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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Being a Boy, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Being a Boy
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: August 20, 2016 [EBook #3127]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEING A BOY ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BEING A BOY
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+BEING A BOY
+
+
+
+
+I. BEING A BOY
+
+
+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 cider-mill. 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 cart-wheel. 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 is to get
+out of them.
+
+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 Three-Ply Silver Stick should happen to get in front of the
+Most Royal Double-and-Twisted 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 often admired this trait in COWS.
+
+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 improves a boy's elocution a great deal more than driving oxen.
+
+It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats “Thanatopsis” while he is
+milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE BOY AS A FARMER
+
+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 have
+a great deal on his mind.
+
+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 horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut down
+the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowing-lot and
+along the road towards the village; to dig up the docks round the garden
+patch; to weed out the beet-bed; 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 run 'em!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” says John, “is that all?”
+
+“Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
+potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat.”
+
+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
+Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at the post and his
+master is talking politics in the store--with 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 eyebrows.
+
+John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the
+odorous buffalo-robe 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 want salting.
+But his father, without turning his head, replies,
+
+“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 half enough!
+
+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 out-door work, that
+rather drags. There are so many things to distract the attention--a
+chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, 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 bill-hook; or he charges upon the rows of
+mullein-stalks 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
+dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time before
+John has made much impression on the garden.
+
+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 out-doors, 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 ball-playing! 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 least, worked for
+my Independence.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
+
+There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, 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 he 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 ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no
+effect on the boy.
+
+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 hay-field. 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 so long! The brindle cow is the
+boy's scapegoat, many a time.
+
+No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy 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 a-fishing 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 and deacon and to “keep store.”
+
+But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring and
+fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, 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 brook-side 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 right ones; and how cheerfully I did
+yell at them.
+
+It was a glorious chance to “holler,” and I have never since heard
+any public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting 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 watering-troughs, 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, cracking my
+black-stock whip.
+
+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, rye-and-indian 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, just to “throw in” the brook we passed. I
+know there were trout there.
+
+
+
+
+IV. NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
+
+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 life would actually stop.
+
+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 leap-frog 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 dinner-table, 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
+winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for them, he is
+to stay in-doors 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 of chores.
+
+A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and
+probably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens. A guinea-hen 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 wood-pile 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 hen-roost 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 cow-dog, but what they call
+a sheep-dog. 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 are also good to
+bark at woodchuck-holes.
+
+A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole 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 at the
+West a ground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish.
+
+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 chicken-stealing. 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 Sunday-school 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. If he had been honest, he
+might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE BOY'S SUNDAY
+
+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 meeting-houses.
+
+Sunday to the country farmer-boy 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,
+hand-springs, 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 country-boy, 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 country-boy in his
+penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the celerity with which he used to
+kick them off at sundown.
+
+Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy. 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
+Sunday-school 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 home
+bareback, and harnessed.
+
+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
+salt-dish, 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 very near saying “dum it,” but he rather
+enjoyed the fun, after all.
+
+The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the set
+of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory of the
+Sunday-school 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 hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, or
+to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch of caraway-seed.
+Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load 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 farmer-boy to see all this
+procession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys, who
+leaned over the wagon-seats 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 daring and wicked.
+
+The meeting-house 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 tithing-men
+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 long-continued 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 tithing-man, who carried a long rod and
+kept order in the house, and out-doors 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
+bushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time. The eyes of
+the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the guilt ooze out
+of his burning face.
+
+At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon service,
+in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon together
+at the watering-trough, 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
+sweet-flag, 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
+bass-viol in the choir took the place of “David's harp of solemn sound.”
+
+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 meeting-house 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 Sunday-school 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.
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
+
+If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the
+farmer-boy, 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 haying--I 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 dew-laden 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 hay-field 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 amid the short and
+freshly cut stubble.
+
+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 each other.
+
+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 such hard grinding
+work?”
+
+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 who--works. 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 men-folks, 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 farm-boy 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 training-day, 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 potato-patch, 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 angle-worm 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 dead-weight 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 sucker.
+
+
+
+
+VII. FICTION AND SENTIMENT
+
+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 country-boy 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 school-hours: 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 spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
+
+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
+jack-knives 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 country-boy 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 dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, 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
+novel-reading, 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 longed to know.
+
+And the farmer-boy 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 wine-parties 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 lead-pencil, 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, pop-corn,
+beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux,
+fancifully folded, three-cornered 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
+flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry in his
+pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that putting his
+fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the sugar-bowl
+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,
+tow-color, 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 I am dead.”
+
+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, red-ink 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 horse-collar,” John was so
+outraged and shocked, as he should have been, at this rude invasion of
+his heart, this coarse suggestion, this profanation 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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
+
+One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
+hickory-nuts, 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 getting-in 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 nut-gathering 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 pine-cones, 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 pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians),
+probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy
+here were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly
+chestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a
+hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out
+with his jack-knife, 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 chestnut-grove; they
+leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year 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 grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one as active as if
+he were a new patent picking-machine, 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 fruit-trees. They could speedily make
+their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields. 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
+skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major 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 grasshopper-field. He throws out
+his company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, 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 any
+Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
+
+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
+play-spell; 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 twenty-four 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 mission to some foreign country, if they do not do well
+where they are.
+
+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 mince-pies 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 chicken-pie 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 merry-making parties, and perhaps the skatings and
+sleigh-rides, 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 chicken-nap. 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 trousers-legs were. He
+blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting 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 presence.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
+
+What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but that
+was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince
+would be better.
+
+The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie 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 stirring-up 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
+ingenuity to get at them.
+
+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 oven-full 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 pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the race of
+boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped
+coming into the world.
+
+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
+way, and makes just as much out of them.
+
+There are ways in which the farmer-boy 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 table--but 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, especially as it
+melted away so fast in that hot climate.
+
+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 self-denial 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 self-denial 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 pumpkin-pies 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 “watch-dog 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 story-teller 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
+pumpkin-pie. 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 robbing, they would have believed him guilty.
+
+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 red-hot 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 dog-cart. 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 in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+X. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
+
+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 way of work.
+
+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 kindling-wood for his mother than go a-fishing,--the
+consequence was, that he was kept at splitting kindling-wood 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 they had done.
+
+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
+gold-pieces 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 country-boy,
+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 relate.
+
+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 palm-leaf, 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 honey-bees' 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 sweet-flag 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 sweet-flag 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 John's day. A lady leaned from the carriage, and said:
+
+“What have you got, little boy?”
+
+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:
+
+“It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?”
+
+“Indeed, I should like to taste it,” said the lady, with a most winning
+smile. “I used to be very fond of it when I was a little girl.”
+
+John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, 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 took two or three stalks, and was about to return the rest, when
+John said:
+
+“Please keep it all, ma'am. I can get lots more.”
+
+“I know where it's ever so thick.”
+
+“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 pleasure vanished. Something like tears were in his eyes as he
+shouted:
+
+“I don't want your cent. I don't sell flag!”
+
+John was intensely mortified. “I suppose,” he said, “she thought I was a
+sort of beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!”
+
+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 sweet-flag, and see if another carriage wouldn't
+come along.
+
+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 sweet-faced girls leaned from the seat
+and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:
+
+“Little boy, how's your mar?”
+
+John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the young
+lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any rate, his
+instinct of politeness made him say:
+
+“She's pretty well, I thank you.”
+
+“Does she know you are out?”
+
+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 self-respect was injured somehow, and he felt
+as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would like to have
+thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
+
+“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 had done.
+
+
+
+
+XI. HOME INVENTIONS
+
+The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, 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 stone-bruise 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 opera-house, 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 of it; his wife,
+however, calls the town Maybe.
+
+The farmer-boy 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 farmer-boy 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 barns were well ventilated.
+
+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 freezing-point. 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 self-acting 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 hen-breeders, 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 families.
+
+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 heeded.
+
+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
+snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with or without a
+board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet. Take a moderate
+hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a “go-round”
+ of boys on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling away
+boot-leather. 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 district-school 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 sheet-iron
+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 object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive real
+history.
+
+Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said,
+had stood in colonial times a block-house, 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 settle--them
+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
+meeting-house 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house ought to
+stand as near heaven as possible.
+
+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 outside.
+
+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 cobble-stones,
+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 ice-balls 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 of the school-bell. The Pequots were in great fear of the
+school-bell.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
+
+The winter evenings of the farmer-boy 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 boy-on it, but it is
+impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
+
+“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 wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
+brown-study 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 farmer-boy'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, and the
+comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a supreme delight.
+
+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 fumbling around in barn and
+wood-house, in the waning light.
+
+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 them.
+
+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 fox-and-geese
+board was, and he could find the twelve-men-Morris. 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 family came as near being idle as is ever
+possible in a New England household.
+
+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 his
+chamber? Why did n't the people who were sleepy go to bed?
+
+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 looking-glass, 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 parting of his hair, and how to find out on which
+side was the natural part.
+
+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 stand-up 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 lead-pencil 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, spruce-gum, 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 spider-web 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 spelling-schools, 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 her name.
+
+But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the invitation,
+in a three-cornered 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 pin-scratching writing. What a precious document
+it was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort of perfume, whether of
+lavender or caraway-seed 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 conduct himself at the party.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. JOHN'S FIRST PARTY
+
+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 formality by Melinda
+Mayhew.
+
+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
+daughters--Melinda 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 tan-bark 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 he would rather face all the dogs in town than knock at the
+front door.
+
+The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging
+before the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound of
+voices--girls' voices--which set his heart in a flutter. He could face
+the whole district school of girls without flinching,--he didn't mind
+'em in the meeting-house 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, and hides his shy awkwardness in noise
+and commotion.
+
+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 religious duties.
+
+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 before--but now nothing that he could
+think of seemed worth saying at a party.
+
+“It is a pleasant evening,” said John.
+
+“It is quite so,” replied Cynthia.
+
+“Did you come in a cutter?” asked John anxiously.
+
+“No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,” said
+Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.
+
+“Was it slippery?” continued John.
+
+“Not very.”
+
+John hoped it would be slippery--very--when 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 encouraging.
+
+And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the
+husking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't
+she think she was a real pretty girl.
+
+“Yes, she was right pretty;” and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it
+pretty well. But did John like the color of her eyes?
+
+No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.
+
+“Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show
+her teeth.”
+
+John said her mouth was her worst feature.
+
+“Oh, no,” said Cynthia warmly; “her mouth is better than her nose.”
+
+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 dreadful black.
+
+But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked black
+hair, and she wished hers was dark. Whereupon John protested that he
+liked light hair--auburn hair--of all things.
+
+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 paring-bee, and the spelling-school, 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 living-room, with its easy-chairs 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 began to enjoy
+themselves.
+
+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 the scraping of a wicked
+fiddle.
+
+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 once.
+
+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, and--and 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 wretched evening.
+
+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 her--like a goose as he was--that she had better
+ask Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got more and more
+miserable, and began to feel that he was making himself ridiculous.
+
+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 permission to “see” Cynthia home.
+
+It was after half-past 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 “Good-night, John!”
+
+“Good-night, Cynthia!”
+
+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 heard a loud rapping on the under
+floor, and saw that it was daylight.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. THE SUGAR CAMP
+
+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 blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the tunes of all the
+other birds.
+
+In my day maple-sugar-making 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
+rye-and-indian 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 money-making 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 country-boy, 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 country-boy 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 maple-trees with his jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure
+to announce the discovery as he comes running into the house in a great
+state of excitement--as if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn--with
+“Sap's runnin'!”
+
+And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sap-buckets, which
+have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, 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 sap-buckets
+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 ox-sled is
+got out to make a road to the sugar camp, and the campaign begins. The
+boy is everywhere present, superintending everything, asking questions,
+and filled with a desire to help the excitement.
+
+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 can scarcely contain his delight that his out-door
+life is about to begin again.
+
+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 cider-barrel 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 re-covered 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 establishment is under full headway.
+
+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 sap-yoke and
+small pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid. He has a little
+boiling-place 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
+done only once in two or three days.
+
+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 sweetness, that his own
+mother would n't know him.
+
+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 hired man
+says that he was very much scared by the hooting of an owl.
+
+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 “sugaring-off” 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 not do.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+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 hickory-tree 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 wide-swaying 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 loud murmur
+would fill the air.
+
+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 far-off 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, no-mistake 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 boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who 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 white-and-black 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 white-and-black
+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 overgrown with brush.
+
+John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a
+special grudge against this clover-eater, 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 apple-tree. 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 trousers-leg. 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
+woodchuck-holes. 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 one--there are usually three--were 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 pit.
+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,
+half-drowned creature as--it 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 woodchuck,--an--unspeakable
+woodchuck.
+
+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 hill-pasture 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
+sweet-smelling 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 mosses--without compunction. But he
+gathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantine
+and the blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored alpine strawberry,
+the blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, and
+fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of the pink-and-white laurel and the
+wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the fragrant sassafras and of
+the sweet-flag; 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 spruce-tree, 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 gold-thread,
+the tansy, and the loathsome “boneset;” and he laid in for the winter,
+like a squirrel, stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts,
+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 sweet-fern; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. JOHN'S REVIVAL.
+
+The New England country-boy 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 “seven-up” in a barn, on the haymow, and the
+enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had once seen a pack of
+greasy “playing-cards,” 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, tumble-down farmhouse, whose
+shiftless inhabitants, it was said, were card-playing 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 his contempt of all holy and
+orderly life as by playing cards for amusement.
+
+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 quavering voice:
+
+       “While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
+        All seated on the ground.”
+
+The “glory” that “shone around” at the end of it--the 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 of delightful wickedness in indulging his dislike of hymns and of
+Sunday.
+
+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 better wicked boy than John.
+
+When the “revival” came, therefore, one summer, John was in a quandary.
+Sunday meeting and Sunday-school 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 would--get 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 heart-wringing pleasures. It
+suggested the immaculate scornful, the melancholy unattainable.
+
+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
+summer--time 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 odor--to 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
+himself as a little Pope, associated his conversion with this plaintive
+sound.
+
+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 stomach-ache; 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 well-known hole tempted John, but he restrained
+himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a woodchuck
+was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. 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 Such a good boy. All
+this was dreadful.
+
+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 stomach-ache 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 Madagascar was just as easy as
+anything.
+
+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 it. And in this
+unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
+
+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 it--be a means of
+“grieving away the Holy Spirit.” He therefore hid away the paper in
+a table-drawer, 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 no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
+him is not a “scheme.”
+
+
+
+
+XVII. WAR
+
+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 country-boy. 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 or vices, in order to understand
+the primitive man.
+
+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 gold-lace 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 smooth-bores and flintlock
+muskets is semi-civilized; to kill them with breech-loading 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 twenty-four 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 taxes to buy uniforms and guns.
+
+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 gold-tried-in-the-fire-color 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; and he valued rather the number than the quality of these elastic
+wristlets.
+
+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 snug-fitting,
+decorated clothes,--very different from his somewhat roomy trousers and
+country-cut 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 in a heroic attitude. John determined to be
+an officer.
+
+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, from which he was never separated.
+
+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 window, or “go for” a striped snake, he was “hollered”
+ at no end.
+
+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 weakness by which women
+govern the world.
+
+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 name--was 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 apple-trees. It was a quiet
+place where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--the
+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 war-whoop
+that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. The Indian
+always preceded murder by the war-whoop; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. COUNTRY SCENES
+
+It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
+conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about
+the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made 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 hen-hawk 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 think any city lad could have written
+“Thanatopsis” at eighteen?
+
+If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used 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 jack-knife. 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, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head,
+gimlet, billets-doux 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 trout-fishing. 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 story-book.
+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 high-stepping
+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 fairy-like person? Was
+this expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing
+a country-boy? 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 self-conscious. 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, red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she
+looked tired and discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none
+of the romance of her youth.
+
+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 swimming-rock, 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 fish-pole, 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 yellow-bird 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
+fish-hawk 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
+even-poised 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 thunder-shower 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, well-traveled road, hidden from view here and
+there by trees and bushes. The chief point of interest, however, is an
+enormous sycamore-tree 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 lime-tree 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 button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old
+watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn 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 Zem-zem, 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 buffalo-robe 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 water-spout! All day long there are pilgrims
+to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them. Here comes a
+gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle buyers, probably.
+Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a good draught the nag
+takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown
+linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute, horsey-looking 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 scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel
+back. It is the deacon's horse, a meeting-going 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, lumber-wagon 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 he goes on,
+perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
+
+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 stage-coach,--the
+vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off the
+shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, 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 stage-coach.
+It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal vehicle; one can go in
+it to the confines of the world,--to Boston and to Albany.
+
+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 river-bank not far from his house. It was
+shaded by elms and butternut-trees, 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 declared,
+
+     “So here we pledge perpetual hate
+      To all that can intoxicate;”
+
+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 loaf-cake and pie
+and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
+
+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 out-doors, 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 story-books;
+and John took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray into
+the country, trading and stealing horses and robbing hen-roosts 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,
+black-haired 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 stove-lengths; 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 that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
+
+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 rewarded me.
+
+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, and especially unfit for a church or an
+aristocratic palace.
+
+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 upon the illumination, which seemed to be a
+private affair to each one of them.
+
+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 it as easy to be pretty
+as an American child to be good.
+
+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 any other kind of children.
+
+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 burning its fingers.
+
+There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and the
+church has understood this longing in human nature, and found means to
+gratify it by this festival of tapers.
+
+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 organ-loft 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 round-faced 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 music-book.
+
+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 hear him long after all sound has
+ceased.
+
+And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes and
+a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his voice in
+the same gleesome abundance.
+
+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 organ-loft. 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 monkey-shines 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 abandon of carriage, as if he could
+sing himself out of his skin if he liked.
+
+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 down-stairs 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 having either the simple manliness or the
+good fortune of the New England boy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Being a Boy, by Charles Dudley Warner
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Being a Boy, by Charles Dudley Warner
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Being a Boy, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Being a Boy
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3127]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEING A BOY ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <h1>
+      BEING A BOY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Dudley Warner
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0006}.jpg" alt="{0006}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0006}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>BEING A BOY <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>THE BOY AS A FARMER <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a>THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV. </a>NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0005"> V. </a>THE BOY'S SUNDAY <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI. </a>THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII. </a>FICTION AND SENTIMENT <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII. </a>THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX. </a>THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X. </a>FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI. </a>HOME INVENTIONS <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII. </a>THE LONELY FARMHOUSE <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII. </a>JOHN'S FIRST PARTY <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV. </a>THE SUGAR CAMP <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV. </a>THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI. </a>JOHN'S REVIVAL <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII. </a>WAR <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0018">
+        XVIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>COUNTRY SCENES <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0019">
+        XIX. </a>A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I. BEING A BOY
+    </h2>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0019}.jpg" alt="{0019}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0019}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Gee, Buck!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Haw, Golden!&rdquo; &ldquo;Whoa, Bright!&rdquo; 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 cider-mill. 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
+      cart-wheel. 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 &ldquo;came the Julius Caesar&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;haw&rdquo; and &ldquo;gee&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;hollered&rdquo; 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 is to get
+      out of them.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0023}.jpg" alt="{0023}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0023}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 &ldquo;lick&rdquo; Novem,
+      and Novem could &ldquo;lick&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;pair of bars&rdquo; 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 Three-Ply
+      Silver Stick should happen to get in front of the Most Royal
+      Double-and-Twisted 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 often
+      admired this trait in COWS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Thanatopsis&rdquo; 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
+      improves a boy's elocution a great deal more than driving oxen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats &ldquo;Thanatopsis&rdquo; while he is
+      milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. THE BOY AS A FARMER
+    </h2>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0029}.jpg" alt="{0029}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0029}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Corners, to see
+      a man&rdquo; about some cattle, to talk with the road commissioner, to go to the
+      store for the &ldquo;women folks,&rdquo; 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 have a great deal on his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up the
+      chores. As if the chores could ever be &ldquo;done up&rdquo; on a farm. He is first to
+      clean out the horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut down the
+      thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowing-lot and along
+      the road towards the village; to dig up the docks round the garden patch;
+      to weed out the beet-bed; 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 &ldquo;and mind he don't run
+      'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; says John, &ldquo;is that all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
+      potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Corners&mdash;while
+      his master's horse is dozing at the post and his master is talking
+      politics in the store&mdash;with 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 eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the odorous
+      buffalo-robe 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,
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0033}.jpg" alt="{0033}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0033}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt the cattle?&rdquo;
+       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 &ldquo;see&rdquo; a sucker in the meadow brook, and
+      perhaps get a &ldquo;jab&rdquo; 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 want salting. But his father, without
+      turning his head, replies,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they don't need salting any more 'n you do!&rdquo; 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
+      half enough!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 out-door work, that rather
+      drags. There are so many things to distract the attention&mdash;a chipmunk
+      in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, 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 &ldquo;Die,
+      ruffian!&rdquo; and slashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon
+      the rows of mullein-stalks 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 dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is
+      cow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 out-doors, 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 ball-playing! 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 least, worked for my Independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, 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,&mdash;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 he
+      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.
+      &ldquo;I went as quick as ever I could,&rdquo; says the boy: his father asks him why
+      he did n't stay all night, when he has been absent three hours on a
+      ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no effect on the boy.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0041}.jpg" alt="{0041}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0041}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 hay-field. It said, &ldquo;Why on earth does n't
+      that boy come home? It is almost dark, and the cows ain't milked!&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;Old Brindle&rdquo; was hidden in the woods, and he couldn't find her for ever
+      so long! The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat, many a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy 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 a-fishing 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, &ldquo;Pretty well done for you, bub; did you
+      catch that big one yourself?&rdquo;&mdash;this is also pure happiness, the like
+      of which the boy will never have again, not if he comes to be selectman
+      and deacon and to &ldquo;keep store.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring and
+      fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, 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 brook-side 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
+      right ones; and how cheerfully I did yell at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a glorious chance to &ldquo;holler,&rdquo; and I have never since heard any
+      public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 watering-troughs, 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,&mdash;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, cracking my black-stock whip.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0047}.jpg" alt="{0047}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0047}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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, rye-and-indian 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, just to &ldquo;throw in&rdquo; the brook we passed. I know there were trout
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 life would actually stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;turning
+      cart-wheels&rdquo; 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 leap-frog 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
+      dinner-table, 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
+      winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for them, he is to
+      stay in-doors 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 of
+      chores.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and probably
+      rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens. A guinea-hen 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 wood-pile 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 hen-roost 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 &ldquo;chore,&rdquo;
+       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 cow-dog,
+      but what they call a sheep-dog. 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 are also good to
+      bark at woodchuck-holes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole 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 &ldquo;home base,&rdquo; 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 at the West a ground-hog, and is eaten
+      by people of color with great relish.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0057}.jpg" alt="{0057}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0057}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 chicken-stealing. 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 Sunday-school 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,&mdash;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. If he had
+      been honest, he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. THE BOY'S SUNDAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;play&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;courting&rdquo; 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 meeting-houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunday to the country farmer-boy 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, hand-springs,
+      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 country-boy, 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 country-boy in his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the celerity
+      with which he used to kick them off at sundown.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0063}.jpg" alt="{0063}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0063}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy. 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
+      Sunday-school 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 home
+      bareback, and harnessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Jock, jock, jock, jock,&rdquo; and shaking his salt-dish, 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
+      very near saying &ldquo;dum it,&rdquo; but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the set of
+      his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory of the
+      Sunday-school 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 hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, or to
+      pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch of caraway-seed. Already
+      the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load 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 &ldquo;womenfolks&rdquo; 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 farmer-boy to see all this procession of horses, and to exchange sly
+      winks with the other boys, who leaned over the wagon-seats 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 daring and wicked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting-house 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 tithing-men 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
+      long-continued 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 tithing-man, who carried a long rod and kept order in the house,
+      and out-doors 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 bushy-headed tithing-man
+      approached a boy in sermon-time. The eyes of the whole congregation were
+      on him, and he could feel the guilt ooze out of his burning face.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0069}.jpg" alt="{0069}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0069}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon service,
+      in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon together at
+      the watering-trough, 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 sweet-flag, 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 bass-viol in the choir took
+      the place of &ldquo;David's harp of solemn sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 meeting-house 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 &ldquo;women-folks&rdquo; 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 Sunday-school book had been read, and the boy sat waiting in
+      the house with great impatience the signal that the &ldquo;day of rest&rdquo; was
+      over. A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not see the need of &ldquo;rest.&rdquo;
+       Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of older farmers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the
+      farmer-boy, 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 haying&mdash;I 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 dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the &ldquo;swish&rdquo;
+       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 &ldquo;spreading&rdquo; after half a
+      dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, while the boy
+      has the whole hay-field 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
+      amid the short and freshly cut stubble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;hired man&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;wabbled&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;turn faster.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;hired men&rdquo; will be very apt to
+      dispense with his services and turn the grindstone for each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;rake after,&rdquo; he can turn
+      grindstone, and it is in this way that he renews his youth. &ldquo;Ain't you
+      ashamed to have your granther turn the grindstone?&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Ain't you ashamed to
+      make either an old man or a little boy do such hard grinding work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 who&mdash;works. 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 men-folks, 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 farm-boy 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
+      training-day, 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 potato-patch,
+      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 &ldquo;suckers&rdquo; 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 angle-worm 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.
+      &ldquo;Golly, ain't he a big one!&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;deportment,&rdquo; and some of the old suckers are
+      perfect Turveydrops in that.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0079}.jpg" alt="{0079}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0079}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+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
+      dead-weight 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 sucker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. FICTION AND SENTIMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his city
+      cousin. When school keeps, he has only to &ldquo;do chores and go to school,&rdquo;
+       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, &ldquo;Come,
+      stir your stumps,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0086}.jpg" alt="{0086}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0086}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      Although the country-boy 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;as he never again will be if
+      he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,&mdash;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 school-hours:
+      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 spelling-book through
+      at the highest pitch.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0090}.jpg" alt="{0090}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0090}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and
+      enmities contracted which are frequently &ldquo;taken out&rdquo; 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
+      jack-knives 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 country-boy 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
+      dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, 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 novel-reading, and have no work of
+      fiction in the house except a pious fraud called &ldquo;Six Months in a
+      Convent,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Is it a true book, John?&rdquo; asks the
+      grandmother; &ldquo;because, if it is n't true, it is the worst thing that a boy
+      can read.&rdquo; (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 longed to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the farmer-boy 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
+      wine-parties 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,&mdash;but whom he will not see again for some
+      time,&mdash;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 lead-pencil, 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, pop-corn, beechnuts, and other articles of
+      value, are some little billets-doux, fancifully folded, three-cornered 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 flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to
+      carry in his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that
+      putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the
+      sugar-bowl at home. Each precious note contained a lock or curl of girl's
+      hair,&mdash;a rare collection of all colors, after John had been in school
+      many terms, and had passed through a great many parting scenes,&mdash;black,
+      brown, red, tow-color, 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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;This lock of hair,
+   Which I did wear,
+   Was taken from my head;
+   When this you see,
+   Remember me,
+   Long after I am dead.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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, red-ink correspondents. When John's big brother one day
+      caught sight of these treasures, and brutally told him that he &ldquo;had hair
+      enough to stuff a horse-collar,&rdquo; John was so outraged and shocked, as he
+      should have been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarse
+      suggestion, this profanation of his most delicate feeling, that he was
+      kept from crying only by the resolution to &ldquo;lick&rdquo; his brother as soon as
+      ever he got big enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII. THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
+      hickory-nuts, 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 getting-in 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 nut-gathering 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 pine-cones, 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 pumpkin-seeds, another
+      favorite with the Italians), probably does not see the fun of nutting.
+      Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks
+      and opening the prickly chestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an
+      ill-used boy. What a hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But
+      now he digs them out with his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the
+      whole. The boy is willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the boy.
+      I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they leave a
+      desert behind them like the seventeen-year 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
+      grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one as active as if he were a
+      new patent picking-machine, 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 fruit-trees. They could speedily make
+      their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields. I have
+      never seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing the
+      grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0101}.jpg" alt="{0101}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0101}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 skirmish-line in
+      advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major 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 grasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a
+      crescent-shaped skirmish-line, 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;so much corn to
+      husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extra
+      play-spell; 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,&mdash;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 twenty-four 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 mission to some foreign
+      country, if they do not do well where they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a world that he was only yet allowed to
+      enjoy through his nose. How filled the house was with the most delicious
+      smells! The mince-pies 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 chicken-pie and other
+      pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to
+      excavate all its riches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 merry-making parties, and perhaps the skatings and sleigh-rides,
+      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 chicken-nap. 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 trousers-legs were. He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting
+      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 presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX. THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but that
+      was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince would
+      be better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie 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 stirring-up 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 ingenuity to get
+      at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 oven-full 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
+      pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the race of boys would have been
+      so discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 way, and makes just as
+      much out of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are ways in which the farmer-boy 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 table&mdash;but 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, especially as it
+      melted away so fast in that hot climate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 self-denial and of benevolence,
+      and if the heathen never heard of him, he would be blessed for his
+      generosity. This was all true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 self-denial was just as
+      good for grown people as it was for little boys and girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights. Speaking
+      of those thin pumpkin-pies 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 &ldquo;watch-dog of the treasury.&rdquo; 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 story-teller 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 pumpkin-pie. 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 robbing, they would have believed him guilty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 red-hot 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 dog-cart. 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 in one respect,&mdash;it is apt to begin at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X. FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,&mdash;the best
+      kind of boy to be in the summer,&mdash;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 way of work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do
+      &ldquo;chores&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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
+      kindling-wood for his mother than go a-fishing,&mdash;the consequence was,
+      that he was kept at splitting kindling-wood and such work most of the
+      time, and grew a better and more useful boy day by day.
+
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0119}.jpg" alt="{0119}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0119}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+
+Solomon would not
+      disobey his parents and eat green apples,&mdash;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 they had done.
+    </p>
+
+
+
+    <p>
+      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
+      gold-pieces 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 country-boy, 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 relate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 palm-leaf, 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 honey-bees' 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John knew the best place to dig sweet-flag 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. &ldquo;I guess you
+      would n't like it yourself,&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;with the stubbs getting into your
+      feet, and the hot sun, and the men getting ahead of you, all you could
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards evening, once, John was coming along the road home with some
+      stalks of the sweet-flag in his hand; there is a succulent pith in the end
+      of the stalk which is very good to eat,&mdash;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 John's
+      day. A lady leaned from the carriage, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you got, little boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I should like to taste it,&rdquo; said the lady, with a most winning
+      smile. &ldquo;I used to be very fond of it when I was a little girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, 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 took
+      two or three stalks, and was about to return the rest, when John said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please keep it all, ma'am. I can get lots more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know where it's ever so thick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you,&rdquo; 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 pleasure vanished. Something like tears were in his eyes as he
+      shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want your cent. I don't sell flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John was intensely mortified. &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she thought I was a
+      sort of beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 sweet-flag, and see if another carriage wouldn't come along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 sweet-faced girls leaned from the seat and
+      said, quite seriously and pleasantly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little boy, how's your mar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the young
+      lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any rate, his
+      instinct of politeness made him say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's pretty well, I thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she know you are out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter, and
+      dashed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and it hurt
+      him dreadfully. His self-respect was injured somehow, and he felt as if
+      his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would like to have thrown
+      a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a nice....&rdquo; but he could n't think of any hard, bitter words quick
+      enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady, never
+      knew what a cruel thing she had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI. HOME INVENTIONS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, 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 stone-bruise on each
+      heel. I like a jolly boy.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0129}.jpg" alt="{0129}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0129}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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
+      opera-house, and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hartford,&mdash;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 of it; his wife, however, calls the
+      town Maybe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The farmer-boy 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 &ldquo;chores.&rdquo; Nature intended the long
+      winter nights for the farmer-boy 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
+      &ldquo;fodder.&rdquo; 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
+      barns were well ventilated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 freezing-point. 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 self-acting 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
+      &ldquo;chores&rdquo; 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 hen-breeders, 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 families.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 heeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with or without a
+      board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet. Take a moderate hill,
+      with a foot-slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a &ldquo;go-round&rdquo; of boys
+      on it, and there is nothing like it for whittling away boot-leather. 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 &ldquo;bareback&rdquo; 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
+      district-school 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 sheet-iron 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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history,&mdash;early
+      history,&mdash;the Indian wars. We studied it mostly at noontime, and we
+      had it illustrated as the children nowadays have &ldquo;object-lessons,&rdquo; though
+      our object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive real
+      history.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0137}.jpg" alt="{0137}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0137}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition said, had
+      stood in colonial times a block-house, 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 settle&mdash;them 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house ought to stand as near heaven as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 cobble-stones, 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
+      ice-balls 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 of the school-bell. The Pequots were in great fear of the
+      school-bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII. THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The winter evenings of the farmer-boy 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.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0143}.jpg" alt="{0143}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0143}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 boy-on it, but it is
+      impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That boy&rdquo; 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
+      wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
+      brown-study 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 farmer-boy'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, and the comic
+      almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a supreme delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course he had the evenings to himself, after he had done the &ldquo;chores&rdquo;
+       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 fumbling around in barn and
+      wood-house, in the waning light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John used to say that he supposed nobody would do his &ldquo;chores&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wonder
+      sometimes whether he was n't still in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, John had nothing to do all the evening, after his &ldquo;chores,&rdquo;&mdash;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 &ldquo;composition&rdquo; 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 fox-and-geese board was, and he could find the
+      twelve-men-Morris. 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 family came as near
+      being idle as is ever possible in a New England household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 his chamber?
+      Why did n't the people who were sleepy go to bed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      looking-glass, 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 parting
+      of his hair, and how to find out on which side was the natural part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;take it out&rdquo;
+       with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up 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 lead-pencil 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, spruce-gum, 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 spider-web 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 &ldquo;enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the feat of
+      &ldquo;going home with a girl&rdquo; 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 her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now John was invited to a regular party. There was the invitation, in
+      a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparent wafer: &ldquo;Miss C. Rudd
+      requests the pleasure of the company of,&rdquo; etc., all in blue ink, and the
+      finest kind of pin-scratching writing. What a precious document it was to
+      John! It even exhaled a faint sort of perfume, whether of lavender or
+      caraway-seed 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 &ldquo;sat up&rdquo; with them in the parlor. And from this sympathetic
+      cousin John got advice as to what he should wear and how he should conduct
+      himself at the party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII. JOHN'S FIRST PARTY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;come within an inch of his
+      life.&rdquo; But he took care not to tumble into anything that should keep him
+      from the next party, which was given with due formality by Melinda Mayhew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 daughters&mdash;Melinda
+      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 tan-bark 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 he would
+      rather face all the dogs in town than knock at the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging before
+      the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound of voices&mdash;girls'
+      voices&mdash;which set his heart in a flutter. He could face the whole
+      district school of girls without flinching,&mdash;he didn't mind 'em in
+      the meeting-house 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, and hides his shy awkwardness in noise and commotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;that carpeted room of
+      haircloth furniture, which was so seldom opened. Upon the wall hung two
+      certificates framed in black,&mdash;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
+      religious duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 before&mdash;but now nothing that he
+      could think of seemed worth saying at a party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a pleasant evening,&rdquo; said John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite so,&rdquo; replied Cynthia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you come in a cutter?&rdquo; asked John anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,&rdquo; said
+      Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it slippery?&rdquo; continued John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John hoped it would be slippery&mdash;very&mdash;when 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 &ldquo;Swiss Family Robinson&rdquo;? 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 encouraging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the husking
+      at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't she think
+      she was a real pretty girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she was right pretty;&rdquo; and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it pretty
+      well. But did John like the color of her eyes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show her
+      teeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John said her mouth was her worst feature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Cynthia warmly; &ldquo;her mouth is better than her nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 dreadful black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked black
+      hair, and she wished hers was dark. Whereupon John protested that he liked
+      light hair&mdash;auburn hair&mdash;of all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the conversation, once started, went on as briskly as possible
+      about the paring-bee, and the spelling-school, 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
+      &ldquo;Northampton,&rdquo; and all the school laughed. John enjoyed the conversation
+      amazingly, and he half wished that he and Cynthia were the whole of the
+      party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 living-room, with its easy-chairs 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 began to enjoy themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the scraping of a wicked fiddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;mate&rdquo; and then the two sweetly kneel upon the cushion,
+      like two meek angels, and&mdash;and 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,&mdash;thanks to a plain little girl
+      for whose admiration he did n't care a straw,&mdash;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 wretched
+      evening.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0164}.jpg" alt="{0164}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0164}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 her&mdash;like a goose as he was&mdash;that she had better ask
+      Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got more and more
+      miserable, and began to feel that he was making himself ridiculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 permission to &ldquo;see&rdquo; Cynthia home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after half-past 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
+      &ldquo;Good-night, John!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Cynthia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the party was over, and Cynthia was gone, and John went home in a kind
+      of dissatisfaction with himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 heard a loud rapping on the under floor,
+      and saw that it was daylight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV. THE SUGAR CAMP
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than the making of
+      maple sugar; it is better than &ldquo;blackberrying,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 blow, or a catbird to sing
+      snatches of the tunes of all the other birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my day maple-sugar-making 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
+      rye-and-indian 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
+      money-making 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 country-boy, 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
+      country-boy 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 maple-trees with
+      his jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery
+      as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement&mdash;as
+      if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn&mdash;with &ldquo;Sap's runnin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sap-buckets, which
+      have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, 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,&mdash;the sap-buckets 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 ox-sled is got out
+      to make a road to the sugar camp, and the campaign begins. The boy is
+      everywhere present, superintending everything, asking questions, and
+      filled with a desire to help the excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 can scarcely contain his delight that his out-door life is about to
+      begin again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      cider-barrel 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the camp is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is re-covered 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 &ldquo;sap run,&rdquo; the
+      establishment is under full headway.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0175}.jpg" alt="{0175}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0175}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 sap-yoke and small pails, with which he
+      gathers the sweet liquid. He has a little boiling-place 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 &ldquo;sugar off.&rdquo; To &ldquo;sugar off&rdquo; is to boil
+      the sirup until it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is the
+      grand event, and is done only once in two or three days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy's desire is to &ldquo;sugar off&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 sweetness, that his own
+      mother would n't know him.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0179}.jpg" alt="{0179}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0179}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 hired man says that he was
+      very much scared by the hooting of an owl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great occasions for the boy, though, are the times of &ldquo;sugaring-off.&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;sugaring-off&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 not do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV. THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 hickory-tree 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 wide-swaying 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 loud murmur
+      would fill the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 far-off 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, no-mistake 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.
+
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0187}.jpg" alt="{0187}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0187}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+
+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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John knew a boy&mdash;a bad enough boy I daresay&mdash;who 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 white-and-black 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 white-and-black 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 overgrown with brush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special
+      grudge against this clover-eater, 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 apple-tree. 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
+      trousers-leg. 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 woodchuck-holes. 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 one&mdash;there are usually
+      three&mdash;were 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 pit. 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, half-drowned creature as&mdash;it 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 &ldquo;fair play.&rdquo;
+       They maintained perfect &ldquo;neutrality&rdquo; so long as the dog was getting the
+      best of the woodchuck; but if the latter was likely to escape, they
+      &ldquo;interfered&rdquo; in the interest of peace and the &ldquo;balance of power,&rdquo; and
+      killed the woodchuck. This is a boy's notion of justice; of course, he'd
+      no business to be a woodchuck,&mdash;an&mdash;unspeakable woodchuck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used the word &ldquo;aromatic&rdquo; 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 hill-pasture 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 sweet-smelling 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.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0196}.jpg" alt="{0196}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0196}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 mosses&mdash;without compunction. But he
+      gathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantine
+      and the blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored alpine strawberry, the
+      blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes;
+      he brought home armfuls of the pink-and-white laurel and the wild
+      honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the fragrant sassafras and of the
+      sweet-flag; 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 &ldquo;brake,&rdquo; which
+      he pulled up, and found that the soft end &ldquo;tasted good;&rdquo; he dug the amber
+      gum from the spruce-tree, 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 gold-thread, the tansy, and the
+      loathsome &ldquo;boneset;&rdquo; and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel,
+      stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, 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 sweet-fern; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI. JOHN'S REVIVAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The New England country-boy 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;card-playing,&rdquo; or being a
+      &ldquo;Democrat.&rdquo; John knew a couple of desperately bad boys who were reported
+      to play &ldquo;seven-up&rdquo; in a barn, on the haymow, and the enormity of this
+      practice made him shudder. He had once seen a pack of greasy
+      &ldquo;playing-cards,&rdquo; 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, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless inhabitants, it was
+      said, were card-playing 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 his contempt of all holy and orderly life as by playing cards for
+      amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;trade&rdquo; 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
+      quavering voice:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       &ldquo;While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
+        All seated on the ground.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0202}.jpg" alt="{0202}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0202}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;glory&rdquo; that &ldquo;shone around&rdquo; at the end of it&mdash;the doleful voice
+      always repeating, &ldquo;and glory shone around &ldquo;&mdash;made John as miserable
+      as &ldquo;Hark! from the tombs.&rdquo; It was all one dreary expectation of something
+      uncomfortable. It was, in short, &ldquo;religion.&rdquo; You'd got to have it some
+      time; that John believed. But it lay in his unthinking mind to put off the
+      &ldquo;Hark! from the tombs&rdquo; enjoyment as long as possible. He experienced a
+      kind of delightful wickedness in indulging his dislike of hymns and of
+      Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;meanness&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;got mad&rdquo; 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 better wicked boy than John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the &ldquo;revival&rdquo; came, therefore, one summer, John was in a quandary.
+      Sunday meeting and Sunday-school 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under the general
+      impression of fright and seriousness. All the talk was of &ldquo;getting
+      religion,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;did n't care,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was essential he learned, that he should have a &ldquo;conviction of sin.&rdquo;
+       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
+      &ldquo;under conviction,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;whaling,&rdquo; noisy kind of boy, who was under
+      conviction and sure he was going to be lost.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0208}.jpg" alt="{0208}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0208}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+How John envied him! And
+      pretty soon Ed &ldquo;experienced religion.&rdquo; 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 would&mdash;get 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, &ldquo;Gul darn ye, I'll learn ye.&rdquo; And John wondered if
+      Ed would take the little trout out any more gently now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;There she is,&rdquo; thought John, &ldquo;singing away like an angel in
+      heaven, and I am left out.&rdquo; During all his after life a contralto voice
+      was to John one of his most bitter and heart-wringing pleasures. It
+      suggested the immaculate scornful, the melancholy unattainable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 summer&mdash;time
+      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 &ldquo;grieve away the Holy Spirit.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several of his
+      little playmates had &ldquo;come forward,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;But I go on forever,&rdquo;
+       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
+      &ldquo;the sweet bells of Imola.&rdquo; 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 odor&mdash;to 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 himself as a little Pope, associated his
+      conversion with this plaintive sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;bounded&rdquo; Massachusetts. So he stood up and raised his hand, and
+      said to the schoolma'am, &ldquo;Please, ma'am, I 've got the stomach-ache; may I
+      go home?&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0216}.jpg" alt="{0216}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0216}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+The
+      sight of a woodchuck at a distance from his well-known hole tempted John,
+      but he restrained himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that
+      chasing a woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. 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
+      &ldquo;some&rdquo; better now. The &ldquo;some&rdquo; did n't save him. Genuine sympathy was
+      lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff dose of nasty &ldquo;picra,&rdquo;&mdash;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,&mdash;much as he hated the
+      business usually, he would now willingly have wandered over the world
+      after cows,&mdash;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 Such a
+      good boy. All this was dreadful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 stomach-ache 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 Madagascar was just as easy as anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;picra,&rdquo; and the going to bed in the afternoon, and the loss of his
+      supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it. And in this unhopeful
+      frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Lexington&rdquo; 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 it&mdash;be a means of &ldquo;grieving away the Holy Spirit.&rdquo;
+       He therefore hid away the paper in a table-drawer, 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 &ldquo;time&rdquo;
+       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 no one to explain that religion
+      for a little fellow like him is not a &ldquo;scheme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII. WAR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 country-boy. 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 or vices, in order to understand the
+      primitive man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, before
+      children were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with the word
+      &ldquo;culture&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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 gold-lace 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 smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; to kill
+      them with breech-loading 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 twenty-four 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 taxes to buy uniforms and
+      guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      gold-tried-in-the-fire-color 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; and he valued rather the number than the quality of these
+      elastic wristlets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 snug-fitting, decorated
+      clothes,&mdash;very different from his somewhat roomy trousers and
+      country-cut 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,&mdash;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 in a heroic attitude. John determined to be an officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, from which he was never separated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;chores&rdquo; 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 window, or &ldquo;go for&rdquo; a
+      striped snake, he was &ldquo;hollered&rdquo; at no end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;hollered,&rdquo; 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 weakness by which women govern the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 name&mdash;was
+      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 apple-trees. It was a quiet place where they lay,
+      but they might have heard&mdash;if hear they could&mdash;the 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 war-whoop that had been the
+      last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. The Indian always preceded murder
+      by the war-whoop; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;lick&rdquo; the other if he could, or for half a dozen
+      to &ldquo;lick&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;holler;&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII. COUNTRY SCENES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
+      conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about the
+      part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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
+      hen-hawk 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 think any city lad
+      could have written &ldquo;Thanatopsis&rdquo; at eighteen?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used straw
+      hat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along the river-bank of a
+      cool morning to see if an eel had &ldquo;got on,&rdquo; 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 jack-knife. 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, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet,
+      billets-doux 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 trout-fishing. 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 &ldquo;got religion&rdquo; and John had got nothing, his love was tempered
+      with a little awe and a feeling of distance.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0238}.jpg" alt="{0238}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0238}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+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 story-book. 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,&mdash;here was an opening into a vast
+      realm. The high-stepping 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
+      fairy-like person? Was this expression on her mobile face merely that of
+      amusement at seeing a country-boy? 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 self-conscious. 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.
+</p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0242}.jpg" alt="{0242}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0242}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+<p>
+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, red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she looked
+      tired and discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none of the
+      romance of her youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 swimming-rock, 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
+      &ldquo;chores.&rdquo; Making his way out to it over the rocks at low water with his
+      fish-pole, 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
+      yellow-bird 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 fish-hawk 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 even-poised pinions, keeping an eye perhaps
+      upon the great eagle which is sweeping the sky in widening circles.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0246}.jpg" alt="{0246}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0246}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 thunder-shower 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,&mdash;a
+      hot, sandy, well-traveled road, hidden from view here and there by trees
+      and bushes. The chief point of interest, however, is an enormous
+      sycamore-tree 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
+      lime-tree 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 &ldquo;Victory!&rdquo; 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
+      button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old watering-trough, with its
+      half-decayed penstock and well-worn 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 Zem-zem, 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!&mdash;antiquated
+      vehicles, rusty wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there are pilgrims to
+      it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them. Here comes a gray
+      horse drawing a buggy with two men,&mdash;cattle buyers, probably. Out
+      jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a good draught the nag takes!
+      Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown linen coat
+      and wide-awake hat,&mdash;dissolute, horsey-looking 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&mdash;unmistakably
+      such, though they appear neither &ldquo;anxious nor aimless&rdquo;&mdash;within the
+      scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back. It is the deacon's horse,
+      a meeting-going nag, with a sedate, leisurely jog as he goes; and these
+      are two of the &ldquo;salt of the earth,&rdquo;&mdash;the brevet rank of the women who
+      stand and wait,&mdash;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,
+      lumber-wagon with load of boards; horse wants to turn up, and driver
+      switches him and cries &ldquo;G'lang,&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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 he goes on,
+      perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 stage-coach,&mdash;the
+      vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile off the shaking
+      of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, 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 stage-coach. It
+      almost satisfies the imagination, this royal vehicle; one can go in it to
+      the confines of the world,&mdash;to Boston and to Albany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 river-bank not far from his house. It was shaded by elms
+      and butternut-trees, 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 declared,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;So here we pledge perpetual hate
+      To all that can intoxicate;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      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 loaf-cake and pie and drinking
+      ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 out-doors, 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 story-books;
+      and John took these city thieves, who were on their annual foray into the
+      country, trading and stealing horses and robbing hen-roosts 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,
+      black-haired 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
+      stove-lengths; and, in short, that the &ldquo;chores&rdquo; 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 that the
+      world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0257}.jpg" alt="{0257}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0257}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX. A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 rewarded
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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, and especially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0261}.jpg" alt="{0261}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0261}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 upon the illumination, which seemed to be a private affair to each
+      one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 it as easy to be pretty as an American child
+      to be good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 any other kind of children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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 burning its fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and the
+      church has understood this longing in human nature, and found means to
+      gratify it by this festival of tapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft 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 round-faced 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
+      music-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And next to the monk stands the boy,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 hear him long after all sound has ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes and a
+      greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his voice in the
+      same gleesome abundance.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> <img src="images/{0265}.jpg" alt="{0265}" width="100%" /><br /> </div> <h5> <a href="images/{0265}.jpg"> <img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> </h5>
+
+    <p>
+      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 organ-loft. 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 monkey-shines that set every other boy into
+      a laugh, or he stirred up a row that set them all at fisticuffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 abandon of carriage, as if he could sing himself
+      out of his skin if he liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 down-stairs in a gale of noise and laughter. The
+      beautiful boy I saw no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About him plays the light of tender memory; but were he twice as lovely, I
+      could never think of him as having either the simple manliness or the good
+      fortune of the New England boy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+
+
+
+Being a Boy
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+BEING A BOY
+
+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
+cider-mill.  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 cart-wheel.  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 is to get out of them.
+
+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 Three-Ply Silver Stick
+should happen to get in front of the Most Royal Double-and-Twisted
+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 often admired this trait in COWS.
+
+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 improves a boy's elocution a great
+deal more than driving oxen.
+
+It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he is
+milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BOY AS A FARMER
+
+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 have a great deal on his mind.
+
+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 horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and
+cut down the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home
+mowing-lot and along the road towards the village; to dig up the
+docks round the garden patch; to weed out the beet-bed; 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 run 'em!"
+
+"Yes, sir," says John," is that all?"
+
+"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
+potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat."
+
+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 Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at the
+post and his master is talking politics in the store--with 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 eyebrows.
+
+John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the
+odorous buffalo-robe 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 want salting.  But his father, without turning his head,
+replies,
+
+"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 half enough!
+
+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 out-door work,
+that rather drags.  There are so many things to distract the
+attention--a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, 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 bill-hook; or
+he charges upon the rows of mullein-stalks 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 dinner-time before John
+finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time before John has made much
+impression on the garden.
+
+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 out-doors,
+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 ball-playing!  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 least, worked for my
+Independence.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
+
+There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, 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 ten-minute errand.  The sarcasm has no
+effect on the boy.
+
+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 hay-field.  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 so long!  The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat, many a
+time.
+
+No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy 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 a-fishing 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 and deacon and to "keep
+store."
+
+But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring
+and fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, 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 brook-side 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 right ones; and how cheerfully I did yell
+at them.
+
+It was a glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heard
+any public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting 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 watering-troughs,
+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, cracking my black-stock whip.
+
+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, rye-and-indian 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, just to "throw in" the brook we passed.  I know there were
+trout there.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
+
+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 life would
+actually stop.
+
+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 leap-frog 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 dinner-table, 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 winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for
+them, he is to stay in-doors 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 of chores.
+
+A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and
+probably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens.  A guinea-hen
+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 wood-pile 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 hen-roost 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 cow-dog, but what they call a
+sheep-dog.  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 are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes.
+
+A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole 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 at the West a
+ground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish.
+
+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 chicken-stealing.  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 Sunday-school 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.  If he had been honest,
+he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE BOY'S SUNDAY
+
+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 meeting-houses.
+
+Sunday to the country farmer-boy 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, hand-springs, 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 country-boy, 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 country-boy in his penitential Sunday shoes.  I recall the
+celerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown.
+
+Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy.  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 Sunday-school 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 home bareback, and harnessed.
+
+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 salt-dish, 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 very near
+saying "dum it," but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.
+
+The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the
+set of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory
+of the Sunday-school 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 hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan,
+or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the
+bunch of caraway-seed.  Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load
+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 farmer-boy to see all this procession
+of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys, who leaned
+over the wagon-seats 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 daring and
+wicked.
+
+The meeting-house 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 tithing-men 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 long-continued
+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 tithing-man, who carried a long rod and kept
+order in the house, and out-doors 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 bushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time.  The
+eyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the
+guilt ooze out of his burning face.
+
+At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon
+service, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon
+together at the watering-trough, 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
+sweet-flag, 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 bass-viol in the choir took the place of
+"David's harp of solemn sound."
+
+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 meeting-house 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
+Sunday-school 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.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
+
+If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the
+farmer-boy, 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 haying--I 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
+dew-laden 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 hay-field 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 amid the short and freshly cut stubble.
+
+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
+each other.
+
+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 such hard grinding work?"
+
+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 who--works."  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 men-folks, 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 farm-boy 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 training-day, 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 potato-patch, 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 angle-worm 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 dead-weight 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 sucker.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+FICTION AND SENTIMENT
+
+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 country-boy 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
+school-hours: 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 spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
+
+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 jack-knives 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
+country-boy 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 dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page,
+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 novel-reading, 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 longed to know.
+
+And the farmer-boy 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 wine-parties 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 lead-pencil, 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, pop-corn,
+beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux,
+fancifully folded, three-cornered 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 flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry
+in his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that
+putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into
+the sugar-bowl 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, tow-color, 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 I am dead."
+
+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, red-ink
+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 horse-collar," 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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
+
+One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
+hickory-nuts, 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 getting-in 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 nut-gathering 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 pine-cones,
+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
+pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not
+see the fun of nutting.  Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at
+pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-burs
+as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy.  What a hardship
+the prickles in his fingers would be!  But now he digs them out with
+his jack-knife, 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 chestnut-grove; they
+leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year 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 grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one
+as active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, 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 fruit-trees.
+They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly
+in cotton-fields.  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
+skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them.  The drum-major
+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
+grasshopper-field.  He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in
+a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, 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 any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
+
+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 play-spell; 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 twenty-four 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 mission
+to some foreign country, if they do not do well where they are.
+
+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 mince-pies 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 chicken-pie 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 merry-making parties, and perhaps the
+skatings and sleigh-rides, 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 chicken-nap.  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 trousers-legs
+were.  He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting 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 presence.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
+
+What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but
+that was after he had eaten a whole one.  It seemed to him then that
+mince would be better.
+
+The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie 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 stirring-up 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 ingenuity to get at them.
+
+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 oven-full 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 pumpkin-pie in
+the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so
+discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into the
+world.
+
+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 way,
+and makes just as much out of them.
+
+There are ways in which the farmer-boy 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 table--but 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, especially as it melted away so fast in that hot
+climate.
+
+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
+self-denial 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
+self-denial 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 pumpkin-pies 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 "watch-dog 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
+story-teller 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 pumpkin-pie.  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 robbing, they would have believed
+him guilty.
+
+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 red-hot 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 dog-cart.  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 in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
+
+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 way of work.
+
+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 kindling-wood
+for his mother than go a-fishing,--the consequence was, that he was
+kept at splitting kindling-wood 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 they had done.
+
+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 gold-pieces 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 country-boy, 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 relate.
+
+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 palm-leaf, 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 honey-bees'
+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 sweet-flag 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 sweet-flag 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 John's day.  A lady leaned from the carriage, and
+said:
+
+"What have you got, little boy?
+
+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:
+
+"It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?"
+
+"Indeed, I should like to taste it," said the lady, with a most
+winning smile.  "I used to be very fond of it when I was a little
+girl."
+
+John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, 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 took two or three stalks, and was about to return the
+rest, when John said:
+
+"Please keep it all, ma'am.  I can get lots more."
+
+"I know where it's ever so thick."
+
+"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 pleasure vanished.  Something like tears were in his
+eyes as he shouted:
+
+"I don't want your cent.  I don't sell flag!"
+
+John was intensely mortified.  "I suppose," he said, "she thought I
+was a sort of beggar-boy.  To think of selling flag!"
+
+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 sweet-flag, and see
+if another carriage wouldn't come along.
+
+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 sweet-faced girls
+leaned from the seat and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:
+
+"Little boy, how's your mar?"
+
+John was surprised and puzzled for a moment.  He had never seen the
+young lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any
+rate, his instinct of politeness made him say:
+
+"She's pretty well, I thank you."
+
+"Does she know you are out?"
+
+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 self-respect was injured somehow, and he
+felt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted.  He would
+like to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
+
+"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 had done.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+HOME INVENTIONS
+
+The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, 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
+stone-bruise 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 opera-house, 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 of it; his wife, however, calls the town
+Maybe.
+
+The farmer-boy 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 farmer-boy 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 barns were well ventilated.
+
+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 freezing-point.  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 self-acting 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 hen-breeders, 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 families.
+
+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 heeded.
+
+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 snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with
+or without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.
+Take a moderate hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy
+smoothness, and a "go-round" of boys on it, and there is nothing like
+it for whittling away boot-leather.  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 district-school 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 sheet-iron 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 object was not so much to have lessons as it was
+to revive real history.
+
+Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition
+said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, 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 settle--them 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house ought to
+stand as near heaven as possible.
+
+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 outside.
+
+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
+cobble-stones, 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 ice-balls 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 of the school-bell.  The Pequots
+were in great fear of the school-bell.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
+
+The winter evenings of the farmer-boy 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 boy-on
+it, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
+
+"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
+wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
+brown-study 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 farmer-boy'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, and the comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a
+supreme delight.
+
+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 fumbling
+around in barn and wood-house, in the waning light.
+
+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 them.
+
+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 fox-and-geese board was, and he could
+find the twelve-men-Morris.  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 family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a New
+England household.
+
+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 his chamber?  Why did n't the people who were
+sleepy go to bed?
+
+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 looking-glass, 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 parting of his hair, and how to
+find out on which side was the natural part.
+
+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 stand-up 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 lead-pencil 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,
+spruce-gum, 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 spider-web 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 spelling-schools, 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 her name.
+
+But now John was invited to a regular party.  There was the
+invitation., in a three-cornered 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 pin-scratching writing.  What
+a precious document it was to John!  It even exhaled a faint sort of
+perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed 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 conduct himself at the
+party.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+JOHN'S FIRST PARTY
+
+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 formality by
+Melinda Mayhew.
+
+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
+daughters--Melinda 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 tan-bark 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 he would rather face all the dogs in town
+than knock at the front door.
+
+The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging
+before the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound of
+voices--girls' voices--which set his heart in a flutter.  He could
+face the whole district school of girls without flinching,--he didn't
+mind 'em in the meeting-house 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, and hides his shy
+awkwardness in noise and commotion.
+
+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 religious
+duties.
+
+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 before--but now
+nothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at a party.
+
+"It is a pleasant evening," said John.
+
+"It is quite so," replied Cynthia.
+
+"Did you come in a cutter?"  asked John anxiously.
+
+"No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,"
+said Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.
+
+"Was it slippery?"  continued John.
+
+"Not very."
+
+John hoped it would be slippery--very--when 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
+encouraging.
+
+And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the
+husking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't
+she think she was a real pretty girl.
+
+"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it
+pretty well.  But did John like the color of her eyes?
+
+No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.
+
+"Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show
+her teeth."
+
+John said her mouth was her worst feature.
+
+"Oh, no," said Cynthia warmly; "her mouth is better than her nose."
+
+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 dreadful black.
+
+But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked
+black hair, and she wished hers was dark.  Whereupon John protested
+that he liked light hair--auburn hair--of all things.
+
+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 paring-bee, and the spelling-school, 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 living-room, with its easy-chairs 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 began to
+enjoy themselves.
+
+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 the scraping of a wicked fiddle.
+
+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
+once.
+
+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, and--and 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 wretched evening.
+
+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 her--like a goose as he was--that she had
+better ask Ephraim.  That seemed to him very smart; but he got more
+and more miserable, and began to feel that he was making himself
+ridiculous.
+
+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 permission to "see"
+Cynthia home.
+
+It was after half-past 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 "Good-night, John!"
+
+"Good-night, Cynthia!"
+
+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 heard a loud
+rapping on the under floor, and saw that it was daylight.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE SUGAR CAMP
+
+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 blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the
+tunes of all the other birds.
+
+In my day maple-sugar-making 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 rye-and-indian 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 money-making 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
+country-boy, 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 country-boy 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 maple-trees with his
+jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery
+as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement--as
+if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn--with "Sap's runnin'!"
+
+And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin.  The sap-buckets,
+which have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, 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
+sap-buckets 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 ox-sled is got out to make a road to the sugar camp,
+and the campaign begins.  The boy is everywhere present,
+superintending everything, asking questions, and filled with a desire
+to help the excitement.
+
+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 can scarcely contain his
+delight that his out-door life is about to begin again.
+
+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 cider-barrel 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 re-covered
+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 establishment is under full headway.
+
+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 sap-yoke
+and small pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid.  He has a
+little boiling-place 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 done only once in two or three days.
+
+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 sweetness, that his own mother would n't know him.
+
+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 hired man says that he was very much scared by
+the hooting of an owl.
+
+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 "sugaring-off "
+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 not do.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+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 hickory-tree 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 wide-swaying 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 loud murmur would fill the air.
+
+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 far-off 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, no-mistake 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 boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who 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 white-and-black 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 white-and-black 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 overgrown with
+brush.
+
+John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck.  He bore a
+special grudge against this clover-eater, 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 apple-tree.
+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
+trousers-leg.  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 woodchuck-holes.  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 one--there are usually three--were
+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, half-drowned
+creature as--it 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 woodchuck,--an--unspeakable woodchuck."
+
+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 hill-pasture 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 sweet-smelling 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 mosses--without
+compunction.  But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks the
+columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the
+high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild
+currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of
+the pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots
+of the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; 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 spruce-tree, 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 gold-thread, the tansy, and the
+loathsome "boneset; " and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel,
+stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, 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
+sweet-fern; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+JOHN'S REVIVAL
+
+The New England country-boy 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 "seven-up" in a barn, on the
+haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder.  He had.
+once seen a pack of greasy "playing-cards," 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, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless
+inhabitants, it was said, were card-playing 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 his contempt of all
+holy and orderly life as by playing cards for amusement.
+
+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 quavering voice:
+
+              "While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
+               All seated on the ground."
+
+The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of it--the 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 of delightful wickedness in
+indulging his dislike of hymns and of Sunday.
+
+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
+better wicked boy than John.
+
+When the "revival" came, therefore, one summer, John was in a
+quandary.  Sunday meeting and Sunday-school 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 would--get 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
+heart-wringing pleasures.  It suggested the immaculate scornful, the
+melancholy unattainable.
+
+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 summer--time 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 odor--to 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 himself as a little Pope, associated his
+conversion with this plaintive sound.
+
+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 stomach-ache; 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 well-known hole tempted John, but he restrained
+himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a
+woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache.  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 Such a good boy.  All
+this was dreadful.
+
+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 stomach-ache 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
+Madagascar was just as easy as anything.
+
+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 it.
+And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
+
+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 it--be a means of "grieving away the Holy Spirit."  He
+therefore hid away the paper in a table-drawer, 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 no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
+him is not a "scheme."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+WAR
+
+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
+country-boy.  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 or vices, in order to understand the
+primitive man.
+
+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 gold-lace 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 smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; to
+kill them with breech-loading 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 twenty-four 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 taxes to buy uniforms and guns.
+
+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 gold-tried-in-the-fire-color
+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; and he valued rather the number than
+the quality of these elastic wristlets.
+
+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 snug-fitting, decorated clothes,--very different from his
+somewhat roomy trousers and country-cut 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 in a
+heroic attitude.  John determined to be an officer.
+
+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, from which he was never separated.
+
+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 window, or "go
+for" a striped snake, he was "hollered" at no end.
+
+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 weakness by which women
+govern the world.
+
+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 name--was
+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 apple-trees.  It was a quiet place
+where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--the
+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 war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas
+Arms.  The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+COUNTRY SCENES
+
+It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
+conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about
+the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made 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 hen-hawk 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 think any city lad
+could have written "Thanatopsis" at eighteen?
+
+If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used
+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
+jack-knife.  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, flag-root,
+tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux 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 trout-fishing.  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 story-book.  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 high-stepping 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 fairy-like person?  Was this
+expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing a
+country-boy?  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 self-conscious.  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,
+red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she looked tired and
+discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none of the
+romance of her youth.
+
+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 swimming-rock,
+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 fish-pole, 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 yellow-bird 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 fish-hawk 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 even-poised
+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 thunder-shower 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, well-traveled road, hidden
+from view here and there by trees and bushes.  The chief point of
+interest, however, is an enormous sycamore-tree 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 lime-tree 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 button-ball tree (as it was called)
+stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and
+well-worn 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
+Zem-zem, 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 buffalo-robe 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 water-spout!  All day long there are
+pilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them.
+Here comes a gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle
+
+buyers, probably.  Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein.  What a
+good draught the nag takes!  Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a
+sulky; man in a brown linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute,
+horsey-looking 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 scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back.  It is
+the deacon's horse, a meeting-going 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, lumber-wagon 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 he
+goes on, perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
+
+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 stage-coach,--
+the vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle.  John can hear a mile off
+the shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, 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 stage-coach.  It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal
+vehicle; one can go in it to the confines of the world,--to Boston
+and to Albany.
+
+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 river-bank not far from his
+house.  It was shaded by elms and butternut-trees, 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 declared,
+
+         "So here we pledge perpetual hate
+          To all that can intoxicate; "
+
+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 loaf-cake and
+pie and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
+
+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 out-doors, 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 story-books; and John took these city thieves,
+who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing
+horses and robbing hen-roosts 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, black-haired 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 stove-lengths; 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 that the world permits only wicked
+people to be Bohemians.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
+
+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 rewarded me.
+
+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, and
+especially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.
+
+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 upon the illumination, which seemed
+to be a private affair to each one of them.
+
+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 it as easy to be pretty as
+an American child to be good.
+
+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 any other kind of children.
+
+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 burning its fingers.
+
+There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and
+the church has understood this longing in human nature, and found
+means to gratify it by this festival of tapers.
+
+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 organ-loft 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 round-faced 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 music-book.
+
+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 hear him long
+after all sound has ceased.
+
+And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes
+and a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his
+voice in the same gleesome abundance.
+
+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 organ-loft.  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 monkey-shines 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 abandon of carriage, as if he could sing himself out of his
+skin if he liked.
+
+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 down-stairs 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 having either the simple
+manliness or the good fortune of the New England boy.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Being a Boy, by Charles D. Warner
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Being a Boy, by C. D. Warner
+#31 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner
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+Title: Being a Boy
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+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
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+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
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+
+
+BEING A BOY
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+NOTE: This work has been previously published in [Etext #2674]
+The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 4,
+Project Gutenberg The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
+4warn10.txt or 4warn10.zip
+
+
+
+
+BEING A BOY
+
+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
+cider-mill.  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 cart-wheel.  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 is to get out of them.
+
+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 Three-Ply Silver Stick
+should happen to get in front of the Most Royal Double-and-Twisted
+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 often admired this trait in COWS.
+
+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 improves a boy's elocution a great
+deal more than driving oxen.
+
+It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he is
+milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BOY AS A FARMER
+
+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 have a great deal on his mind.
+
+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 horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and
+cut down the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home
+mowing-lot and along the road towards the village; to dig up the
+docks round the garden patch; to weed out the beet-bed; 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 run 'em!"
+
+"Yes, sir," says John," is that all?"
+
+"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
+potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat."
+
+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 Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at the
+post and his master is talking politics in the store--with 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 eyebrows.
+
+John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the
+odorous buffalo-robe 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 want salting.  But his father, without turning his head,
+replies,
+
+"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 half enough!
+
+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 out-door work,
+that rather drags.  There are so many things to distract the
+attention--a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, 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 bill-hook; or
+he charges upon the rows of mullein-stalks 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 dinner-time before John
+finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time before John has made much
+impression on the garden.
+
+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 out-doors,
+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 ball-playing!  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 least, worked for my
+Independence.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING
+
+There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, 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 ten-minute errand.  The sarcasm has no
+effect on the boy.
+
+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 hay-field.  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 so long!  The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat, many a
+time.
+
+No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy 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 a-fishing 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 and deacon and to "keep
+store."
+
+But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring
+and fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, 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 brook-side 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 right ones; and how cheerfully I did yell
+at them.
+
+It was a glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heard
+any public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting 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 watering-troughs,
+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, cracking my black-stock whip.
+
+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, rye-and-indian 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, just to "throw in" the brook we passed.  I know there were
+trout there.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY
+
+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 life would
+actually stop.
+
+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 leap-frog 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 dinner-table, 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 winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going for
+them, he is to stay in-doors 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 of chores.
+
+A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, and
+probably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens.  A guinea-hen
+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 wood-pile 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 hen-roost 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 cow-dog, but what they call a
+sheep-dog.  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 are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes.
+
+A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole 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 at the West a
+ground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish.
+
+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 chicken-stealing.  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 Sunday-school 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.  If he had been honest,
+he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE BOY'S SUNDAY
+
+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 meeting-houses.
+
+Sunday to the country farmer-boy 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, hand-springs, 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 country-boy, 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 country-boy in his penitential Sunday shoes.  I recall the
+celerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown.
+
+Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy.  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 Sunday-school 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 home bareback, and harnessed.
+
+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 salt-dish, 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 very near
+saying "dum it," but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.
+
+The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the
+set of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory
+of the Sunday-school 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 hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan,
+or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the
+bunch of caraway-seed.  Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-load
+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 farmer-boy to see all this procession
+of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys, who leaned
+over the wagon-seats 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 daring and
+wicked.
+
+The meeting-house 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 tithing-men 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 long-continued
+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 tithing-man, who carried a long rod and kept
+order in the house, and out-doors 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 bushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time.  The
+eyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the
+guilt ooze out of his burning face.
+
+At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoon
+service, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon
+together at the watering-trough, 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
+sweet-flag, 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 bass-viol in the choir took the place of
+"David's harp of solemn sound."
+
+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 meeting-house 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
+Sunday-school 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.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE
+
+If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the
+farmer-boy, 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 haying--I 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
+dew-laden 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 hay-field 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 amid the short and freshly cut stubble.
+
+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
+each other.
+
+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 such hard grinding work?"
+
+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 who--works.  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 men-folks, 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 farm-boy 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 training-day, 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 potato-patch, 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 angle-worm 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 dead-weight 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 sucker.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+FICTION AND SENTIMENT
+
+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 country-boy 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
+school-hours: 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 spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
+
+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 jack-knives 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
+country-boy 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 dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page,
+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 novel-reading, 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 longed to know.
+
+And the farmer-boy 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 wine-parties 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 lead-pencil, 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, pop-corn,
+beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux,
+fancifully folded, three-cornered 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 flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry
+in his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state that
+putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into
+the sugar-bowl 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, tow-color, 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 I am dead."
+
+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, red-ink
+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 horse-collar," John was so outraged and shocked, as he should
+have been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarse
+suggestion, this profanation 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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING
+
+One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,
+hickory-nuts, 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 getting-in 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 nut-gathering 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 pine-cones,
+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
+pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not
+see the fun of nutting.  Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at
+pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-burs
+as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy.  What a hardship
+the prickles in his fingers would be!  But now he digs them out with
+his jack-knife, 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 chestnut-grove; they
+leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year 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 grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one
+as active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, 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 fruit-trees.
+They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly
+in cotton-fields.  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
+skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them.  The drum-major
+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
+grasshopper-field.  He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in
+a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, 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 any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
+
+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 play-spell; 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 twenty-four 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 mission
+to some foreign country, if they do not do well where they are.
+
+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 mince-pies 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 chicken-pie 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 merry-making parties, and perhaps the
+skatings and sleigh-rides, 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 chicken-nap.  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 trousers-legs
+were.  He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting 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 presence.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE
+
+What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; but
+that was after he had eaten a whole one.  It seemed to him then that
+mince would be better.
+
+The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie 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 stirring-up 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 ingenuity to get at them.
+
+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 oven-full 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 pumpkin-pie in
+the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so
+discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into the
+world.
+
+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 way,
+and makes just as much out of them.
+
+There are ways in which the farmer-boy 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 table--but 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, especially as it melted away so fast in that hot
+climate.
+
+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
+self-denial 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
+self-denial 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 pumpkin-pies 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 "watch-dog 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
+story-teller 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 pumpkin-pie.  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 robbing, they would have believed
+him guilty.
+
+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 red-hot 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 dog-cart.  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 in one respect,--it is apt to begin at home.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD
+
+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 way of work.
+
+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 kindling-wood
+for his mother than go a-fishing,--the consequence was, that he was
+kept at splitting kindling-wood 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 they had done.
+
+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 gold-pieces 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 country-boy, 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 relate.
+
+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 palm-leaf, 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 honey-bees'
+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 sweet-flag 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 sweet-flag 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 John's day.  A lady leaned from the carriage, and
+said:
+
+"What have you got, little boy?"
+
+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:
+
+"It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?"
+
+"Indeed, I should like to taste it," said the lady, with a most
+winning smile.  "I used to be very fond of it when I was a little
+girl."
+
+John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, 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 took two or three stalks, and was about to return the
+rest, when John said:
+
+"Please keep it all, ma'am.  I can get lots more."
+
+"I know where it's ever so thick."
+
+"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 pleasure vanished.  Something like tears were in his
+eyes as he shouted:
+
+"I don't want your cent.  I don't sell flag!"
+
+John was intensely mortified.  "I suppose," he said, "she thought I
+was a sort of beggar-boy.  To think of selling flag!"
+
+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 sweet-flag, and see
+if another carriage wouldn't come along.
+
+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 sweet-faced girls
+leaned from the seat and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:
+
+"Little boy, how's your mar?"
+
+John was surprised and puzzled for a moment.  He had never seen the
+young lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any
+rate, his instinct of politeness made him say:
+
+"She's pretty well, I thank you."
+
+"Does she know you are out?"
+
+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 self-respect was injured somehow, and he
+felt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted.  He would
+like to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
+
+"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 had done.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+HOME INVENTIONS
+
+The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, 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
+stone-bruise 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 opera-house, 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 of it; his wife, however, calls the town
+Maybe.
+
+The farmer-boy 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 farmer-boy 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 barns were well ventilated.
+
+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 freezing-point.  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 self-acting 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 hen-breeders, 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 families.
+
+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 heeded.
+
+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 snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, with
+or without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.
+Take a moderate hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icy
+smoothness, and a "go-round" of boys on it, and there is nothing like
+it for whittling away boot-leather.  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 district-school 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 sheet-iron 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 object was not so much to have lessons as it was
+to revive real history.
+
+Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, tradition
+said, had stood in colonial times a block-house, 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 settle--them 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house 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 meeting-house ought to
+stand as near heaven as possible.
+
+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 outside.
+
+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
+cobble-stones, 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 ice-balls 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 of the school-bell.  The Pequots
+were in great fear of the school-bell.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE LONELY FARMHOUSE
+
+The winter evenings of the farmer-boy 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 boy-on
+it, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.
+
+"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
+wood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in a
+brown-study 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 farmer-boy'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, and the comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was a
+supreme delight.
+
+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 fumbling
+around in barn and wood-house, in the waning light.
+
+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 them.
+
+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 fox-and-geese board was, and he could
+find the twelve-men-Morris.  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 family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a New
+England household.
+
+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 his chamber?  Why did n't the people who were
+sleepy go to bed?
+
+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 looking-glass, 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 parting of his hair, and how to
+find out on which side was the natural part.
+
+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 stand-up 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 lead-pencil 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,
+spruce-gum, 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 spider-web 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 spelling-schools, 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 her name.
+
+But now John was invited to a regular party.  There was the
+invitation, in a three-cornered 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 pin-scratching writing.  What
+a precious document it was to John!  It even exhaled a faint sort of
+perfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed 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 conduct himself at the
+party.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+JOHN'S FIRST PARTY
+
+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 formality by
+Melinda Mayhew.
+
+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
+daughters--Melinda 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 tan-bark 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 he would rather face all the dogs in town
+than knock at the front door.
+
+The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flagging
+before the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound of
+voices--girls' voices--which set his heart in a flutter.  He could
+face the whole district school of girls without flinching,--he didn't
+mind 'em in the meeting-house 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, and hides his shy
+awkwardness in noise and commotion.
+
+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 religious
+duties.
+
+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 before--but now
+nothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at a party.
+
+"It is a pleasant evening," said John.
+
+"It is quite so," replied Cynthia.
+
+"Did you come in a cutter?"  asked John anxiously.
+
+"No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,"
+said Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.
+
+"Was it slippery?"  continued John.
+
+"Not very."
+
+John hoped it would be slippery--very--when 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
+encouraging.
+
+And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the
+husking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't
+she think she was a real pretty girl.
+
+"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew it
+pretty well.  But did John like the color of her eyes?
+
+No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.
+
+"Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and show
+her teeth."
+
+John said her mouth was her worst feature.
+
+"Oh, no," said Cynthia warmly; "her mouth is better than her nose."
+
+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 dreadful black.
+
+But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she liked
+black hair, and she wished hers was dark.  Whereupon John protested
+that he liked light hair--auburn hair--of all things.
+
+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 paring-bee, and the spelling-school, 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 living-room, with its easy-chairs 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 began to
+enjoy themselves.
+
+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 the scraping of a wicked fiddle.
+
+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
+once.
+
+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, and--and 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 wretched evening.
+
+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 her--like a goose as he was--that she had
+better ask Ephraim.  That seemed to him very smart; but he got more
+and more miserable, and began to feel that he was making himself
+ridiculous.
+
+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 permission to "see"
+Cynthia home.
+
+It was after half-past 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 "Good-night, John!"
+
+"Good-night, Cynthia!"
+
+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 heard a loud
+rapping on the under floor, and saw that it was daylight.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE SUGAR CAMP
+
+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 blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the
+tunes of all the other birds.
+
+In my day maple-sugar-making 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 rye-and-indian 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 money-making 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
+country-boy, 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 country-boy 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 maple-trees with his
+jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery
+as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement--as
+if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn--with "Sap's runnin'!"
+
+And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin.  The sap-buckets,
+which have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, 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
+sap-buckets 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 ox-sled is got out to make a road to the sugar camp,
+and the campaign begins.  The boy is everywhere present,
+superintending everything, asking questions, and filled with a desire
+to help the excitement.
+
+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 can scarcely contain his
+delight that his out-door life is about to begin again.
+
+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 cider-barrel 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 re-covered
+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 establishment is under full headway.
+
+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 sap-yoke
+and small pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid.  He has a
+little boiling-place 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 done only once in two or three days.
+
+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 sweetness, that his own mother would n't know him.
+
+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 hired man says that he was very much scared by
+the hooting of an owl.
+
+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 "sugaring-off"
+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 not do.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND
+
+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 hickory-tree 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 wide-swaying 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 loud murmur would fill the air.
+
+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 far-off 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, no-mistake 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 boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who 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 white-and-black 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 white-and-black 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 overgrown with
+brush.
+
+John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck.  He bore a
+special grudge against this clover-eater, 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 apple-tree.
+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
+trousers-leg.  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 woodchuck-holes.  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 one--there are usually three--were
+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 pit.  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, half-drowned
+creature as--it 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 woodchuck,--an--unspeakable woodchuck.
+
+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 hill-pasture 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 sweet-smelling 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 mosses--without
+compunction.  But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks the
+columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the
+high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild
+currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of
+the pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots
+of the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; 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 spruce-tree, 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 gold-thread, the tansy, and the
+loathsome "boneset;" and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel,
+stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, 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
+sweet-fern; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+JOHN'S REVIVAL
+
+The New England country-boy 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 "seven-up" in a barn, on the
+haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder.  He had.
+once seen a pack of greasy "playing-cards," 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, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless
+inhabitants, it was said, were card-playing 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 his contempt of all
+holy and orderly life as by playing cards for amusement.
+
+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 quavering voice:
+
+              "While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
+               All seated on the ground."
+
+The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of it--the 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 of delightful wickedness in
+indulging his dislike of hymns and of Sunday.
+
+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
+better wicked boy than John.
+
+When the "revival" came, therefore, one summer, John was in a
+quandary.  Sunday meeting and Sunday-school 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 would--get 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
+heart-wringing pleasures.  It suggested the immaculate scornful, the
+melancholy unattainable.
+
+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 summer--time 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 odor--to 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 himself as a little Pope, associated his
+conversion with this plaintive sound.
+
+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 stomach-ache; 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 well-known hole tempted John, but he restrained
+himself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing a
+woodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache.  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 Such a good boy.  All
+this was dreadful.
+
+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 stomach-ache 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
+Madagascar was just as easy as anything.
+
+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 it.
+And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.
+
+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 it--be a means of "grieving away the Holy Spirit."  He
+therefore hid away the paper in a table-drawer, 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 no one to explain that religion for a little fellow like
+him is not a "scheme."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+WAR
+
+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
+country-boy.  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 or vices, in order to understand the
+primitive man.
+
+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 gold-lace 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 smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; to
+kill them with breech-loading 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 twenty-four 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 taxes to buy uniforms and guns.
+
+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 gold-tried-in-the-fire-color
+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; and he valued rather the number than
+the quality of these elastic wristlets.
+
+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 snug-fitting, decorated clothes,--very different from his
+somewhat roomy trousers and country-cut 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 in a
+heroic attitude.  John determined to be an officer.
+
+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, from which he was never separated.
+
+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 window, or "go
+for" a striped snake, he was "hollered" at no end.
+
+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 weakness by which women
+govern the world.
+
+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 name--was
+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 apple-trees.  It was a quiet place
+where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--the
+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 war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas
+Arms.  The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+COUNTRY SCENES
+
+It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes
+conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about
+the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made 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 hen-hawk 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 think any city lad
+could have written "Thanatopsis" at eighteen?
+
+If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used
+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
+jack-knife.  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, flag-root,
+tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux 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 trout-fishing.  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 story-book.  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 high-stepping 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 fairy-like person?  Was this
+expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing a
+country-boy?  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 self-conscious.  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,
+red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she looked tired and
+discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none of the
+romance of her youth.
+
+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 swimming-rock,
+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 fish-pole, 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 yellow-bird 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 fish-hawk 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 even-poised
+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 thunder-shower 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, well-traveled road, hidden
+from view here and there by trees and bushes.  The chief point of
+interest, however, is an enormous sycamore-tree 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 lime-tree 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 button-ball tree (as it was called)
+stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and
+well-worn 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
+Zem-zem, 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 buffalo-robe 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 water-spout!  All day long there are
+pilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them.
+Here comes a gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle
+buyers, probably.  Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein.  What a
+good draught the nag takes!  Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a
+sulky; man in a brown linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute,
+horsey-looking 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 scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back.  It is
+the deacon's horse, a meeting-going 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, lumber-wagon 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 he
+goes on, perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.
+
+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 stage-coach,--
+the vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle.  John can hear a mile off
+the shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, 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 stage-coach.  It almost satisfies the imagination, this royal
+vehicle; one can go in it to the confines of the world,--to Boston
+and to Albany.
+
+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 river-bank not far from his
+house.  It was shaded by elms and butternut-trees, 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 declared,
+
+         "So here we pledge perpetual hate
+          To all that can intoxicate;"
+
+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 loaf-cake and
+pie and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.
+
+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 out-doors, 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 story-books; and John took these city thieves,
+who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealing
+horses and robbing hen-roosts 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, black-haired 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 stove-lengths; 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 that the world permits only wicked
+people to be Bohemians.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY
+
+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 rewarded me.
+
+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, and
+especially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.
+
+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 upon the illumination, which seemed
+to be a private affair to each one of them.
+
+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 it as easy to be pretty as
+an American child to be good.
+
+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 any other kind of children.
+
+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 burning its fingers.
+
+There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and
+the church has understood this longing in human nature, and found
+means to gratify it by this festival of tapers.
+
+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 organ-loft 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 round-faced 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 music-book.
+
+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 hear him long
+after all sound has ceased.
+
+And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notes
+and a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out his
+voice in the same gleesome abundance.
+
+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 organ-loft.  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 monkey-shines 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 abandon of carriage, as if he could sing himself out of his
+skin if he liked.
+
+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 down-stairs 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 having either the simple
+manliness or the good fortune of the New England boy.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Being a Boy
+by Charles Dudley Warner
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:20:33 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:20:33 -0700
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