Farmington

by Clarence Darrow

As a little child, I heard my father tell of Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, and the rest of that advance army of reformers, black and white, who went up and down the land arousing the dulled conscience of the people to a sense of justice to the slave. They used to make my father’s home their stopping-place, and any sort of vacant room was the forum where they told of the black man’s wrongs. My father lived to see these disturbers canonized by the public opinion that is ever ready to follow in the wake of a battle fought to a successful end. But when his little world was ready to rejoice with him over the freedom of the slave, he had moved his soiled and tattered tent to a new battlefield and was fighting the same stubborn, sullen, threatening public opinion for a new and yet more doubtful cause. The same determined band of agitators used still to come when I had grown to be a youth. These had seen visions of a higher and broader religious life, and a fuller measure of freedom and justice for the poor than the world had ever known. Like the despised tramp, they seemed to have marked my father’s gate-post, and could not pass his door. They were always poor, often ragged, and a far-off look seemed to haunt their eyes, as if gazing into space at something beyond the stars. Some little room was always found where a handful of my father’s friends would gather, sometimes coming from miles around to listen to the voices crying in the wilderness, calling the heedless world to repent before it should be too late. I cannot remember when I did not go to these little gatherings of the elect and drink in every word that fell upon my ears. Poor boy! I am almost sorry for myself. I listened so rapturously and believed so strongly, and knew so well that the kingdom of heaven would surely come in a little while. And though almost every night through all these long and weary years I have looked with the same unflagging hope for the promised star that should be rising in the east, still it has not come; but no matter how great the trial and disappointment and delay, I am sure I shall always peer out into the darkness for this belated star, until I am so blind that I could not see it if it were really there.

After these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where they told each other of their visions and their hopes. Many and many a time, as I lay in my bed, I listened to their words coming through the crack with the streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant rainbow they had painted from their dreams.

After all, I am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed their dreams. I am glad they really lived above the sordid world, in that ethereal realm which none but the blindly devoted ever see; for I know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights where he really lived and died.

And I am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to catch one glimpse of these exalted realms, and to feel one aspiration for the devoted life they lived; for however truly I may know that this ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however I may have clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, I am sure that some part of this feeling abides with me, and that its tender chord of sentiment and memory reaches back to that hallowed land of childhood and of youth, and still seeks to draw me toward the heights on which my father lived.

I never knew that I was growing from the child to the youth; that the life and experience and even the boy of the district school was passing forever into the realm of clouds and myth. Neither can I remember when I grew from the youth to the man, nor when the first stoop came to my shoulders, the first glint of white to my hair, or the first crease upon my face. I know that I wear glasses now,—but how did my sight begin to fail, and in what one moment of all the fleeting millions that hurried past did I first need to put glasses on my eyes? How lightly and gently time lays its hand upon all who live! I can dimly remember a period when I was very small, and I can distinctly remember when I went to the Academy on the hill and began to think of maturer things if not to think maturer thoughts. I remember that I began to realize that my father was growing old; he made mistakes in names, and hesitated about those he well knew. Still, this is not a sure sign of growing years, for I find that I am doing this myself, and many times lately have determined that I must take more pains about my memory, and cultivate it rather than continue to be as careless as I have always been. And only yesterday around an accustomed table with a few choice friends, I told a long and detailed story that I was sure was very clever and exactly to the point. I had no doubt that the pleasant tale would set the table in a roar. But although all the guests were most considerate and kind and seemed to laugh with the greatest glee, still there was something in their eyes and a certain cadence in their tones that made me sure that sometime and somewhere I had told them this same story at least once before.

I gradually realized that many plans my father seemed to believe he would carry out could never come to pass. I knew that for a long time he had talked of building a new mill. True, he did not say when or how,—but he surely would sometime build the mill. At first I used to think he would; and we often talked of the mill, and just where it would stand, and how many run of stones the trade demanded, and whether we should have an engine to use when there was no water in the dam. But gradually I came to realize that my father never would live to build another mill, and that doubtless no one else would replace the one he had run so long. Yet he kept talking of the mill, as if it would surely come. Nature, after all, is not quite so brutal as she might be. However old and gray and feeble her children grow, she never lets them give up hope until the last spark of life has flown.

Even when my father talked with less confidence of the mill, he was sure to build a new water-wheel, for the old one had turned over and over so many times that there was scarce a sound place no matter where it turned. But this, too, I slowly found would never be; yet after a while I grew to encouraging him in his illusions of what he would sometime do, and even in his wilder and fonder illusions of what I would sometime do. Gradually I knew that he stooped more and rested oftener, and that his face was whiter; and I forgot his age, and never under any circumstances would let anyone tell me how old he was.

As I myself grew older, I came to have a stricter feeling of right and wrong,—to see clearly the sharp lines that separate the good and the bad, to grow hard and unforgiving and more intolerant of sin. But this, like the measles, whooping-cough, and other childish complaints, I luckily lived through. It is one of the errors of childhood to believe in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and, strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the young. It is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right and wrong. It is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate that overrides all earthly schemes. It is only life that makes us know that pity and charity and love are the chief virtues, and cruelty and hardness and selfishness the greatest sins.

As I grew older, one characteristic of my childhood clung about me still. My plans never came out as I expected, and none of the visions of my brain grew into the perfect thing of which I hoped and dreamed. I never seemed able to finish any work that I began; some more alluring prospect ever beckoned me toward achievements grander than my brain had conceived before. The work was contrived, the plan was formed, the material prepared,—but the structure was only just begun.

And so this poor book but illustrates my life. Long I had hoped to write my tale, much I had planned to tell my story; and here, after all my hopes and plans, I have gone off in quite another way, babbling of the schemes of my boyhood days, the thoughts and desires, the hopes and feelings, of a little child. So long and so fondly have I lingered in this fairy-land that now it is too late, and I must close the book before my story really has begun.