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

and the noon of the day. There was probably an oration in the church but I had no ear for speech when my eyes were filled with seeing; for there were shows of various kinds in booths about the common and in the town hall. How to make twenty-five cents take me into all was beyond my arithmetic; so I contented myself with spending ten cents on an exhibition of Albino children, white-haired, ivory-skinned and pink-eyed. Another ten cents admitted me to a collection of dwarfs and giants, the dwarfs mounted on the shoulders or heads of the giants. The remaining five cents let me into the best show of all, a learned pig that played cards and performed amusing tricks. For a good while I wished for nothing so much as a learned pig. But now my money was gone, and I was hungry as only a boy on a holiday can be. I had walked three miles to the town, and there were three miles now between me and my mother's cupboard. When I arrived there I feasted for the remainder of the day and went to bed still hungry. The next few days were flat and languid. In all my boyhood pleasures and excitements I suffered intensely from these reactions. I tormented the family by persistent teasings to go somewhere, or to do something. "Go play, go read your book, go see what Aunt Chloe is doing," they would say. How could I fill the void with such trivial pastimes with a Fourth of July cannon ringing in my ears and the learned pig's red eyes following me? I wanted all days to be Fourth of July, and for a while I made them so with a wooden gun, a General Washington paper chapeau and a tin pan for a brass band. At length the days gradually fell into their usual tenor and I became reconciled to such amusements and mischiefs as my two playmates, George Jennison and Harry Thurber, and myself could invent.

We now began to look forward to the time of ice and snow. Meanwhile Thanksgiving day is near. Little as it meant to me, it was nevertheless a break in the usual order of the days. I have read many cheerful accounts of the Thanksgiving home gatherings--the feastings and the frolic in which the turkey and plum pudding appeared to be treated almost like divinities. But never did I know, in boyhood, the family reunion, the turkey or the pudding, so that these gatherings and dinners are to me pictures and I regard them as I do the feasts of Homer's heroes, pleasant to read of and to imagine. Some of our neighbors celebrated the day in the customary manner and no doubt acknowledged the goodness of the Divine Providence as enjoined by the Governor's proclamation. But the bounty of the Divine Providence never travelled by our lonely road, nor left a turkey or pudding at the door of the little Red House. Saddest of all her sad days I think my mother felt it to be, seeing the bounties and friends at the tables of others and unable to make her own worthy of the occasion. She sometimes spared an aged and unprofitable hen from her scanty flock and made us each a custard in an earthen cup. For that day she brought out her only silver, six tea spoons, and spread on her round table her only table cloth, hand-woven and white as snow. In the evening we parched corn over the hearth fire. My mother sat at one corner of the fireplace and by her side a tall light stand, her candle, her Bible and her knitting. At bedtime she read a chapter aloud, and kneeling, made a low, plaintive prayer, the burden of which was always thankfulness and trust. I remember not the words, but the tone still sounds in my ear. Thus returned from year to year my four holidays until I was old enough to find the road that led from the town and on which I now love to travel back and indulge a holiday of memories.


THE AMPUTATION


Aside from the formal and appointed holidays, the events and days that a country community most enjoyed were not numerous; yet their infrequency and unexpectedness added a certain amount of zest to its monotonous annals. A fire, an accident, a death, a raising, an engagement, a fight, a new minister, even Miss Penniman's new style of gown from Boston were not unwelcome excitements. They furnished food for talk, for wonder, discussion and scandal.

Although there was a certain terror connected with the unusual event I am about to describe, yet this did not deter me from looking forward to it as a kind of holiday.

For a long time it had been rumored that our neighbor, Amos Partridge, would have to lose his leg. He had what was called a white swelling on his knee. Besides his house, Amos Partridge had a large barn and a shop, where, in winter, he bottomed boots. The bottomer of boots sat on a low bench and did most of his work on his lap and knee. It was thought that the primary cause of Amos' trouble arose from a slight blow upon his knee as he sat at his work, increased by subsequent constant pressure upon the spot by the strap which held the boot in place. He worked as long as he was able, and for some time before the operation, he was obliged to use a crutch in passing from his shop to his house. The swelling grew steadily in size, and became more and more troublesome although every remedy then known to New England therapeutics had been tried, including all the nostrums of the neighborhood, plasters, poultices, washes and prayers; for Amos was much beloved by his neighbors, mostly Methodists, to which sect he himself belonged. He was about thirty-five years old, tall and large-framed, light-haired, full-bearded and with blue eyes, a pure Saxon type of a man. His forehead was high and narrow and much work and suffering had ploughed untimely furrows upon it. His house stood close by the roadside, in a field between two pieces of woodland. It was small, one-storied, the only unusual thing about it being that it was painted white, as was also the neat fence which enclosed a tiny space in front almost touching the road. This enclosure was in summer a tangle of cinnamon roses, lilacs, sweet-william, bouncing-Bet and other common flowers which propagate and harvest themselves. A narrow gravelled walk, upon which the flowers constantly encroached, led to the front door--a useless door, generally, as no one ever thought of entering it. There were two rooms on either side of this door; one, the family sitting room, the other, the sacred country parlor with the usual hair-cloth covered furniture and home-made rugs in bright colors and quaint patterns. There was a gilt mirror too, the upper third of which was opaque, and upon it was painted a one-masted vessel with impossible sails set straight from stem to stern, which helps me to recall the room and much of the interior of the house. I had never seen so fine a picture; nor had I ever seen a vessel of any kind. It was wonderful. I never tired of looking at it although I had seen it many times as the room was opened for prayer meetings, which my mother attended regularly, taking me with her. How well I recall those meetings, which sobered me for life. Not that any spoken words impressed me, for I understood nothing of what was said or sung; but there was a sadness, a suppression in the air, as of the valley of Jehosaphat. The stillness too, that intense hush which often occurred between the remarks and prayers of the brethren and sisters, filled me with a nameless, shrinking fear. Had I been old enough, conversion would have been easy as the only means of escape from those terrible silences. My usual relief was in clinging to my mother's hand which gave me a sense of protection from I knew not what; or in looking at the vessel in the mirror and sailing away to other worlds. Under that sail I visited all the neighboring inland towns whose names and nothing more I knew--Milford, Medway, Mendon and Hopkinton, the utmost bound of my little world--beyond Hopkinton, nothing.

At length there came a day when Amos Partridge could work no longer; the pain in his knee became too excruciating to be endured. The surgeon was summoned and a date determined for an amputation. The neighborhood was informed and nothing else was talked or thought of during the preceding days. The chances of Amos surviving the operation were discussed; for it was before the days of anaesthetics and the science of surgery had not then made the removal of a limb the least of its triumphs. Most of the neighbors, especially the women, took a hopeless view of the result. Preparations were made much resembling those for a funeral. My mother told me she was going to the amputation, and as she never left me at home when she went abroad, I knew I should go too. But this did not oppress me, not nearly as much as the thought of a prayer meeting. A dim sensation of something extraordinary about to happen filled me with excitement. Yet, on the whole, it was an emotion of joy.

The momentous day of the amputation arrived. I could hardly restrain my impatience. It was a calm, soft afternoon in early spring when my mother and I set out for the house of Amos Partridge; not however, before my mother had been to her chamber, and, on her knees, offered a silent prayer. She appeared very serious and silent on the way. Could she be ignorant of the pleasure I was anticipating? I danced along by her side; hardly feeling the earth beneath my feet; I was already at the scene of expected festivity. I noticed that my mother carried a fan. It was not a hot day and I wondered much what the fan was for. We arrived at the house where there was already a considerable assemblage of the neighbors and friends from a distance. Horses were fastened to trees, fences and the sides of the barn, just as on Sunday at the meeting-house or at the annual town-meeting. The small boy was there in numbers, but only a few girls. Alas, for the small boy! He was not permitted to play near the house nor to make the least noise. Instead of a holiday, for him, it turned out a more serious affair than the usual Puritan Sabbath. Bitter was my disappointment. My mother, as she left me to go into the house, warned me to keep very still and be a good boy. Accordingly I remained under the window of the room in which the operation was to be performed. The windows were wide open, and I could see and hear all that was said and done. I had a view of my mother and two other women standing by the bedside of Amos, fanning him. I could see the face of the sufferer, pale, emaciated and troubled. Presently I heard the voice of the minister, and looking toward the foot of the bed, I saw opened before him the great family Bible from which he was reading. From the frequent recurrence of the words boils and afflictions I think it must have been some chapter in Job that he had selected as suitable for the occasion. After the Scriptures the minister made a long prayer.

Then the dreadful preparations began. I saw the bed-clothing pulled back and the diseased limb exposed; it was twice its natural size. The surgeon was the once famous