But, after all, I feel to-day just as I did long years ago, when with reluctant ear and rebellious heart I heard of the great achievements of John Stuart Mill. I look back to those early years, and still regret the beautiful play-spells that were broken and the many fond childish schemes for pleasure that were shattered because John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when three years old.
I would often shed bitter tears, and mutter exclamations and protests which no one heard, but which were none the less terrible because they were spoken underneath my breath,—and all on account of John Stuart Mill. It was long before I could forgive my gentle honest father for having tried so hard to make me learn those books. I am sure that no good fortune can ever compensate me for the wasted joys, the broken playtimes, the interrupted childish pleasures, which I should have had.
If I were writing this story as I feel to-day, and if I could not recall the little child who had so lately come from the great heart of Nature that he still must have remembered what she felt and thought and knew, I might not regret those broken childish joys. I might rather mourn and lament, with all the teachers and parents and authors, that I was so profligate of my time when I was yet a child, and that I was not more studious in those far-off years. But as I look back to my childhood days, my sluggish heart beats quicker, and I can feel the warm young blood rush to my tingling feet and hands, and I realize once more the strange thrill of delight and joy that life and activity alone bring to all the young. And so I cling to-day to the childish thought that I was right and my poor father wrong. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things,” said the apostle twenty centuries ago. The mistake of maturity and age has ever been that it lives so wholly in the present and so completely forgets the childhood that is past. To guard infancy and youth as a precious heritage, to keep them as long as we can, seems to me the true philosophy of life. For, after all, life is mostly illusions, and the illusions of infancy and childhood and youth are more alluring than those of later years.
But I fancy now that I can understand my father’s thoughts. A strange fate had set him down beside the little winding creek and kept him at his humble task of tolling his neighbors’ grist. He looked at the high hills to the east, and at the high hills to the west, and up and down the narrow country road that led to the outside world. He knew that beyond the high hills was a broad inviting plain, with opportunity and plenty, with fortune and fame; but as he looked at the hills he could see no way to pass beyond. It is possible that he could have walked over them, or even around them, had he been alone; but there was the ever-growing brood that held him in the narrow place. No doubt as he grew older he often looked up and down the long dusty road, half expecting some fairy or genie to come along and take him away where he might realize his dreams; but of course no such thing ever happened,—for this is a real story,—and so he stayed and ground the grain in the old decaying mill.
My father must have been quite advanced in years before he wholly gave up his ambitions to do something in life besides grinding the farmers’ corn. Indeed, I am not sure that he ever gave them up; but doubtless, as the task seemed more hopeless and the chain grew stronger, he slowly looked to his children to satisfy the dreams that life once held out to him; and so this thought mingled with the rest in his strong endeavor that we should all have the best education he could get for us, so that we need not be millers as he had been. Well, none of us are millers! The old family is scattered far and wide; the last member of the little band long since passed down the narrow road, and out between the great high hills into the far-off land of freedom and opportunity of which my father dreamed. But I should be glad to believe to-day that a single one over whom he watched with such jealous care ever gave as much real service to the world as this simple, kindly man whose name was heard scarcely farther than the water that splashed and tumbled on the turning wheel.
I started bravely to tell about my life,—to write my story as it seems to me; and here I am halting and rambling like a garrulous old man over the feelings and remembrances of long ago. By a strange trick of memory I seem to stand for a few moments out in the old front yard, a little barefoot child. The long summer twilight has grown dim, and the quiet country evening is at hand. Beyond the black trees I hear the falling water spilling over the wooden dam; and farther on, around the edges of the pond, the hoarse croak of the frogs sounds clear and harsh in the still night air. Above the little porch that shelters the front door is my father’s study window. I look in and see him sitting at his desk with his shaded lamp; before him is his everlasting book, and his pale face and long white hair bend over the infatuating pages with all the confidence and trust of a little child. For a simple child he always was, from the time when he first saw the light until his friends and comrades lowered him into the sandy loam of the old churchyard. I see him through the little panes of glass, as he bends above the book. The chapter is finished and he wakens from his reverie into the world in which he lives and works; he takes off his iron-framed spectacles, lays down his book, comes downstairs and calls me away from my companions with the old story that it is time to come into the house and get my lessons. For the hundredth time I protest that I want to play,—to finish my unending game; and again he tells me no, that John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old. And with heavy heart and muttered imprecations on John Stuart Mill, I am taken away from my companions and my play, and set down beside my father with my book. I can feel even now my sorrow and despair, as I leave my playmates and turn the stupid leaves. But I would give all that I possess to-day to hear my father say again, as in that far-off time, “John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old.”
CHAPTER V
THE DISTRICT SCHOOL
In the last chapter I intended to write about the district school; but I lingered so long over old remembrances that I could not get to school in time, so now I will go straight there without delay.
The first school that I remember was not in the little town near which we lived, but about half a mile away in the opposite direction. Our house must have stood just outside the limits of the little village; at any rate, I was sent to the country school. Every morning we children were given a dinner-pail packed full of pie and cake, and now and then a piece of bread and butter (which I always let the other children eat), and were sent off to school. As we passed along the road we were joined by other little boys and girls, and by the time we reached the building our party contained nearly all the children on the road travelling in the direction from which we came. We were a boisterous, thoughtless crowd,—that is, the boys; the girls were generally quieter and more reserved, which we called “proud.”
Almost as soon as the snow was off the ground in the spring, we boys took off our shoes (or, rather, boots) and went barefooted to the school. It was hard for us to wait until our parents said the ground was warm enough for us to take off our boots; we felt so light and free, and could run so fast barefooted, that we always begged our mother to let us leave them off at the very earliest chance. The chief disadvantage was that we often stubbed our toes. This was sometimes serious, when we were running fast and would bring them full tilt against a stone. Most of the time we managed to have one or more toes tied up in rags; and we always found considerable occupation in comparing our wounds, to see whose were the worst, or which were getting well the fastest. The next most serious trouble connected with going barefoot was the necessity for washing our feet every night before we went to bed. This seemed a grievous hardship; sometimes we would forget it, when we could, and I remember now and then being called up out of bed after I thought I had safely escaped and seemed to be sound asleep, and when my feet were clean enough without being washed.