The father of Robert Burns did not consider, because he was a poor man, that it was an excuse for depriving his boys of any advantages of education within his reach, as many a farmer, similarly situated, and intent only on gain, has thought it right to do. His good sense, in this respect, was well rewarded; for Robert’s first teacher said of him, that “he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business.” It is such scholars as these who brighten the otherwise dreary lot of the teacher. Pupils who study, not because they must, and as little as possible at that, but because they have an appetite for it, and crave knowledge. Of course, a good teacher endeavors to be equally faithful to all the pupils who are intrusted to him—the stupid and wayward, as well as the studious. But there must be to him a peculiar pleasure in helping, guiding, and watching over a pupil so eager to acquire. The mother bird, who coaxes her fledglings to the edge of the nest, and, by circling flights overhead, invites them to follow, understands, of course, how the little, cowering thing, who sits crouched on a neighboring twig, may be too indolent, or too timid to go farther; but she looks with proud delight upon the bold little soarer, who, observing well her lesson, reaches the top of the tallest tree, and sits, swaying and singing, upon its topmost branch.
Robert, however, had not always the good luck to have, as in this case, an intelligent, appreciative teacher. I suppose it is not treason to admit, even in a child’s book, which, by some, is considered a place for tremendous fibbing, that a teacher may occasionally err, as well as his pupil. That teachers have been known to mistake their vocation, when they have judged themselves qualified, after trying and failing in every other employment, to fill such a difficult and honorable position.
It seems there was a certain Hugh Rodgers, to whose school Robert was sent. It was the very bad custom of those times, when pupils of his age first entered a school, to take the master to a tavern, and treat him to some liquor. This Robert did, in company with another boy, named Willie, who entered at the same time. Do you suppose that schoolmaster ever thought remorsefully about this in after years, when he heard what a wreck strong drink had made of poor Robert? Well, the boy Willie and Robert became great friends from that day; often staying at each other’s houses, and always spending the intervals between morning and afternoon school, in each other’s company. When the other boys were playing ball, they would talk together on subjects to improve their minds. Now, as they walked while they talked, their omitting to play ball was not of so much consequence as it would otherwise have been—at least, according to my motto, which is, chests first, brains afterward. But to go on. These disputatious youngsters sharpened their wits on all sorts of knotty subjects, and also invited several of their companions to join their debating society—whether to improve them, or to have an audience to approve their skill, I can’t say; perhaps a little of both.
By and by the master heard of it. He didn’t like it. He had an idea boys should have no ideas that the master didn’t put into their heads for them. So one day, when the school was all assembled, he walked up to the desks of Robert and Willie, and began, very unwisely, to taunt them about it before all the scholars—something in this style: “So, boys, I understand that you consider yourselves qualified to decide upon matters of importance, which wiser heads usually let alone. I trust, from debating, you won’t come to blows, young gentlemen,” &c., &c. Now, the boys who had not joined their debating society, set up a laugh, like little rascals, at the rebuked Robert and Willie. This, of course, as the teacher should have known, stung them to the quick; and Robert, with a flushed face, resolved to “speak up” to the master. I find no fault with his reply, which was this; that both he and Willie rather thought that he (the master) would be pleased, instead of displeased, at this effort to improve their minds. At this, Hugh Rodgers laughed contemptuously, and said he should be glad to know what these mighty nonsensical discussions might be about. Willie replied that they had a new subject every day; that he could not recollect all; but that the question of that day had been, whether is a great general, or respectable merchant, the more valuable member of society. At this, Hugh Rodgers laughed more uproariously and provokingly than before, saying, that it was a very silly question, since there could be no doubt for a moment about it. “Very well,” said Robert Burns, now thoroughly roused, “if you think so, I will take any side you please, if you will allow me to discuss it with you.”
The unfortunate schoolmaster consented. He commenced the argument with a pompous flourish in favor of the general. Burns took the other side, and soon had the upper hand of the schoolmaster, who made a very lame reply. Soon the schoolmaster’s hand was observed to shake, his voice to tremble, and, in a state of pitiable vexation, he dismissed the school.
Poor man! he understood mathematics better than human nature; and himself least of all. This was an unfortunate victory, for two reasons. It was an unnecessary degradation of a man who had his estimable qualities, and it increased the self-sufficiency of young Burns, who was born with his arms sufficiently a-kimbo. Alexander-fashion, he soon sighed for another conquest. His bedfellow, John Nevins, was a great wrestler. Nothing would do, but he must floor John Nevins. Strutting up to John, he challenged him to the combat. John soon took that nonsense out of him, by laying him low. Vanquished, he sprang to his feet, and challenged him to a discussion. There he had him!—John having more muscle than brain. Burns’s pride was comforted, and he retreated, a satisfied youth. This is all I know about Robert’s childhood.
Silver hairs were now gathering thickly on his good father’s temples, as he toiled on, to little use, while children grew up fast about his knees, to be fed, schooled, and clothed by his labor. Robert and his brother looked sadly on, as his health declined. Robert had little inclination for his father’s work, and yet, somebody must take his place; for consumption was even then making rapid and fearful havoc with his constitution. The good old man ceased from his labors at last, and went where the weary rest. For a while, Robert strove to fill his place—strove well, strove earnestly. But the farmer who stops to write poems over his plough, seldom reaps a harvest to satisfy hungry mouths. And so, poverty came, instead of potatoes, and Robert Burns, although the troubled eyes of his wife looked into his, and his little children were growing up fast about him, and needed a good father, to teach them how to live in this world, and to earn bread for them till they became big enough to earn it for themselves, it came about that, instead of doing this, he drank whisky to help him forget that he ought to keep on ploughing, if poetry did not bring him bread, and so made poverty a great deal worse. His wife was very, very sorrowful about it, and his little children became tired of waiting for him to love them, and care for them. Perhaps you say, Oh, how could he do so? My dear children, how can anybody ever do wrong? How can you ever vex your dear mother, who is so good to you, and go pouting to bed, and never tell her that you are “sorry”? and still, while you are sleeping, that dear, good, forgiving mother stoops over your little bed, and kisses your forehead, and looks to see if you are warm and comfortable, before she can sleep, the same as if you had been a good child, instead of a bad one. I hope you will think of this before that good mother dies, and tell her that you are very sorry for grieving her; and I hope, too, that Robert Burns, before it was too late, said that he was sorry for grieving those who loved him, and for wasting his life; but I do not know about that.
OLD HICKORY.
Many a time, I dare say, you have sat on your bench at school, with your cotton handkerchief spread over your knee, looking at the stern face of this famous man upon it; every bristling hair upon his head seeming to say for itself, In the name of the commonwealth, stand and deliver! You have thought, perhaps, that a man with such a sharp eye and granite face as that, must be a very terrible person, whose heart was quite left out when he was made, and whom little children had better run away from. It is just because this was not true, that I first believed in General Jackson. A brave man is never a mean one; and it is mean to despise or bully children and women. I place children first, because every woman who has ever had one, does so. But to my story. We, who have lived so peacefully and quietly in the land for which our brave ancestors fought, do not think as often as we ought of the sufferings and trials through which they purchased it for us. Until lately, our houses were not burned down over our heads, or ransacked and robbed, nor our mothers and sisters insulted before our eyes, nor our fathers and brothers dragged off as prisoners of war, and kicked and cuffed for sport by the enemy. All this, Andrew Jackson’s boyish eyes saw. Do you wonder at the fire in them? One of his earliest recollections was of the meeting house in his native place turned into a hospital for his wounded, maimed, dying, brave countrymen; and his own widowed mother, leading him there by the hand to nurse them, and dress their wounds, and comfort them, as only a woman with a strong heart and angel touch can. Could the boy stand by and see all this, and not long for the time when he should grow big, and stout, and tall, and help fight for his country? Could he help being impatient, he, the son of this unprotected mother, when one after another of these poor fellows was brought in, with their fresh, ghastly wounds, and laid down to die? And when, later, his cousin’s house was taken by the British, and the furniture was broken in pieces, and his cousin’s wife was insulted by the officers, and he and his brother were taken prisoners, and ordered by the officer, with an oath, to clean his muddy boots; and, because they both refused, were cut and slashed across the face and head by this bullying, cowardly fellow, Andrew then being only twelve years old; and then were marched miles and miles away down South, and not allowed a morsel of food by the way, and forbidden even to scoop up water from the streams they were fording, to quench their feverish thirst? Ah! do you wonder now at that stern face? Suppose your dear mother, whom your dear father, whom you can just remember, loved so tenderly, was driven across the country with you and your little brother, from place to place, for safety, in those troublous times, and subjected to all kinds of hardships, bearing up under it bravely, as good women will. Suppose that when you and your brother—still boys—were dragged off as prisoners of war, this dear, brave mother traveled off alone, and never rested till she managed, by an exchange of prisoners with the British general, to get her dear boys back again; but wan and wasted with small pox, and the wounds that they had received from that big, cowardly British officer, all undressed and uncared for; these boys, her Andrew, her Robert? Well, as your mother would have nursed you and your brother through her tears, so Andrew Jackson’s mother nursed her fatherless boys. But was Andrew a boy to forget either his mother’s love, or the British? No, indeed! And when, after he became well, and the whole band went to live in the house of a friend, and Andrew picked beans, and pulled fodder, and drove cattle, and went to mill, do you wonder that when he was sent to the blacksmith’s, to get the farm tools mended, he brought home spears of iron, and all sorts of odd-looking, rough weapons, that, while waiting for the blacksmith, he had himself manufactured “to kill the British with”? Do you wonder that he fastened the blade of a scythe to a pole, and exclaimed, fiercely, as he cut down the weeds with it, “Oh! if I were only a man, wouldn’t I sweep off the British with my grass blade?” And he did it, too, afterward. Let those who call him “fierce, savage, vindictive,” remember how these sorrows of his childhood were burned in upon his soul; remember what burning tears must have fallen upon the little bundle containing all his dead mother’s clothes, she who had struggled and suffered through the war of the Revolution, and left him an orphan at fifteen years, with only the memory of her love and his country’s wrongs. As he stood weeping over that little bundle, friendless, homeless, and heart-broken, thinking of all she had been to him, and looking wistfully forward into the dim unknown, he did not see the future President of the United States, and hear his voice falter as he said, “I learned that, years ago, from my dear, good mother!” Well might he remember her then. You ask me if Andrew found no opportunity to get an education in these troublous times? You may be sure his mother knew the value of that! and sent her boys, when quite young, to the best schools she could find in their native place. Schools, in those days, were not the furnace-heated, mahogany-desked affairs we see now. Pupils did not carry an extra pair of shoes to put on when they entered, for fear of soiling the floor. Velvet jackets were not worn by the boys, nor gold bracelets by the girls. Andrew Jackson’s schoolroom was an old log house made of pines, the crevices being filled in with clay, which the boys used to pick out when it came spring, to let in the fresh air. In this school no French, nor drawing, nor “moral science,” was taught. Reading, writing, and arithmetic was all. For a gymnasium, there were the grand old trees, which the freckled, sunburnt, redheaded Andrew was free to swing upon when school was done; and he went up and down them like a squirrel. I think he was better at that than at his books, if the truth must out; however, “learning” did not go before chests in those days, luckily for us, who enjoy the blessings for which our fathers’ strong arms fought. So Andrew studied some, and leaped, and wrestled, and jumped more;—was kind to defenceless small boys, but had his fist in the face of every fellow who made fun of him, or taunted him, or in any way pushed him to the wall.
Andrew had one very bad habit when a boy, which, I am sorry to say, followed him all his life. He swore fearfully! An oath, from anybody’s mouth, is hateful; but from a child’s mouth! I know nothing more saddening and pitiful. Often, I know, children will use such words, quite unconscious of their meaning, as they pick them up from those who have no such excuse for their utterance, till the habit becomes so fixed, that only in later life, when they pain some person who is “old-fashioned” enough to reverence the name they use so lightly, do they become conscious of the extent of this disgusting habit. The idea of its being “manly” to swear is ridiculous enough; since the lowest, most brutal ruffian in creation, can, and does, outdo you in this accomplishment. I think Andrew would have enjoyed his boyish sports quite as well without these bad words; and he was a splendid fellow for all athletic exercises. Had he been alive when that game of cricket was won by the English cricketers, I don’t know what would have happened; well, it wouldn’t have happened; or had it, the victors would never have gone home alive to tell of it!