Neither of my parents believed in the saying, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” They had both been rather strictly brought up and, as so often happens, in avoiding the extreme of severity they themselves had known, they perhaps went to the other extreme of indulgence with their children. On second thought, and to be quite honest, I was the only spoilt child in the family; the charge cannot fairly be brought against the others. When the youngest child dies, and the next youngest becomes the baby, as in my case, everybody knows what happens! Not only the parents but the older children are as wax in those baby hands.
Of the little anecdotes every mother treasures about every child, the following was the one that Mama liked best to tell of her “stormy petrel.” One day, in that blessed period of silence before I had begun to talk, she found me eating the wild cherries that grew at Lawton’s Valley. Taking the forbidden fruit from me, she showed me a little stick and said:
“If you eat those cherries again, I shall slap your hands with this stick.”
The next day I came up to her, at about the same hour, one hand grasping a fistful of wild cherries, the other holding the switch. Looking her squarely in the eyes, I put the cherries in my mouth, handed her the stick, and held out my hand. The whipping? She only caught, kissed, and hugged me to her bosom.
My earliest friends were all more or less connected with the Institution, where my first years were passed. My father was a good judge of character, and the teachers and attendants he chose to help him in his great task were all rather exceptional people.
Daniel Bradford, the Institution steward, was my father’s right-hand man, and my most intimate friend. When young, he had been a ship’s carpenter; the flavor of the sea was in his talk, the roll of it in his legs. He was a short, stout man, full of a merry friendship for all mankind. On Sundays he wore a gorgeous, flowered velvet waistcoat, a full set of false teeth, and the most brazen scratch wig I ever saw. On week days he was frankly bald and toothless as a new-born baby.
“Bradford, come and make the rounds!” my father called out one morning, looking into the office, where the steward sat, laboriously making up his accounts.
They started on their tour of inspection, my father striding ahead, Braddie trotting after him, two steps to his one, and I tagging on behind. I kept very close to them that day, for Braddie needed my sympathy. Had he not that very morning confided in me?
“Old Turk, I’m going to get married. The Doctor’ll take on like the Old Scratch. You get your Ma to put in a word for me.”
I told my mother; she looked grave.