 CHAPTER I One of the best things in the world is to be a boy. It requires no experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough. It is soon over. Just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do, and not have so much fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy with the restrictions that are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it is to yoke up the calves and play work. There is not a boy on a farm but would rather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What a glorious feeling it is indeed when a boy is for the first time given the long whip and permitted to drive the oxen, walking by their side, swinging the long lash and shouting, G. Buck! Ha! Golden! Woe! Bright! And all the rest of that remarkable language, until he is red in the face, and all the neighbors for half a mile are aware that something unusual is going on. If I were a boy, I am not sure but I would rather drive the oxen than have a birthday. The proudest day of my life was one day when I rode on the neap of the cart and drove the oxen all alone with a load of apples to the cider mill. I was so little that it was a wonder I didn't fall off and get under the broad wheels. Nothing could make a boy who cared anything for his appearance feel flatter than to be run over by the broad tire of a cartwheel. But I never heard of one who was, and I don't believe one ever will be. As I said, it was a great day for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. They sagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I came the Julius Caesar over them, if you will allow me to use such a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have seen the peasants from the Campania ha and g them round the forum, of course in Latin, a language that those cattle understood as well as ours do English. But what I mean is that I stood up and hollered with all my might, as everybody does with oxen, as if they were born deaf and whacked them with a long lash over the head, just as the big folks did when they drove. I think now that it was a cowardly thing to crack the patient old fellows over the face and eyes and make them wink in their meek manner. If I am ever a boy again on a farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen and not go screaming round the farm like a crazy man. And I shall not hit them with a cruel cut with a lash every few minutes because it looks big to do so and I cannot think of anything else to do. I never liked licking's myself and I don't know why an ox should like them, especially as he cannot reason about the moral improvement he is to get out of them. Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my cows Latin. I don't mean that I taught them to read it, for it is very difficult to teach a cow to read Latin or any of the dead languages. A cow cares more for her cud than she does for all the classics put together. But if you begin early you can teach a cow or a calf, if you can teach a calf anything, which I doubt, Latin as well as English. There were ten cows which I had to escort to and from pasture night and morning. To these cows I gave the names of the Roman numerals beginning with Unus and Duo and going up to Decem. Decem was of course the biggest cow of the party, or at least she was the ruler of the others and had the place of honour in the stable and everywhere else. I admire cows and especially the exactness with which they define their social position. In this case Decem could lick Novem and Novem could lick Octo and so on down to Unus who couldn't lick anybody except her own calf. I suppose I had to have called the weakest cow Una instead of Unus considering her sex, but I didn't care much to teach the cows the declensions of adjectives in which I was not very well up myself and besides it would be of little use to a cow. People who devote themselves too severely to study of the classics are apt to become dried up and you should never do anything to dry up a cow. Well, these ten cows knew their names after a while, at least they appeared to, and would take their places as I called them. At least if Octo attempted to get for Novem and going through the bars, I have heard people speak of a pair of bars when there were six or eight of them, or into the stable the matter of precedents was settled then and there, and, once settled, there was no dispute about it afterwards. Novem either put her horns into Octo's ribs and Octo shambled to one side or else the two locked horns and tried the game of push and gore until one gave up. Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a party of cows. There is nothing in royal courts equal to it. Rank is exactly settled and the same individuals always have the precedents. You know that at Windsor Castle, if the royal three-ply silver stick should happen to get in front of the most royal double and twisted golden rod when the court is going into dinner, something so dreadful would happen that we don't dare to think of it. It is certain that the soup would get cold while the golden rod was pitching the silver stick out of the castle window into the moat, and perhaps the island of Great Britain itself would split in two. But the people are very careful that it never shall happen, so we shall probably never know what the effect would be. Among cows, as I say, the question is settled in short order and in a different manner from what it sometimes is in other society. It is said that in other society there is sometimes a great scramble for the first place, for the leadership as it is called, and that women and men too fight for what is called position. And in order to be first they will injure their neighbors by telling stories about them and by backbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, not accepting the bite of fleas. But in cow society there is nothing of this detraction in order to get the first place at the crib or the farther stall in the stable. If the question arises, the cows turn in, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that ends it. I have often admired this trait in cows. Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, and it is a very good plan. It does not do the cows much good, but it is very good exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory as good short poems as I could find. The cows liked to listen to Thanatopsis about as well as anything, and repeat them when I went to the pasture, and as I drove the cows home through the sweet ferns and down the rocky slopes. It improves a boy's elocution a great deal more than driving oxen. It is a fact also that if a boy repeats Thanatopsis while he is milking, that operation acquires a certain dignity. CHAPTER 2 THE BOY AS A FARMER Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notions about farming were not so very different from those they entertain. What passes for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in a particular way. For instance, some morning in early summer John is told to catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring wagon, and put in the buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to drive over to the corners to see a man, about some cattle to talk with a road commissioner, to go to the store for the women folks, and to attend to other important business, and very likely he will not be back till sundown. It must be very pressing business, for the old gentleman drives off in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day and appears to have a great deal on his mind. Meantime he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up the chores, as if the chores could ever be done up on a farm. He is first to clean out the horse staple, then to take a billhook and cut down the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowing lot and along the road towards the village, to dig up the rocks round the garden patch, to weed out the beet bed, to hoe the early potatoes, to rake the sticks and leaves out of the front yard. In short, there is work enough laid out for John to keep him busy, it seems to him, till he comes of age, and at half an hour to sundown he is to go for the cows, and mine he don't run them. Yes sir, says John, is that all? Well if you get through in good season you might pick over those potatoes in the cellar, they are sprouting, they ain't fit to eat. John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore more cheerful to a boy than another on a pleasant day, it is rubbing the sprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar, and the old gentleman mounts his wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dog bounding along beside the wagon and refusing to come back at John's call. John half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of farming that suits him. He likes to run along the road and see all the dogs and other people, and he likes best of all to lie on the store steps at the corners, while his master's horse is dozing at the post, and his master is talking politics in the store, with the other dogs of his acquaintance snapping at mutually annoying flies and indulging in that delightful dog gossip which is expressed by a wag of the tail and a sniff of the nose. Nobody knows how many dog's characters are destroyed in this gossip, or how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion by a wag of the tail as a man can by the shrug of the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man can suggest one by raising his eyebrows. John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the odorous buffalo robe and the new whip, and he thinks that is the sort of farming he would like to do, and he cries after his departing parent, Say father, can't I go over to the father pasture and salt the cattle? John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantly in going over to that pasture, looking for birds' nests and shying at red squirrels on the way, and who knows, but he might see a sucker in the meadowbrook and perhaps get a jab at him with a sharp stick. He knows a hole where there is a whopper, and one of his plans in life is to go some day and snare him, and bring him home in triumph. It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the cattle want salting, but his father, without turning his head, replies, No, they don't need salting any more than you do! And the old equipage goes rattling down the road, and John whistles his disappointment. When I was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were never salted half enough. John goes to his chores and gets through the stable as soon as he can, for that must be done, but when it comes to the outdoor work that rather drags. There are so many things to distract the attention, a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near tree, and a hen-hawk circling high in the air over the barnyard. John loses a little time in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and in watching the bird to find where its nest is. And he convinces himself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon the chickens, and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteen minutes in hallowing to that distant bird, and follows it away out of sight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again. And then a carriage with two horses and a trunk on behind goes along the road, and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John, who is suddenly aware that his trousers are patched on each knee and in two places behind. And he wonders if she is rich, and whose name is on the trunk, and how much the horses cost, and whether that nice-looking man is the girl's father, and if that boy on the seat with a driver is her brother, and if he has to do chores. And as the gay sight disappears, John falls to thinking about the great world beyond the farm of cities and people who are always dressed up, and a great many other things of which he has a very dim notion. And then a boy, whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the boy makes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twist of his own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things take time. The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although it is not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play. John imagines that yonder big thissel is some whiskered villain of whom he has read in a fairy-book, and he advances on him with, Die, Ruffian! and slashes off his head with a bill-hook, or he charges upon the rows of mulling stocks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks and hues them down without mercy. What fun it might be if there were only another boy there to help. But even war, single-handed, gets to be tiresome. It is dinner time before John finishes the weeds, and it is cow time before John has made much impression on the garden. This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hope corn all day than work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work that John can do because it is near the house. John's continual plan in this life is to go fishing. When there comes a rainy day he attempts to carry it out, but ten chances to when his father has different views. As it rains so that work cannot be done outdoors, it is a good time to work in the garden. He can run into the house between the heavy showers. John accordingly detests the garden, and the only time he works briskly in it is when he has a stent set to do so much weeding before the Fourth of July. If he is spry he can make an extra holiday the fourth and the day after. Two days of gunpowder and ball playing. When I was a boy I suppose there was some connection between such and such an amount of work done on the farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there could be any Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I at least worked for my independence. End of Chapter 2. CHAPTER III The Delights of Farming There are so many bright spots in the life of a farmboy that I sometimes think I should like to live the life over again. I should almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand, he who leads the school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and there is so much to take his attention off when he is sent to do anything. Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is sent to the neighbors after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs. He is not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he can hit him. No other living thing can go so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead unless he happens to aspire a woodchuck in an adjoining lot when he gives chase to it like a deer. And it is a curious fact about boys that two will be a great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you have to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a great power of helping each other to do nothing, and they are so innocent about it, and unconscious. I went as quick as I ever did, says the boy. His father asks him why he didn't stay all night when he has been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no effect on the boy. Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a hill which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could any boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to eat or to smell that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climb a tree to look for a crow's nest or to swing in the top and to try if I could see the steeple of the village church. It became very important sometimes for me to see that steeple, and in the midst of my investigations the tin horn would blow a great blast from the farmhouse which would send a cold chill down my back in the hottest days. I knew what it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at all like the sweet note that called us to dinner from the hayfield. It said, Why on earth doesn't that boy come home? It is almost dark and the cows ain't milked. And that was the time the cows had to start into a brisk pace and make up for lost time. I wonder if any boy ever drove the cows home late, who did not say that the cows were at the very farther end of the pasture, and that old brindle was hidden in the woods and he couldn't find her for ever so long. The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat many a time. No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm boy does, and his best ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing is of course one sort, the excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and the anticipation of great luck. These are pure pleasures, enjoyed because they are rare. Boys who can go afishing any time care but little for it, tramping all day through bush and briar, fighting flies and mosquitoes, and branches that tangled the line, and snags that break the hook, and returning home late and hungry with wet feet and a string of speckled trout on a willow twig, and having the family crowd out at the kitchen door to look at him and say, Pretty well done for you, bub. Did you catch that big one yourself? This is also pure happiness, the like of which the boy will never have again, not if he comes to be selectman and deacon and to keep store. But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring and fall when we went to the distant pasture land, in a neighboring town, maybe, to drive thither the young cattle in colts and to bring them back again. It was a wild and rocky upland where our great pasture was, many miles from home, the road to it running by a brawling river and up a dashing brookside among great hills. What a day's adventure it was. It was like a journey to Europe. The night before I could scarcely sleep for thinking of it, and there was no trouble about getting me up at sunrise that morning. The breakfast was eaten, the luncheon was packed in a large basket with bottles of root beer and a jug of switchel, which packing I superintended with the greatest interest, and then the cattle were to be collected for the march and the horses hitched up. Did I shirk any duty? Was I slow? I think not. I was willing to run my legs off after the frisky stairs, who seemed to have an idea they were going on a lark and frolic'd about, dashing into all gates and through all bars except the right ones, and how cheerfully I did yell at them. It was a glorious chance to holler, and I have never since heard any public speaker on the stump or at camp meeting who could make more noise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount of noise in a boy does not increase in proportion to his size. If it did, the world could not contain it. The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. We were away from the farm, which to a boy is one of the best parts of farming. We saw other farms and other people at work. I had the pleasure of marching along and swinging my whip past boys whom I knew who were picking up stones. Every turn of the road, every bend and rapid of the river, the great boulders by the wayside, the watering troughs, the giant pine that had been struck by lightning, the mysterious covered bridge over the river where it was, most swift and rocky and foamy, the chance eagle in the blue sky, the sense of going somewhere. Why, as I recall all these things, I feel that even the Prince Imperial, as he used to dash on horseback through the Bois de Boilogne, with fifty mounted hussars clattering at his heels and crowds of people cheering, could not have been as happy as was I, a boy in short jacket and shorter pantaloons trudging in the dust that day behind the steers and colts cracking my black stock whip. I wished the journey would never end, but at last by noon we reached the pastures and turned in the herd, and after making the tour of the lots to make sure there are no breaks in the fences, we take our luncheon from the wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring. This is the supreme moment of the day. This is the way to live. This is like the Swiss family Robinson and all the rest of my delightful acquaintances in romance. Baked beans, rye and Indian bread, moist remember, donuts and cheese, pie and root beer, what richness. You may live to dine at Delmonico's, or if those Frenchmen do not eat each other up, at Philippe's, in Rue Montorguil in Paris, where the dear old Thacaré used to eat as good a dinner as anybody, but you will get there neither donuts nor pie nor root beer, nor anything so good as that luncheon at noon in the old pasture, high among the Massachusetts hills. Nor will you ever, if you live to be the oldest boy in the world, have any holiday equal to the one I have described, but I always regretted that I did not take along the fish-line just to throw in the brook we passed. I know there were trout there. CHAPTER IV. OF BEING A BOY by Charles Dudley Warner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mark Penfold. CHAPTER IV. NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY. Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys. It is my impression that a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief. What the boy does is the life of the farm. He is the factotum, always in demand, always expected to do the thousand indispensable things that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds and ends, the most difficult things. After everybody else is through, he has to finish up. His work is like a woman's, perpetual waiting on others. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner than it is to wash the dishes afterwards, consider what a boy on a farm is required to do, things that must be done or life would actually stop. It is understood in the first place that he is to do all the errands, to go to the store, to the post office, and to carry all sorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would tire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirely inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes and rotate about in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do, and people who have seen him turning cartwheels along the side of the road, have supposed that he was amusing himself and idling his time. He was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion so that he could economize his legs and do his errands with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head in order to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go and errand any distance if he could leapfrog it with a few other boys. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This is the reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water and the family are waiting at the dinner table, he is absent so long. For he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or if there is a penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirt the water a little while. He is the one who spreads the grass when the men have cut it. He mows it away in the barn. He rides the horse to cultivate the corn up and down the hot, weary rose. He picks up the potatoes when they are dug. He drives the cows night and morning. He brings wood and water and splits kindling. He gets up the horse and puts out the horse. Whether he is in the house or out of it, there is always something for him to do. Just before school and winter he shovels paths. In summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of winter greens and sweet flagroot, but instead of going for them, he is to stay indoors and pair apples and stone raisins and pound something in a mortar, and yet with his mind full of schemes of what he would like to do and his hands full of occupations, he is an idle boy who has nothing to busy himself with but school and chores. He would gladly do all the work if somebody else would do the chores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if any boy ever amounted to anything in the world or was of much use as a man who did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal education in the way of chores. A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets, at least a dog and probably rabbits, chickens, ducks and guinea hens. A guinea hen suits a boy. It is entirely useless and makes a more disagreeable noise than a Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young fox which a neighbor had caught. It is a mistake to suppose the fox cannot be tamed. Jacko was a very clever little animal and behaved in all respects with propriety. He kept Sunday as well as any day and all the ten commandments that he could understand. He was a very graceful play fellow and seemed to have an affection for me. He lived in a woodpile in the door-yard, and when I lay down at the entrance to his house and called him, he would come out and sit on his tail and lick my face just like a grown person. I taught him a great many tricks and all the virtues. That year I had a large number of hens and Jacko went about among them with the most perfect indifference, never looking on them to lust after them as I could see and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was his reputation that I would have trusted him in the hen roost in the dark without counting the hens. In short he was domesticated and I was fond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitors as an example of what affectionate treatment would do in some doing the brute instincts. I preferred him to my dog whom I had with much patience, taught to go up a long hill alone and surround the cows and drive them home from the remote pasture. He liked the fun of it at first, but by and by he seemed to get the notion that it was a chore and when I whistled for him to go for the cows he would turn tail and run the other way and the more I whistled and threw stones at him the faster he would run. His name was Turk and I should have sold him if he had not been the kind of dog that nobody will buy. I suppose he was not a cow dog but what they call a sheep dog. At least when he got big enough he used to get into the pasture and chase the sheep to death. That was the way he got into trouble and lost his valuable life. A dog is of great use on a farm and that is the reason a boy likes him. He is good to bite peddlers and small children and run out and yelp at wagons that pass by and a howl all night when the moon shines. And yet if I were a boy again the first thing I would have should be a dog. For dogs are great companions and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing. They are also good to bark at woodchuck holes. A good dog will bark at a woodchuck hole long after the animal has retired to a remote part of his residence and escaped by another hole. This deceives the woodchuck. Some of the most delightful hours of my life have been spent in hiding and watching the hole where the dog was not. What an exquisite thrill ran through my frame when the timid nose appeared was withdrawn, poked out again and finally followed by the entire animal who looked cautiously about and then hopped away to feed on the clover. At that moment I rushed in, occupied the home base, yelled to Turk and then danced with delight at the combat between the spunky woodchuck and the dog. They were about the same size, but science and civilization won the day. I did not reflect then that it would have been more in the interest of civilization if the woodchuck had killed the dog. I do not know why it is that boys so like to hunt and kill animals, but the excuse that I gave in this case for the murder was that the woodchuck ate the clover and trotted it down and in fact was a woodchuck. It was not till long after that I learned with surprise that he is a rodent mammal of the species Arctomis monax is called at the west a groundhog and is eaten by people of color with great relish. But I have forgotten my beautiful fox. Jaco continued to deport himself well into the young chickens came. He was actually cured of the fox vice of chicken stealing. He used to go with me about the coops, pricking up his ears in an intelligent manner and with a demure eye and the most virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox. If he had held out a little while longer I should have put him into a Sunday school book. But I began to miss chickens. They disappeared mysteriously in the night. I would not suspect Jaco at first, for he looked so honest and in the daytime seemed to be as much interested in the chickens as I was. But one morning when I went to call him, I found feathers at the entrance of his hole, chicken feathers. He couldn't deny it. He was a thief. His fox nature had come out under severe temptation and he died an unnatural death. He had a thousand virtues and one crime. But that crime struck at the foundation of society. He deceived and stole. He was a liar and a thief and no pretty ways could hide the fact. His intelligent bright face couldn't save him. If he had been honest he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox. CHAPTER V THE BOYS SUNDAY Sunday in the New England hill-towns used to begin Saturday night at sundown, and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills there before it has set by the almanac. I remember that we used to go by the almanac Saturday night and by the visible disappearance Sunday night. On Saturday night we very slowly yielded to the influences of the holy time which were settling down upon us and submitted to the ablutions which were as inevitable as Sunday. But when the sun, and it never moved so slow, slid behind the hill Sunday night, the effect upon the watching boy was like a shock from a galvanic battery. Something flashed through all his limbs and set them in motion and no play ever seemed so sweet to him as that between sundown and dark Sunday night. This however was on the supposition that he had conscientiously kept Sunday and had not gone in swimming and got drowned. This keeping of Saturday night instead of Sunday night we did not very well understand, but it seemed on the whole a good thing that we should rest Saturday night when we retired and play Sunday night when we were rested. I supposed, however, that it was an arrangement made to suit the big boys who wanted to go courting Sunday night. Certainly they were not to be blamed, for Sunday was the day when pretty girls were most fascinating, and I have never since seen any so lovely as those who used to sit in the gallery and in the singer's seats in the bare old meeting houses. Sunday to the country farmer boy was hardly the relief that it was to the other members of the family. For the same chores must be done that day as on others, and he could not divert his mind with whistling, hand springs, or sending the dog into the river after sticks. He had to submit, in the first place, to the restraint of shoes and stockings. He read in the Old Testament that when Moses came to Holy Ground he put off his shoes, but the boy was obliged to put his on upon the holy day, not only to go to meeting, but while he sat at home. Only the emancipated country boy, who is as agile on his bare feet as a young kid, and rejoices in the pressure of the warm soft earth, knows what a hardship it is to tie on stiff shoes. The monks who put peas in their shoes as a penance do not suffer more than the country boy in his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall the celerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown. Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer boy. He must rise tolerably early, for the cows were to be milked and driven to pasture. Family prayers were a little longer than on other days. There were the Sunday school verses to be relearned, for they did not stay in mind overnight. Perhaps the wagon was to be greased before the neighbors began to drive by, and the horse was to be caught out of the pasture, ridden home, bareback, and harnessed. This catching the horse, perhaps two of them, was very good fun, usually, and would have broken the sunday if the horse had not been wanted for taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful and still in the pasture on Sunday morning, but the horses were never so playful, the colts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the boy went calling in an intriguing Sunday voice, Jock, Jock, Jock, Jock, and shaking his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads erect, and shaking tails and flashing heels, dashed from corner to corner and gave the boy a pretty good race before he could coax the nose of one of them into his dish. The boy got angry and came very near saying, DUMMIT, but he rather enjoyed the fun after all. The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between the set of his turnover collar, the parting of his hair, and his memory of the Sunday school verses, and what a wild confusion there was through the house in getting off for meeting, and how he was kept running hither and thither to get the hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan, or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden the bunch of caraway seed. Already the deacons' mare, with a wagon-load of the deacons' folks, had gone shambling past, head-and-tail-drooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the good deacons sat jerking the reins in an automatic way, and the women folks patiently saw the dust settle upon their best summer finery. Wagon after wagon went along the sandy road, and when our boy's family started they became part of a long procession which sent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pious, smell of buffalo robes. There were fiery horses in the trail which had to be held in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to pass anybody on Sunday. It was a great delight to the farmer-boy to see all this procession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys, who leaned over the wagon seats for that purpose. Occasionally a boy rode behind with his back to the family, and his pantomime was always something wonderful to see, and was considered very daring and wicked. The meeting-house which our boy remembers was a high square building without a steeple. Within it had a lofty pulpit with doors underneath, and closets where sacred things were kept, and where the tiving-men were supposed to imprison bad boys. The pews were square, with seats facing each other, those on one side low for the children, and all with hinges so that they could be raised when the congregation stood up for prayers, and leaned over the backs of the pews as horses meet each other across a pasture fence. After prayers these seats used to be slammed down with a long continued clatter which seemed to the boys about the best part of the exercises. The galleries were very high, and the singers' seats, where the pretty girls sat, were the most conspicuous of all. To sit in the gallery away from the family was a privilege not often granted to the boy. The tiving-men who carried a long rod and kept order in the house, and outdoors at noontime sat in the gallery, and visited any boy who whispered or found curious passages in the Bible and showed them to another boy. It was an awful moment when the bushy-headed tiving-man approached a boy in sermon time. The eyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel the guilt ooze out of his burning face. At noon was Sunday school, and after that before the afternoon service, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheon together at the watering trough, where some of the elders were likely to be gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle, or they went over to a neighboring barn to see the calves, or they slipped off down the roadside to a place where they could dig sassafras, or the root of the sweet flag. Roots very fragrant in the mind of many a boy with religious associations to this day. There was often an odor of sassafras in the afternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as a substitute for the Old Testament incense of the Jews. Something in the same way the big bass vial in the choir took the place of David's harp of solemn sound. The going home from meeting was more cheerful and lively than the coming to it. There was all the bustle of getting the horses out of the sheds and bringing them round to the meeting-house steps. At noon the boys sometimes sat in the wagons and swung the whips without cracking them. Now it was permitted to give them a little snap in order to bring the horses up in good style, and the boy was rather proud of the horse if it pranced a little while the timid women folks were trying to get in. The boy had an eye for whatever life and stir there was in a New England Sunday. He liked to drive home fast. The old house and the farm looked pleasant to him. There was an extra dinner when they reached home, and a cheerful consciousness of duty performed made it a pleasant dinner. Long before sundown the Sunday school book had been read, and the boy sat waiting in the house with great impatience to signal that the day of rest was over. A boy may not be very wicked and yet not see the need of rest. Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of older farmers. 6. The Grindstone of Life If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the farmer boy, it is the Grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about hang, I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the wetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy boba-link, who always sits upon the fence and super intends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the swish, and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively business spreading after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, while the boy has the whole hay-field on his hands. He has little time for the poetry of hang, as he struggles along, filling the air with a wet mass which he shakes over his head, and picking his way with short legs and bare feet amid the short and freshly cut stubble. But if the scythes cut well and swing merrily, it is due to the boy who turned the grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just turn the grindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast. Any hired man was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone. How they did bear on, those great strapping fellows. Turn, turn, turn, what a weary go it was. For my part, I used to like a grindstone that wabbled a good deal on its axis, for when I turned it fast, it put the grinder on a lively lookout for cutting his hands and entirely satisfied his desire that I should turn faster. It was some sport to make the water fly, and wet the grinder suddenly starting up quickly and surprising him when I was turning very slowly. I used to wish sometimes that I could turn fast enough to make the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Any turning is what the grinder's like, and any boy who turned steadily so as to give an even motion to the stone will be much praised and will be in demand. I advise any boy who desires to do this sort of work to turn steadily. If he does it by jerks and in a fitful manner, the hired men will be very apt to dispense with his services and turn the grindstone for each other. This is one of the most disagreeable tasks of the boy farmer, and hard as it is, I do not know why it is supposed to belong especially to childhood, but it is, and one of the certain marks that second childhood has come to a man on a farm is that he is asked to turn the grindstone as if he were a boy again. When the old man is good for nothing else, when he can neither moan nor pitch, and scarcely rake after, he can turn grindstone, and it is in this way that he renews his youth. Ain't you ashamed to have your grandfather turn the grindstone? asks the hired man of the boy, so the boy takes hold and turns himself till his little back aches. When he gets older he wishes he had replied, Ain't you ashamed to make either an old man or a little boy do such hard grinding work? Doing the regular work of this world is not much, the boy thinks, but the wearisome part is the waiting on the people who do the work, and the boy is not far wrong. This is what women and boys have to do on a farm, weighed upon everybody who works. The trouble with the boy's life is that he has no time that he can call his own. He is like a barrel of beer, always on draft. The men, folks, having worked in the regular hours, lie down and rest, stretch themselves idly in the shade at noon, or lounge about after supper. Then the boy, who has done nothing all day but turn grindstone and spread hay and rake after, and run his little legs off at everybody's beck and call, is sent on some errand or some household chore in order that time shall not hang heavy on his hands. The boy comes nearer to perpetual motion than anything else in nature, only it is not altogether a voluntary motion. The time that the farm boy gets for his own is usually at the end of a stent. We used to be given a certain piece of corn to hoe, or a certain quantity of corn to husk in so many days. If we finished the task before the time set, we had the remainder to ourselves. In my day it used to take very sharp work to gain anything, but we were always anxious to take the chance. I think we enjoyed the holiday in anticipation quite as much as we did when we had won it. Unless it was training day or fourth of July or the circus was coming, it was a little difficult to find anything big enough to fill our anticipations of the fun we would have in the day or the two or three days we had earned. We did not want to waste the time on any common thing. Even going fishing in one of the wild mountain brooks was hardly up to the mark, for we could sometimes do that on a rainy day. Going down to the village store was not very exciting, and was on the whole a waste of our precious time. Unless we could get out our military company, life was apt to be a little blank, even on the holidays for which we had worked so hard. If you went to see another boy, he was probably at work in the hay field or the potato patch, and his father looked at you as scants. You sometimes took hold and helped him so that he could go and play with you, but it was usually time to go for the cows before the task was done. The fact is, or used to be, that the amusements of a boy in the country are not many. Snaring suckers out of the deep meadowbrook used to be about as good as any that I had. The North American sucker is not an engaging animal in all respects. His body is comely enough, but his mouth is puckered up like that of a purse. The mouth is not formed for the gentle angle worm nor the delusive fly of the fisherman. It is necessary therefore to snare the fish if you want him. In the sunny days he lies in the deep pools by some big stone or near the bank, posing himself quite still, or only stirring his fins a little now and then, as an elephant moves his ears. He will lie so for hours or rather float in perfect idleness and apparent bliss. The boy who also has a holiday but cannot keep still comes along and peeps over the bank. Golly, ain't he a big one? Perhaps he is 18 inches long and weighs two or three pounds. He lies there among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a school of them, perhaps a district school that only keeps in warm days in the summer. The pupils seem to have little to learn except to balance themselves and to turn gracefully with a flirt of the tale. Not much is taught, but deportment, and some of the old suckers are perfect turvy drops in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line, and on the end of it a brass wire bent into a loop, which is a slip noose and slides together when anything is caught in it. The boy approaches the bank and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale. The boy devours him with his eyes. He is almost too much excited to drop the snare into the water without making a noise. A puff of wind comes and ruffles the surface so that he cannot see the fish. It is calm again, and there he still is, moving his fins in peaceful security. The boy lowers his snare behind the fish and slips it along. He intends to get it around him just back of the gills and then elevate him with a sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation, for the snare will turn a little, and if it hits the fish, he is off. However, it goes well. The wire is almost in place when suddenly the fish, as if he had a warning and a dream, for he appears to see nothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out of the loop, and with no seeming appearance of frustrating anyone's plans, lounges over to the other side of the pool, and there he reposes just as if he was not spoiling the boy's holiday. This slight change of base on the part of the fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time, cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as he gives a tremendous jerk and fills by the dead weight that he has got him fast. Out he comes, up he goes in the air, and the boy runs to look at him. In this transaction, however, no one can be more surprised than the sucker. CHAPTER 7 Fiction and Sentiment The boy-farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his city cousin. When school keeps, he has only to do chores and go to school, but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm that have been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in the pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them. Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the surface as it coaxes the round cantaloupes out of the soft garden soil. It is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys this sort of fall work, and very lively work it was on frosty mornings for the bare-footed boys, who were continually turning up the larger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that had been covered from the frost. A boy can stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork, and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole of his foot was likely to stand in it until the words, Come stir your stumps, broken discordantly upon his meditations. For the boy is very much given to meditations. If he had his way he would do nothing in a hurry. He likes to stop and think about things and enjoy his work as he goes along. He picks up potatoes as if each one were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt and requiring careful examination. Although the country boy fills a little joy when school breaks up, as he does when anything breaks up or any change takes place, since he is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school is his opening into the world, his romance. Its opportunities for enjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set at books for. He takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs, standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of consequences. He grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not at all with a zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. But recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess? He is like to burst with animal spirits. He runs like a deer. He can nearly fly and he throws himself into play with entire self-forgetfulness and an energy that would overturn the world if his strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world is absolutely his. The weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own master for that brief time, as he never again will be if he lives to be as old as the King of Thule, and nobody knows how old he was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour in which vast projects can be carried out which have been slightly matured during the school hours, expeditions are undertaken, wars are begun between the Indians on one side and the settlers on the other, the military company is drilled without uniforms or arms, or games are carried on which involve miles of running and an expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the spelling book through at the highest bitch. Friendships are formed too, which are fervent if not enduring, and enmities contracted which are frequently taken out on the spot after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along. Cases of long credit either in words or trade are not frequent with boys. Boot on jackknives must be paid on the nail, and it is considered much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if the explanation is made with a fists, then to pretend fair, and then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The country boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a copy of the Arabian Nights, a dog eared copy with cover, title page, and the last leaves missing, which is passed around and slightly read under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents disapprove of novel reading, and have no work of fiction in the house except a pious fraud called Six Months in a Convent, and the latest comic Almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the treasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in the land of enchantment open before him. He tells at home that he has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has promised to lend it to him. Is it a true book, John asks the grandmother, because if it isn't true, it is the worst thing that a boy can read. This happened years ago. John cannot answer as to the truth of the book, and so does not bring it home, but he borrows it nevertheless and conceals it in the barn, and lying in the haymow is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he is supposed to be doing chores. There were no chores in the Arabian Nights. The boys there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius who would feed the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood in a minute. It was through this emblazoned portal that the boy walked into the world of books, which he soon found was larger than his own, and filled with people he longed to know. And the farmer boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets, though he has never been at a children's party in his life, and in fact never has heard that children go into society when they are seven, and give regular wine parties when they reach the ripe age of nine. But one of his regrets at having the summer school close is dimly connected with a little girl, whom he does not care much for, what a great deal rather play with a boy than with her at recess, but whom he will not see again for some time. A sweet little thing, who was very friendly with John, and with whom he has been known to exchange bits of candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom he cut in two his lead pencil and gave her half. At the last day of school she goes partway with John, and then he turns and goes a longer distance towards her home, so that it is late when he reaches his own. Is he late? He didn't know he was late. He came straight home when school was dismissed, only going a little way home with Alice Linton to help her carry her books. In a box in his chamber, which he has lately put a padlock on, among fish hooks and lines and bait boxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet apples, popcorn, beach nuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets due, fancifully folded, three cornered or otherwise, and written, I will warrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These little notes are parting gifts at the close of school, and John no doubt gave his own in exchange for them, though the writing was an immense labor, and the folding was a secret bot of another boy for a big piece of sweet flagroot baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carry in his pantaloons pocket until his pocket was in such a state that putting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them into the sugar-bowl at home. Each precious note contained a lock or curl of girl's hair, a rare collection of all colors, after John had been in school many terms, and had passed through a great many parting scenes, black, brown, red, toe color, and some that looked like spun gold and felt like silk. The sentiment contained in the notes was that which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholy foreboding of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enough this side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance, with little variation the poetry that made the hair precious was in the words, and as a cockney would say, set to the hair, following, This lock of hair which I did wear was taken from my head, when this you see remember me long after I am dead. John liked to read these verses which always made a new and fresh impression with each lock of hair, when he was not critical, they were for him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he used when he enclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend, and it did not occur to him until he was a great deal older and less innocent to smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keep every lock of hair entrusted to him, though death should come on the wings of cholera and take away every one of these sad red ink correspondence. When John's big brother one day caught sight of these treasures, and brutally told him that he had hair enough to stuff a horse-collar, John was so outraged and shocked as he should have been at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarse suggestion, this profanation of his most delicate feeling that he was kept from crying only by the resolution to lick his brother as soon as ever he got big enough. CHAPTER VIII. THE COMING OF THANKS-GIVING. One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts, hickory nuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts in the late fall after the frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shaken them and the colored leaves have strewn the ground. On a bright October day when the air is full of golden sunshine there is nothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting, nor is the pleasure of it altogether destroyed for the boy by the consideration that he is making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winter household. The getting in of potatoes and corn is a different thing, that is the pros, but nutting is the poetry of farm life. I am not sure, but the boy would find it very irksome though if he were obliged to work at nut-gathering in order to procure food for the family. He is willing to make himself useful in his own way. The Italian boy, who works day after day at a huge pile of pine cones, pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds which are sold and eaten, as we eat nuts, and which are almost as good as pumpkin seeds, another favorite with the Italians, probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed if the farmer boy here were set at pounding off the walnut shucks and opening the prickly chestnut burrs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a hardship the prickles in his fingers would be. But now he digs them out with his jackknife and enjoys the process on the whole. The boy is willing to do any amount of work if it is called play. In nutting the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut grove. They leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts. To climb a tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass to the next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion of boys scamper over our grass plot under the chestnut trees, each one as active as if he were a new patent-picking machine, sweeping the ground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could go to the door and speak to them about it. Indeed I have noticed that boys don't care much for conversation with the owners of fruit trees. They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton fields. I have never seen anything like it except a flock of turkeys removing the grass hoppers from a piece of pasture. Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of the skirmish line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum major of our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler. He has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step, and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but goes behind them like the kernel of a regiment, so that he can see every part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance is one of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the gobbler maneuvering his forces in a grasshopper field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish line, the number disposed at equal distances while he walks majestically in the rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left with military precision, killing the foe and disposing of the dead bodies with the same pack. Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold, but he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner. He keeps on eating as long as the supplies last. The gobbler in one of these raids does not condescend to grab a single grasshopper, at least not while anybody is watching him, but I suppose he makes up for it when his dignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his ferocity. Perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of the field, but he is only fattening himself for destruction. Like all greedy persons he comes to a bad end, and if the turkeys had any Sunday school they would be taught this. The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great event of the year. He was apt to get stents set him, so much corn to husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extra play spell, and in order to gain a day or two he would work at his task with a rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had the day after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted on. Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival, very much like Sunday except for the enormous dinner, which filled his imagination for months before as completely as it did his stomach for that day and a week after. There was an impression in the house that that dinner was the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower. Healy Agabalus, who did not resemble a pilgrim father at all, but who had prepared for himself in this day some very sumptuous banquets in Rome and ate a great deal of the best he could get, and liked peacocks stuffed with asafoetida for one thing. Never had anything like a Thanksgiving dinner, for do you suppose that he, or Sardinopolis either, ever had 24 different kinds of pie at one dinner? There in many a New England boy is greater than the Roman emperor or the Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxurious eaters of their day and generation. But something more is necessary to make good men than plenty to eat, as Healy Agabalus no doubt found when his head was cut off. Cutting off the head was a mode the people had of expressing disapproval of their conspicuous men. Nowadays they elect them to a higher office, or give them a mission to some foreign country if they do not do well where they are. For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing, not being allowed to taste much, until the world seemed to him to be made of fragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry, a world that he was only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house was with the most delicious smells, the mince pies that were made. If John had been shut in solid walls with them piled about him, he couldn't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were dainties enough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire year luscious with good living if they had been scattered along in it. But people were probably all the better for scraping themselves a little in order to make this a great feast, and it was not by any means over in a day. There were weeks deep of chicken pie and other pastry, the cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long time to excavate all its riches. Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy day, the hilarity of it being so subdued by going to meeting and the universal wearing of the Sunday clothes that the boy couldn't see it. But if he felt little exhilaration he ate a great deal. The next day was the real holiday. Then were the merry-making parties and perhaps the skatings and sleigh rides for the freezing weather came before the governor's proclamation in many parts of New England. The night after Thanksgiving occurred perhaps the first real party that the boy had ever attended with live girls in it dressed so bewitchingly. And there he heard those philandering songs and played those sweet games of forfeits which put him quite beside himself and kept him awake that night till the rooster crowed at the end of his first chicken nap. What a new world that that party opened to him. I think it likely that he saw there and probably did not dare say ten words to some tall graceful girl much older than himself who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see her face just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wondered if she noticed how awkward he was and how short his trouser legs were. He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes and determined then and there that he wouldn't be put off with a ribbon any longer but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhat painful thinking the party over but it was delicious too. He did not think probably that he would die for that tall handsome girl. He did not put it exactly in that way but he rather resolved to live for her which might in the end amount to the same thing. At least he thought that nobody would live to speak twice disrespectively of her in his presence. End of Chapter 8. Recording by Mark Penfold. Chapter 9 of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mark Penfold. Chapter 9. The Season of Pumpkin Pie. What John said was that he didn't care much for pumpkin pie but that was after he had eaten a whole one it seemed to him then that mints would be better. The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin pie has never been properly considered. There is an air of festivity about its approach in the fall. The boy is willing to help pair and cut up the pumpkin and he watches with the greatest interest the stirring up process and the pouring into the scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the baking reaches his nostrils he is filled with the most delightful anticipations. Why should he not be? He knows that for months to come the buttery will contain golden treasures and that it will require only a slight ingenuity to get at them. The fact is that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part of farming. His elders say that the boy is always hungry but that is a very coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a world that is full of good things to eat and there is on the whole a very short time in which to eat them. At least he is told among the first information he receives that life is short. Life being brief and pie and the like fleeting he very soon decides upon an active campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fifty years but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin as it comes as to pie for instance. Some people do make them very thin. I knew a place where they were not thicker than the poor man's plaster. They were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw at hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up by the great ovenful and kept in the dry cellar where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time ago and they make the pumpkin pie in the country better now or the race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into the world. The truth is that boys have always been so plenty that they are not half appreciated. We have shown that a farm could not get along without them and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of the most amusing things is their effort to acquire personal property. The boy has the care of the calves. They always need feeding or shutting up or letting out. When the boy wants to play there are those calves to be looked after until he gets to hate the name of calf. But in consideration of his faithfulness two of them are given to him. There is no doubt that they are his. He has the entire charge of them. When they get to be steers he spends all his holidays in breaking them into a yoke. He gets them so broken in that they will run like a pair of deer all over the farm turning the yoke and kicking their heels while he follows in full chase shouting the ox language till he is red in the face. When the steers grow up to be cattle a drover one day comes along and takes them away and the boy is told that he can have another pair of calves and so with undiminished faith he goes back and begins over again to make his fortune. He owns lambs and young colts in the same way and makes just as much out of them. There are ways in which the farmer boy can earn money as by gathering the early chestnuts and taking them to the corner store or by finding turkey's eggs and selling them to his mother and another way is to go without butter at the table but the money thus made is for the heathen. John Redd and Dr. Livingston that some of the tribes in Central Africa which is represented by a blank spot in the atlas used the butter to grease their hair putting on pounds of it at a time and he said he had rather eat his butter than have it put to that use especially as it melted away so fast in that hot climate. Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do not actually carry butter to Africa and that they must actually go without it themselves there it being almost impossible to make it good from the milk and the coconuts and it was further explained to him that even if the heathen never received his butter or the money for it it was an excellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit of self denial and of benevolence and if the heathen never heard of him he would be blessed for his generosity this was all true but John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of his butter and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eating butter and save the money for missions and he wanted to know where the other members of the family got their money to send to the heathen and his mother said that he was about half right and that self denial was just as good for grown people as it was for little boys and girls the boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights speaking of those thin pumpkin pies kept in the cellar cupboard I used to know a boy who afterwards grew to be a selectman and brushed his hair straight up like general Jackson and went to the legislature where he always voted against every measure that was proposed in the most honest manner and got the reputation of being the watchdog of the treasury rats in the cellar were nothing to be compared to this boy for destructiveness in pies he used to go down whenever he could make an excuse to get apples for the family or draw a mug of cider for his dear old grandfather who was a famous storyteller about the revolutionary war and would no doubt have been wounded in battle if he had not been as prudent as he was patriotic and came upstairs with a tallow candle in one hand and the apples or cider in the other looking as innocent and as unconscious as if he had never done anything in his life except deny himself butter for the sake of the even and yet this boy would have buttoned under his jacket an entire round pumpkin pie and the pie was so well made and so dry that it was not injured in the least and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more than if it had been inside of him instead of outside and this boy would retire to a secluded place and eat it with another boy being never suspected because he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie and he never appeared to have one about him but he did something worse than this when his mother saw that pie after pie departed she told the family that she suspected the hired man and the boy never said a word which was the meanest kind of lying that hired man was probably regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of his days and if he had been accused of robbing they would have believed him guilty I shouldn't wonder if that select man occasionally has remorse now about that pie dreams perhaps that it is buttoned up under his jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate that it lies upon his stomach like a round and red hot nightmare eating into his vitals perhaps not it is difficult to say exactly what was the sin of stealing that kind of pie especially if the one who stole it ate it it could have been used for the game of pitching quites and a pair of them would have made very fair wheels for the dog cart and yet it is probably as wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one and it made no difference because it was easy to steal this sort easy stealing is no better than easy lying where detection of the lie is difficult the boy who steals his mother's pies has no right to be surprised when some other boy steals his watermelons stealing is like charity in one respect it is apt to begin at home chapter 10 first experience of the world if i were forced to be a boy and a boy in the country the best kind of boy to be in the summer i would be about 10 years of age as soon as i got any older i would quit it the trouble with a boy is that just as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old and has to be set to doing something else if a country boy were wise he would stay at just that age when he could enjoy himself most and have the least expected of him in the way of work of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do chores for his father and errands for his mother and sisters rather than enjoy himself in his own way i never saw but one such boy he lived in the town of goshen not the place where the butter is made but a much better goshen than that and i never saw him but i heard of him and being about the same age as i supposed i was taken once from zoa where i lived to goshen to see him but he was dead he had been dead almost a year so that it was impossible to see him he died of the most singular disease it was not from eating green apples in the season of them this boy whose name was Solomon before he died would rather split up kindling wood for his mother than goa fishing the consequence was that he was kept at splitting kindling wood and such work most of the time and grew a better and more useful boy day by day Solomon would not disobey his parents and eat green apples not even when they were ripe enough to knock off with a stick but he had such a longing for them that he pined and passed away if he had eaten the green apples he would have died of them probably so that his example is a difficult one to follow in fact a boy is a hard subject to get a moral from all his little playmates who ate green apples came to Solomon's funeral and were very sorry for what they had done John was a very different boy from Solomon not half so good nor half so dead he was a farmer's boy as Solomon was but he did not take so much interest in the farm if John could have had his way he would have discovered a cave full of diamonds and lots of nail kegs full of gold pieces and Spanish dollars with a pretty little girl living in the cave and two beautifully caparis and horses upon which taking the jewels and money they would have written off together he did not know where John had got thus far in his studies which were apparently arithmetic and geography but were in reality the Arabian knights and other books of high and mighty adventure he was a simple country boy and did not know much about the world as it is but he had one of his own imagination in which he lived a good deal I dare say he found out soon enough what the world is and he had a lesson or two when he was quite young in two incidents which I may as well relate if you had seen John at this time you might have thought he was only a shabbily dressed country lad and you never would have guessed what beautiful thoughts he sometimes had as he went stubbing his toes along the dusty road nor what a chivalrous little fellow he was you would have seen a short boy barefooted with trousers at once too big and too short held up perhaps by one suspender only a checked cotton shirt and a hat of braided palm leaf frayed at the edges and bulged up in the crown it is impossible to keep a hat neat if you use it to catch bumblebees and whisk'em to bail the water from a leaky boat to catch minnows in to put over honeybee's nests and to transport pebbles, strawberries, and hen's eggs John usually carried a sling in his hand or a bow or a limber stick sharp at one end from which he could sling apples a great distance if he walked in the road he walked in the middle of it shuffling up the dust or if he went elsewhere he was likely to be running on the top of the fence or the stone wall and chasing chipmunks John knew the best place to dig sweet flag in all the farm it was in a meadow by the river where the bobble-links sang so gaily he never liked to hear the bobble-links sing however for he said it always reminded him of the wetting of a scythe and that reminded him of spreading hay and if there was anything he hated it was spreading hay after the mowers I guess you wouldn't like it yourself, said John with the stubs getting into your feet and the hot sun and the men getting ahead of you all you could do towards evening once John was coming along the road home with some stalks of the sweet flag in his hand there is a succulent pith in the end of the stalk which is very good to eat tender and not so strong as the root and John liked to pull it and carry home what he did not eat on the way as he was walking along he met a carriage which stopped opposite to him he also stopped and bowed as country boys used to bow in John's day a lady leaned from the carriage and said what have you got little boy she seemed to be the most beautiful woman John had ever seen with light hair dark tender eyes and the sweetest smile there was that in her gracious mienne and in her dress which reminded John of the beautiful castle ladies with whom he was well acquainted in books he felt that he knew her at once and he also seemed to be a sort of young prince himself I fancy he didn't look much like one but of his own appearance he thought not at all as he replied to the ladies question without the least embarrassment it's sweet flag stock would you like some indeed I should like to taste it said the lady with a most winning smile I used to be very fond of it when I was a little girl John was delighted that the lady should like sweet flag and that she was pleased to accept it from him he thought himself that it was about the best thing to eat he knew he handed up a large bunch of it the lady took two or three stocks and was about to return the rest when John said please keep it all ma'am I can get lots more I know where it's ever so thick thank you thank you said the lady and as the carriage started she reached out her hand to John he did not understand the motion until he saw a scent drop in the road at his feet instantly all his illusion and his pleasure vanished something like tears were in his eyes as he shouted I don't want your scent I don't sell flag John was intensely mortified I suppose he said she thought I was a sort of beggar boy to think of selling flag at any rate he walked away and left the scent in the road a humiliated boy the next day he told Jim Gates about it Jim said he was green not to take the money he'd go and look for it now if he would tell him about where it dropped and Jim did spend an hour poking about in the dirt but he did not find the scent Jim however had an idea he said he was going to dig sweet flag and see if another carriage wouldn't come along John's next rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort he was again walking the road at twilight where he was overtaken by a wagon with one seat upon which were two pretty girls and a young gentleman sat between them driving it was a merry party and John could hear them laughing and singing as they approached him the wagon stopped when it overtook him and one of the sweet-faced girls leaned from the seat and said quite seriously and pleasantly little boy how's your mar John was surprised and puzzled for a moment he had never seen the young lady but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother at any rate his instinctive politeness made him say she's pretty well I thank you does she know you are out and there upon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter and dashed on it flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed upon and it hurt him dreadfully his self-respect was injured somehow and he felt as if his lovely gentle mother had been insulted he would like to have thrown a stone at the wagon and in a rage he cried you're a nice but he couldn't think of any hard bitter words quick enough probably the young lady who might have been almost any young lady never knew what a cruel thing she had done end of chapter 10 recording by Mark Penfold chapter 11 of being a boy by Charles Dudley Warner this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Mark Penfold chapter 11 home inventions the winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer boy by any means yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any part of the year there is a difference in boys some are always jolly and some go scowling always through life as if they had a stone bruise on each heel I like a jolly boy I used to know one who came around every morning to sell molasses candy offering two sticks for a cent apiece it was worth fifty cents a day to see his cheery face that boy rose in the world he is now the owner of a large town at the west to be sure there are no houses in it except his own but there is a map of it and roads and streets are laid out in it with dwellings and churches and academies and a college and an opera house and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hartford on paper he and all his family have the fever and agu and shake worse than the people at Lebanon but they do not mind it it makes them lively in fact Ed May is just as jolly as he used to be he calls his town Mayopolis and expects to be mayor of it his wife however calls the town maybe the farmer boy likes to have winter come for one thing because it freezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it and it is covered with snow so that there is no picking up stones nor driving the cows to pasture he would have a very easy time if it were not for the getting up before daylight to build the fires and do the chores nature intended the long winter nights for the farmer boy to sleep but in my day he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the cock crew get out of the warm bed and light a candle struggle into his cold pantaloons and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone down to zero rake open the coals on the hearth and start the morning fire and then go to the barn to fodder the frost was thick on the kitchen windows the snow was drifted against the door and the journey to the barn in the pale light of dawn over the creaking snow was like an exile's trip to Siberia the boy was not half awake when he stumbled into the cold barn and was greeted by the lowing and bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for their breakfast how their breath steamed up from the manger's and hung in frosty spears from their noses through the great lofts above the hay where the swallows nested the winter wind whistled and the snow sifted those old barns were well ventilated I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should be tight and warm with a fire in it if necessary in order to keep the temperature somewhere near the freezing point I couldn't see how the cattle could live in a place where a lively boy full of young blood would freeze to death in a short time if he did not swing his arms and slap his hands and jump about like a goat I thought I would have a sort of perpetual manger that should shake down the hay when it was wanted and a self-acting machine that should cut up the turnips and pass them into the manger's and water always flowing for the cattle and horses to drink with these simple arrangements I could lie in bed and know that the chores were doing themselves it would also be necessary in order that I should not be disturbed that the crow should be taken out of the roosters but I could think of no process to do it it seems to me that the hen breeders if they know as much as they say they do might raise a breed of crow-less roosters for the benefit of boys quiet neighborhoods and sleepy families there was another notion that I had about kindling the kitchen fire that I never carried out it was to have a spring at the head of my bed connecting with a wire which should run to a torpedo which I would plant overnight in the ashes of the fireplace by touching the spring I could explode the torpedo which would scatter the ashes and cover the live coals and at the same time shake down the sticks of wood which were standing by the side of the ashes in the chimney and the fire would kindle itself this ingenious plan was frowned upon by the whole family who said they did not want to be waked up every morning by an explosion and yet they expected me to wake up without an explosion a boy's plans for making life agreeable are hardly ever heated I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the district school in the winter there is such a chance for learning that he must be a dull boy who does not come out in the spring of fair skater an accurate snowballer and an accomplished slider downhill with or without a board on his seat on his stomach or on his feet take a moderate hill with a foot slide down it worn to icy smoothness and a go round of boys on it and there is nothing like it for whittling away boot leather the boy is the shoemaker's friend an active lad can wear down a pair of cow hide soles in a week so that the ice will scrape his toes sledding or coasting is also slow fun compared to the bareback sliding down a steep hill over a hard glistening crust it is not only dangerous but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to make a tailor laugh if any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a school boy wears out his clothes in winter it would need a new one once a month in a county district school patches were not by any means a sign of poverty but of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet iron seats in our trousers the boy said that he wore out his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse ciphering hard sums for that extraordinary statement he received two castigations one at home that was mild and one from the schoolmaster who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's sliding place punishing him as he jacosly called it on a sliding scale according to the thinness of his pantaloons what i liked best at school however was the study of history early history the indian wars we studied it mostly at noontime and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have object lessons though our object was not so much to have lessons as it was to revive real history back of the schoolhouse rose around hill upon which tradition said had stood in colonial times a blockhouse built by the settlers for defense against the indians for the indians had the idea that the whites were not settled enough and used to come knights to settle them with a tomahawk it was called forked hill it was very steep on each side and the river ran close by it was a charming place in summer where one could find laurel and checkerberries and sassafras roots and sit in the cool breeze looking at the mountains across the river and listening to the murmur of the deer field the methodists built a meeting house there afterwards but the hill was so slippery and wintered that the aged could not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it blew nearly all the young methodists away many of whom were afterwards heard of in the west and finally the meeting house itself came down into the valley and grew a steeple and enjoyed itself ever afterwards it used to be a notion in new england that a meeting house ought to stand as near heaven as possible the boys at our school divided themselves into two parties one was the early settlers and the other the pequos the latter the most numerous the early settlers built a snow fort on the hill and a strong fortress it was constructed of snowballs rolled up to a vast size larger than the cyclopean blocks of stone which formed the ancient atruscan walls in idly piled one upon another and the holes cemented by pouring on water which froze and made the walls solid the pequos helped the whites build it it had a covered way under the snow through which only could it be entered and it had bastions and towers and openings to fire from and a great many other things for which there are no names in military books and it had a glacis and a ditch outside when it was completed the early settlers leaving the women in the schoolhouse a prey to the indians used to retire into it and await the attack of the pequos there was only a handful of the garrison while the indians were many and also barbarous it was agreed that they should be barbarous and it was in this light that the great question was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he had soaked overnight in water and let freeze they were as hard as cobblestones and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them he could not tell whether he was a back woe or an early settler it was considered as unfair to use these ice balls in open fight as it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war but as the whites were protected by the fort and the indians were treacherous by nature it was decided that the latter might use the hard missiles the pequos used to come swarming up the hill with hideous war-woops attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and a shower of balls the garrison replied with yells of defiance and well directed shots hurling back the invaders when they attempted to scale the walls the settlers had the advantage of position but they were sometimes overpowered by numbers and would often have to surrender but for the ringing of the school bell the pequos were in great fear of the school bell i do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and surrendered voluntarily but once or twice the fort was carried by storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy and thrown out of the fortress having been first scalped to take a boy's cap was to scalp him and after that he was dead if he played fair there were a great many hard hits given and taken but always cheerfully for it was in the cause of our early history the history of greece and rome was stuff compared to this and we had many boys in our school who could imitate the indian war whip enough better than they could scan arma verumque kano end of chapter 11 recording by mark pennfold chapter 12 of being a boy by charles dudley warner this libra vox recording is in the public domain recording by mark pennfold chapter 12 the lonely farmhouse the winter evenings of the farmer boy in new england used not to be so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of age a remote farmhouse standing a little off the road banked up with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar blockaded with snow and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney looks like a besieged fort on cold and stormy winter nights to the traveler warily dragging along in his creaking slay the light from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a blazing fire but it is no less a fort into which the family retire when the new england winter on the hills really sets in the boy is an important part of the garrison he is not only one of the best means of communicating with the outer world but he furnishes half the entertainment and takes two-thirds of the scolding of the family circle a farm would come to grief without a boy on it but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it that boy brings life into the house his tracks are to be seen everywhere he leaves all the doors open he hasn't half filled the woodbox he makes noise enough to wake the dead or he is in a brown study by the fire and cannot be stirred or he has fastened a grip into some crusoe book which cannot easily be shaken off i suppose that the farmer boy's evenings are not now what they used to be that he has more books and less to do and is not half so good a boy as formerly when he used to think the almanac was pretty lively reading and the comic almanac if he could get hold of that was a supreme delight of course he had the evenings to himself and after he had done the chores at the barn brought in the wood and piled it high in the box ready to be heaped upon the great open fire it was nearly dark when he came from school with its continuation of snowballing and sliding and he always had an agreeable time stumbling and fumbling around in barn and woodhouse in the waning light john used to say that he supposed nobody would do his chores if he did not get home till midnight and he was never contradicted whatever happened to him and whatever length of days or sort of weather was produced by the almanac the cardinal rule was that he should be at home before dark john used to imagine what people did in the dark ages and wonder sometimes whether he wasn't still in them of course john had nothing to do all the evening after his chores except little things while he drew his chair up to the table in order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on his slate or his book the women of the house also sat by the table knitting and sewing the head of the house sat in his chair tipped back against the chimney the hired man was in danger of burning his boots in the fire john might be deep in the excitement of a bear story or be hard at writing a composition on his greasy slate but whatever he was doing he was the only one who could always be interrupted it was he who must snuff the candles and put on a stick of wood and toast the cheese and turn the apples and crack the nuts he knew where the fox and geeseboard was and he could find the twelve men morris considering that he was expected to go to bed at eight o'clock one would say that the opportunity for study was not great and that his reading was rather interrupted there seemed to be always something for him to do even when all the rest of the family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a new england household no wonder that john was not sleepy at eight o'clock he had been flying about while the others had been yawning before the fire he would like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it would become as the night went on he wanted to tinker his skates to mend his sled to finish that chapter why should he go away from that bright blaze and the company that sat in its radiance to the cold and solitude of his chamber why didn't the people who were sleepy go to bed how lonesome the old house was how cold it was away from that great central fire in the heart of it how its timbers creaked as if in the contracting pinch of the frost what a rattling there was of windows what a concerted attack upon the clappards how the floors squeaked and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame of the candle from the boys hand how he shivered as he paused at the staircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow upon the stripped forest through which he could hear the wind raving in a kind of fury and up at the black flying clouds amid which the young moon was dashing and driven on like a frail shallot at sea and his teeth chattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets and drew himself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown like a fox in his hole for a little time he could hear the noises downstairs and an occasional laugh he could guess that now they were having cider and now apples were going round and he could feel the wind tugging at the house even sometimes shaking the bed but this did not last long he soon went away into a country he always delighted to be in a calm place where the wind never blew and no one dictated the time of going to bed to anyone else i like to think of him sleeping there in such rude surroundings ingenious innocent mischievous with no thought of the buffeting he is to get from a world that has a good many worst places for a boy than the hearth of an old farmhouse and the sweet though undemonstrative affection of its family life but there were other evenings in the boys life that were different from these at home and one of them he will never forget it opened a new world to john and sent him into a great flutter it produced a revolution in his mind in regard to neckties it made him wonder if greased boots were quite the thing compared with black boots and he wished he had a long-looking glass so that he could see as he walked away from it what was the effect of round patches on the portion of his trousers he could not see except in a mirror and if patches were quite stylish even on everyday trousers and he began to be very much troubled about the parting of his hair and how to find out on which side was the natural part the evening to which i refer was that of john's first party he knew the girls at school and he was interested in some of them with a different interest from that he took in the boys he never wanted to take it out with one of them for an insult in a stand-up fight and he instinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he was with them he would help a timid little girl to stand erect and slide he would draw her on his sled till his hands were stiff with cold without a murmur he would generously give her red apples into which he longed to set his own sharp teeth and he would cut into his lead pencil for a girl when he would not for a boy had he not some of the beautiful auburn tresses of synthia red in his skate spruce gum and winter green box at home and yet the grand sentiment of life was little awakened in john he liked best to be with boys and their rough play suited him better than the amusements of the shrinking fluttering timid and sensitive little girls john had not learned then that a spider web is stronger than a cable or that a pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great deal easier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry enough john had indeed been at spelling schools and had accomplished the feat of going home with a girl afterwards and he had been growing into the habit of looking around in meeting on sunday and noticing how synthia was dressed and not enjoying the service quite as much if synthia was absent as when she was present but there was very little sentiment in all this and nothing whatever to make john blush at hearing her name but now john was invited to a regular party there was the invitation in a three-cornered billet sealed with a transparent wafer miss c rad requests the pleasure of the company of etc all in blue ink and the finest kind of pin scratching writing what a precious document it was to john it even exhaled a faint sort of perfume whether of lavender or caro a seed he could not tell he read it over a hundred times and showed it confidentially to his favorite cousin who had bow of her own and had even sat up with them in the parlor and from this sympathetic cousin john got advice as to what he should wear and how he should conduct himself at the party end of chapter 12 recording by mark penfold chapter 13 of being a boy by charles dudley warner this libra vox recording is in the public domain recording by mark penfold chapter 13 john's first party it turned out that john did not go after all to synthia rudd's party having broken through the ice on the river when he was skating that day and as the boy who pulled him out said come within an inch of his life but he took care not to tumble into anything that should keep him from the next party which was given with due formality by melinda mayhew john had been many a time to the house of deacon mayhew and never with any hesitation even if he knew that both the deacons daughters melinda and sofronia were at home the only fear he had felt was of the deacons big dog who always surly watched him as he came up the tan bark walk and made a rush at him if he showed the least sign of wavering but upon the night of the party his courage vanished and he thought he would rather face all the dogs in town than knock at the front door the parlor was lighted up and as john stood on the broad flagging before the front door by the lilac bush he could hear the sound of voices girls voices which set his heart in a flutter he could face the whole district school of girls without flinching he didn't mind him in the meeting house in their sunday best but he began to be conscious that now he was passing to a new sphere where the girls are supreme and superior and he began to feel for the first time that he was an awkward boy the girl takes to society as naturally as a duckling does to the placent pond but with a semblance of shy timidity the boy plunges in with a great splash and hides his shy awkwardness in noise and commotion when john entered the company had nearly all come he knew them every one and yet there was something about them strange and unfamiliar they were all a little afraid of each other as people are apt to be when they are well dressed and met together for social purposes in the country to be at a real party was a novel thing for most of them and put a constraint upon them which they could not at once overcome perhaps it was because they were in the awful parlor that carpeted room of hair cloth furniture which was so seldom opened upon the wall hung two certificates framed in black one certifying that by the payment of fifty dollars deacon mayhew was a life member of the american tract society and the other that by a like outlay of bread cast upon the waters his wife was a life member of the a b c f m a portion of the alphabet which has an awful significance to all new england childhood these certificates are a sort of receipt in full for charity and are a constant and consoling reminder to the farmer that he is discharged his religious duties there was a fire on the broad hearth and that with the tallow candles on the mantelpiece made quite an illumination in the room and enabled the boys who were mostly on one side of the room to see the girls who were on the other quite plainly how sweet and demure the girls looked to be sure every boy was thinking if his hair was slick and feeling the full embarrassment of his entrance into fashionable life it was queer that these children who were so free everywhere else should be so constrained now and not know what to do with themselves the shooting of a spark out upon the carpet was a great relief and was accompanied by a deal of scrambling to throw it back into the fire and caused much giggling it was only gradually that the formality was at all broken and the young people got together and found their tongues john at length found himself with Cynthia Rudd to his great delight and considerable embarrassment for Cynthia who was older than john never looked so pretty to his surprise he had nothing to say to her they have always found plenty to talk about before but now nothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at a party it is a pleasant evening said john it is quite so replied Cynthia did you come in a cutter asked john anxiously no i walked on the crust and it was perfectly lovely walking said Cynthia in a burst of confidence was it slippery continued john not very john hoped it would be slippery very when he walked home with Cynthia as he determined to do but he did not dare to say so and the conversation ran aground again john thought about his dog and his sled and his yoke of stairs but he didn't see any way to bring them into conversation had she read the swiss family robinson only a little ways john said it was splendid and he would lend it to her for which she thanked him and said with such a sweet expression she should be so glad to have it from him that was encouraging and then john asked Cynthia if she had seen sally hawks since the husking at their house when sally found so many red ears and didn't she think she was a real pretty girl yes she was right pretty and Cynthia guessed that sally knew it pretty well but did john like the color of her eyes no john didn't like the color of her eyes exactly her mouth would be well enough if she didn't laugh so much and show her teeth john said her mouth was her worst feature oh no said Cynthia warmly her mouth is better than her nose john didn't know but it was better than her nose and he should like her looks better if her hair wasn't so dreadful black but Cynthia who could afford to be generous now said she liked black hair and she wished hers was dark whereupon john protested that he liked light hair auburn hair of all things and Cynthia said that sally was a dear good girl and she didn't believe one word of the story that she only really found one red ear at the husking that night and hid that and kept pulling it out as if it were a new one and so the conversation once started went on as briskly as possible about the pairing bee and the spelling school and the new singing master who was coming and how jack thompson had gone to north hampton to be a clerk in a store and how elvira reddington in the geography class at school was asked what was the capital of massachusetts and had answered north hampton and all the school laughed john enjoyed the conversation amazingly and he half wished that he and Cynthia were the whole of the party but the party had meantime got into operation and the formality was broken up when the boys and girls had ventured out of the parlor into the more comfortable living room with its easy chairs and everyday things and even gone so far as to penetrate the kitchen in their frolic as soon as they forgot they were a party they began to enjoy themselves but the real pleasure only began with the games the party was nothing without the games and indeed it was made for the games very likely it was one of the timid girls who proposed to play something and when the ice was once broken the whole company went into the business enthusiastically there was no dancing we should hope not not in the deacons house not with the deacons daughters nor anywhere in this good puritanic society dancing was a sin in itself and no one could tell what it would lead to but there was no reason why the boys and girls shouldn't come together and kiss each other during a whole evening occasionally kissing was a sign of peace and was not at all like taking hold of hands and skipping about to the scraping of a wicked fiddle in the games there was a great deal of clasping hands of going round in a circle of passing under each other's elevated arms of singing about my true love and the end was kisses distributed with more or less partiality according to the rules of the play but thank heaven there was no fiddler john liked it all and was quite brave about paying all the forfeits imposed on him even to the kissing all the girls in the room but he thought he could have amended that by kissing a few of them a good many times instead of kissing them all once but john was destined to have a damper put upon his enjoyment they were playing a most fascinating game in which they all stand in a circle and sing a philandering song except one who is in the center of the ring and holds a cushion at a certain word in the song the one in the center throws the cushion at the feet of someone in the ring indicating thereby the choice of a mate and then the two sweetly kneel upon the cushion like two meek angels and and so forth then the chosen one takes the cushion and the delightful play goes on it is very easy as it will be seen to learn how to play it synthia was holding the cushion and at the fatal word she threw it down not before john but in front of ifrium legate and they two kneeled and so forth john was astounded he had never conceived as such perfidy in the female heart he felt like wiping ifrium off the face of the earth only ifrium was older and bigger than he when it came his turn at length thanks to a plain little girl for whose admiration he didn't care a straw he threw the cushion down before melinda mayhew with all the devotion he could muster and a dagger look at synthia and synthia's perfidious smile only enraged him the more john felt wronged and worked himself up to pass a wretched evening when supper came he never went near synthia and busied himself in carrying different kinds of pie and cake and red apples and cider to the girls he liked the least he shunned synthia and when he was accidentally near her and she asked him if he would get her a glass of cider he rudely told her like a goose as he was that she had better ask ifrium that seemed to him very smart but he got more and more miserable and began to feel that he was making himself ridiculous girls have a great deal more good sense in such matters than boys synthia went to john at length and asked him simply what the matter was john blushed and said that nothing was the matter synthia said that it wouldn't do for two people always to be together at a party and so they made up and john obtained permission to see synthia home it was after half past nine when the great festivities at the deacons broke up and john walked home with synthia over the shining crust and under the stars it was mostly a silent walk for this was also an occasion when it is difficult to find anything fit to say and john was thinking all the way how he should bid synthia good night whether it would do and whether it wouldn't do this not being a game and no forfeits attaching to it when they reached the gate there was an awkward little pause john said the stars were uncommonly bright synthia did not deny it but waited a minute and then turn abruptly away with good night john good night synthia and the party was over and synthia was gone and john went home in a kind of dissatisfaction with himself it was long before he could go to sleep for thinking of the new world open to him and imagining how he would act under a hundred different circumstances and what he would say and what synthia would say but a dream at length came and led him away to a great city and a brilliant house and while he was there he heard a loud rapping on the underfloor and saw that it was daylight end of chapter 13 recording by mark penfold chapter 14 of being a boy by charles dudley warner this libra vox recording is in the public domain recording by mark penfold chapter 14 the sugar camp i think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than the making of maple sugar it is better than black burying and nearly as good as fishing and one reason he likes this work is that somebody else does the most of it it is a sort of work in which he can appear to be very active and yet not do much and it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busy about nothing if the power for instance that is expended in play by a boy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied to some industry we should see wonderful results but a boy is like a galvanic battery that is not in connection with anything he generates electricity and plays it off into the air with the most reckless prodigality and i for one wouldn't have it otherwise it is as much a boy's business to play off his energies into space as it is for a flower to blow or a cat bird to sing snatches of the tunes of all the other birds in my day maple sugar making used to be something between picnicking and being shipwrecked on a fertile island where one should save from the wreck tubs and augers and great kettles and pork and hen's eggs and ryan indian bread and begin at once to lead the sweetest life in the world i am told that it is something different nowadays and that there is more desire to save the sap and make good pure sugar and sell it for a large price than there used to be and that the old fun and picturesqueness of the business are pretty much gone i am told that it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and bring it to the house where there are built brick arches over which it is evaporated in shallow pans and that pains is taken to keep the leaves sticks and ashes and coals out of it and that the sugar is clarified and that in short it is a money making business in which there is very little fun and that the boy is not allowed to dip his paddle into the kettle of boiling sugar and lick off the delicious syrup the prohibition may improve the sugar but it is cruel to the boy as i remember the new england boy and i am very intimate with one he used to be on the qui vive in the spring for the sap to begin running i think he discovered it as soon as anybody perhaps he knew it by a feeling of something starting in his own veins a sort of spring stir in his legs and arms which tempted him to stand on his head or throw a handspring if he could find a spot of ground from which the snow had melted the sap stirs early in the legs of a country boy and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes which get tired of boots and want to come out and touch the soil just as soon as the sun has warmed it a little the country boy goes barefoot just as naturally as the trees burst their buds which were packed and varnished over in the fall to keep the water in the frost out perhaps the boy has been digging into the maple trees with his jackknife at any rate he is pretty sure to announce the discovery as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement as if he had heard a hen cackle in the barn with saps running and then indeed the stir and excitement begin the sap buckets which have been stored in the garret over the woodhouse in which the boy has occasionally climbed up to look at with another boy for they are full of sweet suggestions of the annual spring frolic the sap buckets are brought down and set out in the south side of the house and scalded the snow is still a foot or two deep in the woods and the ox sled is got out to make a road to the sugar camp and the campaign begins the boy is everywhere present superintending everything asking questions and filled with a desire to help the excitement it is a great day when the cart is loaded with the buckets and the procession starts into the woods the sun shines almost unobstructedly into the forest for there are only naked branches to barret the snow is soft and beginning to sink down leaving the young bushes spindling up everywhere the snow birds are twittering about and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far and wide this is spring and the boy can scarcely contain his delight that his outdoor life is about to begin again in the first place the men go about and tap the trees drive in the spouts and hang the buckets under the boy watches all these operations with the greatest interest he wishes that sometime when a hole is bored in a tree the sap would spout out in a stream as it does when a cider barrel is tapped but it never does it only drops sometimes almost in a stream but on the whole slowly and the boy learns that the sweet things of the world have to be patiently waited for and do not usually come otherwise then drop by drop then the camp is to be cleared of snow the shanty is recovered with boughs in front of it two enormous logs are rolled nearly together and a fire is built between them forked sticks are set at each end and a long pole is laid on them and on this are hung the great cauldron kettles the huge hogs heads are turned right side up and cleaned out to receive the sap that is gathered and now if there is a good sap run the establishment is under full headway the great fire that is kindled up is never let out night or day as long as the season lasts somebody is always cutting wood to feed it somebody is busy most of the time gathering in the sap somebody is required to watch the kettles that they do not boil over and to fill them it is not the boy however he is too busy with things in general to be of any use in details he has his own little sap yoke and small pails with which he gathers the sweet liquid he has a little boiling place of his own with small logs and a tiny kettle in the great kettles the boiling goes on slowly and the liquid as it thickens is dipped from one to another until in the end kettle it is reduced to syrup and is taken out to cool and settle until enough is made to sugar off to sugar off is to boil the syrup until it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar this is the grand event and is done only once in two or three days but the boy's desire is to sugar off perpetually he boils his kettle down as rapidly as possible he is not particular about chips scum or ashes he is apt to burn his sugar but if he can get enough to make a little wax on the snow or to scrape from the bottom of the kettle with his wooden paddle he is happy a good deal is wasted on his hands and the outside of his face and on his clothes but he does not care he is not stingy to watch the operations of the big fire gives him constant pleasure sometimes he is left to watch the boiling kettles with a piece of pork tied on the end of a stick which he dips into the boiling mass when it threatens to go over he is constantly tasting of it however to see if it is not almost syrup he has a long round stick whittled smooth at one end which he uses for this purpose at the constant risk of burning his tongue the smoke blows in his face he is grimy with ashes he is altogether such a massive dirt stickiness and sweetness that his own mother wouldn't know him he likes to boil eggs in the hot sap with a hired man he likes to roast potatoes in the ashes and he would live in the camp day and night if he were permitted some of the hired men sleep in the bow shanty and keep the fire blazing all night to sleep there with them and awaken the night and hear the wind in the trees and see the sparks fly up to the sky is a perfect realization of all the stories of adventures he has ever read he tells the other boys afterwards that he heard something in the night that sounded very much like a bear the hired man says that he was very much scared by the hooting of an owl the great occasions for the boy though are the times of sugaring off sometimes this used to be done in the evening and it was made the excuse for a frolic in the camp the neighbors were invited sometimes even the pretty girls from the village who filled all the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter and little affectations of fright the white snow still lies on all the ground except the warm spot about the camp the tree branches all show distinctly in the light of the fire which sends its ruddy glare far into the darkness and lights up the bow shanty the hogs heads the buckets on the trees and the group about the boiling kettles until the scene is like something taken out of a fairy play if rembrandt could have seen a sugar party in a new england wood he would have made out of its strong contrasts of light and shade one of the finest pictures in the world but rembrandt was not born in massachusetts people hardly ever do know where to be born until it is too late being born in the right place is a thing that has been very much neglected at these sugar parties everyone was expected to eat as much sugar as possible and those who are practiced in it can eat a great deal it is a peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar that though you may eat so much of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it you will want it the next day more than ever at the sugaring off they used to pour the hot sugar upon the snow where it congealed without crystallizing into a sort of wax which i do suppose is the most delicious substance that was ever invented and it takes a great while to eat it if one should close his teeth firmly on a ball of it he would be unable to open his mouth until it dissolved the sensation while it is melting is very pleasant but one cannot converse the boy used to make a big lump of it and give it to the dog who seized it with great avidity and closed his jaws on it as dogs will on anything it was funny the next moment to see the expression of perfect surprise on the dog's face when he found that he could not open his jaws he shook his head he sat down and despair he ran round in a circle he dashed into the woods and back again he did everything except climb a tree and howl it would have been such a relief to him if he could have howled but that was the one thing he could not do