Confessions of Boyhood Part 6

Progress, liberty, the Fathers of the Republic and other patriotic themes were those on which we sharpened our pens. For purely literary subjects there was no interest whatever; and, because of this indifference, occurred what was, to me, one of the most mortifying episodes of my youth. I had come into the possession of Milton's poetry, and though untouched by his Paradise Lost, his Lycidas was a revelation to me of the music and rhythm and allusions possible to poetry. I committed it to memory and startled my cla.s.s one day by reciting it as a part of the regular exercises. It was customary for some criticism to follow such exercises; but, to my distress, my beautiful poem, that had filled me with delight, was received in absolute silence. It had fallen like a bolt from heaven on those young wights. Covered with confusion, I went to my seat feeling that I had committed the unpardonable sin of attempting to do something beyond my capacity. No comment on my effort was made at the time; I was not even rallied about it outside the cla.s.s room; and only after fifty years had pa.s.sed did I learn the reason of the extraordinary silence that had followed my rhetorical outbreak. Said one of my cla.s.smates at a reunion, "I shall never forget the day you recited Lycidas; none of the fellows had ever done such a thing; they neither knew nor cared for poetry, and your recitation was a revelation to us all. It came like a shock and thrilled us to bigger things. We never forgot it."

So impressionable and plastic is youth in its formative period that it only takes one great poem to unlock for it the higher mysteries.

We taught ourselves patriotism in season, and before the days of attenuated and hypersensitive politics. Rough fellows were we, dressed in cheap coats, eating coa.r.s.e food, sleeping on hard beds in cold rooms, and I fear the well was not much called upon for baths. We read but little. There was not a newspaper nor magazine taken in the whole establishment, and how we knew what was going on in the world I cannot tell; yet in some way it penetrated our seclusion. In such a small and socially affiliated school, what one knew, all the others soon imbibed.

We were every one of us Yankee boys, acquisitive and resolved to make the most of ourselves and our small opportunities. The library of the inst.i.tution contained about a hundred volumes, and of these some were religious books. There was a ragged, greasy Shakespeare in eight volumes which I tried to read through, but found the task too much for me.

However, I did have a glimpse of something for which I found myself unprepared; and such is the const.i.tution of my mind, that I have seldom been able to grasp dramatic writing with complete enjoyment; I am apt to dwell too long on its beauty spots. For this reason I prefer the Greek drama, because of the simplicity of its construction. The characters are fewer, and, I may say, not so personal, and there are not so many threads to keep in hand. I am in no perplexity when I begin Agamemnon and Antigone; there is a clear, simple and straight path for action. The one book which we all read with greatest diligence was Todd's Student's Manual. As we did not really study much, it seemed best to know all about the methods and rules for study. The book was stuffed full of sound advice in regard to the regulations of the student's time, diet, sleep and exercise; in short, what may, without offense, be called the mechanical apparatus for the acquirement of education and character. I am sure I profited much from this manual, although I could never observe a t.i.the of its instructions. It was something to know there was a path especially laid out for the student, if he could not always keep it. It prompted the searching of one's self, and in consequence, many of us began to keep a diary, which, I think in my own case, stimulated observation and reflection. Feeble as the young child's first effort to walk were my entries in my first diary. How is one to write without a definite subject, or one selected for him? But with each day's practice it became easier, and at last a pleasure to hold a silent intercourse with myself, to recover and merely to catalogue the day's doings and try to discriminate them. In vain thus far were my attempts at logic in the debating club, and the sentences in my diary seemed even more wanting in connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of nothing so dead and so precipitating as the look into an early youthful diary. Not much more encouraging is the book one has written and published, and some time after has the temerity to open.

SCHOOLMASTER

After a few terms at Worcester Academy, during which I contrived in different ways to support myself on a single meal a day, at one time by ringing the bell for morning prayers and sweeping the general recitation room, at another by delivering a daily newspaper, the _Worcester Spy_, to one hundred and twenty-five subscribers, I thought myself competent to teach a common school, by which I hoped to earn enough to carry me through another year of study. I was examined as to my qualifications for teaching by the chairman of the school committee of the town of Grafton, having applied for one of the district schools. Between fright and incompetency I pa.s.sed a most inadequate examination. What little I did know deserted me at the pinch. The reverend gentleman, who conducted me through questions in the various common school studies, was one of the most amiable souls in the world, as I had many subsequent opportunities of knowing, for he continued my friend as long as he lived. He told me frankly that he was hardly warranted in giving me a certificate, but would allow me to make a trial of the school, and, as my sister had such a high reputation as a teacher, he had no doubt I would succeed if I was in earnest and studied diligently. The school consisted of fifty pupils of all ages; some were just learning to read, others had been through again and again all the text books in use and went to school in winter for fun, and because they had nothing else to do. There were six young men four years older than myself. These older pupils thought they knew their school books well enough, and had no occasion to study them again. They were much inclined to match their proficiency with that of their teacher, which was a good way of putting him on his mettle. A few appeared to be present only to make trouble, and to try their pugilism against that of the master. I was not especially athletic; yet, when my temper was up, I was a dangerous antagonist. I soon discovered the work cut out for me. I spent every evening in preparation for the next day's lessons, and I introduced some new exercises for those older boys and girls whose familiarity with their books gave them little to do. My troubles began soon enough, not in the school, but among the parents, which was shortly reflected in their children. In every New England school district there are generally factions and parties as in larger political divisions; it divides on all kinds of issues, political, religious or social. I am giving my experience, not for its personal value, but as the average picture of the average school district. This particular district was sharply split by the temperance party and the rummies. It so happened that the prudential committeeman, as he was called, that is, the agent whose office it was to hire a teacher and have the general care of all the business concerns of the school for the year, was an ardent temperance worker, and I boarded with him. This was reason enough for the other party to stir up antagonism against the teacher. It was not long before I became aware of the situation, and learned to my surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt that I was a strong temperance man, and in the habit of making temperance speeches. The rummies, I found, were men addicted only to their cider barrels; hard working citizens with red faces and rather lurid speech. On the whole, I thought them much more interesting characters than the faction to which I was supposed to belong. But they would have none of me, and I had not sufficient tact to win them to myself. The crisis came when I thrashed the son of one of them, my first and last experiment in corporal punishment. The boy's father threatened and sent me word that the first time he met me I might look out for his horse whip. I fully expected it, and carried a stick on my way to and from school. He turned out to be a great coward, for one day we met on the road and he slunk the other side of his load of wood as we came opposite each other. He took his boy out of school, and several others followed him, complaining that I did not know enough arithmetic to teach them, which was quite true, only I was learning; and gladly would I learn and gladly teach, if they could have had patience. I think my most successful teaching has been with those with whom I was also studying and learning, having a double incitement and interest. The teacher who knows it all beforehand, and rests in his knowledge is soon dulled and wearied.

This incident, the thrashing of one boy and the withdrawal of several others, brought peace and good will into the school-room, and I became on intimate and even affectionate terms with the remainder of the pupils, and on the last day of the term, examination day it was called, we were all much lauded and flattered by the school committee and a.s.sembled friends. It was my first experience of responsibility, and settled some matters with me for life, chief of which was that the only authority and influence of value are those that are gained by love. The more friendly and intimate my relation with any pupil the more pleasant was my task, the more easy his lesson, the more rapid his progress. I also learned that all effort is lost on a stupid mind, and that it is better to wait upon its awakening. In this I had my own experience to support me, for I never learned anything until aroused from within; all else is but untempered plaster that falls away as soon as it ceases to be fresh. Outside of my school and its duties I found considerable opportunity for improving myself. The couple, with whom I boarded, were good souls, and, having no children of their own, showed me much kindly attention. The table was plentiful; we had pumpkin pie three times daily, baked in oblong tins, and the corner piece was the favorite cut.

My room was large and pleasant, and better furnished than any I had ever occupied. My host always wore a cheerful smile and seemed the happiest of men, although he never joked; his conversation was serious and religious, in striking contrast to his manner and usual countenance. He spoke of heaven and h.e.l.l with the same merry twinkle in his eye, the same smiling face. His speech was accompanied by a sort of low, half audible whistle. He encouraged me through all my troubles, and told me not to worry about the old cider-drinking farmers, as there were more horsewhips than one in the "deestrict." His wife's chief dread in this mortal life was fire. She expected the house would burn up every night.

I can see now her painful look of alarm when there was news of a conflagration anywhere; she would immediately leave her chair, look at the stove, examine the stovepipe and peer out into the kitchen. Then it was not unusual for dissolute, drinking men to take revenge on the total abstainers by setting fire to their barns. There was only one family in the district with whom I became intimate, and whose friendship across the continent I still keep. This was the family of a retired Universalist clergyman. They lived in a large farmhouse, and the clergyman was engaged in reclaiming an immense bog, and occasionally supplying some vacant neighboring pulpit. He was a visionary of a perfect kind. All bogs were to him prospective gardens of Eden; impossibilities to him the only things worth attempting; all men saints and angels. He had inherited a considerable fortune, which had mostly disappeared in the fathomless swamps of the different towns where he had sojourned as a clergyman. His wife was a lineal descendant of one of the heroes of Concord Bridge; a beautiful, domestic woman full of prudent and wise counsels, which had saved the family from being swallowed up in her husband's Utopias. Three of their younger children were among the brightest of my pupils; three grown up sons were still at home, working on the land a part of the year, and in winter they made boots in a little shop attached to the house. As formerly in Hopkinton, so here in this shop, but with more intelligence and learning, I heard and now took part in the discussion of all sorts of questions. Their minds seemed to have been trained in more philosophical directions than any I had met.

Here I had some new insights which helped me forward, and I heard much of the worthlessness of religious dogmas. It was, however, with a tin pedler, a friend and distant relative of this family, that I turned the newest leaf in my mental progress. He usually travelled through Grafton twice a month, and made it his convenience to put up over night with his friends. It was there I used to meet him. His name was Daboll, and he claimed to be descended from that ancient Connecticut maker of arithmetics and almanacs, Nathan Daboll. He said that was why he became a pedler--he was born to calculate. Yet his occupation sat very lightly upon him. It gave him abundant opportunities for reflection and conversation. In the latter he took delight, and lost no chance of displaying his skill in setting forth his own ideas and drawing out those of his customers. If he sold a pan or a broom it was accompanied by some bit of philosophy that he had evolved on the lonesome stretches of road between farmhouse and farmhouse. I write evolved; but that was not his own word, nor his theory of the origin of his ideas. He claimed that they came to him when he escaped his own control. I have forgotten many of the details and examples which he used to give in explanation of his doctrine, and should not remember them at all after so many years, save that at various times I have had similar experiences, and that I have been often reminded of them by the modern discussions of psychology, and especially of the operations of the subjective mind. He said that he was led into his view from thinking about his dreams which were beyond control of the will. His next step was to observe that he sometimes dreamed when awake; that is, thoughts came into his mind without conscious effort, and at times when his head was wholly vacant or wholly occupied with his business. Many things were made clear to him in this manner, and he had come to the conclusion that the best way to get the wisdom enjoined by the Bible and learned men, was to escape from yourself, in short, to become pa.s.sive. In long summer days, slowly travelling his circuit of some forty miles, calling at every house where he was well known, and must needs be in no haste to trade, (for country people were never sure of what they wanted until they looked the cart over), he had plenty of time to resign himself to the involuntary and dreamlike states of mind, which solved for him the questions in which he was most interested. I was not so much impressed that such notions should come from a tin pedler as by the notions themselves; for at that period the democracy of our New England towns considered and treated a pedler as a man and a brother. His business was not regarded as demeaning, and frequently was an apprenticeship to that of a store keeper, and he might, and sometimes did, become the rich merchant of a great city. Many young men peddled small wares, books and pictures between terms to help themselves in paying for their education. So Reuben Daboll was no phenomenon; but his philosophy was phenomenal, at least to me, and kept me awake on the nights when the evening had been spent with him. It kept me awake, I say, for I never could reason far, and trying to think gave me a headache. I was perplexed by a thousand problems, my own, and those propounded by my companions and elders, and others suggested in books; and I wondered if Daboll's way was not an easier and shorter method of answer than the pros and cons of argument.

It is interesting now for me to reflect upon the two influences following each other so closely, that were quickening my own faculties; for they were in direct contrast with each other; one, the animated debates and attempted logical presentation of a subject with its related facts, as presented at the Worcester Academy; and this new method of pa.s.sive receptivity, this opening of the inner eye of the mind to receive impressions. It was a long time before I could experiment with any success in this new direction, for I was of an active and impatient temperament, longing to hurry to an end that I might begin something new, and wishing to arrive rather than to profit by each day's march. As I grew to maturity, the latter method was more congenial and became of more practical use to me, and one of my favorite mottoes has been, "Our thoughts are a pious reception."

The winter school being over in the spring, I returned to Worcester Academy feeling older and more sobered. I began Latin with a dim idea of going to college, how and when, I did not dare to forecast. I was not as happy as formerly in the school. The debates, compositions and declamations interested me less, and I should have been quite dull except for some young girls at the Oread Inst.i.tute. This inst.i.tution had just been opened on the hill, directly opposite our academy. It was not within speaking distance, but was within writing and signalling distance. All intercourse between the girl students and ourselves was prohibited. I have frequently noticed this juxtaposition of schools for the s.e.xes, and also that laws of non-intercourse are enacted for no other purpose than to make their infringement the more tempting and delightful. My chum knew one of the Oreads, a girl from his own village; with this key we carried the citadel. We established a post office in the neighboring stone wall and arranged many a clandestine meeting, walk or drive. The girl whom I had chosen for my devotions was from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She wore her hair in long curls, that fell over her neck and shoulders, and were constantly straggling over her face. Then with a toss of her comely head and a pretty gesture of her hand she would throw them back. This little trick captivated me and fixed my fate. She constantly came between me and the Latin declensions and conjugations that I was trying to memorize. However, I was saved from anything like a formal attachment by her early announcement to me that she was engaged to the son of an ex-governor of New Hampshire. I had reason to suspect afterward that this was a subterfuge to forestall any serious consequences from our intercourse. If so, she was a wise maiden, and whatever claims we men may arrogate to ourselves, women are better tacticians than we in their personal relations. With this barrier, thus timely erected, I was kept on my good behavior and we amused ourselves with each other's company in many a stolen woodland walk, and in a frequent defrauding of the Worcester post-office of its revenues. She wrote a tiny hand and could crowd more upon a page than I could upon four. I treasured her notes in my inmost pocket, and our secret correspondence gave me almost as deep a joy as did our companionship.

It was at this time I began to make verses, as much from an imitative instinct as from my sentimental relation with the pretty Oread; for there was now in the school a young man who set up for a poet and was much admired by us all. It seems to me he must have had a sense of musical rhythm, for there has remained in my ear ever since a stanza of his which I caught as he read it to a little coterie of students. There is nothing in it save its melody.

"The while amid the greenwood Whistled the summer breeze Fair Mantua's maiden swore to wed Her loving Genoese."

Those two names, Mantua and Genoese, had a wonderful, faraway imaginative a.s.sociation for me, and still have. Matthew Arnold's magic of poetry, magical words and lines, explain all its charm for me. A feeling beyond the words or the sense is what I require in poetry. In vain did I try to express in rhyme what I felt. The lines halted for the last word. I never ventured to read them to my Oread or fellow students.

Thus I cherished two secrets and discovered that the private indulgence of verse-making is almost as sweet as a hidden love. The terms of the Academy and the Oread Inst.i.tute ended on the same day, and I parted from my sweetheart never to meet again.

FARM HAND

What to do with myself during the long summer vacation was the next question. My money was fast wasting in spite of my economies. There were no country schools open to male teachers in summer. My sister advised me to find employment on a farm. I thought at once of Bellingham, and my dear Uncle Lyman. He did not want help and eventually I hired myself to another uncle who lived in the extreme southern part of the town, close upon the boundary of Rhode Island. My wages were to be twelve dollars per month with board. My uncle's wife was my father's only surviving sister. Their children were married and settled elsewhere. All that was left to them was a large farm and old age. The one made them rather poorer than richer; the other brought upon them a growing habit of penuriousness, gloom and irritability. I was expected to do all the heavy work and most of the ch.o.r.es, except the milking; that, they would allow no one to do, for fear of not squeezing out the last drop. My aunt still made b.u.t.ter and cheese to sell, and in this work I usually helped her the first thing in the morning before the regular day's work. We had breakfast at sunrise, often before. After breakfast my uncle went into the sitting-room where:

"He waled a portion with judicious care, 'And let us worship G.o.d,' he says, with solemn air."

I suppose that is what he did, for I could hear the low mumble of his voice and occasionally catch a scriptural phrase, but neither my aunt nor myself partic.i.p.ated in this mockery of family prayers. She said she had too much to do, and she could not spare me from the cheese tub and the churn. She scolded her husband for his contributions to the church, and begrudged every cent that was spent. She had Franklin's prudential maxims at her tongue's end, besides many another gathered in the course of her long life of thrift and hard work. She never rested from her labors until the Sabbath. Our food was of the coa.r.s.est kind, but well cooked, and work and hunger were sauce enough. She baked once a week in a great brick oven; her other daily cooking was done by an open fire.

Brown bread and cheese were the staff of our life, and I became more fond of them than of any viands I have since eaten. In vain have I besought my household to discover the recipe of my aunt's brown loaves.

Who can recover for me the relish that went with them? With this aged couple I led a lonely yet healthful life. I came nearer to the earth than ever before; I mean her dirt, her stones, her odors and dews as well as to cows, sheep and horses, whose closer relation to the soil insensibly affects those who have the care of them. I felt myself a brother to the ox that I yoked and guided along the furrow. My nigh ox came from the pasture at my call and would lick my hand and stretch out his neck to be stroked. The whole barnyard was friendly, and I took pleasure, having none other, in the signs of it. The neighbors were few and I saw nothing of them. One young man sometimes called, but as his interest in me appeared to consist in a desire to save my soul his visits distressed me. It was my singular fortune through my childhood and early youth, to have been followed by soul savers. At last in desperation I told him that I was not sure as yet that I had a soul to save; when I had, I would consider his propositions. Whereupon he went his way and reported that I was a Universalist, that being in Bellingham the most opprobrious of names, in consequence of an ancient feud between the Baptist and Universalist churches. The Baptists had come off conquerers; the name, however, remained; and an indefinable name of reproach is a convenient thing to have in a country neighborhood.

I have mentioned the penuriousness of my employers. In the case of my uncle it was exhibited in the most extraordinary, amusing, yet harmless ways. He never could pa.s.s by an old, bent, used-up nail, bit of string, pin or a straight stick without picking it up and putting it away. The collar of his coat and front of his gaudy flannel vest were stuck full of pointless pins and eyeless needles. The shed opposite the house was a museum of rubbish, odds and ends of the most worthless articles neatly sorted, tied up in small bundles and hung about the sides of the building. It was a well-developed mania with him, having acquired it through his long years of money getting and saving, and in larger matters, which had made him a well-to-do farmer. Although now old, he was a well-preserved man; there was still a wholesome red spot in his cheek, and a gleam of youth in his eye. His movements were so deliberate and slow that it was impossible that he could ever have worn himself out with work. He would pause between every hill that he hoed and make some remark, or look up at the sun for the time of the day. He could not mow a straight swath because he was always nicking in and out for some straw left by other mowers. When he harnessed his aged horse, as reliable as an ox to drive, and not much faster, he would go over and over every buckle and strap to make sure that all was safe, in the meantime talking to him in a soothing voice as if he expected every moment that he would run away. If Jim had a strong point it was in standing still. When he sneezed he used to say, "I guess I am good for another day," and like his wife he had a ready proverb for everything. Seldom could I catch the whole of it, for he sputtered in his speech and had a falsetto voice. It was evident that he had acquired his property by exceeding thrift, rather than labor, by that ancient all-pervading custom of the New England farmer of doing without and making things last another year.

I had promised myself to do some studying during the summer, but found that the long hours of labor and fatigue at their end unfitted me for anything save rest and sleep. I scarcely opened a book of any kind. I had a volume of Macauly's Essays with me in which I read a little on the Sabbath. On rainy days I stole away to the hay mow and read one of Jane Porter's novels which I found in the house. I attempted to commit to memory the whole of the Lady of the Lake, but got no farther than the first canto, and the songs interspersed through the others. These songs I recited in the field, and they were a great comfort to me. Little do the poets know in what strange, obscure places, and in what lonely, unknown hearts their verses find lodgment. It is not necessary that one should contend that Scott is the greatest of poets, who thought so for a single summer.

With thirty dollars in my purse and a blue camlet suit made of a cloak, which had been my father's best outer garment, I returned to Worcester Academy. I made a resolution, which I kept, to have no more intimacies with the Oreads, and to devote myself to study. I still cherished the idea of college, although it seemed as distant as ever. I began to be interested in public affairs and attended the first convention of the Free Soil party which was held in Worcester. I heard Charles Sumner and Charles Allen speak. Sumner appealed to my sympathies, Allen to my reason. Allen argued, Sumner was eloquent. Most young men in New England had hitherto been admirers of Webster and Clay, and termed themselves Whigs. The truth was they were called to whatever was eloquence. They worshipped the greatness of sounding, patriotic periods. How we admired Kossuth, and immediately paid him the shallow compliment of wearing a Kossuth hat. I also thought I was a Whig, much to the sorrow of my mother, whose sympathies were with the Abolitionists. After the Free Soil convention I was a Free Soiler, and such I continued, casting my first vote for John C. Fremont. At this time Worcester was the favorite place for every kind of convention of the friends of progress.

Anti-slavery, Non-resistance and Women's Rights. I heard all the strange and strong speakers and advocates on those free and lively platforms. I heard Garrison, Phillips, May, Quincy, Pillsbury, the Fosters, Sojourner Truth, Burleigh, Lucretia Mott, and Ernestine Rose. The last speaker, a handsome, modishly dressed New York Jewess, converted me to the cause of woman. In a short time I was an enthusiastic reformer all along the line. Probably there has been no period in our history so charged with new and revolutionary ideas as that from 1835 to 1850. It was a good time to be alive and to be near the center of agitation in Ma.s.sachusetts. I heard both church and state and the whole structure of society attacked. Whatever other reform might be under discussion these were sure to receive the hardest blows; strike, and spare not, was the watchword. For me the great event in my personal experience and awakening at this period, was not especially connected with the reforms that I have named. One small book very much in common with my former limited reading and enthusiasms for celebrated men, shook me to the center of my being. It was Emerson's Representative Men, recently published. Carelessly looking over the volumes on Mr. Grout's counter in Worcester, I took it up, attracted by its t.i.tle, for I was always hungering for stories of eminent men, always hoping to find the secret of their greatness, that I might use it for my own advancement. I stood and read a few pages, laid down the book, but felt that I must read it through. After some battling between my purse and desire, desire won, and I bought the precious volume at the cost of my breakfast for several weeks, so slender were my resources. In the course of three or four years I added to my library Milton's poems, a volume of Tennyson and three of Potter's translation of Euripides; the latter, not because I wanted it, but because I happened to have made the final bid at a book auction. In Representative Men I found the meat my nature craved. In all previous histories and biographies that I had read, there was much going round and about poets and heroes, an external, academic treatment; with Emerson I seemed to come nearer the possible ideal which was already vaguely outlined in my mind. Besides there was much else than Napoleon and Shakespeare in the pages. There were the moral and poetic insights, and, moreover, there was the style, the vital and penetrating Emersonianism, which aroused, and no doubt, dazzled the youthful and impressionable reader. Emerson's terse epigrammatic method of writing was congenial to my inability to follow difficult logic. His style seemed to me the poetical foil of all the prosers of all time. Through the reading of this book eventually I became acquainted with Emerson, Alcott and Th.o.r.eau. They became my teachers; I followed them until, by their guidance, I was enlarged enough to find my own way into companionship with those poets and thinkers, who have endured through the ages. May I never forget to acknowledge my debt to those men of Concord, my earliest masters in fidelity to ideals and the inward light.

CONCLUSION

I began to write these confidences of boyhood for my own pleasure. If I were to continue them into manhood I could not find nor distinguish myself. It would be like emerging suddenly from solitude into a crowd.

The bright days of childhood easily separate themselves from all later time, and are painted with the free pencil of the imagination. I have now come almost to the wide gateways of the world where I must join the indistinguishable procession and begin to forget myself in its alluring enchantments.

With the discovery of certain books of ancient history, Plutarch, Euripides and Emerson's Essays there came an unexpected close to my student life at the Worcester Academy. Several of my cla.s.smates and myself agreed that we could be better fitted for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, than where we were, and accordingly we put ourselves under the tuition of Dr. Samuel H. Taylor, at that time the most eminent school and drill-master in New England. Under him I just escaped becoming a cla.s.sical scholar and also nearly lost the chance of ever acquiring a love for the cla.s.sics; for it was drill, paradigms, rules, exceptions, scansion, in short, all that pertains to the external apparatus of the Greek and Latin tongues. Often we spent two hours on eight lines of Homer. The father of literature became a Procrustean, grammatical bed on which we were to be stretched, and it did nearly exterminate every one of us. For my own part, I was possessed with an intemperate haste to read Homer straight through as fast as I could; for I felt, without exactly knowing, that there was something in the epic I wanted, yes, I needed and must have. Checked in this by the rigors of the recitation room I lost much of my interest in study, and spent the time which was supposed to be given to text books in reading all the cla.s.sic and English poetry I could find, and in valorous attempts at composition, both prose and verse. This I by no means now regret, and rejoice that my tuition escaped the Spartan discipline no less than the present pragmatical curricula.

At length I was fitted for college and admitted to Harvard. Misfortunes culminated at the same moment. I did not remain. I was too ill for study, and suddenly the bottom of my perfidious purse dropped out.

Bitter was my disappointment. But in another year I began a new career which brought me happiness, new opportunities, new friends and dividends from Utopian investments. Health and hope, my natural inheritance, returned. Boyhood was gone, but not the invincible boy.

As in the Parable I had traveled far, uncertain of the road. My diet had been mostly husks, but how sweet! Arriving at last at hospitable doors, I could receive without penitence, without tears the welcome long prepared for me. Thenceforth I submitted myself with more patience and trust to the destiny which had been awaiting me throughout my apprenticeships. My destiny became my choice.

AVE ATGUE VALE

I shall not pa.s.s this way again; But near by is the town where I was born; I loved it well.

And near my heart my mother State; She wreathed her sword with freedom, learning, law When tyrants fell.

Three words from Athens held me long; Nothing-too-much, proportion, harmony; By these excel.

I never hurried for the goal, But like the tortoise travelled steadily, Sans band, sans bell.

Born when the star of Spring arose, Haply my auspices were cast for calm Of wood and dell.

Form I admired and sounds and scents; Motion of waters, silences of stars-- Mighty their spell!

No senate called me from the plow; No hundred thousand readers read my books-- They did not sell.

Many the friends when life was new Heaven sent to me, but now, alas, reclaimed; Sound, Muse, their knell.

You, who hereafter pa.s.s this way, Remember him who made this simple book And say farewell.