I was set to picking berries to replenish the family larder; but this soon became monotonous, and I appropriated the old grain-sieve, placing it beside the bushes, and pounding the huckleberries into it with a stick; the result was a heterogeneous conglomeration of worms, leaves, bugs, and crushed berries; but I succeeded in eliminating the refuse by throwing the whole mass into a tub of water, and skimming off the risings. I would then descant to buyers upon the freshness of the berries wet with the dews of heaven, but my ruse was soon discovered, and people refused to purchase such mucilaginous pulp.
Our widowed hired woman was possessed of a baby, and I was assigned the task of rocking the cradle; but I soon sighed for the apple blossoms and songs of birds,—we had no English sparrows then—so I drove a nail into the cradle, tied to it the clothes-line, and went out of doors and began pulling at the cord. Soon agonizing screams were heard, and baby was found on the floor with the cradle pounding on top of him.
I was sent to drive home the cows from pasture, but left the task to the dog, who chased them over the wall into the corn-field where they devastated the crop, and ruined the milk by devouring green apples, while I, skylarking in a neighbor's pasture, was treed by an angry bull, who kept me in the branches until I caught a violent cold and became for weeks a family burden.
I was set to milking the cows, but I tied their tails to the beams, applied a lemon-squeezer to their udders until everybody was aroused by the bellowings of the infuriated beasts, and the milk and myself were found carpeting the dirty floor.
At last all patience was exhausted, and as I was born on Sunday, and was good for nothing else my parents, good, pious church-members, concluded I must become a minister, consequently they sent me to school. School! What memories come back to us over the arid wastes of life at the very mention of this magic word! There is the place where immortal minds are filled with loathing at the very sight of books, or where the torch of learning is kindled, which burns on with ever-increasing brightness forever more, and when I think of some of the teachers of my youth I am reminded of what the wise pastor said to a "stupid lunk-head" who had conceived the preposterous idea that he was called to be a preacher. "What, you be a minister?"
"Yes," said the dunce, "are we not commanded in the holy book to preach the gospel to every critter?"
"Verily," was the reply; "but every critter is not commanded to preach the gospel."
So long as percentages obtained after "cramming" for examinations are the criterions which decide the accepting or rejecting of candidates for teaching positions, we must expect "critters" for the school guides of our children, who, like some of my own tutors, will
"Ram it in, cram it in—
Children's heads are hollow;
Rap it in, tap it in—
Bang it in, slam it in
Ancient archaeology,
Aryan philology,
Prosody, zoology,
Physics, climatology,
Calculus and mathematics,
Rhetoric and hydrostatics.
Stuff the school children, fill up the heads of them,
Send them all lesson-full home to the beds of them;
When they are through with the labor and show of it,
What do they care for it, what do they know of it?"