“This preacher,” said he, “is from a region of schools and privileges. Why can I not seek such advantages, and be somebody, and accomplish something? Why can I not go to the city to school this winter?” What an idea for him! It almost took his breath to think of it. And, then, how should he get there? Where was the money coming from to support him while studying?
“I must work and earn it,” he replied. “I can do anything honest; I can, at least, work for my board.”
Tom’s mind had suffered from a famine of knowledge. He could read passably well, write a little, was good at reckoning, and the little he knew excited a craving for more. Public addresses had always moved him deeply, and the 17 living truths of the gospel, as presented by the living preacher, had set the mental machinery in motion, until the decision to go from home in search of an education, had been wrought out; and it was this rising purpose that kept him so patiently at his day’s task of finishing up the fall work, that he might commence his new career.
“I will finish getting in the crops by dark,” said he, as he filled the basket, “and then there will be nothing to keep me at home;” and he was about raising the basket to his shoulder, when he was startled from his reveries by a loud cry of,–
“Tom, Tom! come quick! I’ve caught a fawn, and he’ll get away!” It was twelve-year-old Charley from the hazel bushes that bordered the potato-patch near the woods. Tom ran to assist his brother, but could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw the little fellow had caught the fawn by the tail, and was struggling to hold the agile creature, forgetting how dexterously the deer can use his heels. Scarcely had the elder brother mounted the fence, when, with a smart kick, the fawn sent Charley over on his back, and leaped into the enclosure. At this instant a bevy of flaxen-haired urchins, hatless, bonnetless,–Tom’s brothers and sisters,–came whooping from the cabin, and joined the chase. In 18 a moment Tom had forgotten all his gloomy thoughts and high resolves, and was as eager as any of them, as they tried to secure the nimble prize. A lively time it was, too; fear and speed against numbers, noise, and strategy. A good force were the pursuers; the “olive plants” of the Joneses grew very naturally in regular gradations, like the steps of a flight of stairs. Tom, Eliza, Charley, Bob, Sarah, Bill, and Bub, the four-year-old, were all active with hands, legs, and lungs, while the mother stood in the doorway, surveying the scene, with baby in her arms.
“Fix up the fence where the deer jumped in!” cried Tom to Charley; and the latter hastened to repair the breach, for the brush had been broken down at that point.
From corner to corner and side to side bounded the deer, slipping through the fingers of one and another of the youngsters; but they gave him no rest.
“Stop him, ’Lize! Hold him, Bob! Head him off. Say! Get out of the way, Bub! There! why didn’t you catch him, Charley? Mother, can’t you put down baby, and help us? He’ll get away! There! he’s going over the fence! No, he isn’t!” Amid such vociferations the children rushed on, pell-mell, till out of breath. Luckily, the brush fence was so thick 19 and high, being made of dead trees piled upon each other, that the animal could find no point to push through or scale, especially while kept in “running order” by his pursuers. Although thus imprisoned, he was baffling their efforts, refusing to be captured, when Tom said to the children,–
“We can’t catch him this way. But if you will all do as I tell you, I guess we can.” The fawn was standing in the further corner of the field, as if waiting to see what they would do next. And Tom, ranging his force in line, himself at the head, gave the word to advance towards the deer.
“Steady, steady,” said he, as they neared the animal. They had succeeded in approaching within a few yards, and Tom, with outspread arms and eagle eye, advanced slowly, watching to seize him if he should attempt to spring away, when little Bub, who had been sent into the cabin by Tom, having gone around unobserved on the outside of the garden behind the deer, suddenly ran a sharp stick through the brush into the creature’s back, saying,–