The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

My father was by trade a blacksmith, and one fair of his craft. Neither he nor my mother had much learning; but they were peaceful, sober folk with a bent for work; and being sure, rain or shine, to go to church, and strict in all their duties, they were ones to have a standing with the clergy and the neighbors, It tells well for my father that within the forty-eight hours to follow our landing at Castle Garden, he had a roof above our heads, and an anvil to hammer upon; this latter at a wage double the best that Clonmel might offer even in a dream. And so we began to settle to our surroundings, and to match with them, and fit them to ourselves; with each day Clonmel to gather a dimness, and we to seem less strange and more at home, and in the last to feel as naturally of America as though we had been born upon the soil.

It has found prior intimation that my earlier years ran as wild as a colt, with no strong power save Anne's to tempt me in a right direction. My father, so far as his mood might promise, would have led me in paths I should go; but he was never sharp to a condition, and with nothing to him alert or quick he was one easily fooled, and I dealt with him as I would. Moreover, he had his hands filled with the task of the family's support; for while he took more in wage for his day's work than had ever come to him before, the cost to live had equal promotion, and it is to be doubted if any New York Monday discovered him with riches in his pocket beyond what would have dwelt there had he stayed in Clonmel. But whether he lacked temper or time, and whatever the argument, he cracked no thong of authority over me; I worked out my days by patterns to please myself, with never a word from him to check or guide me.

And my mother was the same. She had her house to care for; and in a wash-tub day, and one when sewing machines were yet to find their birth, a woman with a family to be a cook to, and she of a taste besides to see them clothed and clean, would find her every waking hour engaged. She was a housekeeper of celebration, was my mother, and a star for neighboring wives to steer by; with floor and walls and everything about her as spick and span as scouring soap and lye might make them. Pale, work-worn, I still carry her on the skyline of my memory; and I recall how her eye would light and her gray cheek show a flush when the priest did us the credit of supper at our board, my father pulling down his sleeves over his great hairy arms in deference to the exalted station of the guest. It comes to this, however, that both my father and my mother, in their narrow simplicities and time taken up with the merest arts of living, had neither care nor commands for me. I came and I went by my own clock, and if I gave the business thought, it was a thought of gratitude to find myself so free.

To be sure I went now and then to my lessons. Anne had been brisk to seek forth a school; for she refused to grow up in ignorance, and even cherished a plan to one day teach classes from a book herself. Being established, she drew me after her, using both persuasion and force to that end, and to keep me in a way of enlightenment, invented a system of rewards and punishments, mainly the former, by which according to my merit I was to suffer or gain.

This temple of learning to which Anne lured me was nothing vast, being no bigger than one room. In lieu of a blackboard there was a box of clean white sand wherewith to teach dullards of my age and sort their alphabet. That feat of education the pedagogue in charge—a somber personage, he, and full of bitter muscularities—accomplished by tracing the letter in the sand. This he did with the point of a hickory ruler, which weapon was never out of his hand, and served in moments of thickness as a wand of inspiration, being laid across the dull one's back by way of brightening his wits. More than once I was made wiser in this fashion; and I found such stimulus to go much against the grain and to grievously rub wrong-wise the fur of my fancy.

These hickory drubbings to make me quicker, falling as thickly as October's leaves, went short of their purpose. On the heels of one of them I would run from my lessons for a week on end. To be brief with these matters of schools and books and alphabets and hickory beatings, I went to my classes for a day, only to hide from them for a week; as might be guessed, the system collected but a scanty erudition.

It is a pity, too: that question of education cannot too much invite an emphasis. It is only when one is young that one may be book-taught, just as the time of spring is the time for seed. There goes a byword of an old dog and a new trick, and I should say it meant a man when he is thirty or forty with a book; for, though driven by all the power of shame, I in vain strove with.

What was utmost in me to repair in middle years the loss of those schooldays wasted away. I could come by no advance; the currents of habitual ignorance were too strong and I made no head against them. You think I pause a deal over my want of letters? I tell you it is the thing I have most mourned in all my life.

When a fugitive from lessons, I would stay away from my home. This was because I must manage an escape from Anne; should she find me I was lost, and nothing for it save to be dragged again to school. The look of grief in her brown eyes meant ever defeat for me. My only safety was to turn myself out of doors and play the exile.

This vagabondage was pleasant enough, since it served to feed my native vagrancy of temper. And I fared well, too; for I grew into a kind of cateran, and was out of my sleeping lair with the sun to follow the milkman and baker on their rounds. Coming betimes to the doors of customers who still snored between their sheets, these merchants left their wares in areas. That was all my worst need asked; by what time they doubled the nearest corner I had made my swoop and was fed for the whole of a day.