Part 5 (1/2)
I went to school sue of eleven or twelve, whenwas confined to the winters
(Illustration of The Old Schoolhouse, Roxbury, New York Fro)
As a boy, the only far in the ht me near to wild nature and was freer froather a little harvest of eneral tapping by a few days or a week, and tap a few trees onthe sunny border of the Woods, and boil the sap down on the kitchen stove (to the disgust of the woe I think the first ebra and first graht with soe with ar, how my customers would hail ot it to ot twelve silver quarters for sugar, and I carried the them in the face ofet hold of suchcorn, weeding the garden, and picking stone was drudgery, and haying and harvesting I liked best when they were a good way off; picking up potatoes worriedapples suited”Juno's cushi+ons” in the spring -handled knocker, about the ti overhead, was real fun I alanted so down to any sort of routine always galled me, and does yet The work must be a kind of adventure, and permit of sallies into free fields Hence theor raspberrying by Mother; but the real fun was to go fishi+ng up Montgo a long traer in a few hours thatin the world; yet a pure delight that never sated
Mother used to bake her bread in the large old-fashi+oned brick oven, and once or twice a e boys had to procure oven wood
”You oing to bake today” Then ould scurry around for dry, light, quick wood--pieces of old boxes and boards, and dry limbs ”One more armful,”
she would often say, ere inclined to quit too soon In a half-hour or so, the ould be reduced to ashes, and the oven properly heated I can see Mother yet as she would open the oven door and feel the air inside with her hand ”Run, quick, and get h” When it was ready, the coals and ashes were raked out, and in went the bread, six or seven big loaves of rye, with usually two of wheat The wheat was for company
When ould come in at dinner- or supper-time and see wheat bread on the table ould ask: ”Who's in the other room?” Maybe the ansould be, ”Your Uncle Martin and Aunt Virey” How glad I would be! I always liked to see coht a new eles To wake up in theand think that Uncle Martin and Aunt Virey were there, or Uncle Edmund and Aunt Saliny, quickened the pulse a little Or, when any of e,--what joy filled the days! And when they went, how lonesos looked till the second or third day! I early developed a love of comrades, and was always fond of company--and am yet, as the records of Slabsides show
I was quite a hunter in ht hoeon occasionally I think with longing and delight of the eons that used to co the sky for a day or two, and ay and festive with their soft voices and fluttering blue wings I have seen thousands of the up the sprouting beechnuts Those in the rear would be constantly flying over those in front, so that the effect was that of a vast billow ofas it went One spring afternoon vast flocks of the south over our faran to pour down in the beech woods on the hill by the roadside A part of nearly every flock that streamed by would split off and, with a doheel and rush, join those in the wood Presently I seized the old musket and ran out in the road, and then crept up behind the wall, till only the width of the road separated eons The air and the woods were literally blue with theun across the wall at the surging masses, and then sat there spellbound
The sound of their wings and voices filled my ears, and their numbers more than filled my eyes Why I did not shoot was never very clear to eons, as they still ca down from the heavens, and I did not want to break the spell There I sat waiting, waiting, with un-barrel, till, suddenly, the mass rose like an explosion, and with a rush and a roar they were gone Then I came to my senses and with keen mortification realized what an opportunity I had let slip Such a chance never caeons did not take place till 1875
When I was about ten or twelve, a spell was put uponof a hound upon the mountain had drawn me there, armed with the same old musket It was a chilly day in early Deceht be the runway, and waited After a while I stood the butt of round, and held the barrel with my hand Presently I heard a rustle in the leaves, and there ca past me, not fifty feet away He was evidently not aware of my presence, and, as for un, that here was the game I was in quest of, and that noas my chance to add tofox disappeared over a knoll, again I caun to one I returned hoave as the excuse why I did not shoot, that I had un It is true I had , on my wits also It was years before I heard the last of thatthey said, ”John had his uess”
I reony of my ohen I was a mere boy I used to speculate as to what the world wasmy eyes, I could see what appeared to be little crooked chains of fine bubbles floating in the air, and I concluded that that was the stuff the world was made of And the philosophers have not yet arrived at aof my childhood and youth I try to define to myself wherein I differed frohborhood, or wherein I showed any indication of the future bent of my mind I see that I was more curious and alert than most boys, and had more interests outside my special duties as a farm boy I knew pretty well the ways of the wild bees and hornets when I was only a small lad I knew the different bumblebees, and had made a collection of their combs and honey before I had entered s, the hylas, and had captured the in my hand I had watched the leaf-cutters and followed them to their nests in an old rail, or under a stone I see that I early had an interest in the wild life about me that my brothers did not have I was a natural observer froer curiosity I loved to roa the streams, just to come in contact with the wild and the adventurous I was not sent to Sunday-school, but was allowed to spend the day as I saw fit, provided I did not carry a gun or a fishi+ng-rod Indeed, the foundation of e of the ways of the wild creatures was laid when I was a farm boy, quite unconscious of the natural-history value of ave my mind its final push in this direction would not be easy to nah literature, and h the works of Audubon, when I enty-five or twenty-six years of age
The sentiment of nature is so full and winsoreatly influenced by it I was early drawn to Wordsworth and to our own Emerson and Thoreau, and to the nature articles in the ”Atlantic Monthly,” and my natural-history tastes were stimulated by them
I have a suspicion that ”nature-study” as now followed in the schools--or shall I say in the colleges?--this classroo, probing, tabulating, void of free observation, and shut away from the open air--would have cured , the pri, and to train the eye and ear and acquaint one with the spirit of the great-out-of-doors, rather than a lot of minute facts about nature, is, or should be, the object of nature-study Who cares about the anato--his place in the season and the landscape, and his life-history--is so If I wanted to instill the love of nature into a child's heart, I should do it, in the first place, through country life, and, in the next place, through the best literature, rather than through classrooh books of facts about the ht for the feish to specialize in that branch, but for the mass of pupils, it is a waste of tiht, but in some minds it can be stimulated
Sere the days of my youth! How I love to recall them and dwell upon theulf like that of sidereal space The old far down into the valleys, the woods, the streas, the s I was so protected, and all ht of them all!
Can the old farm ever mean to future boys what it meant to me, and enter so deeply into their lives? No doubt it can, hard as it is to believe it The ”Bundle place,” the ”barn on the hill,” the ”Deacon woods,”
the clover round, the sheep-lot, the bush-lot, the sumac-lot, the ”new-barn h the list--each field and section of the farm had to , sh of the e of which the house is planted--shut off the west and southinds; its fields were all aood crops of oats, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, or, when in grass, yielding good pasture, divided east and west by parallel stone walls; this hill, or lower slope of the mountain, was one of the principal features of the farm It was steep, but it was smooth; it was broad-backed and fertile; its soil was made up mainly of decomposed old red sandstone How row ruddy under the side-hill plough! One ofhi across theacross his breast, scattering the seed-grain
How often at early nightfall, while the as yet glowing, have I seen the grazing cattle silhouetted against the sky In the winter the northinds would sweep the snow clean fro it over to our side and leave it in a long, huge drift that buried the fences and gave the hill an extra full-breasted appearance The breast of the old hill would be padded with ten or fifteen feet of snow
This drift would often last till May I have seen it stop the plough
I re of water up to Brother Curtis when his plough ithin a few feet of the snow Woodchucks would soh this thick coverlid of snow and bore up through it to the sunlight I think the woodchuck's alaroes off before April is done, and he co fast, but to find hisin oats in thethe early years of the Civil War, when Hira as a drummer, and when Father and Mother werefifteen in a ”shock”
I have heard my father tell of a curious incident that once befell his hiredin oats on a sled from the first side-hill lot They had on a load, and the hired man had thrust his fork into the upper sides of it and was bringing his weight to bear against its tendency to capsize But gravity got the better of the to his fork, and swung over the load through the air, alighting on his feet none the worse for the adventure
The spring that supplies the house and the dairy ater comes from the middle side-hill lot, soht down in pipes; in s had to be taken up and new ones put down I saw the logs reneice in s were used, and once he town used to cos--a spectacle I was never tired of looking at
Then the sap bush in the groin of the hill, and but a few minutes' walk from the house, what a feature that was! In winter and in suhtful associations I have with it! I know each of its great sugar maples as I know my friends or the members of the fa capacity they differ greatly