Uncle Lyman's farm supplied nearly every one of his needs except what were called in his day West India goods. He believed with Cato that the father of a family ought always to sell and never to buy. He strictly followed his advice in selling his old cattle, his old carts and used up tools and everything which he did not want. This was why his yards and buildings were unincumbered with the trumpery which so often disfigures New England farms. West India goods were the luxuries of his time. These goods were chiefly rum, sugar and molasses. Tea and spices were even greater luxuries. The strange marks on tea chests were a cipher no one had unravelled. On his farm were raised corn, wheat and always rye, for rye and not wheat was in Bellingham the staff of life. Eggs, cheese, butter and pork were bartered at the country stores for West India goods. Work, incessant work was the prime necessity on the farm and in the house, and Uncle Lyman and his wife never knew an idle day. This fixed upon him a serious and preoccupied air. He began the day early and left off late. The sun was his fellow traveller and laborer to and fro in the furrow, the corn rows and the swath. But it was hard for him to leave his work at sundown; darkness alone sometimes compelled him to quit the field. After supper, which was at five o'clock, the year round, is half and the better half of the day in summer, he used to say. Our Bellingham neighbors were humble, hard working people, but they taught me "the great art of cheerful poverty." I was early cured of several follies by standing under the shadow of rustic wise men. I drove their oxen to the plow, and often fell behind alongside the ploughman and picked up the scattered seeds of old, traditional wisdom in his furrows. With these the sagacious urchin sometimes astonished his little mother. Visitors, a cloudy day, a gentle rain did not prevent Uncle Lyman from his labors. "Let us keep ahead of the weather," he would say, "and then we can go a-fishing." No weeds grew in his corn or rye; and his made hay seldom was wet. He scented a shower from as far away as the Mendon hills. He first taught me to notice the sweet perfume which a summer shower drives before it from afar, the combined perfume of wild flowers, trees and new mown grass.
There was always the promise held out that, after haying or the first hoeing, we should go a-fishing on Beaver Pond, and sometimes the promise was kept. He was a masterful trailer for pickerel; he put into it the same energy as into his axe and scythe. In the same way that I was allowed to drive his mare Nancy by holding the slack of the reins, did I have my part in the fishing excursions. I held a line over the edge of the boat until the fish bit, then another hand took it and drew it in. Perch or pout it was mine, and credit and praise were duly given. "What a smart boy!" words that made me more proud than any commendations I have heard since. When they were cooked I wanted my own catch to eat and was humored. And in general that is the boy's disposition; whatever he captures or finds on trees or on the earth he wishes to eat. No doubt a green apple and the buds of trees, and all kinds of sweet or peppery roots give him that wild and strenuous virtue which enables him to resist pampering and effeminating influences.
Although Uncle Lyman seldom allowed himself a holiday, I believe he enjoyed it as much as I did. He was simply an older boy; that was the secret of our sympathy and my admiration for him. He knew so many more things than I, could do so many more, yet when with me, all in a playful way as if they were of no account, and only for fun. He was my model and my ideal of a man in everything that made for me the world. I felt an inward, irresistible impulsion to do all that he did, just as we are inclined to beat time to the music that we love. Thus was I taught to labor and enslaved to it before I knew it; for a boy wants to do what he sees men do; he must handle the hoe, the rake, the axe and the scythe, and these are often made to suit his size and strength in order to tempt him still further on. Thus does he forge his own chains; he is caught in his own net and his plaything tools become his masters. Now he must mow and hoe in earnest, however hot the sun, however much he hates to work. Yet I have never felt any distinction between work and play when the former was to my liking.
Uncle Lyman's wisdom had been handed down to him by his fathers, and he had improved it by observation. He added a new touch to the wrinkled face of ancient use. He knew the properties of all trees, weeds and herbs. Ash and hornbeam were his most precious woods. Ash served every purpose this side of iron; it was as good as a rope, for was not the Gordion knot tied with it? and could be whittled down as fine as a knitting needle without breaking, and still keeping its strength; it could be pounded into basket stuff, separating the layers to almost any degree of thinness. It handled every tool, from a pitchfork to an awl, and made the whole of a rake, the bows, teeth, head and staff. Besides, it had medicinal virtues; it was good for nose-bleed ever since it staunched the royal nose of King James, the Second. Although the most elastic of wood it never grew crooked, but shot up a trunk as straight as an arrow. It is a tree prophetic of archery. Uncle Lyman made me many a bow from a selected piece of ash, each year of my age a little longer and stouter. He measured the length the bow should be by my height. What a joy it was at length to shoot an arrow almost out of sight! "Now", said Uncle Lyman, "you are almost big enough for a gun". Alas, I might as well have wished for a kingdom. A wooden gun for awhile satisfied my ambition. With that, however, I shot many an Indian, and the little boys and girls who teased and provoked me. But I soon tired of these imaginary foes and marksmanship. With bow and arrow I could hit the trunk of a tree, the house door, and by accident a pane of glass. Best of all I liked to shoot over Uncle Lyman's dooryard elm, or try for the clouds. Often I lost my arrow in them; so I bragged and believed.
The hornbeam was much less common than the ash and was saved with particular care. It was mainly used for stanchions in the tie-ups of cows and oxen, for stakes on sleds and carts, and for levers. It is not easily bent and is almost impossible to break; it is the steel of the forest. Its foliage resembles that of the elm, but is finer and denser. It has no insect enemies and minds not the fiercest tempests. Uncle Lyman said only lightning could rive it, that the hornbeam drew fire from the clouds, and one should never go near it in a thunder storm. This was only when it was alive.
His various speculations about natural objects and phenomena, were always in the way of contraries and offsets. Good weather was enough to ensure forthcoming bad; a full crop this year meant a poor one next year. If every kernel of corn sprouted, look out for plenty of crows and a poor yield. Thus he comforted himself in every reverse and humbled himself in good fortune. In good years he was more saving, and in bad, less so than most of his neighbors. Now he had a fear ahead and now a hope. Thus he balanced both; yet the balance so inclined that the years increased his store, and thrift, industry and honesty brought him honor among his neighbors. He helped the widow and the orphan and loaned money without a mortgage. His debts and credits were obligations of honor; as he paid, so he was paid.
Uncle Lyman admired trees as the most wonderful things that God had made grow out of the earth. He could hardly bring himself to chop them down. The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, made him sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an old friend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from a sapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the old man of Verona,
"A neighboring wood, born with himself, he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees".
The trees I loved and played with most in my boyhood, the white birches, for which I still have more fondness than any other in our northern forests, Uncle Lyman cared for not at all. Although he had a sense of beauty, and long association with an object affected him with a tinge of romance and secret sentiment, yet utility was the chief criterion in his estimate of trees and men. Could you do a good day's work, it was enough; it filled the measure of a man and the promise of a boy. A useful tree was therefore the best tree. He had no use for white or gray birches, for they were neither timber nor vendible firewood. He often ridiculed them, and if there was a worthless fellow in town, he was, in his comparison, a gray birch, good for nothing but to hoop the cider barrels, of which the fellow was too fond; if a too gay girl, she was a white birch, dressed in satin, frizzled and beribboned, dress over dress of the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in the birch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred uses for the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spool and bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch bark books, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs—and, envied man, is able to sell them.
But all these useful, playful and poetic uses are nothing to me in comparison to the birchen bower wherein I spent entrancing summer days with Launa Probana.