my father was a great believer in education,—that is, in the learning that is found in books. he was doubtful of any other sort, if indeed he believed there could be any other sort. his strong faith in books, together with the fact that there were so many of us children around the house in my mother’s way, early drove me to the district school.
before this time i had learned to read simple sentences; for i cannot remember when my father began telling me how important and necessary it was to study books. by some strange trick of fortune, he was born with a quenchless thirst for learning. this love of books was the one great passion of his life; but his large family began to arrive when he was at such an early age that he never had time to prepare himself to make a living from his learning. he always felt the hardship and 33irony of a life of labor to one who loved study and contemplation; so he resolved that his children should have a better chance. poor man! i can see him now as plainly as if it were yesterday. i can see him with his books,—english, latin, greek, and even hebrew,—carrying them back and forth to the dusty mill, and snatching the smallest chance, even when the water was spilling over the dam, to learn more of the wonders that were held between the covers of these books.
all my life i have felt that nature had some grudge against my father. if she had made him a simple miller, content when he was grinding corn and dipping the small toll from the farmer’s grist, he might have lived a fairly useful, happy life. but day after day and year after year he was compelled to walk the short and narrow path between the little house and the decaying mill, while his mind was roving over scenes of great battles, decayed empires, dead languages, and the starry heavens above. to his dying day he lived in a walking trance; and his books and their wondrous stories were more real to him than the turning water-wheel, the sacks of wheat and 34corn, and the cunning, soulless farmers who dickered and haggled about his hard-earned toll.
whether or not my father had strong personal ambitions, i really never knew; no doubt he had, but years of work and resignation had taught him to deny them even to himself, and slowly and pathetically he must have let go his hold upon that hope and ambition which alone make the thoughtful man cling fast to life.
in all the country round, no man knew so much of books as he, and no man knew less of life. the old parson and the doctor were almost the only neighbors who seemed able even to understand the language that he spoke. i remember now, when his work was done, how religiously he went to his little study with his marvellous books, and worked and read far into the night, stopping only to encourage and help his children in the tasks that they were ever anxious to neglect and shirk. my bedroom, with its two beds and generally four occupants, opened directly from his study door; and no matter how often i went to sleep and awakened in the night, i could see a little streak of lamplight at the bottom of the 35door that opened into his room, which showed me that he was still dwelling in the fairy-lands of which his old volumes told. he was no longer there in the morning, and this was usually the first time that i missed him in my waking moments after i had gone to bed. often, too, he wrote, sometimes night after night for weeks together; but i never knew what it was that he put down,—no doubt his hopes and dreams and loves and doubts and fears, as men have ever done since time began, as they will ever do while time shall last, and as i am doing now; but these poor dreams of his were never destined to see the light of day. perhaps, with no one to tell him that they were good, he despaired about their worth, as so many other doubting souls have done before and since. it is not likely, indeed, that any publisher could have been found ready to transform his poor cramped writing into print. whatever may have been the case, if i could only find the pages that he wrote i would print them now with his name upon the title-page, and pay for them myself.
i cannot remember when i learned to read. i seem always to have known how. i am sure 36that i learned my letters from the red and blue blocks that were always scattered on the floor. of course, i did not know what they meant; i only knew that a was a, and was content with that. even when i learned my first little words, and put them into simple sentences, i fancy that i knew no more of what they meant than the poor caged parrot that keeps saying over and over again, “polly wants a cracker,” when he really wants nothing of the kind. i fancy that i knew nothing of what they meant, for as i read to-day many of the brave lessons learned even in my later life i cannot imagine that i had any thought of their meaning such as the language seems now to hold.
but i know that i learned my letters quickly and early,—though not so early as an elder brother who was always kept steadily before my eyes. it must be that my father gave me little chance to tarry long from one simple book to another, for i remember that at a very early age i was told again and again that john stuart mill began studying greek when he was only three years old. i thought then, as i do to-day, that he must have had a cruel father, and 37that this unnatural parent not only made miserable the life of his little boy, but of thousands of other boys whose fathers could see no reason why their sons should be outdone by john stuart mill. i have no doubt that my good father thought that all his children ought to be able to do anything that was ever accomplished by john stuart mill; and so he did his part, and more, to make us try.
but, after all, i feel to-day just as i did long years ago, when with reluctant ear and rebellious heart i heard of the great achievements of john stuart mill. i look back to those early years, and still regret the beautiful play-spells that were broken and the many fond childish schemes for pleasure that were shattered because john stuart mill began studying greek when three years old.
i would often shed bitter tears, and mutter exclamations and protests which no one heard, but which were none the less terrible because they were spoken underneath my breath,—and all on account of john stuart mill. it was long before i could forgive my gentle honest father for having tried so hard to make me learn those books. i am sure that no good 38fortune can ever compensate me for the wasted joys, the broken playtimes, the interrupted childish pleasures, which i should have had.
if i were writing this story as i feel to-day, and if i could not recall the little child who had so lately come from the great heart of nature that he still must have remembered what she felt and thought and knew, i might not regret those broken childish joys. i might rather mourn and lament, with all the teachers and parents and authors, that i was so profligate of my time when i was yet a child, and that i was not more studious in those far-off years. but as i look back to my childhood days, my sluggish heart beats quicker, and i can feel the warm young blood rush to my tingling feet and hands, and i realize once more the strange thrill of delight and joy that life and activity alone bring to all the young. and so i cling to-day to the childish thought that i was right and my poor father wrong. “when i was a child, i spake as a child, i understood as a child, i thought as a child; but when i became a man i put away childish things,” said the apostle twenty centuries ago. the mistake of maturity and age has ever been that it lives 39so wholly in the present and so completely forgets the childhood that is past. to guard infancy and youth as a precious heritage, to keep them as long as we can, seems to me the true philosophy of life. for, after all, life is mostly illusions, and the illusions of infancy and childhood and youth are more alluring than those of later years.
but i fancy now that i can understand my father’s thoughts. a strange fate had set him down beside the little winding creek and kept him at his humble task of tolling his neighbors’ grist. he looked at the high hills to the east, and at the high hills to the west, and up and down the narrow country road that led to the outside world. he knew that beyond the high hills was a broad inviting plain, with opportunity and plenty, with fortune and fame; but as he looked at the hills he could see no way to pass beyond. it is possible that he could have walked over them, or even around them, had he been alone; but there was the ever-growing brood that held him in the narrow place. no doubt as he grew older he often looked up and down the long dusty road, half expecting some fairy or genie to come along and take him away 40where he might realize his dreams; but of course no such thing ever happened,—for this is a real story,—and so he stayed and ground the grain in the old decaying mill.
my father must have been quite advanced in years before he wholly gave up his ambitions to do something in life besides grinding the farmers’ corn. indeed, i am not sure that he ever gave them up; but doubtless, as the task seemed more hopeless and the chain grew stronger, he slowly looked to his children to satisfy the dreams that life once held out to him; and so this thought mingled with the rest in his strong endeavor that we should all have the best education he could get for us, so that we need not be millers as he had been. well, none of us are millers! the old family is scattered far and wide; the last member of the little band long since passed down the narrow road, and out between the great high hills into the far-off land of freedom and opportunity of which my father dreamed. but i should be glad to believe to-day that a single one over whom he watched with such jealous care ever gave as much real service to the world as this simple, kindly man whose name was heard scarcely 41farther than the water that splashed and tumbled on the turning wheel.
i started bravely to tell about my life,—to write my story as it seems to me; and here i am halting and rambling like a garrulous old man over the feelings and remembrances of long ago. by a strange trick of memory i seem to stand for a few moments out in the old front yard, a little barefoot child. the long summer twilight has grown dim, and the quiet country evening is at hand. beyond the black trees i hear the falling water spilling over the wooden dam; and farther on, around the edges of the pond, the hoarse croak of the frogs sounds clear and harsh in the still night air. above the little porch that shelters the front door is my father’s study window. i look in and see him sitting at his desk with his shaded lamp; before him is his everlasting book, and his pale face and long white hair bend over the infatuating pages with all the confidence and trust of a little child. for a simple child he always was, from the time when he first saw the light until his friends and comrades lowered him into the sandy loam of the old churchyard. i see him through the little panes of glass, as he bends 42above the book. the chapter is finished and he wakens from his reverie into the world in which he lives and works; he takes off his iron-framed spectacles, lays down his book, comes downstairs and calls me away from my companions with the old story that it is time to come into the house and get my lessons. for the hundredth time i protest that i want to play,—to finish my unending game; and again he tells me no, that john stuart mill began studying greek when he was only three years old. and with heavy heart and muttered imprecations on john stuart mill, i am taken away from my companions and my play, and set down beside my father with my book. i can feel even now my sorrow and despair, as i leave my playmates and turn the stupid leaves. but i would give all that i possess to-day to hear my father say again, as in that far-off time, “john stuart mill began studying greek when he was only three years old.”
