Child Life in Prose Part 32

I next succeeded in discovering for myself a child's book, of not less interest than even the Iliad, which might, I was told, be read on Sabbaths, in a magnificent old edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress,"

printed on coa.r.s.e whity-brown paper, and charged with numerous woodcuts, each of which occupied an entire page, that, on principles of economy, bore letter-press on the other side. And such delightful prints as they are! It must have been some such volume that sat for its portrait to Wordsworth, and which he so exquisitely describes as

"Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts, Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbow'd, and lean-ankled too, With long and ghastly shanks,--forms which, once seen, Could never be forgotten."

I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life,--the art of holding converse with books; and was transferred to the grammar school of the parish, at which there attended at the time about a hundred and twenty boys, with a cla.s.s of about thirty individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the counting, seeing that it consisted only of _la.s.sies_.

One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amus.e.m.e.nt to read, I began gossiping with my nearest cla.s.s-fellow, a very tall boy, who ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most occasions sat beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him about the tall Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end, every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel.

My story-telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no stopping in my course. I had to tell all the stories I had ever heard or read. The demand on the part of my cla.s.s-fellows was great and urgent; and, setting myself to try my ability of original production, I began to dole out to them long extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abounding in trap-doors and secret pa.s.sages, like that of Udolpho. And finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then pa.s.sed a luxurious old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of confectionery and fruits.

With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favorite with the master; and when at the general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, sir," he has said, after the cla.s.s had just perused, in the school collection, a "Tatler" or "Spectator,"--"that, sir, is a good paper; it's an Addison"; or, "That's one of Steele's, sir"; and on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on Peace," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelled word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is good,--very good, indeed, sir."

And then he added, with a grim smile, "_Care_, sir, is, I dare say, as you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of it on your spelling and your grammar."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

WALTER SCOTT,

POET, HISTORIAN, AND NOVELIST OF SCOTLAND.

It was at Sandy Knowe, at the home of my father's father, that I had the first knowledge of life; and I recollected distinctly that my situation and appearance were a little whimsical. I was lame, and among the old remedies for lameness some one had recommended that, as often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped and wrapped up in the warm skin as it was taken from the carca.s.s of the animal. In this Tartar-like dress I well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlor of the farm-house, while my grandfather, an old man with snowy hair, tried to make me crawl. And I remember a relation of ours, Colonel MacDougal, joining with him to excite and amuse me. I recollect his old military dress, his small c.o.c.ked hat, deeply laced, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light-colored coat, and milk-white locks, as he knelt on the ground before me, and dragged his watch along the carpet to make me follow it. This must have happened about my third year, for both the old men died soon after. My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of the farm, a.s.sisted by my uncle Thomas Scott. This was during the American war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle's weekly visits (for we had no news at another time) to hear of the defeat of Washington, as if I had some personal cause for hating him. I got a strange prejudice in favor of the Stuart family from the songs and tales I heard about them. One or two of my own relations had been put to death after the battle of Culloden, and the husband of one of my aunts used to tell me that he was present at their execution. My grandmother used to tell me many a tale of Border chiefs, like Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead. My kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will always be dear to me, used to read to me with great patience until I could repeat long pa.s.sages by heart.

I learned the old ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of our almost only visitor, Dr. Duncan, the worthy clergyman of the parish, who had no patience to have his sober chat disturbed by my shouting for this ditty. Methinks I see now his tall, emaciated figure, legs cased in clasped gambadoes, and his very long face, and hear him exclaim, "One might as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is!"

I was in my fourth year when my father was told that the waters of Bath might be of some advantage to my lameness. My kind aunt, though so retiring in habits as to make such a journey anything but pleasure or amus.e.m.e.nt, undertook to go with me to the wells, as readily as if she expected all the delight the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitors. My health was by this time a good deal better from the country air at my grandmother's. When the day was fine, I was carried out and laid beside the old shepherd among the crags and rocks, around which he fed his sheep. Childish impatience inclined me to struggle with my lameness, and I began by degrees to stand, walk, and even run.

I lived at Bath a year without much advantage to my lameness. The beauties of the Parade, with the river Avon winding around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only exceeded by the splendors of a toy-shop near the orange grove. I was afraid of the statues in the old abbey church, and looked with horror upon the image of Jacob's ladder with its angels.

My mother joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn for poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her religion, as became her s.e.x, was of a cast less severe than my father's. My hours of leisure from school study were spent in reading with her Pope's translation of Homer, which, with a few ballads and the songs of Allan Ramsay, was the first poetry I possessed. My acquaintance with English literature gradually extended itself. In the intervals of my school-hours I read with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented, not forgetting fairy-tales and Eastern stories and romances. I found in my mother's dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of Shakespeare, nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them by the firelight.

In my thirteenth year I first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry." As I had been from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my attention, from the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those which I possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be described, with what delight I saw pieces of the same kind which had amused my childhood, and still continued in secret the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject of sober research, grave commentary, and apt ill.u.s.tration, by an editor who showed his poetical genius was capable of emulating the best qualities of what his pious labor preserved. I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge plata.n.u.s-tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden adjoining the house. The summer day sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appet.i.te of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could sc.r.a.pe a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with half the enthusiasm.

To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if not the most romantic, village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves, but venerable from their a.s.sociation. The meeting of two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song; the ruins of an ancient abbey; the more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle; the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern taste,--are in themselves objects of the first cla.s.s; yet are so mixed, united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent description, that they harmonize into one general picture, and please rather by unison than by concord.

FREDERIC DOUGLa.s.s,

THE SLAVE-BOY OF MARYLAND, NOW ONE OF THE ABLEST CITIZENS AND MOST ELOQUENT ORATORS OF THE UNITED STATES.

I was born in what is called Tuckahoe, on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Maryland, a worn-out, desolate, sandy region. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptauk River, which runs through, from which they take abundance of shad and herring, and plenty of fever and ague. My first experience of life began in the family of my grandparents. The house was built of logs, clay, and straw. A few rough fence-rails thrown loosely over the rafters answered the purpose of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads. It was a long time before I learned that this house was not my grandparents', but belonged to a mysterious personage who was spoken of as "Old Master"; nay, that my grandmother and her children and grandchildren, myself among them, all belonged to this dreadful personage, who would only suffer me to live a few years with my grandmother, and when I was big enough would carry me off to work on his plantation.

The absolute power of this distant Old Master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold cruel iron, yet it left me something to brood over. The thought of being separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me. I dreaded the idea of going to live with that strange Old Master whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but always with fear. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut and the joyous circle under her care, but especially _she_, who made us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her return,--how could we leave her and the good old home!

But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after-life, are transient. The first seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are as full of content as those of the most favored white children of the slaveholder. The slave-boy escapes many troubles which vex his white brother. He is never lectured for improprieties of behavior. He is never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never scolded for soiling the table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor. He never has the misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or tearing his clothes, for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is never expected to act like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a rude little slave.

Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can be, in his life and conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish nature suggests; enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks of horses, dogs, pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner compromising his dignity or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs wild; has no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery; no nice little speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins, to show how smart he is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of the way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave-boys, he may trot on, in his joyous and roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen under the palm-trees of Africa.

To be sure, he is occasionally reminded, when he stumbles in the way of his master,--and this he early learns to avoid,--that he is eating his _white bread_, and that he will be made to _see sights_ by and by.

The threat is soon forgotten, the shadow soon pa.s.ses, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or play in the mud, as best suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can plunge into the river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing or the fear of wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt--for that is all he has on--is easily dried; and it needed washing as much as did his skin. His food is of the coa.r.s.est kind, consisting for the most part of corn-meal mush, which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster-sh.e.l.l. His days, when the weather is warm, are spent in the pure, open air and in the bright sunshine. He eats no candies; gets no lumps of loaf-sugar; always relishes his food; cries but little, for n.o.body cares for his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because others so think them.

In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight years of his life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom troubles fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy, so far as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now telling.

I gradually learned that the plantation of Old Master was on the river Wye, twelve miles from Tuckahoe. About this place and about that queer Old Master, who must be something more than man and something worse than an angel, I was eager to know all that could be known. Unhappily, all that I found out only increased my dread of being carried thither.

The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that I wished to remain little forever; for I knew, the taller I grew, the shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads up stairs, and its clay floor down stairs, and its dirt chimney and windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship of all the rest, the ladder stairway, and the hole curiously dug in front of the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy placed the sweet potatoes to keep them from the frost, was MY HOME,--the only home I ever had; and I loved it, and all connected with it. The old fences around it, and the stumps in the edge of the woods near it, and the squirrels that ran, skipped, and played upon them, were objects of interest and affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely balanced, that I could move it up and down with only one hand, and could get a drink myself without calling for help. Where else in the world could such a well be found, and where could such another home be met with? Down in a little valley, not far from grandmamma's cabin, stood a mill, where the people came often, in large numbers, to get their corn ground. It was a water-mill; and I never shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt while I sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of its ponderous wheel. The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pin-hook and thread line I could get _nibbles_, if I could catch no fish. But, in all my sports and plays, and in spite of them, there would, occasionally, come the painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there, and that I must soon be called away to the home of Old Master.

I was A SLAVE,--born a slave; and though the fact was strange to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of _somebody_ I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been made to fear this Somebody above all else on earth. Born for another's benefit, as the _firstling_ of the cabin flock I was soon to be selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable Old Master, whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood's imagination. When the time of my departure was decided upon, my grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded event about to happen. Up to the morning (a beautiful summer morning) when we were to start, and, indeed, during the whole journey,--a journey which, child as I was, I remember as well as if it were yesterday,--she kept the sad fact hidden from me.

This reserve was necessary, for, could I have known all, I should have given grandmother some trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was helpless, and she--dear woman!--led me along by the hand, resisting, with the reserve and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks to the last.

The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye River, where Old Master lived, was full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved too hard for me, but that my dear old grandmother--blessings on her memory!--afforded occasional relief by "toting" me on her shoulder. My grandmother, though old in years,--as was evident from more than one gray hair, which peeped from between the ample and graceful folds of her newly-ironed bandanna turban,--was marvellously straight in figure, elastic, and muscular. I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have "toted"

me farther, but that I felt myself too much of a man to allow it, and insisted on walking. Releasing dear grandmamma from carrying me did not make me altogether independent of her, when we happened to pa.s.s through portions of the sombre woods which lay between Tuckahoe and Wye River.

She often found me increasing the energy of my grip, and holding her clothing, lest something should come out of the woods and eat me up.

Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me, and got themselves taken for wild beasts. I could see their legs, eyes, and ears till I got close enough to them to know that the eyes were knots, washed white with rain, and the legs were broken boughs, and the ears only fungous growths on the bark.

As the day went on the heat grew; and it was not until the afternoon that we reached the much-dreaded end of the journey. I found myself in the midst of a group of children of many colors,--black, brown, copper-colored, and nearly white. I had not seen so many children before. Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry, noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe. As a new-comer, I was an object of special interest; and, after laughing and yelling around me, and playing all sorts of wild tricks, the children asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused to do, preferring to stay with grandmamma. I could not help feeling that our being there boded no good to me. Grandmamma looked sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before. I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell on me, though I knew not the cause.

All suspense, however, must have an end, and the end of mine was at hand. Affectionately patting me on the head, and telling me to be a good boy, grandmamma bade me to go and play with the little children.

"They are kin to you," said she; "go and play with them." Among a number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve, and Jerry, Nance and Betty.

Grandmother pointed out my brother and sisters who stood in the group.

I had never seen brother nor sisters before; and though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but _slavery_ had made us strangers. I heard the words "brother" and "sisters," and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. The experience through which I was pa.s.sing, they had pa.s.sed through before. They had already learned the mysteries of Old Master's home, and they seemed to look upon me with a certain degree of compa.s.sion; but my heart clave to my grandmother. Think it not strange that so little sympathy of feeling existed between us. The conditions of brotherly and sisterly feeling were wanting; we had never nestled and played together. My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY! The domestic hearth, with its holy lessons and precious endearments, is abolished in the case of a slave-mother and her children. "Little children, love one another," are words seldom heard in a slave-cabin.

I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters, but they were strangers to me, and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave without taking me with her. Entreated to do so, however, and that, too, by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house, to play with them and the other children. _Play_, however, I did not, but stood with my back against the wall, witnessing the mirth of the others. At last, while standing there, one of the children, who had been in the kitchen, ran up to me, in a sort of roguish glee, exclaiming, "Fed, Fed! grandmammy gone! grandmammy gone!" I could not believe it; yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen, to see for myself, and found it even so. Grandmamma had indeed gone, and was now far away, clean out of sight. I need not tell all that happened now. Almost heartbroken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground, and wept a boy's bitter tears, refusing to be comforted.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS,

FIRST NOVELIST OF THE PERIOD.

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children a.s.sembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. Straight in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top,--for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth,--I look into my youngest Christmas recollections.

All toys at first, I find. But upon the branches of the tree, lower down, how thick the books begin to hang! Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with!

"A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe: like Y, who was always confined to a yacht or a yew-tree; and Z, condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany.