But boys like hills and animals and trees, not so much because they are a part of Nature as for the life and activity they bring. So we climbed the hills and the trees, and went far down the winding stream for no purpose except to go, and when we reached the point for which we started out we turned around and came back home. Still, since I have grown to man’s estate I do the self-same thing. I make my plans to go to a foreign port, and with great trouble and expense travel half-way round the earth, and then, not content with the new places I have found, and longing for the old ones once again, I turn back and journey home.
Since the days when we children followed the crests of the hills along the valley, this lovely scene has fallen under the notice of a business man. He has built a hotel on the top of the highest hill, overlooking the valley and the little town, and in the summer-time its wide verandas are filled day after day with women, young and old, who sit and swing in hammocks, and read Richard Harding Davis and Winston Churchill, and watch for the mail and wait for the dinner-bell to ring.
With what never-ending schemes our youth was filled, and in what quick succession each followed on the others’ heels! Our most cherished plans fell far short of what we hoped and dreamed. Somehow everything in the world conspired to defeat our ends,—and most of all, our own childish nature, which jumped from fad to fancy in such quick succession that we could never do more than just begin. Even when we carried our plans almost to completion, their result was always very far short of the thought our minds conceived.
With what infinite pains and unbounded hopes we prepared to go nutting in the woods! How many bags and sacks we took, and how surely these came back almost empty with the boys who started out with such high hopes as the sun rose up! How often did we prepare the night before to go blackberrying in the choicest spots, but after a long day of bruises and wasp-bites and scratches, come back with almost empty pails! Still, our failures in no way dampened the ardor of any new scheme we formed.
We could run and jump and throw stones with the greatest ease; but when we put any of our efforts to the test, we never ran so fast or jumped so high or threw a stone so far as we thought and said we could,—and yet our failures had no effect in teaching us moderation in any other scheme. I well remember one ambitious lad who started out to make a cart. He planned and worked faithfully, until the wonderful structure took on the semblance of a cart. Then his interest began to flag, and the work went on more slowly than before. For days and weeks we used to come to his shop and ask, “Will, when are you going to finish your cart?” We asked this so often that finally it became a standing joke, and the cart was given up in ignominy and chagrin.
When the snow was soft and damp, we often planned to make a giant snow-man or an enormous fort. We laid out our work on a grand scale, and started in with great industry and energy to accomplish it. But long before it was finished, the rain came down or the sun shone so hot that our work and schemes melted away before our eyes.
So, too, the grown-up children build and build, and never complete what they begin. When the last day comes, it finds us all busy with unfinished schemes,—that is, all who ever try to build. But this is doubtless better than not to try at all.
The difference between the child and the man lies chiefly in the unlimited confidence and buoyancy of youth. The past failure is wholly forgotten in the new idea. As we grow older, more and more do we remember how our plans fell short; more and more do we realize that no hope reaches full fruition and no dream is ever quite fulfilled. Age and life make us doubtful about new schemes, until at last we no longer even try.
Well, our youth brought its mistakes and its failures, its errors of judgment and its dreams so hopeless to achieve. But still it carried with it ambition and life, a boundless hope, and an energy which only time and years could quench. So, after all, perhaps childhood is the reality, and in maturity we simply doze and dream.