Weeks and even years of your boyhood roll on, in the which your dreams are growing wider and grander,—even as the Spring, which I have made the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows on the land.
Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart strangely; and you think that all they write in their books about love cannot equal your fondness for little Nelly. She is pretty, they say; but what do you care for her prettiness? She is so good, so kind, so watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your haughty claims!
But, alas! it is only when this sisterly love is lost forever,—only when the inexorable world separates a family, and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide-lying distances, perhaps to graves,—that a man feels, what a boy can never know,—the disinterested and abiding affection of a sister.
All this that I have set down comes back to you long afterward, when you recall with tears of regret your reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of passion.
Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's,—a mischievous, blue-eyed hoiden. They tease you about Madge. You do not of course care one straw for her, but yet it is rather pleasant to be teased thus. Nelly never does this; oh no, not she. I do not know but in the age of childhood the sister is jealous of the affections of a brother, and would keep his heart wholly at home, until, suddenly and strangely, she finds her own wandering.
But after all Madge is pretty, and there is something taking in her name. Old people, and very precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do not: it is only plain Madge; it sounds like her, very rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you in innumerable ways: she laughs at your big shoes, (such a sweet little foot as she has!) and she pins strips of paper on your coat-collar; and time and again she has worn off your hat in triumph, very well knowing that you—such a quiet body, and so much afraid of her—will never venture upon any liberties with her gypsy bonnet.
You sometimes wish in your vexation, as you see her running, that she would fall and hurt herself badly; but the next moment it seems a very wicked wish, and you renounce it. Once she did come very near it. You were all playing together by the big swing; (how plainly it swings in your memory now!) Madge had the seat, and you were famous for running under with a long push, which Madge liked better than anything else;—well, you have half run over the ground when, crash! comes the swing, and poor Madge with it! You fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt,—only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy ankle; and as she brushes away the tears and those flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh,—half at your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself,—and leans her hand (such a hand!) upon your shoulder, to limp away into the shade, you dream your first dream of love.
But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged by you; she is three or four years your junior,—too young altogether. It is very absurd to talk about it. There is nothing to be said of Madge, only—Madge! The name does it.
It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond of making capital M's; and sometimes you follow it with a capital A. Then you practise a little upon a D, and perhaps back it up with a G. Of course it is the merest accident that these letters come together. It seems funny to you—very. And as a proof that they are made at random, you make a T or an R before them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it.
Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you cross it out,—cross it a great many ways, even holding it up to the light to see that there should be no air of intention about it.
----You need have no fear, Clarence, that your hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental as they are, you are very much more interested in them than any one else.
----It is a common fallacy of this dream in most stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ their time chiefly in spying out its operations.
Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though you do not suspect it then, why you care so much for her. At any rate she is a friend of Nelly's, and it is your duty not to dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling of matters,—for sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of this sort, shrewder than brothers or fathers,—and, like the good, kind girl that she is, she wishes to humor even your weakness.
Madge drops in to tea quite often: Nelly has somethingin particularto show her, two or three times a week. Good Nelly! perhaps she is making your troubles all the greater. You gather large bunches of grapes for Madge—because she is a friend of Nelly's—which she doesn't want at all, and very pretty bouquets, which she either drops or pulls to pieces.
In the presence of your father one day you drop some hint about Madge in a very careless way,—a way shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion,—at which your father laughs. This is odd; it makes you wonder if your father was ever in love himself.
You rather think that he has been.
Madge's father is dead, and her mother is poor; and you sometimes dream how—whatever your father may think or feel—you will some day make a large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and have one horse for your carriage and one for your wife, (not Madge, of course—that is absurd,) and a turtleshell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery; and how your wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,—as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's "Sketch-Book,"—and how she will have a harp in the parlor, and will wear white dresses with a blue sash.
----Poor Clarence, it never occurs to you that even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair in yellow papers! Oh, no, boyhood has no such dreams as that!
I shall leave you here in the middle of your first foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those little feet walking every day into your affections. I shall leave you, before the affair has ripened into any overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split in halves, and tied about your neck and Maggie's neck, to bind your destinies together.
If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or thinks he does, so much better than any one can tell him.
To visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar;—not to visit this or that neighbor,—to drink tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts,—but to go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and a great-coat, and an umbrella—this is large!
It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever: the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach, and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town almost as large as the one you live in; and you are to make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the world: a very proud thing it is to see the world!
As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you see fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them very odd indeed: but it occurs to you that the geographies speak of very various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study. You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco-field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, and others.
As for the houses and barns in the new town, they quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe that some of the latter, instead of having one stable-door have five or six,—a fact which puzzles you very much indeed. You observe further that the houses many of them have balustrades upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful adaptation to the wants of boys who wish to fly kites, or to play upon the roof. You notice with special favor one very low roof, which you might climb upon by a mere plank, and you think the boys whose father lives in that house are very fortunate boys.
Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think, wears a very queer cap, being altogether different from that of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,—Madge's mother. As for the house she lives in, it is quite wonderful. There are such an immense number of closets, and closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries of "Rinaldo Rinaldini." Beside which there are immensely curious bits of old furniture—so black and heavy, and with such curious carving!—and you think of the old wainscot in the "Children of the Abbey". You think you will never tire of rambling about in its odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have to tell of it when you go back to Nelly and Charlie.
As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day with a tall boy next door, called Nat, which seems an extraordinary name. Besides, he has travelled; and as he sits with you on the summer nights under the linden-trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things he has seen. He has made the voyage to London; and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising; and he takes the stern-oar in the little skiff, when you row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most seaman-like way.
He bewilders you, too, with his talk about the great bridges of London,—London Bridge specially, where they sell kids for a penny; which story your new acquaintance unfortunately does not confirm. You have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them in the "Wonders of the World"; but then Nat has seen them with his own eyes: he has literally walked over London Bridge, on his own feet! You look at his very shoes in wonderment, and are surprised you do not find some startling difference between those shoes and your shoes. But there is none,—only yours are a trifle stouter in the welt. You think Nat one of the fortunate boys of this world,—born, as your old nurse used to say, with a gold spoon in his mouth.
Beside Nat there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way, named Jenny,—with an eye as black as a coal, and a half a year older than you, but about your height,—whom you fancy amazingly.
She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play with as if they were your own. And she has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together, and then marries you after his fashion,—much to the amusement of a grown-up house-maid, whenever she gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some day or other.
----Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence, and your blue ribbon!
Jenny is romantic, and talks of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you the book. She folds billets in a lover's fashion, and practises love-knots upon her bonnet-strings. She looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces. She has great pity for middle-aged bachelors, and thinks them all disappointed men.
After a time she writes notes to you, begging you would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and signs herself—"your attached Jenny." She takes the marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way, as trifling with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you. She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss her; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally indignant, but—with a great change of color.
Nat says one day in a confidential conversation that it won't do to marry a woman six months older than yourself; and this, coming from Nat who has been to London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if the thing were possible, for Nat says they sometimes do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never seen it himself.
----Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness as you grow older; you will find that Providence has charitably so tempered our affections, that every man of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a single wife.
All this time—for you are making your visit a very long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring your little coquetries to the chimney-corner—poor Charlie lies sick at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven! does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object is remote. And those letters from the mother, telling you that Charlie cannot play,—cannot talk even as he used to do,—and that perhaps his "Heavenly Father will take him away to be with him in the better world," disturb you for a time only. Sometimes however they come back to your thought on a wakeful night, and you dream about his suffering, and think—why it is not you, but Charlie, who is sick? The thought puzzles you; and well it may, for in it lies the whole mystery of our fate.
Those letters grow more and more discouraging, and the kind admonitions of your mother grow more earnest, as if (though the thought does not come to you until years afterward) she was preparing herself to fasten upon you that surplus of affection which she fears may soon be withdrawn forever from the sick child.
It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing with Nat, that the letter reaches you which says Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to your home. It makes a dreamy night for you—fancying how Charlie will look, and if sickness has altered him much, and if he will not be well by Christmas. From this you fall away in your reverie to the odd old house and its secret cupboards, and your aunt's queer caps; then come up those black eyes of "your attached Jenny," and you think it a pity that she is six month's older than you; and again—as you recall one of her sighs—you think that six months are not much after all!
You bid her good-bye, with a little sentiment swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat will see your lip tremble. Of course you promise to write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty you do not think of doubting—for weeks.
It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The winds sweep over the withered cornfields with a harsh, chilly whistle, and the surfaces of the little pools by the roadside are tossed up into cold blue wrinkles of water. Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry stubble of an oatfield; or, startled by the snap of the driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then whir away down the cold current of the wind. The blue jays scream from the roadside oaks, and the last of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall. And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds to the color of the frosted maples, light lines of the Aurora gush up from the northern hills, and trail their splintered fingers far over the autumn sky.
It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at the open door Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother folds you to her heart; but at your first noisy outburst of joy puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor Charlie's name. The Doctor you see too, slipping softly out of the bedroom-door, with glasses in his hand; and—you hardly know how—your spirits grow sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all about you.
You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;—and you cannot in the quiet parlor tell Nelly a single one of the many things, which you had hoped to tell her. She says,—"Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would never know him." You listen to her, but you cannot talk: she asks you what you have seen, and you begin, for a moment joyously; but when they open the door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot go on. You sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and look thoughtfully into the blaze.
You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead: you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly described him, and with the starched grave-clothes on him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily, and creep down-stairs. A light is burning in the hall: the bedroom-door stands half open, and you listen—fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair with her head upon her hand—though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's little wrist in his fingers; and you hear hard breathing, and now and then a low sigh from your mother's chair.
An occasional gleam of firelight makes the gaunt shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral. You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your own brother—your laughing, gay-hearted brother—is lying. You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step or two; but your mother's ear has caught the sound, and she beckons you to her, and folds you again in her embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the bedside.
The Doctor looks very solemnly as we approach. He takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie's pulse, for he has dropped his hand, and it lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.
He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and she springs forward, dropping your hand, and lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her hand over his mouth.
"Is he asleep, Doctor?" she says in a tone you do not know.
"Be calm, madam." The Doctor is very calm.
"I am calm," says your mother; but you do not think it, for you see her tremble very plainly.
"Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!"
There is no cry,—only a bowing down of your mother's head upon the body of poor dead Charlie!—and only when you see her form shake and quiver with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud and strong.
The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see that pale head,—those blue eyes all sunken,—that flaxen hair gone,—those white lips pinched and hard!—Never, never will the boy forget his first terrible sight of Death!
In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and earnest. They take hold on that awful Visitant,—that strange slipping away from life, of which we know so little, and yet know, alas, so much! Charlie that was your brother, is now only a name: perhaps he is an angel; perhaps (for the old nurse has said it when he was ugly—and now you hate her for it) he is with Satan!
But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that God, who made him suffer, would not now quicken and multiply his suffering. It agrees with your religion to think so; and just now you want your religion to help you all it can.
You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that strange thing—Death; and that perhaps it may overtake you before you are a man; and you sob out those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear, that makes your little prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling;—and so it is a holy feeling,—the same feeling which makes a stricken child yearn for the embrace and the protection of a Parent. But you will find there are those canting ones trying to persuade you, at a later day, that it is a mere animal fear, and not to be cherished.
You feel an access of goodness growing out of your boyish grief; you feel right-minded; it seems as if your little brother in going to Heaven had opened a path-way thither, down which goodness comes streaming over your soul.
You think how good a life you will lead; and you map out great purposes, spreading themselves over the school-weeks of your remaining boyhood; and you love your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever loved them before; and you forgive the boy who provoked you to that sad fall from the oak, and you forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But you cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that you have once spoken to Charlie; still less can you forgive yourself for having once struck him in passion with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs then;—if he were only alive one little instant to let you say,—"Charlie, will you forgive me?"
Yourself you cannot forgive; and sobbing over it, and murmuring "Dear, dear Charlie!" you drop into a troubled sleep.
Is any weak soul frightened, that I should write of the Religion of the boy? How indeed could I cover the field of his moral or intellectual growth, if I left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness, which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and oftener to his hours of vexation and trouble? It would be as wise to describe the season of Spring with no note of the silent influences of that burning Day-god which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts of Winter,—which is filling every bud with succulence, and painting one flower with crimson, and another with white.
I know there is a feeling—by much too general as it seems to me—that the subject may not be approached except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies, and that the language which touches it must not be that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of our thought, but should have some twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy as to the busy man of the world.
I know very well that a great many good souls will call levity what I call honesty, and will abjure that familiar handling of the boy's lien upon Eternity which my story will show. But I shall feel sure, that, in keeping true to Nature with word and with thought, I shall in no way offend against those highest truths to which all truthfulness is kindred.
You have Christian teachers, who speak always reverently of the Bible; you grow up in the hearing of daily prayers; nay, you are perhaps taught to say them.
Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes they have none. They have a meaning when your heart is troubled, when a grief or a wrong weighs upon you: then the keeping of the Father, which you implore, seems to come from the bottom of your soul; and your eye suffuses with such tears of feeling as you count holy, and as you love to cherish in your memory.
But they have no meaning when some trifling vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long hours of toilsome days little thought comes over you of the morning prayer; and only when evening deepens its shadows, and your boyish vexations fatigue you to thoughtfulness, do you dream of that coming and endless night, to which—they tell you—prayers soften the way.
Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong-worded preacher who says things that half fright you it occurs to you to consider how much goodness you are made of; and whether there be enough of it after all to carry you safely away from the clutch of Evil? And straightway you reckon up those friendships where your heart lies; you know you are a true and honest friend to Frank; and you love your mother, and your father; as for Nelly, Heaven knows, you could not contrive a way to love her better than you do.
You dare not take much credit to yourself for the love of little Madge,—partly because you have sometimes caught yourself trying—not to love her; and partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in the way. Yet you can find no command in the Catechism to love one girl to the exclusion of all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you could name, whose images drift through your thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and suddenly this thought, coupled with a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons, utterly breaks down your hopes.
Yet you muse again,—there are plenty of good people, as the times go, who have their dislikes, and who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking clergyman you have heard say some very sour things about his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. And you know that he did not talk as mildly as he does in the church, when he found Frank and yourself quietly filching a few of his peaches through the orchard fence.
But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what seems to you quite unnecessary coldness, that goodness is not to be reckoned in your chances of safety; that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is All-Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly; nor will you escape the puzzle, until, in the presence of the Home altar, which seems to guard you, as the Lares guarded Roman children, youfeel—you cannot tell how—that good actions must spring from good sources; and that those sources must lie in that Heaven toward which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel at your mother's side.
Conscience too is all the while approving you for deeds well done; and—wicked as you fear the preacher might judge it—you cannot but found on those deeds a hope that your prayer at night flows more easily, more freely, and more holily toward "Our Father in Heaven." Nor indeed later in life—whatever may be the ill-advised expressions of human teachers—will you ever find thatDuty performed, andgenerous endeavorwill stand one whit in the way either of Faith or of Love. Striving to be good is a very direct road toward Goodness and if life be so tempered by high motive as to make actions always good, Faith is unconsciously won.
Another notion that disturbs you very much, is your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such singing as they have when the organist is away. You cannot get the force of that verse of Dr. Watts which likens heaven to a never-ending Sabbath; youdohope—though it seems a half wicked hope—that old Dr. —— will not be the preacher. You think that your heart in its best moments craves for something more lovable. You suggest this perhaps to some Sunday teacher, who only shakes his head sourly, and tells you it is a thought that the Devil is putting in your brain. It strikes you oddly that the Devil should be using a verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you! But if it be so, he keeps it sticking by your thought very pertinaciously, until some simple utterance of your mother about the Love that reigns in the other world seems on a sudden to widen Heaven, and to waft away your doubts like a cloud.
It excites your wonder not a little to find people, who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of sermons and of church-going, sometimes fall asleep under it all. And you wonder—if they really like preaching so well—why they do not buy some of the minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on week-days, or invite the clergyman to preach to them in a quiet way in private.
----Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise in the best of the world! You do not yet know either, that ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and false show into the very essentials of Religion.
Again you wonder, if the clergymen are all such very good men as you are taught to believe, why it is that every little while people will be trying to send them off, and very anxious to prove that, instead of being so good, they are in fact very stupid and bad men. At that day you have no clear conceptions of the distinction between stupidity and vice, and think that a good man must necessarily say very eloquent things. You will find yourself sadly mistaken on this point, before you get on very far in life.
Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends gone, and little Charlie, and that better Friend who, she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his Father above the skies, seems a place to be loved and longed for. But to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who is only good on Sundays, will be there too,—and to think of his talking as he does of a place which you are sure he would spoil if he were there,—puzzles you again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt, and yearning.
—And there, Clarence, for the present, I shall leave you. A wide, rich heaven hangs above you, but it hangs very high. A wide, rough world is around you, and it lies very low!
I am assuming in these sketches no office of a teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis of the boyish thought and feeling. But having ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground, I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with a moral.
There is very much religious teaching, even in so good a country as New England, which is far too harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy. Long sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded dogmas as were uttered by those honest but hard-spoken men, the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and puzzle, and dispirit him.
They may be well enough for those strong souls which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon the unfledged faculties of the boy like a winter's rain upon spring flowers,—like hammers of iron upon lithe timber. They may make deep impression upon his moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad rebound.
Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is desirable? And might not the teachings of that Religion, which is the ægis of our moral being, be inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech and form which were given to wise ends,—and lure the boyish soul by something akin to that gentleness which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher, and which provided not only meat for men, but "milk for babes"?
Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New-England farmer. And—go where one will the world over—I know of no race of men who, taken as a whole, possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of those elements of comfort which go to make a home beloved and the social basis firm, than the New-England farmers.
They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined; they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; they know only so much of older nations as their histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable world they hold no place;—but in energy, in industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, and in manly independence, they make up a race that is hard to be matched.
The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of intelligence and sterling worth, infants compared with them; and the farmers of England are either the merest 'ockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their sacks, samples, and market-days,—or, with added cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly as that their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and are to be left to their cattle and the goad.
There are English farmers indeed, who are men in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the current of the year's intelligence; but such men are the exceptions. In New England, with the school upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting church to watch every valley with week-day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, the men become, as a class, bold, intelligent, and honest actors, who would make again, as they have made before, a terrible army of defence,—and who would find reasons for their actions as strong as their armies.
Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely but neat. Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. He is known as the Squire throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen without the Squire's approval;—and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion,—because his farm is large, and he is reckoned "forehanded,"—but because there is a confidence in his judgment.
He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of the schoolmaster, or of the village doctor; and although the latter is a testy politician of the opposite party, it does not all impair the Squire's faith in his calomel; he suffers all his Radicalism with the same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb.
The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers, consider the Squire's note-of-hand for their savings better than the best bonds of city origin; and they seek his advice in all matters of litigation. He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New-England village implies; and many are the sessions of the country courts that you peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room.
The defendant always seems to you in these important cases—especially if his beard is rather long—an extraordinary ruffian, to whom Jack Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. You watch curiously the old gentleman sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuffbox in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply,—with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and you listen with intense admiration as he gives a loud preparatory "Ahem!" and clears away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which distinguishes the New-England farmer,—getting at the very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk as much as by the leniency of his judgment.
His lands lie along those swelling hills, which in southern New England carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains in gentle undulations to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred acres,—"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into "woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house—a large, irregularly-built mansion of wood—stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer-time with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes.
The high-road passes a stone's-throw away; but there is little "travel" to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the stout dairy-maid,—to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook.
This last you cannot but admire as a type of that noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how she must regard the white interlopers upon her own soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's farming privileges with more modesty than you would suppose. You learn however that she pays very little regard to white rights—when they conflict with her own; and further learn, to your deep regret, that your Princess of the old tribe is sadly addicted to cider-drinking; and having heard her once or twice with a very indistinct "Goo-er night, Sq-quare" upon her lips, your dreams about her grow very tame.
The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his hobbies and peculiarities. He has a great contempt, for instance, for all paper money, and imagines banks to be corporate societies skilfully contrived for the legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply of silver and gold by him in the foot of an old stocking, and seems to have great confidence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot until they were ten, and who count the hard winters by their frozen toes." And he is fond of quoting in this connection—the only quotation, by the by, that the old gentleman ever makes—that couplet of "Poor Richard,"—
"He, that by the plough would thrive,Himself must either hold or drive."
The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six per cent.
An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged man, with a heavy-bearded face, to whom Frank introduces you as "Captain Dick"; and he tells you moreover that he is a better butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a broader "swathe," than any man upon the farm. Beside all which he has an immense deal of information. He knows in the spring where all the crows'-nests are to be found; he tells Frank where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership of every stray heifer that appears upon the road: indeed scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous consultation with "Captain Dick."
You have an extraordinary respect for Captain Dick: his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waistcoat, and cowhide boots, only add to it: you can compare your regard for him only with the sentiments you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and families!
A superannuated old greyhound lives about the premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin nose into your hands in a very affectionate manner.
Of course, in your way, you are a lion among the boys of the neighborhood: a blue jacket that you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their especial wonderment. You astonish them moreover with your stories of various parts of the world which they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the dusk after supper under the old oaks; and you delight them in turn with some marvellous tale of South-American reptiles out of Peter Parley's books.
In all this your new friends are men of observation; while Frank and yourself are comparatively men of reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find yourself a long way before them; and you talk of problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a way that sets them all agape.
As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather stagger your notions of propriety; nor can you wholly get over their out-of-the-way pronunciation of some of the vowels. Frank however has a little cousin,—a toddling, wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing; poor Fanny is stone-blind! Your pity leans toward her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor; and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the clear, blue sky, with the same sad, painful vacancy.
And yet—it is very strange!—she does not grieve: there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip,—a smile, that will come to you in your fancied troubles of after-life with a deep voice of reproach.
Altogether you grow into a liking of the country: your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and the sparkles of dew that at sunrise cover the hills with diamonds; and the wild river, with its black-topped, loitering pools; and the shaggy mists that lie in the nights of early autumn like unravelled clouds, lost upon the meadow. You love the hills, climbing green and grand to the skies, or stretching away in distance their soft, blue, smoky caps, like the sweet, half-faded memories of the years behind you. You love those oaks, tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven with a spirit and a strength that kindles your dawning pride and purposes, and that makes you yearn, as your forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love—though you do not know it now—theBreadthof a country life. In the fields of God's planting there isRoom. No walls of brick and mortar cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent. The boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He claims—with tears almost of brotherhood—his kinship with Nature; and he feels in the mountains his heirship to the Father of Nature!
This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon the lip of the boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and will without his consciousness give the spring to his musing dreams.
----So it is, that, as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land, with huge granaries, and cosy old mansion sleeping under the trees, shall be yours,—when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture-lands,—when the clouds shall shed their spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths.
You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and your snuffbox. You will be the happy and respected husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,—a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,—and an accomplished cook of stewed pears and Johnny-cakes!
It seems a very lofty ambition at this stage of growth to reach such eminence, as to convert your drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a bank for the country people; and the power to send a man to jail seems one of those stretches of human prerogative to which few of your fellow-mortals can ever hope to attain.
----Well, it may all be. And who knows but the Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted by the same spirit and freedom of nature that is around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking you through the spring and the summer of Youth, we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily and solemnly in the very fields where you wanton to-day?
This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach far-away shores with their bones.
That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life, may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this mountain home of New England; and that very willow yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully your grave!
The country church is a square old building of wood without paint or decoration, and of that genuine Puritanic stamp which is now fast giving way to Greek porticos and to cockney towers. It stands upon a hill, with a little churchyard in its rear, where one or two sickly-looking trees keep watch and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze among the graves. Bramble-bushes seem to thrive on the bodies below, and there is no flower in the little yard, save a few golden-rods, which flaunt their gaudy inodorous color under the lee of the northern wall.
New England country-livers have as yet been very little inoculated with the sentiment of beauty; even the doorstep to the church is a wide flat stone, that shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, the simplicity is even more severe. Brown galleries run around three sides of the old building, supported by timbers, on which you still trace, under the stains from the leaky roof, the deep scoring of the woodman's axe.
Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square forms, and by age have gained the color of those fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes which you see upon the top shelves in the bar-rooms of country taverns. The minister's desk is lofty, and has once been honored with a coating of paint;—as well as the huge sounding-board, which to your great amazement protrudes from the wall at a very dangerous angle of inclination over the speaker's head. As the Squire's pew is the place of honor to the right of the pulpit, you have a little tremor yourself at sight of the heavy sounding-board, and cannot forbear indulging in a quiet feeling of relief when the last prayer is said.
There are in the Squire's pew long, faded, crimson cushions, which, it seems to you, must date back nearly to the commencement of the Christian era in this country. There are also sundry old thumb-worn copies of Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms of David,—"appointed to be sung in churches by authority of the General Association of the State of Connecticut." The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version are, you observe, sadly warped and weather-stained; and from some stray figures which appear upon a fly-leaf you are constrained to think, that the Squire has sometimes employed a quiet interval of the service with reckoning up the contents of the old stocking-leg at home.
The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your opinion chiefly for a yellowish-brown wig, a strong nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps upon the little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass tacks, at the top of the desk. You do not altogether admire his style; and by the time he has entered upon his "Fourthly," you give your attention in despair to a new reading (it must be the twentieth) of the preface to Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms.
The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat-pocket, and who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of gallery benches facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister turns around to his little group of aids—consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty-headed schoolmaster, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in pink bonnet—to announce the tune.
This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts his long music-book—glances again at his little company,—clears his throat by a powerful ahem, followed by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket-handkerchief,—draws out his tuning-fork, and waits for the parson to close his reading. He now reviews once more his company,—throws a reproving glance at the young woman in the pink hat, who at the moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel,—lifts his music-book,—thumps upon the rail with his fork,—listens keenly,—gives a slightahem,—falls into the cadence,—swells into a strongcrescendo,—catches at the first word of the line as if he were afraid it might get away,—turns to his company,—lifts his music-book with spirit, gives it a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and with a majestic toss of the head soars away, with half the women below straggling on in his wake, into some such brave old melody as—Litchfield!
Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are naturally an object of considerable attention to the girls about your age, as well as to a great many fat old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you excessively by patting you under the chin after church; and insist upon mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry cookies spiced with caraway seeds.
You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as they are rather stout for your notions of beauty, and wear thick calf-skin boots. They compare very poorly with Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be above eating gingerbread between service. None of them, you imagine, ever read "Thaddeus of Warsaw," or ever used a colored glass seal with a Cupid and a dart upon it. You are quite certain they never did, or they could not surely wear such dowdy gowns, and suck their thumbs as they do!
The farmers you have a high respect for,—particularly for one weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his whip into church with him, who sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span of gray colts. You think, however, that he has got rather a stout wife; and from the way he humors her in stopping to talk with two or three other fat women, before setting off for home, (though he seems a little fidgety,) you naively think that he has a high regard for her opinion. Another townsman who attracts your notice is a stout old deacon, who, before entering, always steps around the corner of the church, and puts his hat upon the ground, to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner, and plants his hat and a big pair of buckskin mittens on the little table under the desk. When he is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow upon the top rail,—almost the only man who can comfortably reach it,—you observe that he spreads his brawny fingers over his scalp in an exceedingly cautious manner; and you innocently think again that it is very hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending to lean upon his hand when he is only keeping his wig straight.
After the morning service they have an "hour's intermission," as the preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking after the "folks" at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops. One man, for instance, with a twist in his nose, would say, "It's raether a growin' season;" and another would reply, "Tolerable, but potatoes is feelin' the wet badly." The stout deacon approves this opinion, and confirms it by blowing his nose very powerfully.
Two or three of the more worldly-minded ones will perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barnyard, and take a look at his young stock, and talk of prices, and whittle a little; and very likely some two of them will make a conditional "swop" of "three likely ye'rlings" for a pair of "two-year-olds."
The youngsters are fond of getting out into the graveyard, and comparing jackknives, or talking about the schoolmaster or the menagerie, or, it may be, of some prospective "travel" in the fall,—either to town, or perhaps to the "sea-shore."
Afternoon service hangs heavily; and the tall chorister is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in the toss of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as you are not accustomed to that way of making acquaintance, you decline all overtures.
After the service is finished, the wagons, that have been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn up before the door. The old Squire meantime is sure to have a little chat with the parson before he leaves; in the course of which the parson takes occasion to say that his wife is a little ailing,—"a slight touch," he thinks, "of the rheumatiz." One of the children too has been troubled with the "summer complaint" for a day or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under Providence, will effect a cure. The younger and unmarried men, with red wagons flaming upon bright yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in the van; and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian tone, that they "fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the young bucks much good." It is much to be feared in truth that it has not.
In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly deserted; the neighbor who keeps the key has locked up for another week the creaking door; and nothing of the service remains within except—Dr. Dwight's Version,—the long music-books,—crumbs of gingerbread, and refuse stalks of despoiled fennel.
And yet under the influence of that old, weather-stained temple are perhaps growing up—though you do not once fancy it—souls possessed of an energy, an industry, and a respect for virtue, which will make them stronger for the real work of life than all the elegant children of a city. One lesson, which even the rudest churches of New England teach,—with all their harshness, and all their repulsive severity of form,—is the lesson of Self-Denial. Once armed with that, and manhood is strong. The soul that possesses the consciousness of mastering passion, is endowed with an element of force that can never harmonize with defeat. Difficulties it wears like a summer garment, and flings away at the first approach of the winter of Need.
Let not any one suppose, then, that in this detail of the country life through which our hero is led, I would cast obloquy or a sneer upon its simplicity, or upon its lack of refinement. Goodness and strength in this world are quite as apt to wear rough coats as fine ones. And the words of thorough and self-sacrificing kindness are far more often dressed in the uncouth sounds of retired life than in the polished utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm hearts and honest hearts distinguishable by the quality of the covering. True diamonds need no work of the artificer to reflect and multiply their rays. Goodness is more within than without; and purity is of nearer kin to the soul than to the body.
----And, Clarence, it may well happen that later in life—under the gorgeous ceilings of Venetian churches, or at some splendid mass in Nôtre Dame, with embroidered coats and costly silks around you—your thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten church, and to the willow waving in its yard, with a Hope thatglows, and with a tear that you embalm!
And now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, or suffer my hero to slip away from this gala-time of his life, without a fair look at that Home where his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin and end.
Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of life,—what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from him into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man can go save on the wings of his dreams. Little does he think—and God be praised that the thought does not sink deep lines in his young forehead!—as he leans upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her in some earnest pleading for a fancied pleasure of the hour, or in some important story of his griefs, that such sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with his wishes, he will find nowhere again.
Little does he imagine that the fond Nelly, ever thoughtful of his pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs, will soon be beyond the reach of either, and that the waves of the years, which come rocking so gently under him, will soon toss her far away upon the great swell of life.
Butnowyou are there. The firelight glimmers upon the walls of your cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite sits your mother: her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued; her arm perhaps resting on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition of the days that are to come.
The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock, that ticked so plainly when Charlie died, is ticking on the mantel still. The great table in the middle of the room with its books and work waits only for the lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to its stores of embroidery, and of story.
Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches now and then a flicker of the firelight, and makes it play wantonly over the ceiling, lies that big book reverenced of your New-England parents,—the Family Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with heavy silver clasps that you have often pressed open for a look at its quaint old pictures, or for a study of those prettily bordered pages which lie between the Testaments, and which hold the Family Record.
There are the Births,—your father's, and your mother's; it seems as if they were born a long time ago; and even your own date of birth appears an almost incredible distance back. Then there are the marriages,—only one as yet; and your mother's maiden name looks oddly to you: it is hard to think of her as any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if your name will ever come under that paging; and wonder, though you scarce whisper the wonder to yourself, how another name would look, just below yours,—such a name, for instance, as Fanny, or as Miss Margaret Boyne!
Last of all come the Deaths,—only one. Poor Charlie! How it looks?—"Died 12 September 18—Charles Henry, aged four years." You know just how it looks. You have turned to it often; there you seem to be joined to him, though only by the turning of a leaf. And over your thoughts, as you look at that page of the record, there sometimes wanders a vague shadowy fear, whichwillcome,—that your own name may soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly your own; you affect to slight it, as you would slight a boy who presumed on your acquaintance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a common thing, you will find, with our world to decline familiarity with those ideas that fright us.
Yet your mother—how strange it is!—has no fears of such dark fancies. Even now as you stand beside her, and as the twilight deepens in the room, her low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you that she cannot be long with you; that the time is coming when you must be guided by your own judgment, and struggle with the world unaided by the friends of your boyhood. There is a little pride, and a great deal more of anxiety, in your thoughts now, as you look steadfastly into the home blaze, while those delicate fingers, so tender of your happiness, play with the locks upon your brow.
----To struggle with the world,—that is a proud thing; to struggle alone,—there lies the doubt! Then crowds in swift upon the calm of boyhood the first anxious thought of youth; then chases over the sky of Spring the first heated and wrathful cloud of Summer.
But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and they shed a soft haze to the farthest corner of the room; while the firelight streams over the floor, where puss lies purring. Little Madge is there; she has dropped in softly with her mother, and Nelly has welcomed her with a bound and with a kiss. Jenny has not so rosy a cheek as Madge. But Jenny with her love-notes, and her languishing dark eye, you think of as a lady; and the thought of her is a constant drain upon your sentiment. As for Madge,—that girl Madge, whom you know so well,—you think of her as a sister; and yet—it is very odd—you look at her far oftener than you do at Nelly!
Frank too has come in to have a game with you at draughts; and he is in capital spirits, all brisk and glowing with his evening's walk. He—bless his honest heart!—never observes that you arrange the board very adroitly, so that you may keep half an eye upon Madge, as she sits yonder beside Nelly. Nor does he once notice your blush as you catch her eye when she raises her head to fling back the ringlets, and then with a sly look at you bends a most earnest gaze upon the board, as if she were especially interested in the disposition of the men.
You catch a little of the spirit of coquetry yourself,—(what a native growth it is!)—and if she lift her eyes when you are gazing at her, you very suddenly divert your look to the cat at her feet, and remark to your friend Frank in an easy off-hand way—how still the cat is lying!
And Frank turns—thinking probably, if he thinks at all about it, that cats are very apt to lie still when they sleep.
As for Nelly, half neglected by your thought as well as by your eye, while mischievous-looking Madge is sitting by her, you little know as yet what kindness, what gentleness, you are careless of. Few loves in life, and you will learn it before life is done, can balance the lost love of a sister.
As for your parents, in the intervals of the game you listen dreamily to their talk with the mother of Madge,—good Mrs. Boyne. It floats over your mind, as you rest your chin upon your clenched hand, like a strain of old familiar music,—a household strain that seems to belong to the habit of your ear,—a strain that will linger about it melodiously for many years to come,—a strain that will be recalled long time hence, when life is earnest and its cares heavy, with tears of regret and with sighs of bitterness.
By-and-by your game is done; and other games, in which join Nelly (the tears come when you write her namenow!) and Madge, (the smiles come when you look on herthen,) stretch out that sweet eventide of Home, until the lamp flickers, and you speak your friends—adieu. To Madge, it is said boldly,—a boldness put on to conceal a little lurking tremor; but there is no tremor in the home good-night.
---- Aye, my boy, kiss your mother,—kiss her again; fondle your sweet Nelly; pass your little hand through the gray locks of your father; love them dearly while you can! Make your good-nights linger and make your adieus long, and sweet, and often repeated. Love with your whole soul,—Father, Mother, and Sister,—for these loves shall die!
----Not indeed in thought,—God be thanked! Nor yet in tears,—for He is merciful! But they shall die, as the leaves die,—die, as Spring dies into the heat and ripeness of Summer, and as boyhood dies into the elasticity and ambition of youth. Death, Distance, and Time shall each one of them dig graves for your affections; but this you do not know, nor can know, until the story of your life is ended.
The dreams of riches, of love, of voyage, of learning, that light up the boy age with splendor, will pass on and over into the hotter dreams of youth. Spring buds and blossoms, under the glowing sun of April, nurture at their heart those firstlings of fruit which the heat of summer shall ripen.
You little know—and for this you may well thank Heaven—that you are leaving the Spring of life, and that you are floating fast from the shady sources of your years into heat, bustle, and storm. Your dreams are now faint, flickering shadows, that play like fire-flies in the coppices of leafy June. They have no rule but the rule of infantile desire; they have no joys to promise greater than the joys that belong to your passing life; they have no terrors but such terrors as the darkness of a Spring night makes. They do not take hold on your soul as the dreams of youth and manhood will do.
Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, boyish home. You wish no friends but the friends of boyhood; no sister but your fond Nelly; none to love better than the playful Madge.
You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you is the Spring with them, and that the storms of Summer may chase wide shadows over your path and over theirs. And you forget that Summer is even now lowering with its mist, and with its scorching rays, upon the hem of your flowery May!
----The hands of the old clock upon the mantel, that ticked off the hours when Charlie sighed and when Charlie died, draw on toward midnight. The shadows that the fire-flame makes grow dimmer and dimmer. And thus it is that Home, boy home, passes away forever,—like the swaying of a pendulum,—like the fading of a shadow on the floor!