I had three or four neighboring girl associates who also had their own or family horses, and our riding parties were the events of the season. Anticipating the deep, forbidding snows of the winter in New England, we had the custom of celebrating Thanksgiving day by a final party for the season. Even this was cold and had often some traces of snow.
On the present occasion there were but three of us, Martha, Eveline and myself. Martha had a fine sorrel trotter, Eveline a spirited single-footer. The day was cold and threatening. Our ride was to Worcester, some ten miles. When about three miles from home, on our return, a blinding snowstorm set in, literally a gale. This either frightened or excited Eveline’s horse, which, mastering the situation by a quick toss of the head, and catch of the bit (a trick he evidently understood), dropped his single-foot as something adapted to ladies and little girls, and fell to using all the feet he had, the best he knew. Awed by her peril, but powerless to aid, we could only follow our fleeing comrade to be ready to help when she should fall, as we were sure she must. The gale mercilessly increased; so did our speed. We kept nearly alongside, every horse upon the “dead run.”
We must have presented a striking miniature picture of the veritable “Three Furies” on a rampage. A country road and no one passing. Martha and myself each rushing directly past our own homes unobserved in the storm, till at length we rounded the curve that brought the flying horse in sight of his own stable. They had sighted the coming cavalcade. The gates were thrown wide open, and a man stationed on either side to catch both horse and rider when they should enter.
Seeing the worn-out girl once safely in her father’s arms, we turned away, with an entirely new chapter added to our very limited stock of equestrian knowledge. We were all alive and unharmed, and I alone am here now to tell the little stories of childhood’s terrifying dangers and miraculous escapes.
We were midway between the two district schools, a long mile and a half from either, and it frequently chanced that a season or two of indifferent schools followed each other in train. The experiment of sending me away to school was not to be repeated, and accordingly I was undertaken at home. My mathematical brother, Stephen, took charge of that department, and Mrs. Vassall the other needful studies, while my former patient, brother David, the equestrian of early days, now grown strong and well, kept to his rule of practical teaching. I recall vividly the half impatient frown on his fine face when he would see me do an awkward thing, however trivial. He detested false motions; wanted the thing done rightly the first time. If I started to go somewhere, go, and not turn back; if to do something, do it. I must throw a ball or a stone with an under swing like a boy and not a girl, and must make it go where I sent it, and not fall at my feet and foolishly laugh at it. If I would drive a nail, strike it fairly on the head every time, and not split the board. If I would draw a screw, turn it right the first time. I must tie a square knot that would hold, and not tie my horse with a slip noose and leave him to choke himself. These were little things, still a part of the instructions not to be undervalued. In the rather practical life which has sometimes fallen to me, I have wondered if they were not among the most useful, and if that handsome frown were not one of my best lessons.
At length there came a school that could be utilized, and my family instructors were relieved. The school to the north of us was undertaken by Mr. Lucian Burleigh, a younger member of the noted Burleigh family, and brother of William H. Burleigh, the poet. It seemed very strange to me to be in school again. I had been so long accustomed to govern myself, in a manner, that I wondered how any one should need others to govern them. If scholars came there to learn, why should they try, or want, to do anything else? There is no doubt that I seemed equally unaccountable and prudish to them.
MR. JONATHAN DANA,
MY OXFORD TEACHER.
The quick perceptions of the teacher at once comprehended the conditions, and he treated me with the greatest consideration and kindness; advising such changes and additions as seemed suitable, and most in accord with the studies I had taken with me; even, as I could later see, forming some new classes in branches outside of the customary routine of the public school; as elementary astronomy, ancient history, and the “Science of Language”; his own literary and scholarly tastes pointing significantly to the latter. If Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and Pollok’s “Course of Time” were ever dissected, transposed, analyzed and “parsed” by any class of vigilant youths, it was then and there.
The winter passed all too soon. A mile and a half through the snow had been only a pleasure. Our faithful, brotherly teacher left us, never to return; but the still brotherly friendship between teacher and pupil remained unbroken until his summons came.