XVI.
OTHER BOYS.
I CANNOT quite understand why the theatre, which my boy was so full of,and so fond of, did not inspire him to write plays, to pour them out,tragedy upon tragedy, till the world was filled with tears and blood.Perhaps it was because his soul was so soaked, and, as it were,water-logged with the drama, that it could only drift sluggishly in thatwelter of emotions, and make for no point, no port, where it couldrecover itself and direct its powers again. The historical romance whichhe had begun to write before the impassioned days of the theatre seemsto have been lost sight of at this time, though it was an enterprisethat he was so confident of carrying forward that he told all his familyand friends about it, and even put down the opening passages of it onpaper which he cut in large quantity, and ruled himself, so as to haveit exactly suitable. The story, as I have said, was imagined from eventsin Irving's history of the "Conquest of Granada," a book which the boyloved hardly less than the monkish legends of "Gesta Romanorum," and itconcerned the rival fortunes of Hamet el Zegri and Boabdil el Chico, theuncle and nephew who vied with each other for the crumbling throne ofthe Moorish kingdom; but I have not the least notion how it all ended.Perhaps the boy himself had none.
I wish I could truly say that he finished any of his literaryundertakings, but I cannot. They were so many that they cumbered thehouse, and were trodden under foot; and sometimes they brought him toopen shame, as when his brother picked one of them up, and began to readit out loud with affected admiration. He was apt to be ashamed of hisliterary efforts after the first moment, and he shuddered at hisbrother's burlesque of the high romantic vein in which most of hisneverended beginnings were conceived. One of his river-faring uncles wasvisiting with his family at the boy's home when he laid out the schemeof his great fiction of "Hamet el Zegri," and the kindly young aunt tookan interest in it which he poorly rewarded a few months later, when sheasked how the story was getting on, and he tried to ignore the wholematter, and showed such mortification at the mention of it that the poorlady was quite bewildered.
The trouble with him was, that he had to live that kind of double life Ihave spoken of--the Boy's Town life and the Cloud Dweller's life--andthat the last, which he was secretly proud of, abashed him before thefirst. This is always the way with double-lived people, but he did notknow it, and he stumbled along through the glory and the ignominy asbest he could, and, as he thought, alone.
He was often kept from being a fool, and worse, by that elder brother ofhis; and I advise every boy to have an elder brother. Have a brotherabout four years older than yourself, I should say; and if your temperis hot, and your disposition revengeful, and you are a vain andridiculous dreamer at the same time that you are eager to excel in featsof strength and games of skill, and to do everything that the otherfellows do, and are ashamed to be better than the worst boy in thecrowd, your brother can be of the greatest use to you, with his largerexperience and wisdom. My boy's brother seemed to have an ideal ofusefulness, while my boy only had an ideal of glory, to wish to helpothers, while my boy only wished to help himself. My boy would as soonhave thought of his father's doing a wrong thing as of his brother'sdoing it; and his brother was a calm light of common-sense, of justice,of truth, while he was a fantastic flicker of gaudy purposes which hewished to make shine before men in their fulfilment. His brother wasalways doing for him and for the younger children; while my boy only didfor himself; he had a very gray moustache before he began to have anyconception of the fact that he was sent into the world to serve and tosuffer, as well as to rule and enjoy. But his brother seemed to knowthis instinctively; he bore the yoke in his youth, patiently if notwillingly; he shared the anxieties as he parted the cares of his fatherand mother. Yet he was a boy among boys, too; he loved to swim, toskate, to fish, to forage, and passionately, above all, he loved tohunt; but in everything he held himself in check, that he might hold theyounger boys in check; and my boy often repaid his conscientiousvigilance with hard words and hard names, such as embitter even the mostself-forgiving memories. He kept mechanically within certain laws, andthough in his rage he hurled every other name at his brother, he wouldnot call him a fool, because then he would be in danger of hell-fire. Ifhe had known just what Raca meant, he might have called him Raca, for hewas not so much afraid of the council; but, as it was, his brotherescaped that insult, and held through all a rein upon him, and governedhim through his scruples as well as his fears.
His brother was full of inventions and enterprises beyond most otherboys, and his undertakings came to the same end of nothingness thatawaits all boyish endeavor. He intended to make fireworks and sell them;he meant to raise silk-worms; he prepared to take the contract ofclearing the new cemetery grounds of stumps by blasting them out withgunpowder. Besides this, he had a plan with another big boy for makingmoney, by getting slabs from the saw-mill, and sawing them up intostove-wood, and selling them to the cooks of canal-boats. The onlytrouble was that the cooks would not buy the fuel, even when the boyshad a half-cord of it all nicely piled up on the canal-bank; they wouldrather come ashore after dark and take it for nothing. He had a goodmany other schemes for getting rich, that failed; and he wanted to go toCalifornia and dig gold; only his mother would not consent. He reallydid save the Canal-Basin once, when the banks began to give way after along rain. He saw the break beginning, and ran to tell his father, whohad the firebells rung. The fire companies came rushing to the rescue,but as they could not put the Basin out with their engines, they all gotshovels and kept it in. They did not do this before it had overflowedthe street, and run into the cellars of the nearest houses. The waterstood two feet deep in the kitchen of my boy's house, and the yard wasflooded so that the boys made rafts and navigated it for a whole day. Myboy's brother got drenched to the skin in the rain, and lots of fellowsfell off the rafts.
He belonged to a military company of big boys that had real wooden guns,such as the little boys never could get, and silk oil-cloth caps, andnankeen roundabouts, and white pantaloons with black stripes down thelegs; and once they marched out to a boy's that had a father that had afarm, and he gave them all a free dinner in an arbor before the house;bread and butter, and apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, andpeaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about theMexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got afarmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy placethere was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured.They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fortabout fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher than theirheads, but they got so eager to have the works stormed that they couldnot wait, and they commenced having the battle when they had the wallsonly breast high. There were going to be two parties: one to attack thefort, and the other to defend it, and they were just going to throwsods; but one boy had a real shot-gun, that he was to load up withpowder and fire off when the battle got to the worst, so as to have itmore like a battle. He thought it would be more like yet if he put in afew shot, and he did it on his own hook. It was a splendid gun, but itwould not stand cocked long, and he was resting it on the wall of thefort, ready to fire when the storming-party came on, throwing sods andyelling and holloing; and all at once his gun went off, and a cow thatwas grazing broadside to the fort gave a frightened bellow, and put upher tail, and started for home. When they found out that the gun, ifnot the boy, had shot a cow, the Mexicans and Americans both took totheir heels; and it was a good thing they did so, for as soon as thatcow got home, and the owner found out by the blood on her that she hadbeen shot, though it was only a very slight wound, he was so mad that hedid not know what to do, and very likely he would have half killed thoseboys if he had caught them. He got a plough, and he went out to theirfort, and he ploughed it all down flat, so that not one sod remainedupon another.
My boy's brother had a good many friends who were too old for my boy toplay with. One of them had a father that had a flour-mill out at theFirst Lock, and for a while m
y boy's brother intended to be a miller. Ido not know why he gave up being one; he did stay up all night with hisfriend in the mill once, and he found out that the water has more powerby night than by day, or at least he came to believe so. He knew anotherboy who had a father who had a stone-quarry and a canal-boat to bringthe stone to town. It was a scow, and it was drawn by one horse;sometimes he got to drive the horse, and once he was allowed to steerthe boat. This was a great thing, and it would have been hard to believeof anybody else. The name of the boy that had the father that owned thisboat was Piccolo; or, rather, that was his nickname, given him becausehe could whistle like a piccolo-flute. Once the fellows were disputingwhether you could jump halfway across a narrow stream, and then jumpback, without touching your feet to the other shore. Piccolo tried it,and sat down in the middle of the stream.
My boy's brother had a scheme for preserving ripe fruit, by sealing itup in a stone jug and burying the jug in the ground, and not digging itup till Christmas. He tried it with a jug of cherries, which he dug upin about a week; but the cherries could not have smelt worse if they hadbeen kept till Christmas. He knew a boy that had a father that had abakery, and that used to let him come and watch them making bread. Therewas a fat boy learning the trade there, and they called him thedough-baby, because he looked so white and soft; and the boy whosefather had a mill said that down at the German brewery they had a Dutchboy that they were teaching to drink beer, so they could tell how muchbeer a person could drink if he was taken early; but perhaps this wasnot true.
My boy's brother went to all sorts of places that my boy was too shy togo to; and he associated with much older boys, but there was one boywho, as I have said, was the dear friend of both of them, and that wasthe boy who came to learn the trade in their father's printing-office,and who began an historical romance at the time my boy began his greatMoorish novel. The first day he came he was put to roll, or ink thetypes, while my boy's brother worked the press, and all day long my boy,from where he was setting type, could hear him telling the story of abook he had read. It was about a person named Monte Cristo, who was acount, and who could do anything. My boy listened with a gnawingliterary jealousy of a boy who had read a book that he had never heardof. He tried to think whether it sounded as if it were as great a bookas the "Conquest of Granada," or "Gesta Romanorum;" and for a time hekept aloof from this boy because of his envy. Afterwards they cametogether on "Don Quixote," but though my boy came to have quite apassionate fondness for him, he was long in getting rid of his grudgeagainst him for his knowledge of "Monte Cristo." He was as great alaughter as my boy and his brother, and he liked the same sports, sothat two by two, or all three together, they had no end of jokes andfun. He became the editor of a country newspaper, with varying fortunesbut steadfast principles, and when the war broke out he went as aprivate soldier. He soon rose to be an officer, and fought bravely inmany battles. Then he came back to a country-newspaper office where,ever after, he continued to fight the battles of right against wrong,till he died not long ago at his post of duty--a true, generous, andlofty soul. He was one of those boys who grow into the men who seemcommoner in America than elsewhere, and who succeed far beyond ourmillionaires and statesmen in realizing the ideal of America in theirnobly simple lives. If his story could be faithfully written out, wordfor word, deed for deed, it would be far more thrilling than that ofMonte Cristo, or any hero of romance; and so would the common story ofany common life; but we cannot tell these stories, somehow.
My boy knew nearly a hundred boys, more or less; but it is no use tryingto tell about them, for all boys are a good deal alike, and most ofthese did not differ much from the rest. They were pretty good fellows;that is to say, they never did half the mischief they intended to do,and they had moments of intending to do right, or at least they thoughtthey did, and when they did wrong they said they did not intend to. Butmy boy never had any particular friend among his schoolmates, though heplayed and fought with them on intimate terms, and was a good comradewith any boy that wanted to go in swimming or out hunting. His closestfriend was a boy who was probably never willingly at school in his life,and who had no more relish of literature or learning in him than theopen fields, or the warm air of an early spring day. I dare say it was asense of his kinship with nature that took my boy with him, and restedhis soul from all its wild dreams and vain imaginings. He was like apiece of the genial earth, with no more hint of toiling or spinning inhim; willing for anything, but passive, and without force or aim. Helived in a belated log-cabin that stood in the edge of a corn-field onthe river-bank, and he seemed, one day when my boy went to find himthere, to have a mother, who smoked a cob-pipe, and two or three largesisters who hulked about in the one dim, low room. But the boys had verylittle to do with each other's houses, or, for that matter, with eachother's yards. His friend seldom entered my boy's gate, and never hisdoor; for with all the toleration his father felt for every manner ofhuman creature, he could not see what good the boy was to get from thisqueer companion. It is certain that, he got no harm; for his companionwas too vague and void even to think evil. Socially, he was as low asthe ground under foot, but morally he was as good as any boy in theBoy's Town, and he had no bad impulses. He had no impulses at all, infact, and of his own motion he never did anything, or seemed to thinkanything. When he wished to get at my boy, he simply appeared in theneighborhood, and hung about the outside of the fence till he came out.He did not whistle, or call "E-oo-we!" as the other fellows did, butwaited patiently to be discovered, and to be gone off with wherever myboy listed. He never had any plans himself, and never any will but togo in swimming; he neither hunted nor foraged; he did not even fish; andI suppose that money could not have hired him to run races. He playedmarbles, but not very well, and he did not care much for the game. Thetwo boys soaked themselves in the river together, and then they lay onthe sandy shore, or under some tree, and talked; but my boy could nothave talked to him about any of the things that were in his books, orthe fume of dreams they sent up in his mind. He must rather have soothedagainst his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of his fantastic spirit,and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax and easy aimlessness.Their friendship was not only more innocent than any other friendship myboy had, but it was wholly innocent; they loved each other, and that wasall; and why people love one another there is never any satisfactorytelling. But this friend of his must have had great natural good in him;and if I could find a man of the make of that boy I am sure I shouldlove him.
My boy's other friends wondered at his fondness for him, and it wasoften made a question with him at home, if not a reproach to him; sothat in the course of time it ceased to be that comfort it had been tohim. He could not give him up, but he could not help seeing that he wasignorant and idle, and in a fatal hour he resolved to reform him. I amnot able now to say just how he worked his friend up to the point ofcoming to school, and of washing his hands and feet and face, andputting on a new check shirt to come in. But one day he came, and myboy, as he had planned, took him into his seat, and owned his friendshipwith him before the whole school. This was not easy, for thougheverybody knew how much the two were together, it was a different thingto sit with him as if he thought him just as good as any boy, and tohelp him get his lessons, and stay him mentally as well as socially. Hestruggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure fromthe first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came onehalf-day, and then never came again. The attempted reform had spoiledtheir simple and harmless intimacy. They never met again upon the oldground of perfect trust and affection. Perhaps the kindly earth-spirithad instinctively felt a wound from the shame my boy had tried to braveout, and shrank from their former friendship without quite knowing why.Perhaps it was my boy who learned to realize that there could be littlein common but their common humanity between them, and could not go backto that. At any rate, their friendship declined from this point; and itseems to me, somehow, a pity.
Among the boys who were between my boy and his
brother in age was onewhom all the boys liked, because he was clever with everybody, withlittle boys as well as big boys. He was a laughing, pleasant fellow,always ready for fun, but he never did mean things, and he had an openface that made a friend of every one who saw him. He had a father thathad a house with a lightning-rod, so that if you were in it when therewas a thunder-storm you could not get struck by lightning, as my boyonce proved by being in it when there was a thunder-storm and notgetting struck. This in itself was a great merit, and there weregrape-arbors and peach-trees in his yard which added to his popularity,with cling-stone peaches almost as big as oranges on them. He was afellow who could take you home to meals whenever he wanted to, and heliked to have boys stay all night with him; his mother was as clever ashe was, and even the sight of his father did not make the fellows wantto go and hide. His father was so clever that he went home with my boyone night about midnight when the boy had come to pass the night withhis boys, and the youngest of them had said he always had the nightmareand walked in his sleep, and as likely as not he might kill you beforehe knew it. My boy tried to sleep, but the more he reflected upon hischances of getting through the night alive the smaller they seemed; andso he woke up his potential murderer from the sweetest and soundestslumber, and said he was going home, but he was afraid; and the boy hadto go and wake his father. Very few fathers would have dressed up andgone home with a boy at midnight, and perhaps this one did so onlybecause the mother made him; but it shows how clever the whole familywas.
It was their oldest boy whom my boy and his brother chiefly went withbefore that boy who knew about "Monte Cristo" came to learn the trade intheir father's office. One Saturday in July they three spent the wholeday together. It was just the time when the apples are as big as walnutson the trees, and a boy wants to try whether any of them are going to besweet or not. The boys tried a great many of them, in an old orchardthrown open for building-lots behind my boy's yard; but they could notfind any that were not sour; or that they could eat till they thought ofputting salt on them; if you put salt on it, you could eat any kind ofgreen apple, whether it was going to be a sweet kind or not. They wentup to the Basin bank and got lots of salt out of the holes in thebarrels lying there, and then they ate all the apples they could hold,and after that they cut limber sticks off the trees, and sharpened thepoints, and stuck apples on them and threw them. You could send an applealmost out of sight that way, and you could scare a dog almost as far asyou could see him.
On Monday my boy and his brother went to school, but the other boy wasnot there, and in the afternoon they heard he was sick. Then, towardsthe end of the week they heard that he had the flux; and on Friday, justbefore school let out, the teacher--it was the one that whipped so, andthat the fellows all liked--rapped on his desk, and began to speak verysolemnly to the scholars. He told them that their little mate, whom theyhad played with and studied with, was lying very sick, so very sick thatit was expected he would die; and then he read them a serious lessonabout life and death, and tried to make them feel how passing anduncertain all things were, and resolve to live so that they need neverbe afraid to die.
Some of the fellows cried, and the next day some of them went to see thedying boy, and my boy went with them. His spirit was stricken to theearth, when he saw his gay, kind playmate lying there, white as thepillow under his wasted face, in which his sunken blue eyes showed largeand strange. The sick boy did not say anything that the other boys couldhear, but they could see the wan smile that came to his dry lips, andthe light come sadly into his eyes, when his mother asked him if he knewthis one or that; and they could not bear it, and went out of the room.
In a few days they heard that he was dead, and one afternoon school didnot keep, so that the boys might go to the funeral. Most of them walkedin the procession; but some of them were waiting beside the open grave,that was dug near the grave of that man who believed there was a holethrough the earth from pole to pole, and had a perforated stone globe ontop of his monument.