Chapter III: Part 3

Yet the household never again felt the highest happiness of domestic life. A soft and tranquil resignation took its place. They moved about with a gentler step, speaking in subdued tones, more often not at all. They had to live out their lives, although it now seemed hardly worth the struggle. Tears were in their eyes at the table, and one or another would arise before the meal was half finished. I heard suppressed sobs as I went to sleep on a truckle-bed beside my mother, who during the day was more composed than her daughters. Neighbors soon began to call; there was then a hearty cry in which everybody in the room joined. Nothing so relieves the pent-up feeling as this, if only a little sympathy is present, as it were, to receive and consecrate the precious and sacred tribute of tears.

As for me when I returned from the grave of my father, unconscious of what had happened, I resumed my interrupted play under the apple tree. I had never as yet wept for anything except the crossing of my will--April tears, soon dried.

MY MOTHER'S RED CLOAK

My mother was a silent woman, seldom speaking unless first addressed, and she never asked questions of callers beyond what an extreme courtesy required. I noticed the latter trait when a child, in contrast to the custom of most people; for to ask questions seemed to be the usual and almost only manner of carrying on conversation among the neighbors. Moreover, I was myself pestered beyond endurance by a fire of questions whenever I went anywhere, or anybody came to us. I inherit from my mother a great reserve in speech and fondness for silence; and, as the latter can only be purchased by retirement, I have added to silence a love of solitude in which I have doubtless too much indulged myself. All sorts of suppositions follow a man who retires and declines the ambitions of his contemporaries. By some he is thought a coward or eccentric; by others he is believed to be a philosopher. Those of a more indulgent temper guess that delicate health or some disappointment in love, in business or profession has driven him away from his kind. None of these solutions hits the marks. And although I have no wish to relieve myself of responsibility for my course of life, still less to apologize for it, destiny, in form of a woman, my mother, has directed my life in spite of reason, the persuasion of friends or the allurements of the world--the world which inflicts its just penalties upon him who refrains from becoming an actor, who persists in being a spectator. The paradox of my nature is that I love my kind as much as I love solitude and silence. My friendships are now sixty years old. My mother also enjoyed society although she never sought it. She was easily amused, but I never heard her laugh aloud; her whole face smiled and it was more contagious than the outbursts of more demonstrative persons. She listened apparently with all her senses and faculties. It was this characteristic I imagine, that, when outward voices were withdrawn, made possible the turning of an inward ear to the responses of her soul. In no other way can I account for the fact that without education or opportunities she became a refined gentle-woman, became intelligent without books and had an insight and judgment in all matters within her sphere, much depended upon by her family and acquaintances. She was feminine to the tips of her fingers, and sympathetic with distress and misfortune. From her scanty cupboard she fed all who asked for food. She believed and often said that the loaf which is divided is never consumed. Wandering beggars knew her door and were never turned away. But, as her house was small, and without a man, if they asked for shelter, she sent them to the next neighbor.

Bred in such a quiet atmosphere I was usually very silent in my mother's presence. When alone on the road, or in the fields, or with my playthings I talked to myself a great deal; or rather I addressed inanimate objects as if they were living beings, a habit which still clings to me, although the voice is no longer needed. My days were full; I found everywhere enough to keep my feet moving and my hands busy. I was completely filled and satisfied with the earth just as I found it in the town of Bellingham. When, however, evening came on and I had to go into the house, everything shrank to the size of the room. I became restless and fretful. Having exhausted every amusement which the house afforded and, however sleepy, unwilling to go to bed, I sat down upon a cricket at my mother's knee and kept saying, "tell me one little story."

One such evening I recall when the days were growing short and shorter and the candle was lighted at half past four o'clock. It was a privilege always granted me to light the candle. If no one happened to be looking I blew it out for the pleasure of relighting it; for, like other children I loved to play with fire and the candles and the open hearth gave me ample opportunities. The bellows and I were intimate and constant playmates. We played many a trick together; sometimes stealing up behind one of my sisters and blowing into her ear, or going some distance away from the candle I made a current of air which would sway the candle flame, when my mother would exclaim, "how the wind does blow; some door must be open." Then my titter would reveal the rogue, who was reminded that it was his bedtime.

But, on the evening to which I have referred, I was a good boy having expended my naughtiness during the day. There was a still calm throughout the house and the intense cold had hushed the air over field and wood. The candle was alight on the three-footed stand and my mother was counting the stitches in the setting of a new stocking. As usual I was coaxing for a story. Perhaps it was the red yarn which reminded my mother of her red cloak, or some sudden flash of tender memories. When she had fairly started the stocking so that she could knit without counting or looking at her work she said, "I had a red cloak once; would you like to hear about it?"

"Oh yes, and tell it long, long, mother."

"I was a little girl then, so the cloak was short, and so the story. Red was the color I most admired when I was ten years old. It became me, so I thought, for I was almost as dark skinned as an Indian. Folks called me Widow Thayer's red-winged blackbird when I wore my cloak, of which I was very proud. It had no sleeves and came down to my feet and was closed at the neck with a fastening of silk cord braided in a pretty pattern.

"I went to meeting in it all one winter, proud and gay, but never wore it on any other day except the Sabbath. At the end of winter it was packed away in a great chest where our winter clothing was kept in summer with tansy laid among the garments to prevent moths. My red cloak was placed at the bottom of the chest and I myself spread an unnecessary number of green tansy sprays over it. I never thought of the cloak again until the next winter. When it was taken out for me to wear one cold November Sabbath, what was my grief to see the cloak, as I thought, ruined. The tansy leaves had printed their exact shapes in a dark brown color all over the back, which had lain uppermost in the bottom of the chest. The pressure and the heat had acted like a dye. I cried my eyes red and would not go to meeting. Every one thought the cloak was spoilt. But one day the minister's wife called at our house, and the sad tale of the cloak was related to her, and asking to see it she said, "Why, if it wasn't pretty before--and I never liked red for little girls--it certainly is now. It is beautiful with those brown leaves; it looks almost like a palm-leaf cashmere shawl." Now a palm-leaf cashmere shawl was the finest and most costly outer garment a woman could possess in those days. My mother and sisters agreed with the minister's wife, as her opinion about all women's concerns was as much respected as was her husband's on religious matters. So I began to wear the cloak again, and people thought it was a new one, and wondered how my mother could be so extravagant when she was so poor. But the cloak was much admired and thought to become me more than the last year's red one. The secret was not kept long for the minister's wife explained it to someone to free my mother from the charge of extravagance. Soon everybody knew it and many inquiries were made how it happened. Some of our neighbor's daughters even tried to produce the same effects on their dresses and cloaks by pressing green leaves on them with hot flatirons. But it did not succeed. You cannot imitate accidents; they just happen once; the next one is something different. So all the girls envied me my cloak. It lasted me ten years, for I was not much taller at twenty than at ten."

My mother was silent again and I exclaimed "is that all, mother? Tell some more, do."

"Stories, my son, must have an end or you would not like them--but there would never be another. I have heard of a book that had a thousand, but it took a thousand evenings to tell them. So one an evening ought to be enough, and it is your bedtime."

Here my youngest sister, Harriet, who was fifteen years old, said, "Mother, why don't you tell him the other part of the cloak story?"

"Yes, tell it," I entreated.

My mother appeared to be wholly absorbed in her stocking; she had dropped a stitch and was working her needles painfully, trying to recover it. A half sad smile, half pleased expression came into her face and a faint blush upon her brown cheek.

"Well, I suppose the journey I took in the red cloak with the tansy figures is what your sister wants me to tell you about. My mother, your grandmother, was a widow. I never saw my own father, for I was born while he was away fighting in the battles of the Revolution and he never returned; he was killed at Yorktown. When I was about ten years old my mother had an offer of marriage from a farmer in Medway who had lost his wife; his children had grown up, married and settled excepting one son twenty years old. It was a matter of convenience on both sides; my mother needed a home and he needed a housekeeper. The marriage took place in her own house. But she did not go immediately to her new home; she had a little property to dispose of and other small affairs to arrange. When she had sold everything but her old white mare she set out for Medway upon the mare's back, taking me with her on a pillion behind. It was a day in Spring, and although not cold, I wore my cloak as the easiest way of carrying it. No doubt it was a queer spectacle we made; yet, not as queer then as it would seem now--the old white mare ambling along, head down, and feet hardly clearing the ground under the heavy load, for your grandmother was a large, stout woman and we had a number of bags and bundles fastened onto the saddle, and I almost hidden among them, was quite covered by my cloak so that I might have been mistaken for another parcel hanging behind my mother's broad back. She wore an immense bonnet flaring wide in front and big bowed silver spectacles. I had on a small tightly-fitting bright yellow cap tied under my chin with blue ribbon. It was not a long journey from Bellingham to Medway, but it was the first I had ever taken, and it seemed to me it would never end. I was much subdued and even frightened on the way. It was all so strange and perplexing to me this marriage of my mother to a strange man, giving up my childhood home and going to another of which I knew nothing. Little did I imagine the destiny that awaited me there.

"At last we turned into a long lane and came to a large rambling farm house with barns all about it. A young man came to the doorstep to meet us. I was not in the habit of taking much notice of boys and young men, but I could not help seeing that he was a handsome youth, tall, fair haired and blue eyed. He helped my mother to dismount, and then lifted me in his arms from the pillion. That young man, my son, was your father, and I have heard him say he that moment fell in love with the little girl in the red cloak. He seemed never so much pleased as when winter came round and I began to wear it again. He waited and served ten years for me, and when I was twenty and he thirty we were married. We went back to Bellingham to be married by my mother's minister, an old friend. We went on horseback, I on a pillion behind your father just as I had left the town and wearing still my red cloak, but almost for the last time, for it was thought no longer suitable for a married woman. It was hung away in a closet; your father would not have it made over into any other kind of a garment, as was the thrifty custom of all households, although I much wanted to make it into a petticoat. Your father prized it more than any of my newer clothes, and it hung in the closet for many a year. Sometimes in the long winter evenings when we would be talking of old times and the ten tedious years of his waiting, he would make me take out the cloak and parade around the room. It seemed to make him happy and more affectionate."

MY UNCLE LYMAN

As I shall often allude to my Uncle Lyman in these pages, I will sketch as much of his character and his ways as I can now recall, and that may interest the reader. He was a farmer of the old style and I love to remember him. To hear of great men and great events is stimulating, as even the sound of fire is warming; yet the memory of those who have been near and dear to us brings a deeper glow into the heart.

Uncle Lyman's farm supplied nearly every one of his needs except what were called in his day West India goods. He believed with Cato that the father of a family ought always to sell and never to buy. He strictly followed his advice in selling his old cattle, his old carts and used up tools and everything which he did not want. This was why his yards and buildings were unincumbered with the trumpery which so often disfigures New England farms. West India goods were the luxuries of his time. These goods were chiefly rum, sugar and molasses. Tea and spices were even greater luxuries. The strange marks on tea chests were a cipher no one had unravelled. On his farm were raised corn, wheat and always rye, for rye and not wheat was in Bellingham the staff of life. Eggs, cheese, butter and pork were bartered at the country stores for West India goods. Work, incessant work was the prime necessity on the farm and in the house, and Uncle Lyman and his wife never knew an idle day. This fixed upon him a serious and preoccupied air. He began the day early and left off late. The sun was his fellow traveller and laborer to and fro in the furrow, the corn rows and the swath. But it was hard for him to leave his work at sundown; darkness alone sometimes compelled him to quit the field. After supper, which was at five o'clock, the year round, is half and the better half of the day in summer, he used to say. Our Bellingham neighbors were humble, hard working people, but they taught me "the great art of cheerful poverty." I was early cured of several follies by standing under the shadow of rustic wise men. I drove their oxen to the plow, and often fell behind alongside the ploughman and picked up the scattered seeds of old, traditional wisdom in his furrows. With these the sagacious urchin sometimes astonished his little mother. Visitors, a cloudy day, a gentle rain did not prevent Uncle Lyman from his labors. "Let us keep ahead of the weather," he would say, "and then we can go a-fishing." No weeds grew in his corn or rye; and his made hay seldom was wet. He scented a shower from as far away as the Mendon hills. He first taught me to notice the sweet perfume which a summer shower drives before it from afar, the combined perfume of wild flowers, trees and new mown grass.

There was always the promise held out that, after haying or the first hoeing, we should go a-fishing on Beaver Pond, and sometimes the promise was kept. He was a masterful trailer for pickerel; he put into it the same energy as into his axe and scythe. In the same way that I was allowed to drive his mare Nancy by holding the slack of the reins, did I have my part in the fishing excursions. I held a line over the edge of the boat until the fish bit, then another hand took it and drew it in. Perch or pout it was mine, and credit and praise were duly given. "What a smart boy!" words that made me more proud than any commendations I have heard since. When they were cooked I wanted my own catch to eat and was humored. And in general that is the boy's disposition; whatever he captures or finds on trees or on the earth he wishes to eat. No doubt a green apple and the buds of trees, and all kinds of sweet or peppery roots give him that wild and strenuous virtue which enables him to resist pampering and effeminating influences.

Although Uncle Lyman seldom allowed himself a holiday, I believe he enjoyed it as much as I did. He was simply an older boy; that was the secret of our sympathy and my admiration for him. He knew so many more things than I, could do so many more, yet when with me, all in a playful way as if they were of no account, and only for fun. He was my model and my ideal of a man in everything that made for me the world. I felt an inward, irresistible impulsion to do all that he did, just as we are inclined to beat time to the music that we love. Thus was I taught to labor and enslaved to it before I knew it; for a boy wants to do what he sees men do; he must handle the hoe, the rake, the axe and the scythe, and these are often made to suit his size and strength in order to tempt him still further on. Thus does he forge his own chains; he is caught in his own net and his plaything tools become his masters. Now he must mow and hoe in earnest, however hot the sun, however much he hates to work. Yet I have never felt any distinction between work and play when the former was to my liking.

Uncle Lyman's wisdom had been handed down to him by his fathers, and he had improved it by observation. He added a new touch to the wrinkled face of ancient use. He knew the properties of all trees, weeds and herbs. Ash and hornbeam were his most precious woods. Ash served every purpose this side of iron; it was as good as a rope, for was not the Gordion knot tied with it? and could be whittled down as fine as a knitting needle without breaking, and still keeping its strength; it could be pounded into basket stuff, separating the layers to almost any degree of thinness. It handled every tool, from a pitchfork to an awl, and made the whole of a rake, the bows, teeth, head and staff. Besides, it had medicinal virtues; it was good for nose-bleed ever since it staunched the royal nose of King James, the Second. Although the most elastic of wood it never grew crooked, but shot up a trunk as straight as an arrow. It is a tree prophetic of archery. Uncle Lyman made me many a bow from a selected piece of ash, each year of my age a little longer and stouter. He measured the length the bow should be by my height. What a joy it was at length to shoot an arrow almost out of sight! "Now", said Uncle Lyman, "you are almost big enough for a gun". Alas, I might as well have wished for a kingdom. A wooden gun for awhile satisfied my ambition. With that, however, I shot many an Indian, and the little boys and girls who teased and provoked me. But I soon tired of these imaginary foes and marksmanship. With bow and arrow I could hit the trunk of a tree, the house door, and by accident a pane of glass. Best of all I liked to shoot over Uncle Lyman's dooryard elm, or try for the clouds. Often I lost my arrow in them; so I bragged and believed.

The hornbeam was much less common than the ash and was saved with particular care. It was mainly used for stanchions in the tie-ups of cows and oxen, for stakes on sleds and carts, and for levers. It is not easily bent and is almost impossible to break; it is the steel of the forest. Its foliage resembles that of the elm, but is finer and denser. It has no insect enemies and minds not the fiercest tempests. Uncle Lyman said only lightning could rive it, that the hornbeam drew fire from the clouds, and one should never go near it in a thunder storm. This was only when it was alive.

His various speculations about natural objects and phenomena, were always in the way of contraries and offsets. Good weather was enough to ensure forthcoming bad; a full crop this year meant a poor one next year. If every kernel of corn sprouted, look out for plenty of crows and a poor yield. Thus he comforted himself in every reverse and humbled himself in good fortune. In good years he was more saving, and in bad, less so than most of his neighbors. Now he had a fear ahead and now a hope. Thus he balanced both; yet the balance so inclined that the years increased his store, and thrift, industry and honesty brought him honor among his neighbors. He helped the widow and the orphan and loaned money without a mortgage. His debts and credits were obligations of honor; as he paid, so he was paid.

Uncle Lyman admired trees as the most wonderful things that God had made grow out of the earth. He could hardly bring himself to chop them down. The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, made him sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an old friend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from a sapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the old man of Verona,

"A neighboring wood, born with himself, he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees".

The trees I loved and played with most in my boyhood, the white birches, for which I still have more fondness than any other in our northern forests, Uncle Lyman cared for not at all. Although he had a sense of beauty, and long association with an object affected him with a tinge of romance and secret sentiment, yet utility was the chief criterion in his estimate of trees and men. Could you do a good day's work, it was enough; it filled the measure of a man and the promise of a boy. A useful tree was therefore the best tree. He had no use for white or gray birches, for they were neither timber nor vendible firewood. He often ridiculed them, and if there was a worthless fellow in town, he was, in his comparison, a gray birch, good for nothing but to hoop the cider barrels, of which the fellow was too fond; if a too gay girl, she was a white birch, dressed in satin, frizzled and beribboned, dress over dress of the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in the birch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred uses for the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spool and bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch bark books, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs--and, envied man, is able to sell them.

But all these useful, playful and poetic uses are nothing to me in comparison to the birchen bower wherein I spent entrancing summer days with Launa Probana.

Having been my father's most intimate friend, when he died in the midst of his years, he became my mother's adviser and helper, and to me a second father. I loved him well, and I believe he reciprocated this boyish affection. His eyes twinkled and the wrinkles on his weather-beaten face ran together when I approached him in the field, or when we talked together beside the hearth fire or under the elm tree when the day's work was done. For some reason I cannot now fathom, unless it were the ambitious desire to put myself on a footing with his years and wisdom, I would assume with him an unnatural gravity. My wisdom consisted in asking him questions, any that happened to come into my head. I took for granted that he knew everything. Had he not been to Boston, and more than once? Yet little would he say about that town. He liked much better to talk of places he had never seen, especially London and London Bridge. I only learned that people in Boston dressed every day in the week in their best clothes; that was what made the deepest impression upon me; for our best clothes hung in the closet until Sunday. Uncle Lyman and I went barefooted and shirtsleeved all summer. He never had a linen shirt or collar; but how fine he looked in a snowy white cotton shirt and broad collar, a blue coat and tall bell-shaped hat, a hat he had worn all his life on the Sabbath and at funerals. Nor do I think he had, during his manhood, more than one best suit of clothing. In winter he always wore a long woolen frock made by his wife, and a cap of woodchuck skin. Folks said it was like to be a hard winter when he put on his overcoat. His complexion was as dark as an Indian's; eyes as black as night, and he had straight raven hair. He used much tobacco, always a quid in his mouth except when it was a pipe. He mostly refrained on the Sabbath until the evening when a long quiet smoke compensated him for abstinence during two sermons. His voice was rich and seemed to come from deep down in his chest. When he was a bit puzzled, he scratched his head with one finger. He was scrupulously neat in his person and orderly in his yard and buildings. No chips, no broken-down carts nor tools disfigured his premises. His was almost the only barn of a working farmer I ever saw that was kept clean and neat--except my own. He did not belong to any church; but he had a whole pew in the body of the meeting-house and contributed his full share to the support of the Gospel. Moreover he gave of the produce of his farm every year something to the minister's woodshed or cellar. I never heard him but once make any comment on the sermons he had heard, which were more than five thousand according to his figures. "My boy", he said to me one Sunday evening, "if you should ever be a parson, try to make your sermons different every time. It seems to me as though I had heard the same sermon all my life". On the Sabbath day, after the chores were done, there were shaving and dressing, the fires to be put out and the windows to be made fast with a button or a nail. Then the carryall was brought out, a high narrow vehicle difficult to get into, and still more difficult to get out of. The mare, Nancy, was called white, but she had patches of brown along her expansive sides and was, with much effort, squeezed between the fills, and the straps made tight in their buckles. Nancy winced at this tightening. She did not like her Sunday harness which had grown hard and stiff from infrequent use and too small, having been made for her when she was younger. I also felt most uncomfortable in my good clothes, which were ever outgrown and held me like a corselet. At last the house door was locked and we drove the two miles to the church, silent and serious as became our Sunday clothes and our equipage. We felt strange to ourselves and not at ease. When the meeting was over I had a sudden overpowering revulsion in my spirits. I wanted to shout, to run, to jump over something and a hitching post as high as my head offered the nearest opportunity. I forgot the Sunday school lesson in a moment; I had not understood a word of it. On the way home we became very cheerful. There was comment on the wayside farms and gossip of the doings of the neighbors. We compared the height of their corn with our own field, and always found it a little less than ours. A heavy load of something seemed lifted from our hearts on returning from meeting. Uncle Lyman slyly put his quid back into his mouth which at once made him happier. There was a faint remonstrance from the back seat, which he pretended not to hear; or he would rejoin, "mother, have you munched all those caraway seeds you took along to meeting?" My driving on the way home was much like the illusion which follows us through life. Hands in front of ours direct our actions and our affairs. We hold but the slack of the reins, and the driven imagines himself the driver. There was a short whip in the socket, which was never taken out in the summer, and in sleighing disappeared altogether; it was only ornamental. "Hudup" and a flap of the reins were enough for the encouragement of Nancy. A switch of her tail and a laying back of her ears showed that she understood. If a letter must be written, it was done after meeting. Uncle Lyman seldom touched pen and paper except when an item was to be set down in his account book. Paper was scarce and costly and postage six good cents; and the pen, a quill, was usually dried up, and the nib opened too wide to hold the ink, and had to be soaked a good while before it would write. There was always some excuse for not answering a letter. But nothing pleased him more than to receive one. It was read slowly and with great attention, stuck behind the clock and reread for a week. The Sabbath ended with an early supper and early sleep, for Monday was always a busy day. Corn and potatoes did not rest on the Sabbath, neither did weeds.

At last for Uncle Lyman there came the eternal Sabbath day. He lifted the latch of his house door for the last time, smoked his last pipe, and laid down willingly to sleep. Other feet now traverse his lands; there is new paint over the ancient red house walls, and new labor saving tools; they and hired menials do the work, but no more than his two hands in proud industrious independence were wont to accomplish. He is forgotten by those who now possess what he made worth possessing. But I have not forgotten him, and little do the present owners of his houses and lands imagine that there is a title back of theirs, registered in the court of memory which no mere occupation and ownership can invalidate.

THE ANCIENT NEW ENGLAND FARMER

How pleasant o'er the still autumnal vale
From his great timbered barn's wide open door
The muffled sound of his unresting flail
In rhythmic swing upon the threshing floor!

How straight their tasselled tops his corn upreared!
Straight were the rows, no weed dared raise its head;
How golden gleamed their opening sheaths well eared
Whose inner husks stuffed out his bulging bed!

Full many a field of dewy grass breast-high
His long sharp scythe ere breakfast time did lay;
Full many a hurrying shower came by,
But to the mow still faster went the hay.

To him as inward fires were ice and snow,
They urged his pulse with warm vivacious blood;
How made his furrowed cheeks in winter glow
With ruddy health and iron hardihood!

Superfluous to him was coat or vest,
Let blow hot or cold or stormiest weather;
He, as his hardy fathers, liked the best
His shirt sleeves free and brimless cap of leather.

Few were his books, his learning was but small;
He boasted not of thoughts beyond his speech;
Some few and simple maxims bounded all
That he had learned, or wished to teach.

He loved his home, his farm, his native town;
These were the walls his happy world confined;
And heaven with unaccustomed joy looked down
To see fulfilled a life itself designed.

Sadly his neighbors bore him to his grave
Beneath the old perpetual mourning pine,
Where honest tears and praise they duly gave,
For all he was, the immemorial sign.

THE DORR WAR AND MILLERISM

There was trouble enough in Bellingham in 1840. The sleepy old town in its previous existence had never felt a ripple of excitement more moving than a sewing bee, a travelling phrenologist or temperance lecturer, a summer picnic or a winter revival. Now it was invaded on one hand by Millerism and on the other by the Dorr War. The seat of the latter was in Rhode Island; but Bellingham, being a border town, was in danger of a raid. The Dorrites did, in fact, advance as far as Crook's Tavern on the southern boundary of the town, where, having drunk up what rum they could find, and hearing that the other tavern in the center of the town was kept on teetotal principles, they at once retreated. Not, however, before an alarm had been rung out by the church bell and the militia company called to arms. Great was the fright of the women and children. There was no sleeping in any house, no working and little eating for several days. My mother took her family to the top of a neighboring hill to reconnoitre and was prepared to run for the woods in case the enemy appeared. She was in great distress, having no man to care for and protect her little brood. She was a small, delicate and timid woman, extremely unfitted to play the heroine, and only used to suffering, which she bore like a saint. On the contrary I aged seven, armed with a long fishpole, threatened the advance of the rebels, and was eager to have them come on. I did not go far from my mother and sisters however. I enjoyed the situation, for I loved danger, with plenty of protection and means of escape. I loved fire, deep and threatening water, the roofs of houses, high, dangerous places, thin ice and a bull in the pasture. These tempted me to trials of boyish bravery. At heart, a little coward, I brandished my fishpole and clung to my mother's dress. We could see our soldiers with their high hats surmounted by pompons, parading in front of the town house and could hear the snare drum beat the time of their movement. Nothing came of the affair beyond great excitement and town talk. The Dorrites retreated to Smithfield, the militia men went back to their farms and the town was saved. I was terribly disappointed, and the succeeding days were too flat and dull to be endured. I got through them by playing at soldiering for the remainder of the summer, making forts and wooden guns and gay uniforms out of bright bits of calico, cocked hats of paper stuck full of cock tail feathers. I had also a long-handled lance which had come down in the family from Revolutionary times with which I charged the woodpile and the hen house, made of sods, at an angle in the orchard wall. Through this I thrust so fiercely one day that I killed our only rooster, to the consternation of my mother and sisters. As I was much in need of more tail feathers for my military hat, it did not seem to me such a tragedy. I was punished by not getting the drumstick and wishing bone when he was cooked, and the tail feathers, to my chagrin, were made into a hearth duster.

The Dorr Rebellion was not long past when the terrifying prophecies of Rev. William Miller began to be preached. He had figured out by Biblical and historical dates that the world was to last six thousand years, and that era would be reached about 1843. The Dorr scare was a trifle compared to the panic which now seized upon many people in the country towns of New England. Even those who disbelieved or scoffed could not conceal their dread. It sobered everybody and banished all joy and gaiety. A sad expectancy and presentiment of impending disaster oppressed whole communities. Church members and serious minded persons thought it as well to be prepared and to be on the safe side, in case the end should come. Revivals were going on everywhere and the churches were refilled. What impression did this talk and excitement make on children? I can say for one that I enjoyed it almost as much as the Dorr War. I comprehended nothing of what it meant. I never thought of anything happening to myself, to the house or my dog and kites. The general agitation filled me inwardly with a lively joy; the danger seemed to threaten only our neighbors, that is, such as were Millerites. I reasoned that they and their houses would somehow disappear while we should remain. So every morning I climbed a little hill to see if Sylvanus White's house was standing. He was the leading believer in the end of the world among our neighbors, a prosperous farmer living in a large, frame house. I heard my mother say that he had no children, and it did not make much difference to him what happened. I pondered this remark of my mother trying to think what she meant. I got no farther than the curious conclusion that all the Millerites were grown up people without children, and, by a natural deduction, that my mother and sisters and myself were safe from the end of the world. But I was not altogether satisfied. In my heart, so much did I delight in having something going on, that I wanted to see the great event, which I pictured to myself, remembering the words, flame, smoke and thunder, as something like the mimic Indian fights I had once seen represented on the annual training day of the militia men; only this promised to be on a grander scale.

It is well known that children play at death and funerals without sorrow; so I played the destruction of the world with great delight. I made my world of small boxes for houses, one over the other, and on top of all, a crippled kite which represented Farmer White, as I had heard that he had prepared a white robe in which to ascend. I wanted of course some people in my doomed world besides Farmer White. I manufactured quite an assemblage out of one thing and another and gave them names, mostly of older boys whom I disliked, my Sunday-school teacher, who gave me a bad half hour every week, and my uncle Slocomb who was always telling my mother I would never be a man if she did not stop indulging me so much. I added a few pretended animals of corn cobs, a dead snake, a live frog; and, as these did not seem the real thing, I tied my dog and cat and a lame chicken close to the sacrificial heap. I surrounded the whole with sticks, paper and pine cones and then came the exciting moment when I "touched her off," as boys say. What fun, what glee I experienced at that moment, no one can know, who does not keep in his bosom a fragment of his boyish heart. Creation may please the gods, but it cannot equal the boy's pleasure in destruction, especially by fire. I only needed a few spectators and I soon had them. The flames began to singe the dog and cat, and fricassee the chicken. Their howling and screaming brought the family upon the scene, and none too soon to save the lives of my pets. I was shut in a dark closet on bread and water for the remainder of the day and left to meditate, as my mother charged me, when I confessed my intentions, on "the naughtiness of mocking serious things." Thus did I innocently anticipate in my own person that _dies irae_ which I had prepared for my imaginary town. I took no further interest in Millerism and in neighbor White's big house and ascension robe. After this I made new and less destructible worlds which continue to this day.

But the delusion did not expire by my neglect. It is still cherished as the candid faith of many readers of scriptural oracles. And now they are comforted by the astronomers who terrify us with their calculations on the inexorable cataclysm impending over our trusty and splendid earth. Never mind; we shall not be at the exit. To the vast future belong all these disconcerting predictions--and welcome. Time has already inscribed our urns, and, without mathematics, appointed for each one his separate and appropriate catastrophe. We who have lived fifteen lustrums have already witnessed the dissolution of our world. What more could the Rev. William Miller do for us?

WOODS AND PASTURES

There are many matters in the recollections of our earliest years so minute that to speak of them is only becoming to second childhood. "The soul discovers great things from casual circumstances", says Porphory. Providence provides temporary bridges through life which commonly fall to pieces after we pass over them and are forgotten. It is not so with me; one bridge remains whole and more beautified by time--that on which I return to my native town. I require no daylight or lantern for the journey. Some men can number their happy days; I more often count my happy nights, when I soothe myself to repose by recalling the sweet and tender joys of childhood. I travel the roads and pastures or wade the brook hand in hand with Launa Probana.

There was no gate out of Bellingham in my childhood. Its confines I never thought to question, or to suspect that there was anything beyond. It had its own sun, moon and stars, its river, its pond, its pastures and woods as full of interests and resources and as exhilarating as any place discovered later on the map of the world. This concentration and limitation give to children experiences and illusions which color the whole subsequent life. They are implicit in that soil where we find the roots of our being. They are what make us good citizens, steadfast friends, true lovers, observers of nature, disciples of the poets. They, whose early life is diffused over too many objects, with too many opportunities, have only a temporary and incomplete hold and delight in any of the advantages of their superior fortune. What is the good of however large a circle, if it have no center?

The lean and hungry pastures of Bellingham were prolific in inexhaustible harvests; what they bore on their surface may hint of something deeper and more perennial. The pastures and borders of the woods were covered with patches of huckleberry and blue-berry bushes, and over every stone heap clambered the low blackberry vines with racemes of luscious fruit. The pastures were named from one or the other of these berries, and their owners never claimed private right to them. To put up the bars as we entered and left the field, was the only obligation expected of us. Seldom were they taken down; the women crawled through, the boys leaped over, the small girls squeezed in between the posts and the wall. Our forefathers left the turnstile behind them in their English meadows, but not the short-cut from house to house, from field to field or from village to village. There is always a shorter way than the crowd travels. Boys and animals, those untaught explorers and surveyors, are the first to find it. Once within the pasture, a hundred short paths led hither and thither wherein grew a little low, sweet grass which the red cows grazed and sheep nibbled; and as they sauntered along they paid behind for their food in front. Then a warning voice would be raised telling us to be careful where we stepped. In these mazy pathways we were always returning upon our tracks and finding the bushes we had already stripped. Children were crying out to each other that the bottom of their pails was covered, or that they had a pint or quart, and generally as many went into the mouth as into the pail. The days when we went berrying were holidays, although the berries were picked for market and added a mite to the year's supply of silver money. Bank bills and gold we never saw, only silver and copper, and of these, silver was the money of men and women and huge copper cents and half cents of boys. I can remember a time when one cent was riches unspeakable, treasured for months and often displayed in triumph to penniless companions. Poor indeed are they who have never known the day of small things and the size of a cent. It is said money is only good for what it will buy, and the miser who hoards is the scoff of mankind. I must have been a descendant of Shylock for I loved cents for themselves and the feeling of importance they gave me. I polished them until they shone like gold and the face of the Father of his Country gleamed with irridescent benignity. Some were hopelessly worn and battered; some had a hole in them or a piece nicked out of the rim. These I exchanged with my mother for more perfect ones which I could burnish.

For children, berrying was play, pure pastime; it brought no money to their pockets. For the first hour it was infinitely exciting; by the next, we wanted something else, and it was difficult to keep us in order. What to do next is an eternal question that has followed both children and man from Eden. It is usually resolved by doing the same thing over again.

A little boy once sat discontentedly on the bank of a river. A traveller asked him what was the matter. He answered "I want to be on the other side of the stream." "What for?" inquired the traveller. "So that I could come back here," said the restless boy.

To hide and play games was one means of escape from the fatigue of the slow filling berry pails. Then such quiet fell over the pasture that our elders knew some mischief was afoot. We were promptly discovered, scolded and warned that we must fill our pails before we could play.

As milking time approached we gathered up stray hats, aprons and handkerchiefs and prepared to go home. We painted each others' cheeks with the red blood of huckleberries and crowned our heads with leaves of the birch and oak, stalks of indigo weed or broad fern fronds that hung down over the face like green veils. Thus freaked and marked, walking in single file, our mothers and elder sisters behind us, shouting, leaping and laughing, we presented something as near a Bacchic procession as could be found in a community enshrouded in the black cloak of John Calvin. What a good time it was to be alive, and never is a boy so young as in the berry pasture, nor any place so full of enchantments. She--for it was never a boy--who had picked the most berries that day, headed the band and was a proud and envied person. Our elders cherished this emulation. I was always thinking that the next time we went berrying, I should try for the head of the procession; but the fun was too much for me; I could not hold to my resolution above a half hour; I was excessively fond of praise but averse to the ways of meriting it. The only long word I brought away from childhood was approbativeness. I never used the word, nor knew its meaning, and, least of all, could have pronounced it. I heard it once only, together with another word, editor, which I understood as little, from the lips of a travelling phrenologist. It happened that my mother lodged and fed him for a night and he paid his score by examining the heads of all the family. I was greatly impressed when he remarked that I had a large bump of approbativeness and would sometime be an editor. As to the bump, feeling over my own head, I never could find it. My mother said it was inside and that the phrenologist meant I must be a good boy. I was quite used to that interpretation of everything concerning myself. A great many years after, when I became editor of an obscure newspaper, so little comfort, reputation or profit did I find in it, that I amused myself in thinking of it as the fulfillment of the phrenologist's prophecy.

The Bacchic procession dropped its members here and there along the road and we got to our own cottage tired, sunburnt and hungry. We ate our suppers of berries and milk out of pewter porringers with pewter spoons and went to bed at dark. The next day we fed on berry pies, and all the neighborhood during the berry season bore the marks of pies in blackened teeth and lips, except a few fastidious young women who cleaned theirs with vinegar. Tooth brushes were as unknown as rouge and powder. Every Saturday night the children were scrubbed in a wash tub in front of the fire place in winter, and at the door in summer. During the session of school my mother washed my ears and face every day, pinned my collar, kissed me, and always her tedious parting injunction was, mind your teacher, study your lesson and be a good boy. Then away with flying feet I overtake my companions, whom no sooner met, than we loitered along the road, hand in hand, or arms around another's neck, merry and playful, quite unmindful of nine o'clock and the hateful lesson. There were no precocious and wonderful children in our red school house. Even I did not begin to write poetry until I was eighteen or nineteen! The only literary prodigy among our neighbors was a maiden lady who wrote obituary verses on the death of her pious friends.