Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart

by Donald Grant Mitchell

But it was of no use; I put my head out of the coach window, and looked back, as the little figure of Isabel faded, and then the house, and the trees; and the tears did come; and I smuggled my handkerchief outside without turning; so that I could wipe my eyes before the tall boy should see me. They say that these shadows of morning fade, as the sun brightens into noonday; but they are very dark shadows for all that!

Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul; to whom the school in a distant village is but a vacation from home; and with whom a return revives all those grosser affections which alone existed before; just as there are plants which will bear all exposure without the wilting of a leaf, and will return to the hot-house life as strong and as hopeful as ever. But there are others to whom the severance from the prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a mother, and the unseen influences of the home altar, gives a shock that lasts forever; it is wrenching with cruel hand what will bear but little roughness; and the sobs with which the adieux are said are sobs that may come back in the after years, strong, and steady, and terrible.

God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. These chords a little rude and unnatural tension will break, and break forever. Watch your boy then, if so be he will bear the strain; try his nature, if it be rude or delicate; and, if delicate, in God’s name, do not, as you value your peace and his, breed a harsh youth spirit in him that shall take pride in subjugating and forgetting the delicacy and richness of his finer affections!

—I see now, looking into the past, the troops of boys who were scattered in the great play-ground, as the coach drove up at night. The school was in a tall, stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where I thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, they told me at home, was kind; he said he hoped I would be a good boy, and patted me on the head; but he did not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there was a woman, whom they called the matron; who had a great many ribbons in her cap, and who shook my hand—but so stiffly that I didn’t dare to look up in her face.

One boy took me down to see the school-room, which was in the basement, and the walls were all moldly, I remember; and when we passed a certain door, he said: there was the dungeon; how I felt! I hated that boy; but I believe he is dead now. Then the matron took me up to my room—a little corner room, with two beds, and two windows, and a red table, and closet; and my chum was about my size, and wore a queer roundabout jacket with big bell buttons; and he called the schoolmaster “Old Crikey”—and kept me awake half the night, telling me how he whipped the scholars, and how they played tricks upon him. I thought my chum was a very uncommon boy.

For a day or two, the lessons were easy, and it was sport to play with so many “fellows.” But soon I began to feel lonely at night after I had gone to bed. I used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me; after school, too, I wished I could step in and tell Isabel how bravely I had got my lessons. When I told my chum this, he laughed at me, and said that was no place for “homesick, white-livered chaps.” I wondered if my chum had any mother.

We had spending money once a week, with which we used to go down to the village store, and club our funds together, to make great pitchers of lemonade. Some boys would have money besides; though it was against the rules; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar bill in his wallet—and we all thought he must be very rich.

We marched in procession to the village church on Sundays. There were two long benches in the galleries, reaching down the sides of the meeting-house; and on these we sat. At the first, I was among the smallest boys, and took a place close to the wall, against the pulpit; but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to the lower end of the first bench. This I never liked, because it was close by one of the ushers, and because it brought me next to some country women, who wore stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with the choir. But there was a little black-eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, that I thought handsome; I used to look at her very often; but was careful she should never catch my eye.

There was another down below, in a corner pew, who was pretty; and who wore a hat in the winter trimmed with fur. Half the boys in the school said they would marry her some day or other. One’s name was Jane, and that of the other, Sophia; which we thought pretty names, and cut them on the ice, in skating time. But I didn’t think either of them so pretty as Isabel.

Once a teacher whipped me: I bore it bravely in the school: but afterward, at night, when my chum was asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I thought of Isabel, and Ben, and my mother, and how much they loved me: and laying my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In the morning I was calm enough: it was another of the heart-ties broken, though I did not know it then. It lessened the old attachment to home, because that home could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympathies. Memory, indeed, freshened and grew strong; but strong in bitterness, and in regrets. The boy whose love you can not feed by daily nourishment will find pride, self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to furnish other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can not shoot his branches into the sunshine, he will become acclimated to the shadow, and indifferent to such stray gleams of sunshine as his fortune may vouchsafe.