CHAPTER IV
SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE
1840-1844
I went to school, of course, for this was a part of the serious business of New England life. Our schoolhouse was two and a half miles distant, and the path to it lay across half a dozen farms and ran through the forest for a mile. There I was taught the "three R's," and nothing else. There was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the little 'rithmetic, no mathematics. I learned to cipher, read, and write; but I learned these rudimentary branches very rapidly. At night, in the old farmhouse, my aunts would go over the tasks of the day with me.
Our principal diversions were in the winter, when we had delightful sleighing parties. The school-children always had one great picnic. There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher would be in charge of the party. We visited the surrounding towns, and it was a great affair to us. We looked forward to it from the very commencement of the school year. On examination day, at the close of the term, we children had to clean the schoolhouse. There was no janitor, as now. But we enjoyed the work, and took a certain childish pride in it.
I remember that one of my earliest ambitions was gratified at that period when I was chosen leader of the school. I stood at the head of everything. And it was no idle compliment. Boys are not, like their elders, influenced by envy or jealousy. They invariably try to select the best "man" among them for their leader. Jealousies, envy, and heart-burnings come afterward.
Reading the account of the collision between the Priscilla and the Powhatan in the Sound off Newport, this year, and the peril that threatened five hundred passengers, there came to my mind the recollection of a catastrophe that happened sixty-two years ago, and how the tidings were brought to me. I can live over again the horror of that day. I recall that it was in January, '40.
It was a stormy, bitter day, and I was in the little schoolhouse at Pond End, two and a half miles from the farm. The snow had been falling a long while, and everything was covered with it. As the day advanced, and the snow piled deeper and ever deeper about the little house, and covered the forests and fields with a thicker blanket of white, we began to grow anxious. Now and then a sleigh would drive up through the drifting, flying snow, and the father and mother of some child in the school would come in and take away the little boy or girl and disappear in the storm. I began to think, with dread, of how I, a little fellow, would be able to find my way home through the blinding snow, when suddenly there came a tap on the door. The teacher went to the door, and called to me: "George, your uncle Emery Bemis has just arrived from Boston in his sleigh, and wants to take you home with him."
When I got into the sleigh he seemed to be very sad. He sat quiet for some little time, and then turned to me and said: "George, I have some terrible news for your grandmother. She is at the farmhouse now, waiting to see her youngest daughter, your aunt Alice. Your grandmother expects me to bring her. She was coming from New York on the steamer Lexington, with the dead body of her husband [and his brother and father], which she wanted to bury in the family graveyard. There were three hundred passengers on the ship. The Lexington was wrecked and burned in the Sound, and three hundred persons were lost—burned or drowned. Your aunt was lost. Only five passengers were saved."
Such were the horrible tidings my uncle was bearing to my grandmother and my aunts, instead of the living presence they were expecting. This incident left an ineradicable impression upon my mind. There was one peculiar thing about the accident of the Lexington that struck me at the time as being weird and unforgettable. When the ship went to pieces the pilot-house was shattered, and a portion of it floated away and lodged against the rocks near the shore. The bell itself was uninjured, and still swung from its hangings, and there it remained, clanging dolorously in every wind. It seemed to my boyish fancy to be tolling perpetually for the dead of the Lexington.