somehow i can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the academy on the hill. back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and the little child from whom i grew is only one of the old boyish group for whose sake the sun revolved and the changing seasons came and went.
it must be that for a long time i looked forward to going to the academy as an event in my boyish life. for i know that when i first went up the hill, i wore a collar and a necktie and shoes,—or, rather, boots. i must have felt then that i was growing to be a man, and that it was almost time to put off childish things. when i went to the academy, we called the teacher “professor,” and he in turn no longer called me johnny, or even john, but spoke to me as “smith.” a certain dignity 265and individuality had come to me from some source, i knew not where. when we boys came from the playground into the open door, it was not quite the mad rush of noisy and boisterous urchins that carried all before it, like a rushing flood, in the little district school.
almost unconsciously some new idea of duty and obligation began to dawn upon my mind, and i had even a faint conception that the lessons of the books would be related in some way to my future life. among us boys, in our relation to each other, the difference was not quite so great as that between the teacher and ourselves; but our bearing toward the girls was still more changed. in the district school they had seemed only different, and rather in the way, or at least of no special interest or importance in the scheme. now, we stood before them quite abashed and awed. they had put on long dresses, and had taken on a reserved and distant air; and much that we said and did in the academy was with the conscious thought of how it would look to them. this, too, was a reason why we should wear our collars and our boots, and comb our hair, and not be found always at the bottom of the class.
i began about this time to get letters at the post-office,—letters addressed directly to me, and which i could open first, and show to the others or not as i saw fit. and i began to know about affairs, especially to take an interest in politics, and to know our side—which of course was always beaten. i, like all the rest of the boys, inherited my politics and my religion. i said,—like all the boys; but i should have said like all people, whether boys or men. so little do we have the habit of thought, that our opinions on religion and politics and life are only such as have come down to us from ignorant and remote ancestors, influenced we know not how.
so, too, the same feeling seemed to steal over us at home and in our family group. the old sitting-room was quieter and wore a more serious look as we gathered round the lighted lamp on the great table with our books. the lessons were always tasks, but we tried to get through them for the sake of the magazine or book of travel or adventure that we could read when the work was done. 267my father was as helpful and interested as ever in our studies, and constantly told us how this task and that would affect our future lives. more and more he made clear to us his intense desire that we should reach the things that had been beyond his grasp.
almost unconsciously i grew into sympathy with his ideals and his life, seeing faintly the grand visions that were always clear to him, and bewailing more and more my own indolence and love of pleasure that made them seem so hard for me to reach. i learned to understand the tragedy of his obscure and hidden life, and the long and bitter contest he had waged within the narrow shadow of the stubborn little town where he had lived and struggled and hoped so long. it was many years before i came to know fully that the smaller the world in which we move, the more impossible it is to break the prejudices and conventions that bind us down. and so it was many, many years before i realized what must have been my father’s life.
as a little child, i heard my father tell of frederick douglass, parker pillsbury, sojourner truth, wendell phillips, and the rest of that advance army of reformers, black and white, who went up and down the land arousing the dulled conscience of the people to a sense of justice to the slave. they used to make my father’s home their stopping-place, and any sort of vacant room was the forum where they told of the black man’s wrongs. my father lived to see these disturbers canonized by the public opinion that is ever ready to follow in the wake of a battle fought to a successful end. but when his little world was ready to rejoice with him over the freedom of the slave, he had moved his soiled and tattered tent to a new battlefield and was fighting the same stubborn, sullen, threatening public opinion for a new and yet more doubtful cause. the same determined band of agitators used still to come when i had grown to be a youth. these had seen visions of a higher and broader religious life, and a fuller measure of freedom and justice for the poor than the world had ever known. like the despised tramp, they seemed to have marked my father’s gate-post, and could not pass his door. they were always poor, often ragged, and a far-off look seemed to haunt their eyes, as if gazing into space at something 269beyond the stars. some little room was always found where a handful of my father’s friends would gather, sometimes coming from miles around to listen to the voices crying in the wilderness, calling the heedless world to repent before it should be too late. i cannot remember when i did not go to these little gatherings of the elect and drink in every word that fell upon my ears. poor boy! i am almost sorry for myself. i listened so rapturously and believed so strongly, and knew so well that the kingdom of heaven would surely come in a little while. and though almost every night through all these long and weary years i have looked with the same unflagging hope for the promised star that should be rising in the east, still it has not come; but no matter how great the trial and disappointment and delay, i am sure i shall always peer out into the darkness for this belated star, until i am so blind that i could not see it if it were really there.
after these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where they told each other of their visions 270and their hopes. many and many a time, as i lay in my bed, i listened to their words coming through the crack with the streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant rainbow they had painted from their dreams.
after all, i am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed their dreams. i am glad they really lived above the sordid world, in that ethereal realm which none but the blindly devoted ever see; for i know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights where he really lived and died.
and i am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to catch one glimpse of these exalted realms, and to feel one aspiration for the devoted life they lived; for however truly i may know that this ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however i may have clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, i am sure that some part of this feeling abides with me, and that its tender chord of sentiment and memory reaches 271back to that hallowed land of childhood and of youth, and still seeks to draw me toward the heights on which my father lived.
i never knew that i was growing from the child to the youth; that the life and experience and even the boy of the district school was passing forever into the realm of clouds and myth. neither can i remember when i grew from the youth to the man, nor when the first stoop came to my shoulders, the first glint of white to my hair, or the first crease upon my face. i know that i wear glasses now,—but how did my sight begin to fail, and in what one moment of all the fleeting millions that hurried past did i first need to put glasses on my eyes? how lightly and gently time lays its hand upon all who live! i can dimly remember a period when i was very small, and i can distinctly remember when i went to the academy on the hill and began to think of maturer things if not to think maturer thoughts. i remember that i began to realize that my father was growing old; he made mistakes in names, and hesitated about those he well knew. still, this is not a sure sign of growing years, for i find that i am doing this myself, and 272many times lately have determined that i must take more pains about my memory, and cultivate it rather than continue to be as careless as i have always been. and only yesterday around an accustomed table with a few choice friends, i told a long and detailed story that i was sure was very clever and exactly to the point. i had no doubt that the pleasant tale would set the table in a roar. but although all the guests were most considerate and kind and seemed to laugh with the greatest glee, still there was something in their eyes and a certain cadence in their tones that made me sure that sometime and somewhere i had told them this same story at least once before.
i gradually realized that many plans my father seemed to believe he would carry out could never come to pass. i knew that for a long time he had talked of building a new mill. true, he did not say when or how,—but he surely would sometime build the mill. at first i used to think he would; and we often talked of the mill, and just where it would stand, and how many run of stones the trade demanded, and whether we should have an engine to use when there was no water in 273the dam. but gradually i came to realize that my father never would live to build another mill, and that doubtless no one else would replace the one he had run so long. yet he kept talking of the mill, as if it would surely come. nature, after all, is not quite so brutal as she might be. however old and gray and feeble her children grow, she never lets them give up hope until the last spark of life has flown.
even when my father talked with less confidence of the mill, he was sure to build a new water-wheel, for the old one had turned over and over so many times that there was scarce a sound place no matter where it turned. but this, too, i slowly found would never be; yet after a while i grew to encouraging him in his illusions of what he would sometime do, and even in his wilder and fonder illusions of what i would sometime do. gradually i knew that he stooped more and rested oftener, and that his face was whiter; and i forgot his age, and never under any circumstances would let anyone tell me how old he was.
as i myself grew older, i came to have a stricter feeling of right and wrong,—to see 274clearly the sharp lines that separate the good and the bad, to grow hard and unforgiving and more intolerant of sin. but this, like the measles, whooping-cough, and other childish complaints, i luckily lived through. it is one of the errors of childhood to believe in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and, strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the young. it is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right and wrong. it is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate that overrides all earthly schemes. it is only life that makes us know that pity and charity and love are the chief virtues, and cruelty and hardness and selfishness the greatest sins.
as i grew older, one characteristic of my childhood clung about me still. my plans never came out as i expected, and none of the visions of my brain grew into the perfect thing of which i hoped and dreamed. i never seemed able to finish any work that i began; some more alluring prospect ever beckoned 275me toward achievements grander than my brain had conceived before. the work was contrived, the plan was formed, the material prepared,—but the structure was only just begun.
and so this poor book but illustrates my life. long i had hoped to write my tale, much i had planned to tell my story; and here, after all my hopes and plans, i have gone off in quite another way, babbling of the schemes of my boyhood days, the thoughts and desires, the hopes and feelings, of a little child. so long and so fondly have i lingered in this fairy-land that now it is too late, and i must close the book before my story really has begun.
that fatal trip back to my old home was the cause of my undoing, and has robbed me of the fame that i had hoped to win. but i felt that i could not write the story unless i went back once more to visit the town of my childhood, and to see again the companions of my early life. but what a revelation came with this simple journey to the little valley where my father lived! i had looked at my face in the glass each day for many years, and never felt that it had changed; but when i went back to my old familiar haunts, and looked into the 276faces of the boys i once knew, i saw scarcely a line to call back their images to my mind. these bashful little boys were bent and gray and old, and had almost reached their journey’s end. and when i asked for familiar names, over and over again i was pointed to the white stones that now covered our old playground and were persistently crawling up the hill beyond the little rivulet that once marked the farthest limits of the yard. so many times was i referred to the graveyard for the answer to the name i called, that finally i did not dare to ask, “where is john cole?” or thomas clark, but instead of this i would break the news more gently to myself, and say, “is john cole living still?” or, “is thomas clark yet dead?”
i am most disconsolate because i could not tell the story that i meant to write, and i can scarce forgive this weird fantastic troop that pushed themselves before my pencil and would not let me tell my tale. yet, after all,—the everlasting “after all” that excuses all, and in some poor fashion decks even the most worthless life,—yet, after all, there was little that i could have told had i done my very best. even now i might sum up my story in a few short words.
all my life i have been planning and hoping and thinking and dreaming and loitering and waiting. all my life i have been getting ready to begin to do something worth the while. i have been waiting for the summer and waiting for the fall; i have been waiting for the winter and waiting for the spring; waiting for the night and waiting for the morning; waiting and dawdling and dreaming, until the day is almost spent and the twilight close at hand.
