SCHOOL DAYS
The morning was cloudy and threatened rain; besides, it was autumn weather, and the winds were getting harsh, and rustling among the tree-tops that shaded the house most dismally. I did not dare to listen. If, indeed, I were to stay by the bright fires of home, and gather the nuts as they fell, and pile up the falling leaves to make great bonfires, with Ben and the rest of the boys, I should have liked to listen, and would have braved the dismal morning with the cheerfullest of them all. For it would have been a capital time to light a fire in the little oven we had built under the wall; it would have been so pleasant to warm our fingers at it, and to roast the great russets on the flat stones that made the top.
But this was not in store for me. I had bid the town boys good-by the day before; my trunk was all packed; I was to go away—to school. The little oven would go to ruin—I knew it would. I was to leave my home. I was to bid my mother good-by, and Lilly, and Isabel, and all the rest; and was to go away from them so far that I should only know what they were all doing—in letters. It was sad. And then to have the clouds come over on that morning, and the winds sigh so dismally; oh, it was too bad, I thought!
It comes back to me as I lie here this bright spring morning as if it were only yesterday. I remember that the pigeons skulked under the eaves of the carriage-house, and did not sit, as they used to do in summer, upon the ridge; and the chickens huddled together about the stable doors, as if they were afraid of the cold autumn. And in the garden the white hollyhocks stood shivering, and bowed to the wind, as if their time had come. The yellow musk-melons showed plain among the frost-bitten vines, and looked cold and uncomfortable.
—Then they were all so kind, indoors! The cook made such nice things for my breakfast, because little master was going; Lilly would give me her seat by the fire, and would put her lump of sugar in my cup; and my mother looked so smiling, and so tenderly, that I thought I loved her more than I ever did before. Little Ben was so gay, too; and wanted me to take his jackknife, if I wished it—though he knew that I had a brand new one in my trunk. The old nurse slipped a little purse into my hand, tied up with a green ribbon—with money in it—and told me not to show it to Ben or Lilly.
And cousin Isabel, who was there on a visit, would come to stand by my chair, when my mother was talking to me; and put her hand in mine, and look up into my face; but she did not say a word. I thought it was very odd; and yet it did not seem odd to me that I could say nothing to her. I dare say we felt alike.
At length Ben came running in, and said the coach had come; and there, sure enough, out of the window, we saw it—a bright yellow coach, with four white horses, and band-boxes all over the top, with a great pile of trunks behind. Ben said it was a grand coach, and that he should like a ride in it; and the old nurse came to the door, and said I should have a capital time; but, somehow, I doubted if the nurse was talking honestly. I believe she gave me an honest kiss though—and such a hug!
But it was nothing to my mother’s. Tom told me to be a man, and study like a Trojan; but I was not thinking about study then. There was a tall boy in the coach, and I was ashamed to have him see me cry; so I didn’t, at first. But I remember, as I looked back and saw little Isabel run out into the middle of the street to see the coach go off, and the curls floating behind her, as the wind freshened, I felt my heart leaping into my throat, and the water coming into my eyes, and how just then I caught sight of the tall boy glancing at me—and how I tried to turn it off by looking to see if I could button up my greatcoat a great deal lower down than the buttonholes went.
But it was of no use; I put my head out of the coach window, and looked back, as the little figure of Isabel faded, and then the house, and the trees; and the tears did come; and I smuggled my handkerchief outside without turning; so that I could wipe my eyes before the tall boy should see me. They say that these shadows of morning fade, as the sun brightens into noonday; but they are very dark shadows for all that!
Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul; to whom the school in a distant village is but a vacation from home; and with whom a return revives all those grosser affections which alone existed before; just as there are plants which will bear all exposure without the wilting of a leaf, and will return to the hot-house life as strong and as hopeful as ever. But there are others to whom the severance from the prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a mother, and the unseen influences of the home altar, gives a shock that lasts forever; it is wrenching with cruel hand what will bear but little roughness; and the sobs with which the adieux are said are sobs that may come back in the after years, strong, and steady, and terrible.
God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. These chords a little rude and unnatural tension will break, and break forever. Watch your boy then, if so be he will bear the strain; try his nature, if it be rude or delicate; and, if delicate, in God’s name, do not, as you value your peace and his, breed a harsh youth spirit in him that shall take pride in subjugating and forgetting the delicacy and richness of his finer affections!
—I see now, looking into the past, the troops of boys who were scattered in the great play-ground, as the coach drove up at night. The school was in a tall, stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where I thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, they told me at home, was kind; he said he hoped I would be a good boy, and patted me on the head; but he did not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there was a woman, whom they called the matron; who had a great many ribbons in her cap, and who shook my hand—but so stiffly that I didn’t dare to look up in her face.
One boy took me down to see the school-room, which was in the basement, and the walls were all moldly, I remember; and when we passed a certain door, he said: there was the dungeon; how I felt! I hated that boy; but I believe he is dead now. Then the matron took me up to my room—a little corner room, with two beds, and two windows, and a red table, and closet; and my chum was about my size, and wore a queer roundabout jacket with big bell buttons; and he called the schoolmaster “Old Crikey”—and kept me awake half the night, telling me how he whipped the scholars, and how they played tricks upon him. I thought my chum was a very uncommon boy.
For a day or two, the lessons were easy, and it was sport to play with so many “fellows.” But soon I began to feel lonely at night after I had gone to bed. I used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me; after school, too, I wished I could step in and tell Isabel how bravely I had got my lessons. When I told my chum this, he laughed at me, and said that was no place for “homesick, white-livered chaps.” I wondered if my chum had any mother.
We had spending money once a week, with which we used to go down to the village store, and club our funds together, to make great pitchers of lemonade. Some boys would have money besides; though it was against the rules; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar bill in his wallet—and we all thought he must be very rich.
We marched in procession to the village church on Sundays. There were two long benches in the galleries, reaching down the sides of the meeting-house; and on these we sat. At the first, I was among the smallest boys, and took a place close to the wall, against the pulpit; but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to the lower end of the first bench. This I never liked, because it was close by one of the ushers, and because it brought me next to some country women, who wore stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with the choir. But there was a little black-eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, that I thought handsome; I used to look at her very often; but was careful she should never catch my eye.
There was another down below, in a corner pew, who was pretty; and who wore a hat in the winter trimmed with fur. Half the boys in the school said they would marry her some day or other. One’s name was Jane, and that of the other, Sophia; which we thought pretty names, and cut them on the ice, in skating time. But I didn’t think either of them so pretty as Isabel.
Once a teacher whipped me: I bore it bravely in the school: but afterward, at night, when my chum was asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I thought of Isabel, and Ben, and my mother, and how much they loved me: and laying my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In the morning I was calm enough: it was another of the heart-ties broken, though I did not know it then. It lessened the old attachment to home, because that home could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympathies. Memory, indeed, freshened and grew strong; but strong in bitterness, and in regrets. The boy whose love you can not feed by daily nourishment will find pride, self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to furnish other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can not shoot his branches into the sunshine, he will become acclimated to the shadow, and indifferent to such stray gleams of sunshine as his fortune may vouchsafe.
Hostilities would sometimes threaten between the school and the village boys; but they usually passed off with such loud and harmless explosions as belong to the wars of our small politicians. The village champions were a hatter’s apprentice, and a thickset fellow who worked in a tannery. We prided ourselves especially on one stout boy, who wore a sailor’s monkey jacket. I can not but think how jaunty that stout boy looked in that jacket; and what an Ajax cast there was to his countenance! It certainly did occur to me to compare him with William Wallace (Miss Porter’s William Wallace) and I thought how I would have liked to have seen a tussle between them. Of course, we who were small boys, limited ourselves to indignant remark, and thought “we should like to see them do it;” and prepared clubs from the wood-shed, after a model suggested by a New York boy, who had seen the clubs of the policemen.
There was one scholar, poor Leslie, who had friends in some foreign country, and who occasionally received letters bearing a foreign post-mark: what an extraordinary boy that was—what astonishing letters, what extraordinary parents! I wondered if I should ever receive a letter from “foreign parts?” I wondered if I should ever write one; but this was too much—too absurd! As if I, Paul, wearing a blue jacket with gilt buttons, and number four boots, should ever visit those countries spoken of in the geographies, and by learned travelers! No, no; this was too extravagant; but I knew what I would do, if I lived to come of age; and I vowed that I would—I would go to New York!
Number seven was the hospital, and forbidden ground; we had all of us a sort of horror of number seven. A boy died there once, and oh, how he moaned; and what a time there was when the father came!
A scholar by the name of Tom Belton, who wore linsey gray, made a dam across a little brook by the school, and whittled out a saw-mill that actually sawed; he had genius. I expected to see him before now at the head of American mechanics; but I learn with pain that he is keeping a grocery store.
At the close of all the terms we had exhibitions, to which all the townspeople came, and among them the black-eyed Jane, and the pretty Sophia with fur around her hat. My great triumph was when I had the part of one of Pizarro’s chieftains, the evening before I left the school. How I did look!
I had a mustache put on with burned cork, and whiskers very bushy indeed; and I had the militia coat of an ensign in the town company, with the skirts pinned up, and a short sword very dull, and crooked, which belonged to an old gentleman who was said to have got it from some privateer, who was said to have taken it from some great British admiral in the old wars; and the way I carried that sword upon the platform and the way I jerked it out when it came to my turn to say—“Battle! battle! then death to the armed, and chains for the defenseless!”—was tremendous!
The morning after, in our dramatic hats—black felt, with turkey feathers—we took our place upon the top of the coach to leave the school. The head master, in green spectacles, came out to shake hands with us—a very awful shaking of hands.
Poor gentleman!—he is in his grave now.
We gave three loud hurrahs “for the old school,” as the coach started; and upon the top of the hill that overlooks the village, we gave another round—and still another for the crabbed old fellow whose apples we had so often stolen. I wonder if old Bulkeley is living yet?
As we got on under the pine trees, I recalled the image of the black-eyed Jane, and of the other little girl in the corner pew—and thought how I would come back after the college days were over—a man, with a beaver hat, and a cane, and with a splendid barouche, and how I would take the best chamber at the inn, and astonish the old schoolmaster by giving him a familiar tap on the shoulder; and how I would be the admiration, and the wonder of the pretty girl in the fur-trimmed hat! Alas, how our thoughts outrun our deeds!
For long—long years, I saw no more of my old school; and when at length the view came, great changes—crashing tornadoes—had swept over my path! I thought no more of startling the villagers, or astonishing the black-eyed girl. No, no! I was content to slip quietly through the little town, with only a tear or two, as I recalled the dead ones, and mused upon the emptiness of life!
