringtrough, with its halfdecayed penstock and wellworn spout

pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough. It is fed by a spring near by, and the water

is sweeter and colder than any in the known world, unless it be the well Zemzem, as generations of people

and horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could come back. And if they could file along this

road again, what a procession there would be riding down the valley!antiquated vehicles, rusty wagons

adorned with the invariable buffalorobe even in the hottest days, lean and long favored horses, frisky colts,

drawing, generation after generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to meeting and to mill.

What a refreshment is that waterspout! All day long there are pilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better

buyers, probably. Out jumps a man, down goes the checkrein. What a good draught the nag takes! Here

comes a longstepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown linen coat and wideawake hat,dissolute,

horseylooking man. They turn up, of course. Ah, there is an establishment he knows well: a sorrel horse and

an old chaise. The sorrel horse scents the water afar off, and begins to turn up long before he reaches the

trough, thrusting out his nose in anticipation of the coot sensation. No check to let down; he plunges his nose

in nearly to his eyes. in his haste to get at it. Two maiden ladies unmistakably such, though they appear

neither "anxious nor aimless " within the scooptop smile benevolently on the sorrel back. It is the

deacon's horse, a meetinggoing nag, with a sedate, leisurely jog as he goes; and these are two of the "salt of

the earth,"the brevet rank of the women who stand and wait,going down to the village store to dicker.

There come two men in a hurry, horse driven up smartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and

the horse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back, the nervous man in the buggy hitches

forward on his seat, as if that would carry the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumberwagon with load of boards;

horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and cries "G'lang," and the horse reluctantly goes by, turning

his head wistfully towards the flowing spout. Ah, here comes an equipage strange to these parts, and John

stands up to look; an elegant carriage and two horses; trunks strapped on behind; gentleman and boy on front

seat and two ladies on back seat,city people. The gentleman descends, unchecks the horses, wipes his

brow, takes a drink at the spout and looks around, evidently remarking upon the lovely view, as he swings his

handkerchief in an explanatory manner. Judicious travelers. John would like to know who they are. Perhaps

they are from Boston, whence come all the wonderfully painted peddlers' wagons drawn by six stalwart

horses, which the driver, using no rein, controls with his long whip and cheery voice. If so, great is the

condescension of Boston; and John follows them with an undefined longing as they drive away toward the

mountains of Zoar. Here is a footman, dusty and tired, who comes with lagging steps. He stops, removes his

hat, as he should to such a tree, puts his mouth to the spout, and takes a long pull at the lively water. And then

So they come and go all the summer afternoon; but the great event of the day is the passing down the valley

of the majestic stagecoach, the vast yellowbodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off the shaking

of chains, traces, and whiffletrees, and the creaking of its leathern braces, as the great bulk swings along

piled high with trunks. It represents to John, somehow, authority, government, the right of way; the driver is

an autocrat, everybody must make way for the stagecoach. It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal

There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy's education. I think his imagination was

stimulated by a band of gypsies who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a little roadside patch of

green turf by the riverbank not far from his house. It was shaded by elms and butternuttrees, and a long

spit of sand and pebbles ran out from it into the brawling stream. Probably they were not a very good kind of

gypsy, although the story was that the men drank and beat the women. John didn't know much about

drinking; his experience of it was confined to sweet cider; yet he had already set himself up as a reformer,

and joined the Cold Water Band. The object of this Band was to walk in a procession under a banner that

and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of a well curb with a long sweep. It kept John

and all the little boys and girls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age; though perhaps

a few of them died meantime from eating loafcake and pie and drinking icecold water at the celebrations

The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled of curiosity and fear. Nothing more alien could

come into the New England life than this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible that here were actually

people who lived outdoors, who slept in their covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air;

it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and the remote times of the storybooks; and John

took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing horses and

robbing henroosts and cornfields, for the mysterious race who for thousands of years have done these same

things in all lands, by right of their pure blood and ancient lineage. John was afraid to approach the camp

when any of the scowling and villainous men were lounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took more courage

when only women and children were visible. The swarthy, blackhaired women in dirty calico frocks were

anything but attractive, but they spoke softly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him into bringing

them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course of the season. In front of the tent were planted in

the ground three poles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle. This was the kitchen, and it was

sufficient. The fuel for the fire was the driftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require to be sawed

into stovelengths; and, in short, that the "chores" about this establishment were reduced to the minimum.

And an older person than John might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paid neither rent nor taxes,

and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature. It seemed to the boy that affairs would go more smoothly in the

world if everybody would live in this simple manner. Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, why it is

One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music from the swinging curtain of the doorway, I

entered a little church much frequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedingly pretty sight

It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart for some festival, or belongs to some saint or

another, and I suppose that when leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint ready to claim the 29th

of February. Whatever the day was to the elders, the evening was devoted to the children. The first thing I

noticed was, that the quaint old church was lighted up with innumerable wax tapers,an uncommon sight,

for the darkness of a Catholic church in the evening is usually relieved only by a candle here and there, and

by a blazing pyramid of them on the high altar. The use of gas is held to be a vulgar thing all over Europe,

Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and the groups of children were scattered all about

the church. There was a group by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupied by knots of them,

and there were so many circles of them seated on the pavement that I could with difficulty make my way

among them. There were hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in their holiday apparel, and all intent

And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vast vaults above them. The tapers were little

spiral coils of wax, which the children unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they were tired of holding

them, they rested them on the ground and watched the burning. I stood some time by a group of a dozen

seated in a corner of the church. They had massed all the tapers in the center and formed a ring about the

spectacle, sitting with their legs straight out before them and their toes turned up. The light shone full in their

happy faces, and made the group, enveloped otherwise in darkness, like one of Correggio's pictures of

children or angels. Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the sixteenth century, who painted cherubs like

children who were just going to heaven, and children like cherubs who had just come out of it. But then, he

had the Italian children for models, and they get the knack of being lovely very young. An Italian child finds

One could not but be struck with the patience these little people exhibited in their occupation, and the

enjoyment they got out of it. There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved in the most

gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, and there were many of them so small that they could

only toddle about by the most judicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say this by way of reproof to

These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about the church; and they made with their tapers little

spots of light, which looked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is at Dresden,the

Holy Family at Night, and the light from the Divine Child blazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of

the children were infants in the nurses' arms, but no one was too small to have a taper, and to run the risk of

There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and the church has understood this longing in

The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there is a good deal of shifting about, and I see

little stragglers wandering over the church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionally they form a little

procession and march from one altar to another, their lights twinkling as they go.

But all this time there is music pouring out of the organloft at the end of the church, and flooding all its

spaces with its volume. In front of the organ is a choir of boys, led by a roundfaced and jolly monk, who

rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noise rumble about a long time in his stomach before he pours it

out of his mouth. I can see the faces of all of them quite well, for each singer has a candle to light his

And next to the monk stands the boy,the handsomest boy in the whole world probably at this moment. I

can see now his great, liquid, dark eyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his long waving

hair when he struck into his part. He resembled the portraits of Raphael, when that artist was a boy; only I

think he looked better than Raphael, and without trying, for he seemed to be a spontaneous sort of boy. And

how that boy did sing! He was the soprano of the choir, and he had a voice of heavenly sweetness. When he

opened his mouth and tossed back his head, he filled the church with exquisite melody.

He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As we never heard an angel sing, that comparison is not worth much. I

have seen pictures of angels singing, there is one by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck in the gallery at Berlin,and

they open their mouths like this boy, but I can't say as much for their singing. The lark, which you very likely

never heard either) for larks are as scarce in America as angels,is a bird that springs up from the meadow

and begins to sing as he rises in a spiral flight, and the higher he mounts, the sweeter he sings, until you think

the notes are dropping out of heaven itself, and you hear him when he is gone from sight, and you think you

And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes and a greater compass and more volume,

I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy was a good boy. He was probably one of the

most mischievous boys that was ever in an organloft. All the time that he was singing the vespers he was

skylarking like an imp. While he was pouring out the most divine melody, he would take the opportunity of

kicking the shins of the boy next to him, and while he was waiting for his part, he would kick out behind at

any one who was incautious enough to approach him. There never was such a vicious boy; he kept the whole

loft in a ferment. When the monk rumbled his bass in his stomach, the boy cut up monkeyshines that set

every other boy into a laugh, or he stirred up a row that set them all at fisticuffs.

And yet this boy was a great favorite. The jolly monk loved him best of all and bore with his wildest pranks.

When he was wanted to sing his part and was skylarking in the rear, the fat monk took him by the ear and

brought him forward; and when he gave the boy's ear a twist, the boy opened his lovely mouth and poured

forth such a flood of melody as you never heard. And he did n't mind his notes; he seemed to know his notes

by heart, and could sing and look off like a nightingale on a bough. He knew his power, that boy; and he

stepped forward to his stand when he pleased, certain that he would be forgiven as soon as he began to sing.

And such spirit and life as he threw into the performance, rollicking through the Vespers with a perfect

While the little angels down below were pattering about with their wax tapers, keeping the holy fire burning,

suddenly the organ stopped, the monk shut his book with a bang, the boys blew out the candles, and I heard

them all tumbling downstairs in a gale of noise and laughter. The beautiful boy I saw no more.

About him plays the light of tender memory; but were he twice as lovely, I could never think of him as