The farm was not very large, and the soil was only moderately productive, notwithstanding the labor and skill that the Mateers put upon it. In picking off the broken slate stones which were turned up thick by the plow, the children by hard experience were trained in patient industry as to small details. At least the two elder frequently beguiled the tedium of this task “by reciting portions of the Westminster Catechism and long passages of Scripture.” Another really tedious occupation, which, however, was converted into a sort of late autumn feast of ingathering, was shared by the whole family, but was especially appreciated by the children. This was the nut harvest of the “shellbark” hickory trees of the forest. As many as fifty or more bushels were gathered in a season; the sale of these afforded a handsome supplement to the income of the household. Along the side of the farm flows a beautiful stream, still bearing its Indian name of Bermudgeon, and in front of the house is a smaller creek; and in these Calvin fished and set traps for the muskrats, and experimented with little waterwheels, and learned to swim. Up on an elevation still stand the old house and barn, both constructed of the red brick once so largely used in the eastern section of Pennsylvania. Both of these are still in use. Though showing signs of age and lack of care, they are witnesses that for those days the Mateers were quite up to the better standard of living customary among their neighbors. “This growing family,” says Mrs. Kirkwood (Jennie), “was a hive of industry, making most of the implements used both indoors and out, and accomplishing many tasks long since relegated to the factory and the shop. Necessity was with them the mother not only of invention, but of execution as well. All were up early in the morning eating breakfast by candlelight even in summer, and ready before the sun had risen for a day’s work that continued long after twilight had fallen.” In the barn they not only housed their horses and cattle and the field products, but also manufactured most of the implements for their agricultural work. Here Calvin first had his mechanical gifts called into exercise, sometimes on sleds and wagons and farm tools, and sometimes on traps and other articles of youthful sport.
In this home family worship was held twice each day,—in the morning often before the day had fully dawned, and in the evening when the twilight was vanishing into night. In this service usually there were not only the reading of Scripture and the offering of prayer, but also the singing of praise, the fine musical voice of the father and his ability to lead in the tunes making this all the more effective. Of course, on the Sabbath the entire family, young and old, so far as practicable, attended services when held in the Presbyterian church not far away. But that was not all of the religious observances. The Sabbath was sacredly kept, after the old-fashioned manner of putting away the avoidable work of the week, and of giving exceptional attention to sacred things. Mrs. Kirkwood, who was near enough in age to be the “chum” of Calvin, writes: “Among the many living pictures which memory holds of those years, there is one of a large, airy, farmhouse kitchen, on a Sabbath afternoon. The table, with one leaf raised to afford space for ‘Scott’ and ‘Henry’ stands between two doors that look out upon tree-shaded, flower-filled yards. There sits the mother, with open books spread all about her, studying the Bible lesson for herself and for her children. Both parents and children attended a pastor’s class in which the old Sunday School Union Question Book was used. In this many references were given which the children were required to commit. Older people read them from their Bibles, but these children memorized them. Some of the longer ones could never be repeated in after times without awakening associations of the muscularizing mental tussles of those early days.” It was a part of the religious training of each child in that household, just as soon as able to read, to commit to memory the Westminster Shorter Catechism,—not so as to blunder through the answers in some sort of fashion, but so as to recite them all, no matter how long or difficult, without mistaking so much as an article or a preposition.
Stories are handed down concerning the boy Calvin at home, some of which foreshadow characteristics of his later years. One of these must suffice here. The “Hermitage,” when the Mateers came into it, was popularly believed to be haunted by a former occupant whose grave was in an old deserted Episcopal churchyard about a mile away. The grave was sunken, and it was asserted that it would not remain filled. It was also rumored that in the gloomy woods by which the place was surrounded a headless man had been seen wandering at night. Nevertheless the Mateer children often went up there on a Sabbath afternoon, and entered the never-closed door, to view the Bible and books and desk, which were left just as they had been when services long before had ceased to be held; or wandered about the graves, picking the moss from the inscriptions on the headstones, in order to see who could find the oldest. It was a place that, of course, was much avoided at night; for had not restless white forms been seen moving about among these burial places of the dead? The boy Calvin had been in the habit of running by it in the late evening with fast-beating heart. One dark night he went and climbed up on the graveyard fence, resolved to sit in that supremely desolate and uncanny spot till he had mastered the superstitious fear associated with it. The owls hooted, and other night sounds were intensified by the loneliness, but he successfully passed his chosen ordeal, and won a victory worth the effort. In a youthful way he was disciplining himself for more difficult ordeals in China.
II
THE MAKING OF THE MAN
“It has been said, and with truth, that when one has finished his course in an ordinary college, he knows just enough to be sensible of his own ignorance.”—LETTER TO HIS MOTHER, January 15, 1857.
The letter from which the sentence at the head of this chapter is taken was written a week after Mateer had reached his twenty-first year and when he was almost half advanced in his senior year in college. Later in the letter he says: “Improvement and advancement need not, and should not, stop with a college life. We should be advancing in knowledge so long as we live.” With this understanding we may somewhat arbitrarily set his graduation from college as terminating the period of his life covered by what I have designated as “the making of the man.”
Back of all else lay his native endowments of body and of mind. Physically he was exceptionally free from both inherited and acquired weaknesses. In a letter which he wrote to his near relatives in this country on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, he said, “I have not only lived, but I have enjoyed an exceptional measure of health.” At no period was he laid aside by protracted sickness. At the same time, this must not be understood to signify that he had one of those iron constitutions that seem to be capable of enduring without harm every sort of exposure except such as in its nature must be mortal. In that part of his Journal covering portions of his college and seminary work he often tells of a lassitude for which he blames himself as morally at fault, but in which a physician would have seen symptoms of a low bodily tone. Bad food, lack of exercise and ill treatment on the voyage which first brought him to China left him with a temporary attack of dyspepsia. Occasionally he had dysentery, and once he had erysipelas. At no time did he regard himself as so rugged in constitution that he did not need to provide himself with proper clothing and shelter, so far as practicable. Nevertheless it was because of the sound physique inherited from his parents, and fostered by his country life during early youth, that without any serious breaking down of health or strength he was able to endure the privations and the toils and cares of his forty-five years in China.
As to his native mental endowments, no one would have been more ready than he to deny that he was a “genius,” if by this is meant that he had an ability offhand to do important things for the accomplishment of which others require study and effort. If, as to this, any exception ought to be made in his favor, it would be concerning some of the applied sciences and machinery, and possibly mathematics. He certainly had an extraordinary aptitude especially as to the former of these. While he himself regarded his work in the Mandarin as perhaps the greatest of his achievements, he had no such talent for the mastery of foreign languages that he did not need time and toil and patience to learn them. In college his best standing was not in Latin or Greek. In China other missionaries have been able to preach in the native tongue after as short a period of preparation; and the perfect command of the language which he attained came only after years of ceaseless toil.
Such were his native physical and mental endowments: a good, sound, though not unusually rugged, bodily constitution; and an intellect vigorous in all of its faculties, which was in degree not so superior as to set him on a pedestal by himself, yet was very considerably above the average even of college students.