Confessions of Boyhood by John Albee (free e reader .TXT) 📕

ash and was saved with particular care. It was mainly used for stanchions in the tie-ups of cows and oxen, for stakes on sleds and carts, and for levers. It is not easily bent and is almost impossible to break; it is the steel of the forest. Its foliage resembles that of the elm, but is finer and denser. It has no insect enemies and minds not the fiercest tempests. Uncle Lyman said only lightning could rive it, that the hornbeam drew fire from the clouds, and one should never go near it in a thunder storm. This was only when it was alive.

His various speculations about natural objects and phenomena, were always in the way of contraries and offsets. Good weather was enough to ensure forthcoming bad; a full crop this year meant a poor one next year. If every kernel of corn sprouted, look out for plenty of crows and a poor yield. Thus he comforted himself in every reverse and humbled himself in good fortune. In good years he was more saving, and in bad, less so than most of his neighbors. Now he had a fear ahead and now a hope. Thus he balanced both; yet the balance so inclined that the years increased his store, and thrift, industry and honesty brought him honor among his neighbors. He helped the widow and the orphan and loaned money without a mortgage. His debts and credits were obligations of honor; as he paid, so he was paid.

Uncle Lyman admired trees as the most wonderful things that God had made grow out of the earth. He could hardly bring himself to chop them down. The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, made him sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an old friend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from a sapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the old man of Verona,

"A neighboring wood, born with himself, he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees".

The trees I loved and played with most in my boyhood, the white birches, for which I still have more fondness than any other in our northern forests, Uncle Lyman cared for not at all. Although he had a sense of beauty, and long association with an object affected him with a tinge of romance and secret sentiment, yet utility was the chief criterion in his estimate of trees and men. Could you do a good day's work, it was enough; it filled the measure of a man and the promise of a boy. A useful tree was therefore the best tree. He had no use for white or gray birches, for they were neither timber nor vendible firewood. He often ridiculed them, and if there was a worthless fellow in town, he was, in his comparison, a gray birch, good for nothing but to hoop the cider barrels, of which the fellow was too fond; if a too gay girl, she was a white birch, dressed in satin, frizzled and beribboned, dress over dress of the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in the birch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred uses for the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spool and bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch bark books, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs--and, envied man, is able to sell them.

But all these useful, playful and poetic uses are nothing to me in comparison to the birchen bower wherein I spent entrancing summer days with Launa Probana.

Having been my father's most intimate friend, when he died in the midst of his years, he became my mother's adviser and helper, and to me a second father. I loved him well, and I believe he reciprocated this boyish affection. His eyes twinkled and the wrinkles on his weather-beaten face ran together when I approached him in the field, or when we talked together beside the hearth fire or under the elm tree when the day's work was done. For some reason I cannot now fathom, unless it were the ambitious desire to put myself on a footing with his years and wisdom, I would assume with him an unnatural gravity. My wisdom consisted in asking him questions, any that happened to come into my head. I took for granted that he knew everything. Had he not been to Boston, and more than once? Yet little would he say about that town. He liked much better to talk of places he had never seen, especially London and London Bridge. I only learned that people in Boston dressed every day in the week in their best clothes; that was what made the deepest impression upon me; for our best clothes hung in the closet until Sunday. Uncle Lyman and I went barefooted and shirtsleeved all summer. He never had a linen shirt or collar; but how fine he looked in a snowy white cotton shirt and broad collar, a blue coat and tall bell-shaped hat, a hat he had worn all his life on the Sabbath and at funerals. Nor do I think he had, during his manhood, more than one best suit of clothing. In winter he always wore a long woolen frock made by his wife, and a cap of woodchuck skin. Folks said it was like to be a hard winter when he put on his overcoat. His complexion was as dark as an Indian's; eyes as black as night, and he had straight raven hair. He used much tobacco, always a quid in his mouth except when it was a pipe. He mostly refrained on the Sabbath until the evening when a long quiet smoke compensated him for abstinence during two sermons. His voice was rich and seemed to come from deep down in his chest. When he was a bit puzzled, he scratched his head with one finger. He was scrupulously neat in his person and orderly in his yard and buildings. No chips, no broken-down carts nor tools disfigured his premises. His was almost the only barn of a working farmer I ever saw that was kept clean and neat--except my own. He did not belong to any church; but he had a whole pew in the body of the meeting-house and contributed his full share to the support of the Gospel. Moreover he gave of the produce of his farm every year something to the minister's woodshed or cellar. I never heard him but once make any comment on the sermons he had heard, which were more than five thousand according to his figures. "My boy", he said to me one Sunday evening, "if you should ever be a parson, try to make your sermons different every time. It seems to me as though I had heard the same sermon all my life". On the Sabbath day, after the chores were done, there were shaving and dressing, the fires to be put out and the windows to be made fast with a button or a nail. Then the carryall was brought out, a high narrow vehicle difficult to get into, and still more difficult to get out of. The mare, Nancy, was called white, but she had patches of brown along her expansive sides and was, with much effort, squeezed between the fills, and the straps made tight in their buckles. Nancy winced at this tightening. She did not like her Sunday harness which had grown hard and stiff from infrequent use and too small, having been made for her when she was younger. I also felt most uncomfortable in my good clothes, which were ever outgrown and held me like a corselet. At last the house door was locked and we drove the two miles to the church, silent and serious as became our Sunday clothes and our equipage. We felt strange to ourselves and not at ease. When the meeting was over I had a sudden overpowering revulsion in my spirits. I wanted to shout, to run, to jump over something and a hitching post as high as my head offered the nearest opportunity. I forgot the Sunday school lesson in a moment; I had not understood a word of it. On the way home we became very cheerful. There was comment on the wayside farms and gossip of the doings of the neighbors. We compared the height of their corn with our own field, and always found it a little less than ours. A heavy load of something seemed lifted from our hearts on returning from meeting. Uncle Lyman slyly put his quid back into his mouth which at once made him happier. There was a faint remonstrance from the back seat, which he pretended not to hear; or he would rejoin, "mother, have you munched all those caraway seeds you took along to meeting?" My driving on the way home was much like the illusion which follows us through life. Hands in front of ours direct our actions and our affairs. We hold but the slack of the reins, and the driven imagines himself the driver. There was a short whip in the socket, which was never taken out in the summer, and in sleighing disappeared altogether; it was only ornamental. "Hudup" and a flap of the reins were enough for the encouragement of Nancy. A switch of her tail and a laying back of her ears showed that she understood. If a letter must be written, it was done after meeting. Uncle Lyman seldom touched pen and paper except when an item was to be set down in his account book. Paper was scarce and costly and postage six good cents; and the pen, a quill, was usually dried up, and the nib opened too wide to hold the ink, and had to be soaked a good while before it would write. There was always some excuse for not answering a letter. But nothing pleased him more than to receive one. It was read slowly and with great attention, stuck behind the clock and reread for a week. The Sabbath ended with an early supper and early sleep, for Monday was always a busy day. Corn and potatoes did not rest on the Sabbath, neither did weeds.

At last for Uncle Lyman there came the eternal Sabbath day. He lifted the latch of his house door for the last time, smoked his last pipe, and laid down willingly to sleep. Other feet now traverse his lands; there is new paint over the ancient red house walls, and new labor saving tools; they and hired menials do the work, but no more than his two hands in proud industrious independence were wont to accomplish. He is forgotten by those who now possess what he made worth possessing. But I have not forgotten him, and little do the present owners of his houses and lands imagine that there is a title back of theirs, registered in the court of memory which no mere occupation and ownership can invalidate.


THE ANCIENT NEW ENGLAND FARMER


How pleasant o'er the still autumnal vale
From his great timbered barn's wide open door
The muffled sound of his unresting flail
In rhythmic swing upon the threshing floor!

How straight their tasselled tops his corn upreared!
Straight were the rows, no weed dared raise its head;
How golden gleamed their opening sheaths well eared
Whose inner husks stuffed out his bulging bed!