i forgot to mention that my name is john smith. of course this is a very plebeian name, but i am in no way responsible for it. as long as i can remember, i answered to the call of “john” or “johnny” many a time in my childhood, and even later, when i would much have preferred not to hear the call. my father’s name was john smith, too. no doubt he, and his father before him, could see no way to avoid the smith, and thought it could not make much difference to add the john. the chief trouble that i have experienced from the name has come from getting my letters mixed up with other people’s,—mainly my father’s,—which often caused me embarrassment in my younger days.
i have tried very hard to remember when i first knew my name was john. indeed, i have often wondered when it was that i first knew that i was i, and how that fact dawned upon my mind. over and over again i have tried to remember my first thoughts and experiences of life, but have always failed in the attempt. if i could only tell of my first sensations, as i looked at the blue sky, and felt the warm sun, and heard the singing birds in my infancy, i am sure they would interest the reader. but i can give no testimony upon these important points. i have no doubt, however, that when i looked upon the heavens and the earth for the first time i must have felt the same ignorance and awe and wonder that possess my mind to-day when i try to understand the same unexplainable mysteries that have always filled me with queries, doubts, and fears.
neither can i tell just what i first came to remember; and when i look back to that little home beside the creek i am not quite sure whether the feelings that i have are of things that i actually saw and felt and lived, or whether some imaginings of my young brain have taken the form and semblance of real life.
i was only one of a large family, mostly older than myself; but while i was only one, i was the chief one, and the rest were important only as they affected me. it must have been the rule of our family that each of the children should have the right to give orders to those younger than himself; at any rate, all the older ones told me what to do, and i in turn claimed the same privilege with those younger than myself.
my early remembrances have little sequence or logical connection. i am quite unable to tell which events came first of those that must have happened when i was very young.
among my earliest impressions is one of a hill in our back yard, and of our going down it to bring water from the well. i am sure that the hill is not a dream, for i have been back since and found it there, although not near as long and steep as it seemed in those far-off years. i remember that we children used to slide down this hill and then walk up again. even then i was willing to do a great deal of work for a very small amount of fun. somehow, in looking back, it seems as if i were always sliding downhill and tugging my sled back to the top in the dusk of the evening. i cannot quite understand how it is that i remember the evening best, but there it is as i unroll the scroll,—there are the dents in my memory, and there is the little boy pulling his sled uphill and looking in at the lighted kitchen window at the top. there, too, are the older and wiser members of the family,—those who have learned that the short sensation of sliding down the hill is not worth the long tug up; a lesson which, although i am growing old and gray, i never have been wise enough to learn. there are the older ones gathered around the table with their books, or busy with their household work,—the old family circle that i see so plainly now in the lamplight through the window, perhaps more plainly for the years that lie between. this magic circle was long since broken and scattered, and lives only in the memory of the man-child who knew so little then of what life really meant, and who knows so little now.
it is strange, but somehow i have no such distinct recollection of our home as i have of the other objects that were familiar to my childish mind. i can see the little muddy brook that ran just back of the garden fence. down the hill on the edge of the stream stood a log cheese-house,—at least, it seems so now,—and 15back of this cheese-house beside the brook must have been a favorite spot for me to wade and fish, although i have no remembrance that i ever caught anything, which fact i am happy to record. beyond the stream was an orchard. i am uncertain whether or not it belonged to my father, although i rather think it must have been owned by somebody else, the apples always looked so tempting and so red,—which reminds me that all through life it has seemed to me that no fruit was quite so sweet as that which was just beyond my reach. anyhow, this orchard stands out very plainly in my mind. it was a very large orchard,—in fact, a great forest of trees; and i remember that i always stole over the fence intending to get the apples on the nearest tree, but they did not taste so sweet nor look so red as some others farther on, which in turn were passed by for others yet a little farther off, until i had gone quite through the orchard in my endeavor to get the very best. although i have been grown up for many a year, somehow this habit of seeing something better further on has clung to me through life. so tenacious is this habit, that i fancy i have missed much that is 16valuable and good in my eager haste to get something better still. i am not quite certain about the orchard, perhaps it was not so very large after all; at least, when i went back a few years ago there was no cheese-house, and no orchard, and even the brook was grown up to grass and weeds. i know that in my childhood my parents moved from the old house to another slightly better, and nearer town; but though i can clearly remember certain incidents of both, still i have no recollection of our moving, and it is utterly impossible to keep the impressions of each separate and distinct.
my first memory of a schoolhouse seems quite clear. it may be that the things i remember never really happened, although the impression of them is very strong upon my mind. i must have been very young, hardly more than three or four years old, and was doubtless taken to school by an elder brother or sister; certainly i was too young to be a pupil. the schoolhouse was a long way from home,—miles and miles it seemed to me. after being in school for hours, i must have grown weary and restless, sitting so motionless and still, for i know that i was boxed on the ears either by the teacher’s hand or with a slate. i ran out of the room sobbing and crying, and went down the long white road to my home. i shall never forget that journey in the heat and dust. it must have been the greatest pain and sorrow i had ever known. doubtless it was the humiliation of being boxed on the ears before the whole school that broke my heart; at least, i felt as if i never would reach home, and i must have sprinkled every foot of the way with my bitter tears. i remember that teacher’s name to-day, and i never forgave her, until a short time ago, after i read tolstoi. now i only realize how stupid and ignorant she was to awaken such hatred in the heart of a little child. in those days whipping was a part, and a very large part, of the regular course of the district school, and i learned in a few years not to mind it very much,—in fact, rather to enjoy it, for it gave me such good standing with the other children of the school.
how full of illusions and delusions we children were! since i have grown to man’s estate, i have travelled the same road over which i sobbed in that far-off day, and it was really but a very little way,—a short half-mile,—and still, as i look back to that little crying child, it seems as if he must have walked across a desert beneath a tropical sun, and borne all the despair and anguish of the world inside his little jacket.
another memory that has become a part of my being grows out of the great civil war. i was probably four or five years old, and was playing under the big maple-trees in our old front yard. the scene all comes back to me as i write. i have a stick or hoop, or perhaps both, in my little hand. no one else is anywhere about. i hear a drum and fife coming over the hill, and i run to the fence and look down the gravelly road. a two-horse wagon loaded with men and boys, whose names and perhaps faces i seem to know, drives past me as i peer through the palings of the fence. they are dressed in uniform, and are proud and gay. in the centre of the wagon is one boy standing up; i see his face plainly, and catch its boyish smile. they drive past the house to the railroad station, on their way to the southern battle-fields. i must have been told a great deal about these men and about the war, for my people were abolitionists, who looked upon the rebels as some sort of monsters, and had no thought that there could be any side but ours. however, i now remember nothing at all of what was said to me, but i hear the martial music, i see the horses and wagons and men, and clear and distinct from all the rest is this one boy’s face that i knew so well. even more distinctly do i remember a day some months later. i must then have begun going to the district school, for i remember that there was no school that day. i recall a great throng of people, and among them all the boys and girls from school, and we are gathered inside the burying-ground where they are carrying the young soldier who rode past our house a few months before. i cannot remember what was said at the funeral, but this is the first impression that i can recall of the grim spectre death. what it meant to my childish mind i cannot now conceive. i remember only the hushed awe and the deep dread that fell upon us all when we realized that they were putting this boy into the ground and that we should never see his face again. whatever the feeling, i fancy that time and years have not changed or modified it, or made it any easier to reconcile or understand.
but with the memory of the funeral there lingers an impression that we all thought this young man a glorious, brave, and noble boy, and that his widowed mother and brothers and sisters ought to have felt happy and proud that he was buried in the ground. i remembered the mother for many years, and how she always mourned her son; but it was a long, long time before i came to understand that the fact that the boy was killed upon the field of battle really did not make the sorrow any less for the family left behind. and it was still longer before i came to realize that it is no more noble or honorable to die fighting on the field of battle than in any other way.
