The Carving of a Great Name
"I WONDER who that other boy is," and Obadiah Holman stared at a slim little fellow, dark and serious-looking, who was having hard work to keep step with his long-legged father.
A group of men and boys were trudging through the big woods in Spencer County, Indiana.
Several movers from Kentucky had fallen in with the wagon-train of emigrants to which the Holman boy's father belonged, and together the men of both companies were looking over a section of land.
"Out of breath, Doby?" asked Mr. Holman.
Dobywasout of breath, so he nodded.
His father suggested: "You boys had better sit down on a log and wait 'til we go to the crown of the hill and back. It is more than a mile and the walking is rough."
Most of the home-seekers were pleased withthis place. It offered them the finest of soil. The hardwood trees were splendid. The springs were pure. Every tumbling brook suggested water-power to turn their mills. There were few dangerous beasts and no unfriendly Indians.
Wild fruits and berries and nuts, something delicious to eat for almost every month in the year, were growing on the hillsides. Game was plentiful. The climate was mild. The soil was fertile and very deep.
The father of the little boy said: "The titles to the lands in this State are made out by honest officials. That is a very important matter."
All the men wagged their heads over the misfortunes of settlers who were careless about securing the proper officers to record their farms. Hundreds of early homes were lost through legal mistakes.
"If a settler once takes up his land and pays for it, Indiana protects his right to the homestead he has earned," Mr. Holman agreed. But he made this strong objection to the site. "I'm not over-fond of chopping down whole forests of stout oaks, nor of burning them. I'd rather get a section where Nature has done some of the clearing."
The father of the little boy, who was also dark and serious-looking, considered the spotan ideal one. He said: "I do not mind the work of felling trees. My wife loves the woods. She would be safe and happy here. I want to get her away from the Indian war-paths and the panther region. I could build a half-face cabin here and bring my family this fall. We could be comfortable all winter in a snug camp. By spring I'd have a clearing made."
"Land can be bought for about two dollars and a half an acre; one third down, one third next year, and the last third the next," Mr. Holman told him.
He answered, "Another fine thing about this State is the provision for school land in every township." He smiled. "I like that plan. Schools bring the better class of folks. They make a neighborhood intelligent. Until a schoolhouse can be built in this township, lessons are being taught in one of the cabins, I've heard. We are invited to a spelling-match there to-night. Everybody is," and he looked whimsically at his small son and smiled.
The little boy returned the smile with a sudden lightening of his serious childish face, and watched his father with happy eyes as the tall figure strode away with the other men.
Then the two boys on the log edged nearerand nearer to each other. Doby was thinking of the stranger: "He is tall, but I don't believe he is more than eight years old. I'd just as soon play with a nice small chap if there are no big fellows around." So he grinned cheerfully at his companion.
Shyly the little boy moved closer yet.
"It will be easy to like him," Doby decided. "He is so friendly."
Doby could not think of anything to say. He pulled out his stone knife and fell to carving his initials on the beech log.
The little boy gazed at Doby's queer knife. (Boys always noticed that knife. It was the owner's letter of introduction to all chance acquaintances.) Then he opened his own shabby pocket-knife and neatly cut the date—1816—below the bold O H.
Then Doby promptly cut all the figures 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 below the date.
The little boy valiantly accepted the challenge and started to make the whole alphabet in capitals. This was a big task, but he slashed away at it and finally the letters stood in proper order. He had not missed one. He glowed with interest in his work.
"Just like he had a lighted candle inside of him," thought Doby, full of admiration for theyouthful student. "I'll have to take the dare." So he followed, rather laboriously, with the curlicued small letters. This took a long time. They, too, were correct. Upon this, both boys broke into satisfied laughter and began to talk.
"Do you know how to spell?" asked Doby.
"Every word in my book," answered the little boy, "beginning at the front or beginning at the back, I can spell 'em all." Then he added, honestly: "I can't always remember the order the big words come in. Page twelve is the hard page. My mother drills me on that page every day."
Now theywerefriends! Doby knew in a flash how the little boy lived and how he thought. He exclaimed, "That is the waymymother does!" And the two boys, one from New England, one from Kentucky, because their mothers were alike, could look into each other's heart with perfect understanding.
Doby said: "The last page in my speller is the hard one. Every day ma teaches me those words and every night I forget 'em."
The little boy pursed his mouth and shook his head as one who had also gone through this troublesome forgetting. "I can read Æsop's fables," he said.
"I have a New England primer," began Doby, painstakingly quoting from its title-page:
"TheNew England PrimerImprovedFor the more easy attaining the trueReading of EnglishTo which is added,The Assembly of Divines,and Mr. Cotton'sCatechismBoston: Printed and Sold byS. Adams, in Queen-street. 1762.
Have you got one?"
The little boy shook his head.
"You ought to have," was Doby's dogmatic decision, "because for ever so many years it has beenthemost important lesson-book for schools and families. A million boys have studied it and another million grown folks have bought it, and there have been another million besides those."
The little boy was much impressed by these large numbers which Doby knew were true.
"It says:
"Thy life to mendThis Book attend;
"Thy life to mendThis Book attend;
"Thy life to mendThis Book attend;
"Thy life to mend
This Book attend;
and
An idle FoolIs whipt at school;
An idle FoolIs whipt at school;
An idle FoolIs whipt at school;
An idle Fool
Is whipt at school;
and
My Book and HeartShall never part.
My Book and HeartShall never part.
My Book and HeartShall never part.
My Book and Heart
Shall never part.
"If I had a fresh-cut pine slab, I could show you how some of it is printed. A slab is a nice slate to scratch verses on—"
The little boy interrupted with this discovery of his own: "Our big wooden shovel is thick. I write on it with a burnt stick. When it is all covered with words, I whittle the writing off in thin shavings. Then I write on the clean wood again."
"That's a bright idea," praised Doby. "I'll try it some time." He carved on the beech:
Zaccheus hedid climb the Tree,his Lord to see.
Zaccheus hedid climb the Tree,his Lord to see.
Zaccheus hedid climb the Tree,his Lord to see.
Zaccheus he
did climb the Tree,
his Lord to see.
The little boy examined it, doubtfully. "Is that poetry?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed," affirmed Doby, pointing out the rhymes. "And that bunch of wavy lines at the bottom are the sycamore-tree that he climbed—in the Bible story, you know."
The little boydidknow the Bible story. He showed plainly that he was a friend and acquaintance of the famous Zaccheus. But his eyes traveled from Doby's copy of the primer's illustration to a living sycamore down by the brook and the doubt in them deepened.
Doby hastened to explain: "That's whatthey call art. I have noticed that poetry and art are sometimes different from the way we might expect them to be. We can't always understand them."
Oh, boys of long ago!
Oh, queer old rhymes and drawings!
If Doby could have rolled over giggling on the log and tried to sing Riley's song of the "Raggedy Man and 'Lisabuth Ann," or if the little Kentuckian could have stuck up his hair in pretended fright, made his eyes round and scary, and begun to recite,
An' gobble'uns 'll git youEf youDon'tWatchOut—
how easily they might have understood such poetry and what fun they might have had!
Or if they could have seen the art of Adams, or Stark, or Steele, or Bundy, whose canvases hold sycamores with mottled bark glistening in the sunshine, broad leaves rustling in the breeze, white roots wading in the creek, the very buttons a-dance with joy, they would have wanted, as every boy does nowadays, to straightway try to climb them!
"Spelling—well—spelling has to be exactlyright or it won't do at all," announced Doby, returning to a safe subject.
At this the little boy brightened. He could understand spelling.
As the men returned and the group began to separate, the little boy said to Doby, "I hav'n't any candle to bring to help light the cabin for the spelling-match to-night."
"Come anyway," urged Doby. "Ma and pa and I are going. We hav'n't any candles to take. Plenty of other people will bring them."
But strangely enough, not one of those who gathered at the friendly settler's cabin after chore-time had remembered to bring the promised candles.
The settler's wife was the schoolma'am. Besides teaching lessons to other people's boys and girls, and mothering her own eight children, and helping her husband, she was a gardener, a florist, a beekeeper, and a chicken-fancier. She was a spinner, a weaver, a seamstress, a milliner, a tanner, a laundress, a dairy-maid, a cook, and a general "handy man."
In attending to the demands of these various trades she had temporarily left out candle-making. She had trusted to her neighbors to help, and they had failed her.
The first ordinance for the rule of the Northwest Territory had said that, "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to a good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
The laws of the new State of Indiana said the same thing. When a county was surveyed by the government's orders, it was divided into townships, each containing six square miles, or "sections," numbered from one up to thirty-six. Lot 16 in each township was reserved for school purposes.
Until the near-by settlers could build a schoolhouse on this land, the children of that neighborhood had to be taught in their own homes, or the homes of some one of them. If money couldn't be raised to pay a teacher, the pioneer youngsters had to memorize their letters, had to learn to spell and to read the story of Noah and his ark, from fathers, mothers, and circuit-riding preachers.
The hearth of the settler's cabin became the altar where parents struggled to keep alive the flame of desire for better things, until the schoolhouse could be built. To them the little log temple on Lot 16 meant the hope of progress.
Such women as this teacher-mother were notto be dismayed by a small failure like the absence of candles to light her way.
How could she "give out" words with nothing but moonlight to show her the printed page?
Doby was watching her. He was fond of sociability, and any party, 'specially a spelling-party, is better if it can be seen.
Was there any way in which a boy could help her?
He grasped his new friend, the little boy from Kentucky. He whispered excitedly to him. The little boy, timid at first, soon entered into Doby's plan. Together they sidled up to her and secretly got her ear.
She was interested and pleased. She praised their scheme. "Bright as a button," she considered it.
In the settler's dooryard, with the full July moon shining down upon them, the guests formed two opposing lines of a dozen or so of people on each "side," and made ready for the spelling-match.
'Twas "light as day" they all declared; an idle hour for a bit of fun after a hard day's work.
In the deep shadow of the door-jamb, where no one could see him, stood the little boy from Kentucky. When it was time to begin he shuthis eyes and, forgetting everything else, he looked into the book of his trained memory.
Beginning at top of the left-hand column on page one, he pronounced aloud, in a firm childish treble, all the words, one after another, in that column.
The two lines, or "sides," of guests, as they had been "chosen up" by their leaders, "took turns," one person at a time, in spelling the words as the little boy gave them out.
The schoolma'am acted as judge. She decided, "C'rect," if the speller got his word right. "Next," she called, if the wrong letters were used.
Beginning at the second column, the little boy pronounced its words in the same way; then he took the third column; then the fourth. The ones who missed the words he gave were "spelled down" and had to take their seats. Slowly the stools and stumps in the yard filled with faulty scholars.
The little boy's thoughts turned the leaf with as much certainty as though he held a printed book in his hand. He began again on page two at the upper left-hand column and went down it; began on column two and finished that; began on column three—how easy it was!
How often and often and often had he andhis mother gone over and over these same old words, laughing because he could spell them with the book upside down or with the book shut!
Wouldn't she be happy when he told her how useful a thing her teachings had proved to be! Her love and her pride inspired him to do his best. And wasn't he glad that his father was sitting on the door-step, ready to encourage him if he got scared!
He kept on pronouncing. Page three went blithely for him and so did page four. Then came five—six—seven; word after word column after column.
The boy stood to it bravely, but the spellers were giving out. Three went down on "phthis-icky" and four on "Ticdouloureux."
Those who remained sharpened their wits and went at the words as though they were splitting rails.
Page after page they conquered. But "asafœtida" was too much for them. Even the schoolma'am wanted twof'sin it. She found it hard to give one of them up at the command of a little boy. But he was positive on the subject of onefand the crowd stood with him through perfect faith in his ultimatum. She took her seat. At this the match was over. Every one was spelled down.
The sole survivor was the little boy from Kentucky, who stole away with Doby. He did not stay for the praise the spellers wanted to give him.
Doby thought, "I s'pose he will be all puffed up about himself."
But it was a humble little boy who confessed to Doby: "When I got to page twelve, I couldn't remember—just couldnotremember what comes after 'potentialities' and 'incomprehensibility' except 'asafœtida.' If they had spelled that word—that 'asafœtida'—I could not have told them the next word.I did not know what it was."
Doby was appalled, as well he might be, by this narrow escape. What if they had failed? That their plan had ended fortunately moved him to say, earnestly: "I like you. I am going to give you my New England primer to remember me by. It's got pictures in it. I don't need it any more. I'll put my name on the back cover, then you can always see who gave it to you. The schoolma'am loaned me this lead on purpose so we can do good printing." And he set down primly the letters,OBADIAH HOLMAN.
"Now," he continued, passing over the lead, "you can have your name in the front to show that it is your book."
Smiling happily at the giver and the gift, the little boy from Kentucky, who was soon to become a Hoosier, carefully wrote his name. Doby, straining his eyes in the moonlight, looked over his shoulder and read the words,ABRAHAM LINCOLN.