The boy’s eyes sparkled, and his hands trembled with delight, while Esther’s more serious countenance lighted up with a quick smile.
The treasure John exhibited with such exultation, was a worn copy of Goldsmith’s Manners and Customs. The title-page declared that it was adorned with plates; but readers accustomed to the present more beautiful style of publishing would have been slow to admit that the straight, lank figures, daubed with engraver’s ink, were any ornament to the volumes. To the unpractised eyes of John and his sister, they were, however, gems of Art; and the manner in which they were obtained greatly increased their value. The children had received a cake and two little chickens from a neighbour, in payment for picking cranberries. Never did chickens give rise to such extensive speculations; not even the imaginary brood of the famous milk-maid. The chickens would become hens, and the hens would lay eggs, and Mr. Brown, who drove the market-wagon, would sell the eggs, and there were ever so many books in Boston, and who could guess what wonderful stories they would buy with their eggs? The vision was realized in due time. The chickens did become hens, and laid eggs; and Mr. Brown listened good-naturedly to John’s request to sell them and buy “a book, that had pictures in it, and told about countries a way off.” Goldsmith’s Manners and Customs came as the fruit of these instructions, and was hailed with an outburst of joy.
Most boys would have chosen to buy marbles or a drum; but John’s earliest passion had been for a book. The subtle influences which organize temperaments and produce character, are not easily traced. His intellectual activity certainly was not derived from either of his parents; for they were mere healthy sluggish animals. But there was a tradition in the neighbourhood, that his maternal grandmother was “an extraordinary woman in her day; that few folks knew so much as she did; and if her husband had been half as smart and calculating, they would have been very fore-handed people!”
The children of the “extraordinary woman” inherited her husband’s inert temperament, but her own energetic character re-appeared in her grandchildren; and they had the good fortune to be born in New England where the moral atmosphere stimulates intellect, and the stream of knowledge flows free and full to all the people. Esther was as eager for information, as her more vivacious brother; and though, as a woman, her pathway of life was more obstructed, and all its growth more stinted, she helped to lead him into broader avenues than she herself was allowed to enter. Being two years older than he, it was her delight to teach him the alphabet, as soon as he could speak; and great was her satisfaction when he knew all the letters in her little, old primer, and could recite the couplet that belonged to each. They conveyed no very distinct idea to his mind, but Esther’s praise made him very vain of this accomplishment. A dozen times a day, he shouted the whole twenty-four, all in a row, and was quite out of breath when he arrived at:
“Zaccheus he
Did climb a tree,
His Lord to see!”
The mother, who was a kindly but dull woman, took little interest in their childish scrambling after literature; but she sent them to the town-school, for the sake of having them out of the way; and she was somewhat proud that her children could “read joining-hand,” as she called it, earlier than neighbours of the same age. One day, when the minister of the village called, she told John to bring his book about Manners and Customs, and let the minister hear how well they could read. The good old man was much pleased with the bright boy and his intelligent, motherly sister. When their mother told him the story of the eggs, he patted them on the head and said: “That’s right, my children. You can’t be too fond of your books. They are the best friends in the world. If you ask them, they will tell you about every thing!” This remark, uttered in a very serious tone, made a deep impression. That evening, as brother and sister sat on the door-step, eating their supper of bread and milk, the sun set bright and clear after a transient shower, and a beautiful rainbow arched the entire heavens. “Oh, Esther, look at that pretty rainbow!” exclaimed John. “Ah, see! see! now there are two of ’em!” He gazed at the beautiful phenomenon with all his soul in his eyes, and added: “As soon as we have eggs enough, we will get Mr. Brown to buy a book that tells how rainbows are made, and where they come from.” Esther replied, that she did wish the hens would lay three eggs a day.
When the market-man was commissioned to purchase another volume, he declared himself unable to find one that told where rainbows came from. In lieu thereof, he brought Bruce’s Travels; and an unfailing source of entertainment it proved. Thus month by month their little library increased, and their intellectual craving grew fast by the food it fed on. They gathered berries, picked chips, ran on errands, rose early, and worked late, to accumulate sixpences.
When this is done merely to obtain animal indulgences, or for the sake of possessing more than others, there is something degrading in the servile process; but when the object is pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, all creeping things become winged. Beautiful it is to see human souls thus struggling with poverty and toil, sustained only by those ministering angels, Hope and Faith! Those who have life enough to struggle thus, are all the stronger for the contest. For the vigorous intellect it is better to be so placed than to be born in palaces. Jean Paul says truly: “Wealth bears far heavier on talent than poverty. Under gold mountains and thrones, who knows how many a spiritual giant may lie crushed down and buried?”
Esther and her brother were troubled with no ambitious conjectures whether or not they could ever become spiritual giants; they simply felt that the acquisition of knowledge was present delight. They thought little of hats and shoes, till father and mother said these must be bought with a portion of their wages; but after that, they were doubly careful of their hats, and often carried their shoes in their hands. Thus were they, in their unconscious earnestness, living according to laws which highest reason would prescribe for the whole social fabric. They worked industriously at manual labor, but always with a spiritual end in view; and that spiritual end was their own chosen recreation. They practised the most careful economy, but it was neither mean nor painful, because it was for a noble use, not for the mere sake of accumulation.
Though the poor parents were obliged to appropriate a portion of the children’s juvenile earnings, there was one little fund that was entirely their own. The two chickens had a progeny of chickens, and these, in process of time, likewise laid eggs. John picked up every stray grain of oats he could find, because he had heard it was a good kind of food to increase eggs; and busy little Esther saved all the oyster shells she could find, to pound for the hens in winter, when there was no gravel to furnish material for the shells. The cackling of a hen was to them an important event. Esther smiled at her knitting as she heard it, and John, as he plucked the weeds, raised up his head to listen. Hens have been often laughed at for proclaiming all abroad that another egg is in the world; but John’s brood had a right to crow over their mission. Cackle away to thy heart’s content, thou brown little feather-top! Never mind their jibes and jeers! Thy human superiors often become world-famous by simply obeying an impulse, which, unconsciously to themselves, evolves extensive and progressive good; and thou art not the first prattling egotist, who has worked for far higher results than he had the ability to comprehend. Let him who laughs at thy cackling, measure, if he can, what share thy new-laid egg may have in changing the destiny of man! It will aid in the culture of a human soul. It will help to develop and stimulate individual thought. And if generously aimed and fearlessly uttered, may not that individual thought pervade and modify the entire opinion of society? And is not law the mere record of aggregate opinion?