And then the geography! How hard they tried to make us learn this book, and how many recesses were denied us because we were not sure just which river in Siberia was the longest! Of course we knew nothing about Siberia, or whether the rivers ran water or blood; but we were forced to know which was the largest and just how long it was. And so all over the great round world we travelled, to find cities, towns, rivers, mountain ranges, peninsulas, oceans, and bays. How important it all was! I remember that one of the ways they took to make us learn this book was to have us sing geography in a chorus of little voices. I can recall to-day how one of those old tunes began, but I remember little beyond the start. The song was about the capitals of all the States, and it began, “State of Maine, Augusta, is on the Kennebec River,” and so on through the whole thirty-three or four, or whatever the number was when I was a little child. Well, many, many years have passed away since then, and I have wandered far and wide from my old-time country home. There are few places in the United States that I have not seen, in my quest for activity and change. I have even stood on some of the highest peaks of the Alps, and looked down upon its quiet valleys and its lovely lakes; but I have never yet been to Augusta on the Kennebec River in the State of Maine, and it begins to look as if I never should. Still, if Fortune ever takes me there, I shall be very glad that I learned when yet a child at school that Augusta was the capital of Maine and on the Kennebec River. So, too, I have never been to Siberia, and, not being a Russian, I presume that I shall never go. And in fact, wherever I have wandered on the earth I have had to learn my geography all over new again.
But, really, grammar made me more trouble than any other study. Somehow I never could learn grammar, and it always made me angry when I tried. My parents and teachers told me that I could never write or speak unless I learned grammar, and so I tried and tried, but even now I can hardly tell an adverb from an adjective, and I do not know that I care. When a little boy, I used to think that if I really had anything to tell I could make myself understood; and I think so still. The longer I live the surer I am that the chief difficulty of writers and speakers is the lack of interesting thoughts, and not of proper words. Certainly grammar was a hideous nightmare to me when a child at school. Of all the parts of speech the verb was the most impossible to get. I remember now how difficult it was to conjugate the verb “to love,” which the books seemed always to put first. How I stumbled and blundered as I tried to learn that verb! I might possibly have mastered the present tense, but when it came to all the different moods and various tenses it became a hopeless task. I am much older now, but somehow that verb has never grown easier with the fleeting years. The past-perfect tense has always been well-nigh impossible to learn. I never could tell when it left off, or whether it ever left off or not. Neither have I been able to keep it separate from the present, or, for that matter, from the future. A few years after the district school, I went for a brief time to the Academy on the hill, where I studied Latin; and I remember that this same verb was there, with all the old complications and many that were new, to greet me when I came. To be sure, it had been changed to “Amo, Amas, Amat,” but it was the old verb just the same, and its various moods and tenses caused me the same trouble that I had experienced as a little child. My worry over this word has made me wonder whether this verb, in all its moods and tenses, was not one of the many causes of the downfall of the Roman Republic, of which we used to hear so much. At any rate, I long since ceased trying to get it straight or keep it straight; indeed, I am quite sure that it was designed only to tangle and ensnare.
CHAPTER VI
THE SCHOOL READERS
If we scholars did not grow up to be exemplary men and women, it surely was not the fault of our teachers or our parents,—or of the schoolbook publishers.
When I look back to those lessons that we learned, I marvel that I ever wandered from the straight path in the smallest possible degree. Whether we were learning to read or write, studying grammar or composition, in whatever book we chanced to take, there was the moral precept plain on every page. Our many transgressions could have come only from the fact that we really did not know what these lessons meant; and doubtless our teachers also never thought they had any sort of relation to our lives.
How these books were crammed with noble thoughts! In them every virtue was extolled and every vice condemned. I wonder now how the book publishers could ever have printed such tales, or how they reconciled themselves to the hypocrisy they must have felt when they sold the books.
This moral instruction concerned certain general themes. First of all, temperance was the great lesson taught. I well remember that we children believed that the first taste of liquor was the fatal one; and we never even considered that one drop could be taken without leading us to everlasting ruin and despair. There were the alms-house, the jail, and the penitentiary square, in front of every child who even considered taking the first drink; while all the rewards of this world and the next were freely promised to the noble lad who should resist.
As I look back to-day, it seems as if every moral lesson in the universe must have grown into my being from those books. How could I have ever wandered from the narrow path? I look back to those little freckled, trifling boys and girls, and I hear them read their lessons in their books so long ago. The stories were all the same, from the beginning to the end. We began in the primer, and our instruction in reading and good conduct did not end until the covers of the last book were closed.
It seems to me to-day that I can hear those little urchins reading about the idle lazy boy who tried to get the bee and the cow and the horse to play with him,—though what he wanted of the bee I could never understand,—but they were all too busy with their work, and so he ran away from school and had a most miserable day alone. How could we children ever stay away from school after we had read this lesson? And yet, I cannot now recall that it made us love our books, or think one whit less of the free breeze, the waving grass and trees, or the alluring coaxing sun.
We were taught by our books that we must on all accounts speak the truth; that we must learn our lessons; that we must love our parents and our teachers; must enjoy work; must be generous and kind; must despise riches; must avoid ambition; and then, if we did all these things, some fairy godmother would come along at just the darkest hour and give us everything our hearts desired. Not one story in the book told how any good could ever come from wilfulness, or selfishness, or greed, or that any possible evil ever grew from thrift, or diligence, or generosity, or kindness. And yet, in spite of all these precepts, we were young savages, always grasping for the best, ever fighting and scheming to get the advantage of our playmates, our teachers, and our tasks.