XXI.
LAST DAYS.
I HAVE already told that my boy's father would not support GeneralTaylor, the Whig candidate for President, because he believed him, asthe hero of a pro-slavery war, to be a friend of slavery. At this timehe had a large family of little children, and he had got nothing beyonda comfortable living from the newspaper which he had published for eightyears; if he must give that up, he must begin life anew heavilyburdened. Perhaps he thought it need not come to his giving up hispaper, that somehow affairs might change. But his newspaper would havegone to nothing in his hands if he had tried to publish it as a FreeSoil paper after the election of the Whig candidate; so he sold it, andbegan to cast about for some other business; how anxiously, my boy wastoo young to know. He only felt the relief that the whole family feltfor a while at getting out of the printing business; the boys wanted togo into almost anything else: the drug-business, or farming, or apaper-mill, or anything. The elder brother knew all the anxiety of thetime, and shared it fully with the mother, whose acquiescence in whatthe father thought right was more than patient; she abode courageouslyin the suspense, the uncertainty of the time; and she hoped forsomething from the father's endeavors in the different ways he turned.At one time there was much talk in the family of using the fibre of acommon weed in making paper, which he thought he could introduce;perhaps it was the milk-weed; but he could not manage it, somehow; andafter a year of inaction he decided to go into another newspaper. Bythis time the boys had made their peace with the printing business, andthe father had made his with the Whig party. He had done what it musthave been harder to do than to stand out against it; he had publiclyowned that he was mistaken in regard to Taylor, who had not become thetool of the slaveholders, but had obeyed the highest instincts of theparty and served the interests of freedom, though he was himself aslaveholder and the hero of an unjust war.
It was then too late, however, for the father to have got back his oldnewspaper, even if he had wished, and the children heard, with theelation that novelty brings to all children, old or young, that theywere going away from the Boy's Town, to live in another place. It was amuch larger place and was even considered a city, though it was notcomparable to Cincinnati, so long the only known city in the world.
My boy was twelve years old by that time, and was already a swiftcompositor, though he was still so small that he had to stand on a chairto reach the case in setting type on Taylor's inaugural message. Butwhat he lacked in stature he made up in gravity of demeanor; and he gotthe name of "The Old Man" from the printers as soon as he began to comeabout the office, which he did almost as soon as he could walk. Hisfirst attempt in literature, an essay on the vain and disappointingnature of human life, he set up and printed off himself in his sixth orseventh year; and the printing-office was in some sort his home, as wellas his school, his university. He could no more remember learning toset type than he could remember learning to read; and in after-life hecould not come within smell of the ink, the dusty types, the humidpaper, of a printing-office without that tender swelling of the heartwhich so fondly responds to any memory-bearing perfume: his youth, hisboyhood, almost his infancy came back to him in it. He now lookedforward eagerly to helping on the new paper, and somewhat proudly toliving in the larger place the family were going to. The moment it wasdecided he began to tell the boys that he was going to live in a city,and he felt that it gave him distinction. He had nothing but joy in it,and he did not dream that as the time drew near it could be sorrow. Butwhen it came at last, and he was to leave the house, the town, the boys,he found himself deathly homesick. The parting days were days of gloom;the parting was an anguish of bitter tears. Nothing consoled him but thefact that they were going all the way to the new place in a canal-boat,which his father chartered for the trip. My boy and his brother had oncegone to Cincinnati in a canal-boat, with a friendly captain of theiracquaintance, and, though they were both put to sleep in a berth sonarrow that when they turned they fell out on the floor, the glory ofthe adventure remained with him, and he could have thought of nothingmore delightful than such another voyage. The household goods were piledup in the middle of the boat, and the family had a cabin forward, whichseemed immense to the children. They played in it and ran races up anddown the long canal-boat roof, where their father and mother sometimesput their chairs and sat to admire the scenery.
As my boy could remember very few incidents of this voyage afterwards, Idare say he spent a great part of it with his face in a book, and wasaware of the landscape only from time to time when he lifted his eyesfrom the story he was reading. That was apt to be the way with him; andbefore he left the Boy's Town the world within claimed him more andmore. He ceased to be that eager comrade he had once been; sometimes heleft his book with a sigh; and he saw much of the outer world through aveil of fancies quivering like an autumn haze between him and itsrealities, softening their harsh outlines, and giving them a fairycoloring. I think he would sometimes have been better employed inlooking directly at them; but he had to live his own life, and I cannotlive it over for him. The season was the one of all others best fittedto win him to the earth, and in a measure it did. It was spring, andalong the tow-path strutted the large, glossy blackbirds which had justcome back, and made the boys sick with longing to kill them, theyoffered such good shots. But the boys had no powder with them, and atany rate the captain would not have stopped his boat, which was rushingon at the rate of two miles an hour, to let them pick up a bird, if theyhad hit it. They were sufficiently provisioned without the game,however; the mother had baked bread, and boiled a ham, and providedsugar-cakes in recognition of the holiday character of the voyage, andthey had the use of the boat cooking-stove for their tea and coffee. Theboys had to content themselves with such sense of adventure as theycould get out of going ashore when the boat was passing through thelocks, or staying aboard and seeing the water burst and plunge in aroundthe boat. They had often watched this thrilling sight at the FirstLock, but it had a novel interest now. As their boat approached thelock, the lower gates were pushed open by men who set their breasts tothe long sweeps or handles of the gates, and when the boat was fairlyinside of the stone-walled lock they were closed behind her. Then theupper gates, which opened against the dull current, and were kept shutby its pressure, were opened a little, and the waters rushed and roaredinto the lock, and began to lift the boat. The gates were opened widerand wider, till the waters poured a heavy cataract into the lock, wherethe boat tossed on their increasing volume, and at last calmedthemselves to the level within. Then the boat passed out through theupper gates, on even water, and the voyage to the next lock began. Atfirst it was rather awful, and the little children were always afraidwhen they came to a lock, but the boys enjoyed it after the first time.They would have liked to take turns driving the pair of horses that drewthe boat, but it seemed too bold a wish, and I think they never proposedit; they did not ask, either, to relieve the man at the helm.
They arrived safely at their journey's end, without any sort ofaccident. They had made the whole forty miles in less than two days, andwere all as well as when they started, without having suffered for amoment from seasickness. The boat drew up at the tow-path just beforethe stable belonging to the house which the father had already taken,and the whole family at once began helping the crew put the thingsashore. The boys thought it would have been a splendid stable to keepthe pony in, only they had sold the pony; but they saw in an instantthat it would do for a circus as soon as they could get acquainted withenough boys to have one.
The strangeness of the house and street, and the necessity of meetingthe boys of the neighborhood, and paying with his person for hisstanding among them, kept my boy interested for a time, and he did notrealize at first how much he missed the Boy's Town and all the familiarfellowships there, and all the manifold privileges of the place. Then hebegan to be very homesick, and to be torn with the torment of a dividedlove. His mother, whom he loved so dearly, so tenderly, was here, andwherever she was, that was hom
e; and yet home was yonder, far off, atthe end of those forty inexorable miles, where he had left his life-longmates. The first months there was a dumb heartache at the bottom ofevery pleasure and excitement. There were many excitements, not theleast of which was the excitement of helping get out a tri-weekly andthen a daily newspaper, instead of the weekly that his father hadpublished in the Boy's Town. Then that dear friend of his brother andhimself, the apprentice who knew all about "Monte Cristo," came to workwith them and live with them again, and that was a great deal; but hedid not bring the Boy's Town with him; and when they each began to writea new historical romance, the thought of the beloved scenes amidst whichthey had planned their first was a pang that nothing could assuage.During the summer the cholera came; the milkman, though naturally acheerful person, said that the people around where he lived were dyingoff like flies; and the funerals, three and four, five and six, ten andtwelve a day, passed before the door; and all the brooding horror of thepestilence sank deep into the boy's morbid soul. Then he fell sick ofthe cholera himself; and, though it was a mild attack, he lay in theValley of the Shadow of Death while it lasted, and waited the worst withsuch terror that when he kept asking her if he should get well, hismother tried to reason with him, and to coax him out of his fear. Was heafraid to die, she asked him, when he knew that heaven was so muchbetter, and he would be in the care of such love as never could come tohim on earth? He could only gasp back that he _was_ afraid to die; andshe could only turn from reconciling him with the other world toassuring him that he was in no danger of leaving this.
I sometimes think that if parents would deal rightly and truly withchildren about death from the beginning, some of the fear of it might betaken away. It seems to me that it is partly because death is hushed upand ignored between them that it rests such a burden on the soul; but ifchildren were told as soon as they are old enough that death is a partof nature, and not a calamitous accident, they would be somewhatstrengthened to meet it. My boy had been taught that this world was onlyan illusion, a shadow thrown from the real world beyond; and no doubthis father and mother believed what they taught him; but he had alwaysseen them anxious to keep the illusion, and in his turn he clung to thevain shadow with all the force of his being.
He got well of the cholera, but not of the homesickness, and after awhile he was allowed to revisit the Boy's Town. It could only have beenthree or four months after he had left it, but it already seemed a verylong time; and he figured himself returning as stage-heroes do to thescenes of their childhood, after an absence of some fifteen years. Hefancied that if the boys did not find him grown, they would find himsomehow changed, and that he would dazzle them with the lightaccumulated by his residence in a city. He was going to stay with hisgrandmother, and he planned to make a long stay; for he was very fond ofher, and he liked the quiet and comfort of her pleasant house. He musthave gone back by the canal-packet, but his memory kept no record of thefact, and afterwards he knew only of having arrived, and of searchingabout in a ghostly fashion for his old comrades. They may have been atschool; at any rate he found very few of them; and with them he wascertainly strange enough; too strange, even. They received him with akind of surprise; and they could not begin playing together at once inthe old way. He went to all the places that were so dear to him; but hefelt in them the same kind of refusal, or reluctance, that he felt inthe boys. His heart began to ache again, he did not quite know why; onlyit ached. When he went up from his grandmother's to look at the Faulknerhouse, he realized that it was no longer home, and he could not bear thesight of it. There were other people living in it; strange voicessounded from the open doors, strange faces peered from the windows.
He came back to his grandmother's, bruised and defeated, and spent themorning indoors reading. After dinner he went out again, and hunted upthat queer earth-spirit who had been so long and closely his onlyfriend. He at least was not changed; he was as unwashed and as unkemptas ever; but he seemed shy of my poor boy. He had probably never beenshaken hands with in his life before; he dropped my boy's hand; andthey stood looking at each other, not knowing what to say. My boy had onhis best clothes, which he wore so as to affect the Boy's Town boys withthe full splendor of a city boy. After all, he was not so very splendid,but his presence altogether was too much for the earth-spirit, and hevanished out of his consciousness like an apparition.
After school was out in the afternoon, he met more of the boys, but noneof them knew just what to do with him. The place that he had once had intheir lives was filled; he was an outsider, who might be suffered amongthem, but he was no longer of them. He did not understand this at once,nor well know what hurt him. But something was gone that could not becalled back, something lost that could not be found.
At tea-time his grandfather came home and gravely made him welcome; theuncle who was staying with them was jovially kind. But a heavyhomesickness weighed down the child's heart, which now turned from theBoy's Town as longingly as it had turned towards it before.
They all knelt down with the grandfather before they went to the table.There had been a good many deaths from cholera during the day, and thegrandfather prayed for grace and help amidst the pestilence that walkethin darkness and wasteth at noonday in such a way that the boy felt therewould be very little of either for him unless he got home at once. Allthrough the meal that followed he was trying to find the courage to saythat he must go home. When he managed to say it, his grandmother andaunt tried to comfort and coax him, and his uncle tried to shame him,out of his homesickness, to joke it off, to make him laugh. But hisgrandfather's tender heart was moved. He could not endure the child'smute misery; he said he must go home if he wished.
In half an hour the boy was on the canal-packet speeding homeward at thehighest pace of the three-horse team, and the Boy's Town was out ofsight. He could not sleep for excitement that night, and he came andspent the time talking on quite equal terms with the steersman, one ofthe canalers whom he had admired afar in earlier and simpler days. Hefound him a very amiable fellow, by no means haughty, who began to tellhim funny stories, and who even let him take the helm for a while. Therudder-handle was of polished iron, very different from the clumsywooden affair of a freight-boat; and the packet made in a single nightthe distance which the boy's family had been nearly two days intravelling when they moved away from the Boy's Town.
He arrived home for breakfast a travelled and experienced person, andwholly cured of that longing for his former home that had tormented himbefore he revisited its scenes. He now fully gave himself up to his newenvironment, and looked forward and not backward. I do not mean to saythat he ceased to love the Boy's Town; that he could not do and neverdid. But he became more and more aware that the past was gone from himforever, and that he could not return to it. He did not forget it, butcherished its memories the more fondly for that reason.
There was no bitterness in it, and no harm that he could not hope wouldeasily be forgiven him. He had often been foolish, and sometimes he hadbeen wicked; but he had never been such a little fool or such a littlesinner but he had wished for more sense and more grace. There are somegreat fools and great sinners who try to believe in after-life that theyare the manlier men because they have been silly and mischievous boys,but he has never believed that. He is glad to have had a boyhood fullyrounded out with all a boy's interests and pleasures, and he is gladthat his lines were cast in the Boy's Town; but he knows, or believes heknows, that whatever is good in him now came from what was good in himthen; and he is sure that the town was delightful chiefly because hishome in it was happy. The town was small and the boys there were hemmedin by their inexperience and ignorance; but the simple home was largewith vistas that stretched to the ends of the earth, and it was serenelybright with a father's reason and warm with a mother's love.
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 101, "unbotton" changed to "u
nbutton" (begins to unbutton)
Page 190, "laugher" changed to "laughter" (great a laughter)
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