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

Dr. Miller, of Franklin, reputed the seventh son of a seventh son, some extraordinary gift in surgery being credited to such a descent. In his day he performed all the surgical operations in that part of Massachusetts and the bordering towns of Rhode Island. Spread out on a small table at his right hand were his instruments, whose names I did not know, but they interested me immensely. What would I not have given for one of those dainty polished saws or keen knives with handsome handles! The room was partly filled with neighbors, mostly women, ready to lend their aid to the surgeon and to comfort the patient, whose family sat weeping in an adjoining room. Amos' eyes were now closed and his mouth set firm. As the tourniquet was twisted tighter and tighter the lines in his brow grew deeper. He breathed hard and a moan, the only one, escaped him as the knife went through the outer skin. It was not long before the sound of the saw came through the open window. The operation was over and the leg had taken its last step with its fellow. It was carried away into the barn for dissection; we heard with awe that Amos felt a faint sensation of pain when the knives and probes were searching for the hidden disease, as if the severed limb still remembered its possessor.

Subsequently the remains of the leg were buried in Amos' garden, which gave rise to some questionings in this pious and scrupulous community as to whether it ought not to have been placed in the graveyard. But Amos said that he did not own a lot yet, and when he died, he should not need his old leg to welcome him to his grave.

The operation proved successful. In a short time Amos was up with the empty pantaloon fastened back and the stump of the leg encased in a thick leather protector. As he had used crutches for some time before the amputation he soon learned to accommodate himself to their new use. He could not now walk long distances, so the weekly prayer meetings were generally appointed at his house. He became what was called among Methodists a class-leader; he took the leading part in all the private religious gatherings and never failed in his opening prayer to thank the Lord for bringing him safely through his peril. "It was Thy hand that held the knife", he would exclaim, "yea, it was"; and all the brethren said, amen.

There was, in the little community of which Amos Partridge was the central and pathetic figure, a sincere belief in the nearness and activity of Heaven in its every day affairs. It rendered them serious, careful and slightly superstitious. It was also true, however, that these tendencies sometimes seemed to create antagonism and a rebellious spirit in the young men. We children, from the same causes, were timid, afraid of the dark, afraid of everything; or, it may be, these very, nameless terrors of the night, of wild beasts and the forests, together with reactions from fancied escapes were the best stimulants and rustic guardians of the imagination--the primitive Muses of the Bellingham boy.


COUNTRY FUNERALS


If a surgical operation brought with it a country lad's holiday, a funeral may also be reckoned among the events which varied his life, if not with gaiety, at least with pleasing diversion. As a very young child I was present at two funerals which for special reasons have impressed themselves upon my memory. I had heard much of a widowed sister of my father, supposed to be rich; this proved to be a fable. Her husband had left the bulk of his estate to foreign missions, and only a bare support to his wife. As he had acquired his property by selling liquor it was but natural he should wish to make a restitution in the land of the heathen. The widow, my aunt, lived to an advanced age. When she died I accompanied my family to her obsequies. There I met her other young nephews and nieces besides the children of the neighborhood. We had a merry time together all day except for the hour of the services. There was a general feast served for everybody. The children were served at a second table, but there was a plentiful supply of goodies reserved for us and no tears to check our appetites. At the table we were told that our aunt had left us each fifty dollars. I had never heard of, least of all, seen such a sum of money and I conjectured it was enough to last the remainder of our lives.

A great deal takes place at a country funeral characteristic of the kindly as well as the weaker side of rustic men and women. There is much bustle and subdued cheerfulness mingled with awe; conversation is carried on in whispers. The chief mourners are permitted to be as helpless as they please; everything is done for them; they are treated as automatons. They are arranged in ranks next to the corpse according to consanguinity. Then come the neighbors and those persons who love to attend funerals. Children bring up the rear and in the hall and doorway lean a few men who seem to have no particular relation to the occasion. The important personage, not excepting the minister, is the volunteer undertaker, who for some unknown reason, has become the man usually called upon to officiate at the exercises. He knows his business, and for an hour feels himself a man of consequence. He is impartial in his attentions; be the dead old or young, saint or sinner, he is equally anxious that the ceremonies shall be conducted with proper decency and order. The rich give him a little more care, as they, perhaps, have rendered unto their dead a handsomer outfit for their last appearance and farewell journey; such I think may have been the case when our distinguished neighbors, the Scammels and Pennimans passed away. When the minister has concluded his remarks and his prayer, generally in the most lugubrious words and scriptural phrases he can muster, the man in charge of the funeral, (for country people knew no such professional name as undertaker), comes briskly forward, and, with much ceremony, lifts the lid of the coffin, rearranges some portion of the dress about the face of the dead, gives a searching glance over the coffin and then announces: "The friends and all those who desire, may now view the 'remains'". This is the most affecting moment in the ceremony; the last parting look which wrings the heart of the stoutest, when the women break down and are led away blinded by their tears. It is then that the most indifferent spectator pays that beautiful tribute of weeping for those he may not have loved, nay, hated or despised. All the ill is forgotten, the good alone remembered. A hearse was hardly known in the old days. The coffin was placed on a bier of home construction and carried to the graveyard on the shoulders of four men. The sad funeral procession followed behind, the mourners walking two and two and the rear made up of a straggling company of men, women and children. The minister offered a farewell prayer at the grave, and in summer time, an appropriate hymn was sung, its appropriateness consisting mostly in its dismal words and tune. Then the terrible moment arrived, the lowering of the coffin and the sound of the first earth upon it; for, formerly the company awaited this last act. This was not the formal dust to dust, a verbal and figurative act, but some shovelfuls of real earth that for a few moments rattled and pounded the top of the coffin with a heart-rending sound. The minister shook hands with the chief mourners, every one took his way home, the bier was placed under a tree and left to the elements and to be the plaything of boys until the feet of them, that await at the door to carry out the dead, are heard again.

The next funeral of which I have a recollection came into my own home. My father was dead, dead in the prime of his life, his labors and his hopes. Of this event I recall only two things, being taken from my playthings under an apple tree to the grave, and the hard pressure of my hand by my sister as the coffin was lowered. This became in after years my most pathetic memory as I grew to realize what it meant. In that grave all our hopes were buried; that I was unconscious of it must have made the grief of my family only the more poignant. At the same time I became the object of their greater solicitude and affection, and it was a miracle that, in a family of women only, I was not spoilt by too much indulgence. But while my sisters petted and pampered me, my mother's graver manners and prayers doubtless saved me from being too selfish and effeminate. Boys, however, owe chiefly to each other their escape from the apron string and the softness of nursery manners.

How empty now seemed the house whence the dear father had gone forever. The problems of life offered themselves to my mother and sisters with a terrible and crushing reality. My sisters were old enough and had sufficient education to teach the summer terms of district schools. My mother boarded the winter schoolmaster and planted and cared for her garden with her own hands. There was a pig in the pen and a flock of hens in the sod house. Most of my father's tools were sold at public vendue, which brought in a little ready money. There was straw to be braided at one and a half, sometimes two cents per yard; in summer huckleberries were picked and sold for three and four cents a quart. There was a peddler who made his rounds monthly and always put up for the night at my mother's house, paying his score with a liberal barter of such articles as he carried, dry goods, women's shoes and small wares. Dresses were made over and over, were darned and patched as long as the cloth would hold the stitches. My father's clothes were cut down for me and I wore the last of them in my sixteenth year. My straw hats and winter caps were home-made. Every year a cousin in business in Woonsocket Falls presented me with a pair of new boots. There was no want in the household because wants were few and had been reduced to the last limit. I am sure I never went cold or hungry although I never had a boughten plaything or any of those delicacies which are more necessary to children than necessities.

It is in such circumstances that the friendliness of country neighbors appears in its most beautiful light. There is no thought of almsgiving on their part, nor a sense of accepting charity on the part of the recipients. Benevolence and gratitude were not called upon to exchange compliments. Farmer Bosworth is going our way and leaves a jug of milk; he stops to chat a while and relight his pipe with a coal from the hearth. Would you see him do it with a boy's eyes? The tongs are too long and heavy to bring around to his pipe; but with them he pulls out a coal of the right size, picks it up between thumb and finger and puts it into his pipe bowl. I stand close beside him, and although he doesn't cringe, I do, and almost feel my fingers burn. He winks out of the corner of his eye at me and says, 'Your old daddy is tough isn't he?' and shows