Besides his good grandparents, Walter had a very kind aunt, by the name of Janet, who liked children, and was fond of telling Walter stories, and teaching him to repeat little ballads. Of one of these in particular, he was very fond; and when he lay sprawling on the floor, he used to say it over to himself. It seems that among his grandpa’s friends was one of those persons who have no love for, and, of course, no patience with, children. This person had a very long face, very thin legs, and a very narrow chest; so I suppose we must forgive him. Did you ever know a fat, broad-chested man or woman to hate children? I never did. Well, when little Walter lay there under foot, amusing himself with his favorite ballad, this long-legged man would frown, and turning to his grandpa, say, “One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is!” It is so unnatural a thing to dislike children, that I prefer to believe, when persons do so, that it is because they are sick and nervous. However, little Walter did not bear this gentleman any ill-will for it; because, long afterward, when he heard that he was sick and dying, he went to see him, and they took a kind farewell of each other.
It seems that Walter’s sickness did not sour his disposition; an old woman by the name of Tibby, at Sandy Knowe, says that “he was a sweet-tempered little bairn, and a darling with all the house.” The shepherds delighted to carry him on their backs among the crags, and he soon learned to know every sheep and lamb in the flock, by the mark put on their heads. Best of all, he liked an old man, who had the superintendence of all the flocks, who was called “the cow-bailie;” when Walter saw him in the morning, he never would be satisfied until he had been put astride his shoulder and carried to the crags, to keep him company while he watched his flocks. After a while, he became weary of this, as children will; then the nice old man blew a particular note on his whistle, to let the maid servant know that she was to come up and carry him down the crags to his grandpa, in the little cozy parlor. Many—many—many years after this, when Walter was an old man, he went back to see those crags, and this is what he said: “Oh, how I used to love the sheep and lambs when I rolled round here upon the grass; I have never forgotten the feeling—no, not till this day!”
Once, when little Walter was up on the crags, the people in the house where he lived forgot him. A thunder storm came up. Suddenly his Aunt Janet remembered that he was there, and ran up, much frightened, to bring him home. There she found him, lying comfortably on his back, the sharp, forked lightning playing overhead, and little Walter clapping his hands and crying, “Bonny! bonny!” at every flash. Walter’s grandpa, finding that he was fond of riding on the old cow-bailie’s shoulder, bought him a cunning little Shetland pony, hardly as large as a Newfoundland dog; in fact, he was so small that he used to walk into the parlor like a dog, and feed from the child’s hand. He did not think then that one day he should have a little grandchild lame like himself, and that he should buy him just such a little pony, and name it like that—“Marion;”—but so it was.
Walter was a great reader. He read to his aunt, read to himself, and read to his mother. One day he was reading to his mother an account of a shipwreck, and became very much excited; lifting his hands and eyes, and saying, “There’s the mast gone! crash! now they’ll all perish!” While he was reading, a lady had come in to see his mother. After he had recovered a little from his agitation, he turned to the lady-visitor with a politeness quite remarkable in a child of only six years, and said, “This is too melancholy! had I not better read you something more amusing?” The lady thought, as well she might, that if she wanted to be “amused” she had better make him talk; so she said, knowing he had been reading Milton, “How did you like Milton, Walter?” “I think,” said he, “that it is very strange that Adam, who had just come newly into the world, should know everything. I suppose, though, it must be only the poet’s fancy.” “You forget,” said the lady, “that God created Adam quite perfect.” Walter reflected a moment, seemed satisfied, and yielded the point. When his Aunt Janet took him up to bed that night, he said, “Auntie, I like that lady; I think she is a virtuoso like myself.” “Dear Walter!” exclaimed Aunt Jenny, opening wide her eyes, “what is a virtuoso?” “Why, aunt, it is one who wishes, and will know, everything.” Of course, you may believe that his Aunt Jenny tucked him up that night in the full belief that he would never live to grow up. Luckily for us all, she was mistaken.
Are you tired hearing stories about him? Because I have another one I want to tell you, though I dare say, if you are reading this book of mine aloud to your mother, she has said to herself fifty times (and I like her fifty times better for saying it), “Pooh! our Ben, or our Sam, or our Harry, said a great many wonderful things, quite as wonderful as these, as I could show, if ‘a mother’ ever had a minute’s time to write and tell the world of it.” I’ve no doubt of it, my dear madam; I shall certainly die in the belief that children say about all there is worth listening to in this world; but to proceed with my story. One day, when Walter was sitting at the gate with an attendant, a woe-begone old beggar came up, and asked for charity. After he had received it, the attendant said, “Walter, how thankful should you be, that you are not obliged to beg your bread in that way.” Walter looked up wistfully, as if he did not comprehend; then replied, “Homer was a beggar.” “How do you know?” asked the attendant. “Why, don’t you remember?
“‘Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.’”
How lucky that Walter was not kept in the city! I think nothing could have made him well but taking him just where he was taken; out on the crags, where the fresh wind blew, and the grass was so sweet, and everything about him tempted him to crawl on a little farther, and then a little farther; a tuft of moss, or a curious stone, or some little thing which he wished to take in his own hand, and examine more closely. Oh, I am quite sure he must have died in the city; his poor lame leg would have shrunk more and more, for want of exercise; for a carpet ever so soft, can never be like that which God has spread for the bare feet of the poorest country child. But you must not suppose, all this while, that he learned nothing save that which the sky, and the crags, and the sheep taught him. Aunt Janet used to give him lessons when he was well enough, and as he could bear them. Ah! it is well that there are some good women who never marry. Else, what would so many sick children do, for patient, careful, good, loving nurses? How many of them have been coaxed by such round the most dangerous point of childhood, where medicine was nothing, and good nursing everything, to the astonishment of all who prophesied an early death. Such women have their reward, for these little ones become almost as dear to them as if in name—as well as in self-forgetting love—they were mothers. God bless them all! as the silver threads gleam amid their tresses. They will not be lonely in Heaven.
Children are full of funny whims; though I think, if we follow them but carefully, we shall, oftener than not, find good reason for them. Walter had a dislike almost amounting to terror of a statue. Very likely, he might first have seen one by a dim light, which, to his startled vision, gave it a ghostly look. It might have been so, though I don’t know that it was. When his Uncle Robert, who was very fond of him, found this out, he did not laugh at him, or scold him, but he took him, whenever it was possible, to see fine statues; and he soon learned, not only to conquer his dislike, but to admire their beauty exceedingly.
By and by his friends thought it was time he went to school, he was growing so much stronger, though not well of his lameness; in fact, I believe that all his after life he walked with a stick. So to school he went, I dare say, with many misgivings; I dare say he wondered whether the boys would make fun of his lameness. I dare say he wondered what he should do with himself while they were running, and leaping, and playing all sorts of rough-and-tumble plays out of doors, and out of school hours. I dare say he dreaded, as do all children, the first day at a new school. I dare say he wondered whether the education he had picked up by bits, as his lame leg would let him, would pass muster at a big boys’ school; or whether he would be called “a dunce,” as well as “lame.” I don’t know that he thought any of these thoughts, but I shouldn’t wonder if he had. I suppose his grandpa, and his Uncle Robert, and his Aunt Janet all felt anxious, too; but, as it turned out, there was no great occasion for it, for he seemed quite well able, after he got there, to manage his own little affairs. In the first place, knowing that he couldn’t “rough it” much in the playground, and not liking, of course, to be left in a corner alone, he commenced telling such wonderful tales and stories, that the boys were glad to crowd round him and listen; and they were worth listening to; else the boys wouldn’t have staid, I can tell you. How they would have stared, had they then been told that this lame fellow was destined to set the whole world by the ears by the stories he should write. Ah! you don’t know, you boys, what famous men you may be sharing your apples and cake with in the playground. You don’t know what a big man you may become yourself, only by being his boyhood’s friend. How his future biographer will hunt you out, and catechise you about the color of his eyes, and hair, and the shape of his finger nails, and what he said, and did, and ate, and drank, and what he did like, and what he didn’t like; and it is very well you don’t know all this, because it would spoil your present fun and freedom; and it is very well “the master” don’t know “a genius” when he is boxing his ears, because they might grow very long for the need of such discipline!