Uncle Stanwood had a golden age to which he often referred. In the first place, as a young bachelor he had traveled like a gentleman. His tour had included Ireland, France, and the Isle of Man. This was before he had learned to play a flute and piano and when public-houses were religiously abhorred. He was always repeating an experience that befell him in Ireland. I can record it verbatim. “I was walking along through a little hamlet when night came on. I saw one of them sod houses, and I knocked on the door. A blinking Irish woman asked me what I wanted. I told her, ‘a night’s lodging.’ She pointed to a far corner in the sod house where a pig and some hens lay, and said to me, ‘Ye can dossy down in the corner wid th’ rist of the fam’ly!’” In its time there was no more vivid story that caught my imagination than that—pig, hens, and blinking Irish woman. About his Isle of Man experiences, uncle was always eloquent. Besides all else he had a ditty about it, to the accompaniment of which he often dandled me on his knee.
“Aye, oh, aye! Lissen till I tell you
Who I am, am, am.
I’m a rovin’ little darkey
All the way from Isle of Man.
I’m as free as anybody,
And they call me little Sam!”
Previous to his marriage, also, he had been the teacher of a very large young men’s class in one of the churches. That was his proudest boast, because, as explained to me over and over again in after years, “It was that work as a teacher that made me read a lot of mighty fine books. I had to prepare myself thoroughly, for those young fellows were reading philosophy, religion, and the finest fiction. I had to keep ahead of them in some way. It is to that work that I owe what little learnin’ I’ve got.”
The inclinations toward the finer, sweeter things of life were wrapped up in uncle’s character, but his will was not strong enough to keep him away from the public-house.
“That’s my downfall,” he said. “Oh, if I’d not learned to play the flute and the piano!” His art was his undoing; but never did his undoing smother his golden age. When almost incoherently drunk it was his habit to whimper, “I was better once—I was. I taught a young men’s class. Look at me now!”