FULLER 
 
; 
 
 
A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
A NEW ENGLAND 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET FULLER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1916 
 
Copyright, 79/6, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published, September, 1916 
 Reprinted, December, 1916 
 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mail., U.S.A. 
 Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN TO 
 LITTLE PHILLIS HOPE 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THIS is a true story of a little boy who 
 grew to be a notable man Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman. 
 
 I lived in his house when he became a man, 
 but before that day I too had been a little 
 child and had lived in the places where he had 
 lived ; I too had tried to make a trout brook 
 out of the Stedman rain barrel ; I had listened 
 to the graybeards tell tales in Fuller s store ; 
 I had fashioned a seat in the willows along 
 Bobbin Mill Brook, his brook of lost youth 
 that has minished until to-day it is only a 
 rivulet whose gurgle you must stay your step 
 to catch ; and I have interchanged confidences 
 with Lady Sarah Huntington, last of the La- 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 dies Huntington, staring past her all the while 
 into the marvelous oil painting on the wall, 
 whose actual clock in its canvas belfry pealed 
 with marriage bells as often as the slow-footed 
 afternoon brought due a laggard hour. These 
 places of which I tell you are real places : the 
 people are real people. 
 
 Do I not know of what I write ! Gentle 
 Annie who fetched Edmund in the buggy to 
 her father s house has carried me up and down 
 the Judge s stairway, with my head held close 
 against her cheek and with the silvery shadow 
 of her brow against my tangled hair. On the 
 topmost steep of the Hampton burial ground, 
 my kinsmen s names stand fast around the 
 names of their best friends, the Stedmans long 
 years gone. 
 
 I tell you this because when you read how 
 the child Edmund brought upwards his heel 
 in sharp pain under the heaviest of his grand 
 father s strokes and shattered the spectacles on 
 the old gentleman s nose, I want you to believe 
 that he surely did lie across the venerable knee 
 a little four-year-old, both too proud on his 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 own account to raise an outcry, and too tender 
 of his fair girl-mother who was sobbing from 
 sympathy in the next room. And when you 
 read how he ran away after having been given 
 over to the Judge, his uncle, I want you to 
 remember that he ran away in the dream of 
 finding that same fair mother, and that " as 
 he sailed, as he sailed," the big round face of 
 his uncle who was pursuing him did loom 
 slowly above the gunwale, and the runaway-in- 
 pinafore was passed forth by the black-frocked, 
 ministerial-looking, tipsy captain and forced to 
 walk the plank right into the uncle s skiff. 
 
 My very hand which writes these pages to 
 you has handled pages and pages of letters 
 written by that same child to that same far-off 
 mother through the wistful years that followed, 
 years which we who love young children 
 would forget. 
 
 And above all else, I want you to feel that 
 he was most worthy of remembrance in that 
 he loved all little children, and in that all men 
 were children to him if they were saddened, or 
 in need, or were helpless even as sheep with- 
 
x FOREWORD 
 
 out a shepherd, and as little lads without a 
 mother. 
 
 Now read my story and be certain that every 
 word I say of him is true. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 THE stanzas from Mr. Stedman s poems included in 
 this book are published by the kind permission of Messrs. 
 Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, authorized publishers of 
 his works. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE INVITED FAIRY i 
 
 II THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY . . 8 
 
 III EDMUND S FIRST LESSON IN RHYME . 20 
 
 IV A TAVERN ON WHEELS . . . .38 
 V THE HURRYING WORLD . . . 52 
 
 VI FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN ... 69 
 
 VII HARLAND HOUSE 87 
 
 VIII CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE ... 96 
 
 IX TWILIGHT AND EVENING STAR . .117 
 
 X PRINCE FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS . 121 
 
 XI AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO ! . .137 
 
 XII OUT OF THE FRYING PAN . . .146 
 
 XIII THE WANDER SUMMER . . . .15? 
 
 XIV GOD TEMPERING THE WIND . . .180 
 XV FULLER S STORE 195 
 
 XVI A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL . .220 
 
 XVII THE GILDED CAGE 241 
 
 XVIII THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR . . .255 
 
 XIX THE DOORSTEP 269 
 
 XX THE INFINITE SHORE . . . .289 
 
A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 THE INVITED FAIRY 
 
 A THREE-STORY brick house with uncompro 
 mising square windows set in its square walls 
 and with a ponderous oaken door lit by a gleam 
 ing brass knocker stood at the corner of Main 
 and High streets, Hartford, gazing down over 
 meadow land to the Connecticut River and to 
 the ships that came and went as if they sailed in 
 the grass, but this was in the year 1833. 
 
 In those days, huge, round, rough cobblestones, 
 
 at least they seemed huge to little feet, and 
 they were certainly rough and round, studded 
 the thoroughfare, and heavy drags and stages, 
 
 there were no horse cars then, nor any railways, 
 
 rattled and rumbled as they jolted along on 
 their road through the town. Close at hand, 
 
* A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 according to a man s way of thinking, arose the 
 steeple of the Reverend Doctor BushnelPs Meet 
 ing-house, one of the trio of sister churches that 
 were the Three Graces of Main Street. They 
 seemed near at hand to a man, but to a pretty 
 truant just learning to gad alone, they were a 
 Sabbath-day s journey distant. 
 
 You will guess that I have a reason for telling 
 you so particularly about this house and this 
 church. Edmund Clarence Stedman was chris 
 tened in the North Congregational Church by the 
 Reverend Horace Bushnell, and he came to the 
 brick house to live when he was just one year and 
 six months old. 
 
 Edmund was born in a cottage in Main Street, 
 October the eighth, 1833, at eight o clock of the 
 evening. His hair was as black as a pirate s, and 
 he wore it long. He was as solemn as an owl. 
 He stared at his flannels as if he did not approve 
 of their cut ; he stared at his rattle as if it might 
 perhaps beguile a younger child than he; and 
 when he was presented with a coral ring, he stuck 
 his fist into his mouth to signify that he could 
 amuse himself. 
 
THE INVITED FAIRY 3 
 
 But he was not the only baby under the cot 
 tage roof that autumn, according to the nurse 
 Susan s way of thinking. A violet-eyed, beautiful 
 girl lay on a couch drawn close to the bedroom 
 window, and when she called the tiny infant, 
 "little son!" the motherly Susan who was 
 cosseting him against her comfortable homespun 
 dress glanced over his dusky head to the youthful 
 head against the pane, and cried, "Baby, indeed ! 
 you are nothing but a baby yourself, my pet." 
 Then she stroked the child-mother s golden curls 
 with her one hand, and with her other hand held 
 fast the helpless, struggling little elf, lest his un 
 witting fists might rumple his mother s lace- 
 ruffled gown ; and she cooed to the one and scolded 
 the other; and then cooed over the other and 
 scolded the one, until to hear her you could not 
 have told which of her two charges was the 
 baby. 
 
 But the real mother was watching the real 
 baby with deepening eyes. She caught his 
 clinging hands and kissed them. His wandering, 
 regardless glance fixed on her smile. His serious 
 brow drew itself into a pucker. Is he going to 
 
4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 cry? Is this the way for a young gentleman to 
 greet his mama whom he sees for the first time 
 clad not in everyday white but in a silk as blue 
 as her eyes, and with her ringlets wound up into a 
 wreath of gold. 
 
 "He smiles!" cried the mother, radiant. 
 
 "He will become a notable man," replied the 
 nurse sagely. "A babe that smiles before it is 
 forty days old is born to be a wonder." 
 
 "He is to be a poet my poet," murmured 
 the young girl fondly. 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" cried Susan in consterna 
 tion. "How could we live with any more papers 
 in the house ! Mercy ! It s books everywhere 
 now, and scribblings on everything. I don t 
 dare to throw away an old billhead, let alone 
 clean off a shelf ! Not that we all are not glad 
 that you are a poetess, Miss Elizabeth, and not 
 that we are not proud of you. But pray heaven 
 that the lad proves like his father, a downright 
 brave, true gentleman; with a purse open to 
 whoever has need of it, and with never a thought 
 for himself. There is not many a husband who 
 cherishes and fosters his young wife as Major 
 
THE INVITED FAIRY 5 
 
 Edmund cherishes you, my pretty girl, and he 
 so full of strength and spirit. " 
 
 "But little Edmund could be like his father 
 and be a poet too," said the mother, with a toss 
 of her lovely curls. 
 
 "Don t you go to putting notions into his 
 head," said Susan, prancing the baby to and fro 
 to keep his gaze from fixing upon his mother. 
 
 "Well, Susan, you may invite the good fairies, 
 Constancy, and Honor, and Truth, and Gener 
 osity, and Self-forgetfulness to come to his chris 
 tening," returned the mother, with a wilful curve 
 to her lip, "but I am going to invite the Muses 
 -the whole Nine!" 
 
 "And let Want come too, and Misery, and 
 Grief, I suppose!" cried Susan, on her mettle. 
 
 "Certainly; what will it matter so long as 
 Song is there ! Dame Care may come to be my 
 little son s guest, if she likes!" 
 
 "It does well enough for you to say it - 
 you who have never known a hardship, and 
 have a man s arm to fend for you and guard 
 you and a man s shoulder to set itself be 
 tween you and each ill-lunged breath that 
 
6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 blows. Ah, Miss Elizabeth, how many a poor 
 woman, watching your husband pass, may 
 not murmur, Would to God that I had 
 such a man ! 
 
 "My husband likes to take thought for other 
 people. He enjoys it. Taking care is a good 
 deal a matter of choice." 
 
 "Taking care is a matter of heart," said Susan 
 stoutly. 
 
 The girl-mother s eyes were as wonderingly 
 round and as vaguely questioning as the baby s. 
 She did not understand greatly this talk of misery 
 and self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice was something 
 about which one wrote in poetry, and concerning 
 which it was well enough for elderly folk to prate. 
 She smiled gaily, and again the baby smiled. 
 And when he did smile, what an owlish, self- 
 contained young person he was, a perfect 
 parson ! 
 
 "We will have Song, will we not, dear heart !" 
 she cried, snatching at the darling feet to kiss 
 them. " Song and Music ; and then if that ugly 
 fairy, Dame Care, likes to come too, let her 
 come!" 
 
THE INVITED FAIRY 7 
 
 But good Susan was on her way to the kitchen, 
 bearing the baby Edmund in her arms, and with 
 her palm and forefingers stopping both his ears, 
 lest his wits be drawn away from following the 
 homelier path of his father. 
 
II 
 
 THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 
 
 BY the time that Edmund came to live in the 
 brick house, he was considered old enough to 
 take a constitutional by himself, and he used to 
 trudge down the street to the Reverend Horace 
 BushnelFs sanctuary and hold forth in the portico 
 after the fashion of that worthy. But it was safe 
 at home that he practised his untried powers 
 unabashed, and it was after a year s practice that 
 his mother s sister, his Aunt Melissa, found him 
 on the floor, seated on his cousin s head, and dron 
 ing in his babyhood treble a forceful sequence of 
 ohs and ahs. 
 
 "Land alive ! Edmund, what are you doing?" 
 cried the astonished lady. 
 
 "Pweaching," lisped the nigh three-year-old, 
 and straightened manlike to feel the pull of his 
 suspenders. 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 9 
 
 "But you are sitting on your cousin s head; 
 he is black in the face." 
 
 "I m Weverend Bushnell, and I want him to 
 listen." 
 
 "But Doctor Bushnell never sits on your 
 father s head, or on your head, or on mine, when 
 he wants us to listen." 
 
 Edmund s face grew thoughtful. "But you 
 can t get away till he s through," he replied, after 
 weighing the question. 
 
 That argument was not to be gainsaid. Aunt 
 Melissa seized the melancholy congregation by the 
 sleeve and with a jerk landed him blubbering 
 on his feet. "Why do you let little Edmund sit 
 on you, a great boy like you, three times 
 his size and half again his age? Look at him; 
 he s only a weanling !" 
 
 The congregation, spying down from the supe 
 rior ground of his height upon his tiny kins 
 man, stood nevertheless as the Philistine before 
 David. "But Ned is so masterful," he said, after 
 a snivel. "And he kicks me in my stomick with 
 his heels." 
 
 Edmund thrust his hands into his pantaloons 
 
io A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 pockets. "I had to kick him," he interposed 
 calmly, " cause when I didn t, he roared like 
 a bull, and I was pertending that I was 
 preaching, and I was pertending that he was 
 a lost soul." 
 
 Aunt Melissa was a strong Christian, and a 
 Baptist. She too looked down on the baby, but 
 not unkindly. "Don t forget that you have a 
 soul of your own to save, my pretty Immortal," 
 she said gravely. 
 
 Aunt Melissa never forgot Edmund s soul. 
 She carried like a load the remembrance of 
 those who did not believe precisely as she be 
 lieved. Her purse was always open to the cause 
 of cannibals, and many a needy relative would 
 have done well to have been a pagan on the 
 Ganges. 
 
 Wandering aimless through the house on a 
 rainy interminable morning, shut from the sight 
 of the river, and with silence reigning up-stairs 
 and down-stairs and in my lady s chamber, was 
 dull pastime for a baby of three; especially 
 for a baby who has been put into breeches 
 and is expected to behave like a man. Shut 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY n 
 
 fast inside her room, Edmund s mother wrote 
 poems, undistracted by questioning prattle, 
 and outside the locked door, Edmund built 
 block houses that fell endlessly. The solitari 
 ness and the dearth quickened his wits beyond 
 his years. 
 
 "Mother, I ve swallowed a pin!" he shouted, 
 in a joy that betrayed that his plight was imagi 
 nary. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 Would nothing terrify his dear one into opening 
 the door ! 
 
 The baby began another castle and again it 
 fell as flat as old Sisera. 
 
 Aunt Melissa passed through the hallway, 
 gloved and hooded. Little Edmund waited until 
 she was out of hearing ; then dragging at the door- 
 latch of his mother s bedroom, he pressed his lips 
 to the crack. 
 
 "Muwer, muvver," he whispered beguilingly 
 to his ritual-devoted mama, "open the door 
 quick. Aunt Melissa is going to take me to a 
 drefful baptism /" 
 
 The word "baptism" proved a Sesame; the 
 
12 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 key turned, the door drew back ; and Edmund, 
 clutching and climbing, held his adored mother 
 fast, a self -surrendered prisoner to his wiles. 
 
 With his father he had romped boisterously 
 during their brief days together, albeit the two 
 made no great noise, for Papa had been more 
 guardful than Mama herself that she should 
 not be disturbed. His playtime with his father 
 had come when the day s work was over. Up 
 and down they had gone, Papa the horse, carry 
 ing his little lad pickaback. Papa called Edmund 
 his little Clarence; he said it was his nom de 
 caresse his love-name. Sometimes they talked 
 together soberly like old people, lying full 
 length on the rug in the firelight, Edmund 
 junior with his elbows pillowed on Edmund 
 senior s chest. 
 
 "What now?" cried his father, when Edmund 
 with one little fist grasped in the other fist for a 
 pencil traced the wrinkle between his father s 
 eyes. 
 
 "A scowl," said Edmund. 
 
 "That is not a scowl." 
 
 "A scowl," reiterated Edmund. 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 13 
 
 "No," persisted his father, "it is a line of 
 
 care." 
 
 "Care," echoed the baby. 
 
 "Care is love, little boy. You know what 
 love is. Papa loves Mama very much; Papa 
 loves you, little son. You two, his wife, his 
 son, are dearer to him than all the world. You 
 have seen how rough the wind can blow? You 
 have felt how the hoar frost bites? Papa is 
 thinking always and planning always that no 
 uncaring blast shall smite his darlings no win 
 try want come nigh their dwelling. Papa is 
 planning how to make it always summer for 
 them. And sometimes, when Papa thinks of it, 
 he looks thoughtful, and that makes the line 
 of care. When you are a man, Clarence, you 
 may have wrinkles just as Papa has." 
 
 Edmund Clarence pulled his brow into puckers. 
 
 "Not all over your forehead!" cried his father 
 in mock dismay. 
 
 Edmund nodded. He would not be outdone. 
 
 "But why so many?" 
 
 "Why?" echoed the baby, and stopped. His 
 thoughts were like shy birds in a mist, and he 
 
i 4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 had not learned to call them to him. His hands 
 sprang to his father s cheeks. " I love you love 
 you/ he repeated, so like his mother! "And I 
 love muwer." 
 
 "To distraction?" 
 
 " Distwaction," repeated the child. 
 
 And there the matter rested. 
 
 It seemed to Edmund junior that whenever 
 his mother was not writing poetry, she was tired 
 and wished him to be quiet; and when he was 
 most quiet, she fell ill. The unbroken silence 
 during her illness, and the keen weeks of his 
 father s bitter sickness that followed her conva 
 lescence made him older than ever for his age. 
 And when he saw his mother, his gay, irrepressibly 
 joyous mama, shaken with sobs and clinging to 
 his father as if she never could let him go, child 
 that he was, he felt himself a man. He walked 
 to and fro through his play sedately, and once 
 when the stilly night was startled by a cry, he 
 leaned from his unwatched crib and whispered 
 "Hush, hush!" as if he were the nurse. And 
 when his father walked in the garden once more 
 and finding him silently at play with a toy boat, 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 15 
 
 strained his son to him, the little lad caught his 
 breath and winked hard. Big boys like him did 
 not cry ; mother had told him, and mother loved 
 him to distraction ! she said so precisely as 
 he loved her. 
 
 But in the evening when he lay in his father s 
 arms, just as in the days before the illness, some 
 thing came into his throat that choked and hurt 
 him. Yet they talked for all that. They did 
 not have to play that Edmund was a man. They 
 were two men together now, the father in the 
 languor of helplessness that was closing in around 
 him; the son in the unvexed growth that was 
 his. Only three weeks earlier, and Edmund 
 had dragged at his father s beard and beaten 
 him in the chest with his vigorous young heels; 
 and now the little boy s eyes fixed on his father s 
 eyes broodingly, and the restive hands lay limp 
 along the wasted shoulders. 
 
 "Big boat," said the child at last. Ah, it 
 was the thought of separation that stilled the 
 tireless feet, that shadowed the ardent eyes ! It 
 was the voyage that the father was to make in 
 search of the fountain of health ! 
 
16 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 The father held him closer. 
 
 "Little son, there was a man, four hundred 
 years ago, who sailed from his home and all that 
 he loved, to find a way around the world. And 
 after weary months of sailing, he espied a new 
 world lying close against the horizon. And he 
 praised God. That man was Columbus, and the 
 country that he discovered was our America. 
 And after a while he sailed back home again and 
 brought word to his dear ones that he had found 
 a better country than their country, better even 
 than their fatherland. Yet perhaps at the very 
 first, there had been reasons why he did not wish 
 to set forth. Perhaps he shrank. Perhaps the 
 mist through which he peered was the mist of 
 tears. But a voice in his heart kept crying : 
 1 Sail Sail ! and that voice was the voice of 
 God. Now it may be that Papa will be called to 
 go away, it may be to discover a better coun 
 try for his loved ones. My little boy will not 
 make it hard for me, will he ? by shedding 
 tears ; or, after I am gone, by forgetting to be 
 manly, and caring for Mama?" 
 
 His little lad slipped from his knees, then in a 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 17 
 
 moment climbed them and clung. Bless him 
 in his innocency; he had fetched his Sunday 
 cap ! 
 
 "Father! Father!" he pleaded. 
 
 "Little son, no one may come with me. The 
 voyage that I take, every man must take 
 alone." 
 
 Gloaming closed around them. The fire-glow 
 sank unheeded. 
 
 "It may be that somewhere in God s great 
 Unknown waits a new, an undiscovered world, 
 a house not made by hands, eternal in the 
 heavens. You cannot understand to-day, but 
 you will learn to know hereafter." 
 
 Silence broken only by a sigh. . . . 
 
 The little hands were fast around the father s 
 neck. The little cheek was close against his 
 cheek, and between their lids a tear was stealing 
 too slowly for a child s. 
 
 "You will ever be tender of mother and lov 
 ing? You will never leave her or forsake her? 
 You will look at father s picture, and when you 
 look, you will remember him and her? Prom 
 ise father." 
 
i8 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 A little hand feeling through the gloom for the 
 father s hand, and that was answer. 
 
 "Edmund, you will be thoughtful, obedient, 
 a good boy. Child ! son ! my son ! - 
 whom else have I to speak to ! I cannot speak 
 to Mama; it breaks my heart with anguish to 
 see tears in her beautiful eyes ! Edmund, you 
 are my eldest son!" 
 
 It was true ! In the chamber overhead, in 
 Edmund s cradle, slept another little lad, Ed 
 mund s baby brother, Charles. 
 
 At sea, on the fourth day of December of the 
 year 1835, in the dusk before dawn, Edmund 
 Burke Stedman, little Edmund s father, died of 
 quick consumption following a partial recovery 
 from pneumonia contracted the earlier summer. 
 
 It may be that the mists encircling the voyager s 
 helpless ship of life lifted, and that he descried 
 the better country of which he had spoken, 
 stretching along the ultimate horizon, gracious 
 and true and constant, the Undiscovered Coun 
 try of God. Certainly, when the sailors came 
 to look upon him for the last time, so vast a 
 peace lay on his brow so lightly that the daystar 
 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 19 
 
 itself seemed fatherless and yet unfearful. Solici 
 tude for wife, children, home, earth, was nothing 
 to him who lay in that majestic calm. He saw 
 beyond the twin mystery of birth and death, and 
 the line of care was gone. 
 
Ill 
 
 EDMUND S FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 
 
 THE wide-stretching room, the Sunday severity 
 and oppressions of the great manor house in New 
 Jersey to which his mother brought him after 
 his father s death, made pictures in Edmund s 
 memory. The house was set amid two hundred 
 acres, through which a brook flowed, with cedar 
 trees for guideposts pointing the way to Plainfield 
 a mile below in the marshes. It was called Cedar 
 Brook, and Elizabeth s father had newly bought 
 it. Each night and morning the family sat 
 around in straight-backed chairs, and Edmund s 
 grandfather Dodge, a tall, massive animal 
 he appeared to the tiny grandson, read the 
 Scriptures. On Sabbaths and fast days, the 
 household arose at half past four, and the patri 
 arch catechised them, not overlooking Edmund 
 although he was so small. 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 21 
 
 The morning Scripture portion seemed all day 
 long to Edmund, it was so long ; and the nightly 
 prayer seemed longer than a thousand nights. 
 He winked and nodded, and then he stared to 
 keep awake; and then he nodded again. Some 
 times, at prayers in the morning, his foot went to 
 sleep, but at night he went to sleep all over. And 
 what a plight he was in, night or morning! If 
 he stirred ever so little, his grandfather s eye 
 lifted from the Bible and traveled over the tops 
 of his gold-bowed spectacles with so uncompro 
 mising a sternness that Edmund was instantly 
 still, blinking like a star. He was not suffered 
 to sit beside his darling mother; they said that 
 her fond looks spoiled him. The "they" were 
 his grandfather and his great-aunt and some other 
 people whom he could not tell apart, and who 
 were equally elderly and sedate. So he sat be 
 tween his great-aunt and some one else quite 
 like her, and no sooner did his grandfather Dodge 
 glance the little boy s way than his great-aunt 
 reached out and tapped Edmund with her fore 
 finger rebukingly. But his grandfather was al 
 ways the first to catch him stirring. 
 
22 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Evening prayers did not come till nine o clock, 
 and nine o clock seemed midnight to the child. 
 His strife against disgrace was terrible. His lids 
 would falter and fall until at last he was too 
 heavy with sleep to fight or fear and, in spite of 
 his grandfather s disinheriting countenance and 
 his great-aunt s pokes, he sank down in the big 
 chair, and would have lurched head foremost 
 to the floor if the servant, at a sign from his 
 grandmother, had not lifted him by the arm and 
 led him off to bed. 
 
 No one spoke or moved when grandfather read 
 to himself, even from the newspaper. When he 
 wished to read, he took his seat beside a stand on 
 which stood two candles made by grandmother s 
 own hands; then grandmother took her place 
 at the farther side of the stand and mildly knitted, 
 casting guardful glances through the room to 
 maintain an absolute hush. Her needles whis 
 pered, "Whist! Whist! Whist!" The logs 
 as big as trees that burned on the hearth, there 
 was no other fire, dwindled without a crackle. 
 
 The stiffness and silence did not wear upon his 
 mother. At prayers she looked as saintly as you 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 23 
 
 please, but once in the orchard she shook out her 
 pretty curls and danced; and sometimes she 
 sang in the household s very faces. She did not 
 care about the gloom one bit. And, Oh ! to see 
 her ! Surely she was beautiful ; there was no 
 doubt about her beauty. And she had the most 
 fascinating boxes and jewels which little lads 
 were not to touch. She would sit before her table, 
 showing the ancient mirror her youthful face 
 and making ready for a guest at dinner, or for 
 nobody at all, for hours together. But the 
 hour never seemed a minute long to Edmund 
 when he was watching her, and not so much as 
 his foot went to sleep. He stood, silent with 
 wonder, and adoring, while his wistful deep eyes 
 journeyed now from the face in the glass to the 
 face at his side, and now back to the face in the 
 glass. First there was marvelous powder, white 
 like snow, that lost itself on her white shoulders. 
 There was gold dust in a bottle that she sifted 
 over her hair. There were multitudes of silks in 
 her chests that were just like her, as if the 
 merest particles of herself had flecked off and 
 been captured. And over everything there was 
 
24 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 a fragrant breath like the fields where the mowers 
 go. It was enchanting. Edmund could not be 
 certain whether it was his mother s fingers that 
 made her gauds so sweet, or whether it was the 
 perfume that made her fingers so like grasses. 
 In merriment, she dashed a drop of the sweetest 
 scent of all, a scent that was in a bottle, on the 
 tip of his aquiline little nose, and at night he 
 went to sleep, sniffing softly and per tending that 
 Mama was in bed beside him. What an idea ! 
 When he had had a room apart from her ever 
 since as he said he was a little boy ! 
 
 Yes, his mama was very beautiful. He used 
 to clamber out of bed and steal to the top of the 
 stairway and look down to see her when there 
 was company. Every one looked at her, all 
 the guests, and when she spoke, they listened 
 and laughed. One day, in the garden, a gentle 
 man took him on his knee and said: "My boy, 
 your mother is a gifted woman ! " Edmund 
 did not know what the words meant, but sudden 
 tears sprang to his eyes, he felt so proud of 
 her, so full of longing to run and take her in 
 his arms. 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 25 
 
 He practiced writing. He could make all the 
 letters now that he was four, and he could spell 
 words, provided the words were "cat" or "dog" 
 or "God" or "cow"; but he could read more 
 words than he could spell, and when he read 
 them to himself, he did not read what they truly 
 were but made stories out of them, stories that 
 did not have an end or a beginning and that ran 
 along of themselves. 
 
 But he had to take good care to say the words 
 as they were printed when he stood on the foot 
 stool at his grandfather s knee and read his daily 
 lesson. If he mispronounced so much as a syl 
 lable, a broadside on his ear from his grand 
 father s hand sent him flat to the floor. You 
 may be sure he paid heed to his p s and q s. 
 He spelled each word over to himself as fast as 
 he could, to make sure, and then he said it 
 slowly and regardfully, glancing forward all the 
 while to the next word to see if it was one he 
 knew. When it came to spelling from memory, 
 some of the simplest looking words were the 
 most difficult. He had no end of trouble with 
 "God." "God" used to get mixed up in his 
 
26 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 mind with "dog" whenever his grandfather 
 looked at him, and he knew beforehand which 
 ever way he began to spell it, he would begin it 
 wrong. "God" was truly the worst word of 
 all. "God" was more vexatious than the cate 
 chism. And many a punishment the catechism 
 cost him ! 
 
 Edmund had as little idea of what rhyme was 
 as he had of the meaning of the catechism. One 
 afternoon, he came upon two lines clipped from 
 a newspaper and pasted to an outhouse wall. 
 He spelled them out. They bewitched him. 
 Like the stories that he read out of his head, 
 they went of themselves, and kept coming back 
 without his trying to remember. 
 
 The first line was : 
 
 "What is the chief end of man?" the words of 
 the catechism ; and the second : 
 
 "To keep all he gets and to get all he can," an 
 unauthorized and to his mind an improved 
 version. 
 
 At the hour of weekly catechising, Grandfather 
 Dodge s keen eye rested upon his wee grandson 
 indulgently. 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 27 
 
 The lad is but a witless babe, doubtless the 
 grown man thought, I will bear in mind that he 
 was sent to bed last night without supper because 
 he shouted loudly after sundown; I will give 
 him a question that he has answered on many a 
 bygone Sabbath morning. 
 
 "What is the chief end of man?" said the 
 patriarch, and glanced around the circle mildly 
 as if undecided whom to ask. 
 
 Instantly Edmund s eyes glowed. His sensi 
 tive, small nostrils twitched. 
 
 "Edmund," repeated the patriarch, "what is 
 the chief end of man?" 
 
 "To keep all he gets and to get all he can!" 
 rang out in the child s bright treble. 
 
 Astonishment and consternation coursed blood- 
 like through his grandfather s temples. His smile 
 hardened into stony dismay. This, then, was the 
 guileless innocent ! His heavy-browed eye turned 
 from the offender in socks to Grandmother 
 Dodge. 
 
 "Elizabeth," he said painfully, "Satan hath 
 entered into the child !" 
 
 One by one the circle dropped away, as Ed- 
 
28 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 mund, in the grasp of his grandfather s hand, was 
 led from the room. 
 
 Edmund suspected what was coming: he was 
 going to be locked in his grandfather s boot 
 closet under the stairway, his one terror. It 
 was a black hole and so large ! It yawned 
 pathless and huge as a dungeon. And Edmund 
 had told himself that there were snakes in it and 
 bloodsuckers and holes a yard long. In after 
 years, in the summer of 1906, when little Edmund 
 himself was a grandfather, he returned to Plain- 
 field to look at his childhood s prison and was 
 surprised to find that he was forced to stoop to 
 enter it. Perhaps the boot closet had grown 
 small, while he had been growing large ! I have 
 seen houses and people that seem to grow 
 small. 
 
 In the late afternoon of that Sabbath day, 
 the bolt that had kept Edmund a prisoner was 
 drawn back. No word was spoken. His grand 
 father laid him across his knee. Sobs unre 
 strained and childlike throbbed through the 
 lonely walls, but they were not Edmund s. Ed 
 mund remembered his father and how he had 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 29 
 
 promised him to be thoughtful for his mother, 
 and to do his best never to grieve her. It was 
 pretty Elizabeth who was sobbing in her bed 
 room, sobbing because Grandfather Dodge s 
 hand fell so heavily upon her little son. But not 
 a cry escaped Edmund. Only once, under the 
 dire pain of the sharpest stroke of all, his heel 
 lifted, and would you believe it ? gave the old 
 gentleman s spectacles such a whack that they 
 flew from his nose in a dozen pieces ! 
 
 Then the two, grandfather and grandson, arose 
 to their feet. They looked each other in the eye. 
 Grandfather Dodge s look said as plainly as 
 speech: "I trust I have given you something, 
 my young Sir, to remind you for the present what 
 is the chief end of a boy." Edmund s heaving 
 chest and fast-closed lips said, "You haven t 
 made me cry yet!" 
 
 And here ended Edmund s first lesson in rhyme, 
 and here it began, for from that day he was al 
 ways on the lookout to see if lines matched, and 
 when they did match, he spelled them out to 
 find if they were like the lines that he had been 
 punished for repeating. 
 
30 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Edmund lay on his stomach, the forenoon 
 after his whipping, and forgot the past, staring 
 at the pictures in the family Bible. Each wood 
 cut looked as big to him as a Flemish chest. 
 He had lifted the book down for himself, and was 
 so excited over the chance of seeing Adam and 
 Eve that he failed to think how naughty he was 
 to touch his uncle s property without asking. He 
 was quite comfortable when he did not try to sit 
 down. 
 
 It was some days before he felt like running 
 about the fields again. He felt unaccountably 
 sore all over. And very tired. He had many a 
 stealthy sight of Eve and Adam and each time 
 that he saw them, there they stood without 
 vesture, gazing woodenly ahead, although the 
 most fearful lions strolled around them; pan 
 thers too, and every kind of ravenous creature, 
 and in particular a tiger that was sharpening its 
 claws on a tree which had very evidently fallen 
 to the earth for the convenience of felines. Every 
 time that he lifted the book down and opened to 
 the page, he expected to find our first parents 
 devoured. Without cavil, Adam and Eve were 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 31 
 
 more daring even than Daniel, for there was an 
 angel in the den to scare the lions, Edmund 
 had not been able to discover the angel, but the 
 Bible said that the angel was there, arid, 
 besides, Daniel wore smalls. 
 
 When Edmund s grandmother came upon him, 
 how he jumped ! He expected another whipping, 
 but she looked gently down and murmured, 
 "Pretty Edmund!" Her conduct was most 
 perplexing. Often he was naughty when it 
 never occurred to him that he was naughty; 
 and sometimes when he surmised that he was 
 naughty, he was treated as if he were good. 
 Altogether, being naughty and being good was a 
 bewildering enigma. He was never sure when 
 reproof might fall. He tried not to get too near 
 his elders, since they had bidden him to keep 
 from under foot; yet, inquisitive and loving, 
 he continued to follow them around dallying 
 half an ell behind. He was careful of his dress 
 and very proud of the fact that he had ridden in 
 a railway train when he came to Plainfield ; he 
 confided to his mother that the farm hands 
 called him the " wailway woad dandy." 
 
32 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 To make sure that he was kept out of mischief 
 he was posted off to school, and not long after 
 wards he was taken from his first school and posted 
 to a second. He did not study much. He gazed 
 around and amused himself pertending to be study 
 ing. Neither one of his two masters punished 
 him in the ways that he was punished at home 
 and, not understanding that he was being pun 
 ished when he was called to sit at the teacher s 
 side, he felt affectionate and grateful, and not a 
 bit ashamed. 
 
 When his mother folded his garments in a tiny 
 pack, he thought it might be that he had been 
 very bad, and that Grandfather Dodge was going 
 to shut him up again in the boot closet and this 
 time keep him there so long that his clothes would 
 be worn out like the Israelites shoes, and he 
 would need some others. Edmund looked grave 
 indeed, and his mother looked grave. Two tears 
 slipped through her lashes, and a tear had 
 splashed her cheek. A new thought struck 
 Edmund. She had folded and laid aside his 
 father s cloak and top boots, and had wept the 
 while. 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 33 
 
 "Mother, am I going away?" 
 
 "Yes, Edmund." 
 
 A long pause. His shadowed face was dis 
 tressfully inquiring. 
 
 "Are you going to send me to the burying- 
 ground, Mother?" he at length asked. 
 
 She caught him up and kissed him a hundred 
 times; kissed his hair and mouth and eyes, 
 kissed him blind and breathless. And how they 
 laughed they two ! No, certainly he was not 
 going to be taken to the burying-ground ! And 
 after the laughter, they had a romp in the garden, 
 such a romp as they had never had before. And 
 earnest little Charlie pattered after them and fell 
 prone and, forgetting in his eagerness to be up 
 and away that he could walk as well as anybody, 
 the blessed babe took to all fours and scrambled 
 over the turf like an infant angel whose wings 
 are scarce unfolded. 
 
 But it was true nevertheless that Edmund 
 was going on a journey. He was going to Nor 
 wich Town in Connecticut, to pay his uncle, Dea 
 con James Stedman, a visit his mother said; 
 and she told him that there were many kinsmen 
 
34 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 of his in his uncle s house; his cousins Charles 
 and Tom, grown lads who would be big brothers 
 to him; and Ferdinand, who was ten, nearly 
 twice as old as he ! and who had hair not unlike 
 his and eyes a little like his but not so deep a 
 blue; besides, there were his girl-cousins, Mary, 
 Jerusha, and gentle Annie; and his excellent 
 Aunt Abbie, and his kind Aunt Eunice, his 
 Uncle James s wife ; and the hired man, Jeremiah. 
 There were brooks at Norwich Town and fish 
 in the brooks ; there were trees to climb, and nuts 
 to gather ; there were cows and dogs and horses. 
 Mother herself had lived in Norwich, in a 
 square, brown house with great elms before it, 
 on the plain at a place called Beanhill. This 
 was once upon a time when her father, his Grand 
 father Dodge, lost much money and retired from 
 New York City till he should have rebuilt his 
 fortune. So Mother knew all about it, and she 
 could give him her word that in the Stedman 
 homestead it was like a party all the time there 
 were so many folk. And to a little lad, the geese 
 and pigs and horses would be as fine as a county 
 fair. 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 35 
 
 "And now, my darling," said his mother, 
 "there are two thoughts which I wish you to 
 think of every morning and every night and all 
 day long. It is Mother s prayer for you and 
 her hope and expectation that you will be a stu 
 dent and a scholar, that you will love books and 
 all that is beautiful, that you will be a poet. But 
 stronger than her desire that you should be a 
 poet is her desire that you should be a gentleman. 
 When you are grown a little older, and perhaps 
 an hour comes when you must choose between 
 being courteous and considerate, and pursuing 
 uninterrupted the book which you are reading or 
 the task that you are at work upon, lay aside 
 self and selfish aims; be a gentleman and gra 
 cious. Noblesse oblige shall be your motto. 
 Edmund, say Noblesse oblige" 
 
 "No bless" 
 
 "Oblige" 
 
 "O-bleege," repeated Edmund. 
 
 " Noblesse oblige means all that Mother is tell 
 ing you. Think first of others. When you have 
 given your word, keep it. Place service before 
 fame ; honor before life ; in everything be kind. 
 
36 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Such a gentleman was your father; be the son of 
 that gentleman. And if you can follow too in 
 the paths of your mother, love the beautiful and 
 pursue it. 
 
 " Brush your teeth every morning ; a clean 
 mouth means a clean heart. Read what the 
 world calls literature, even if you cannot under 
 stand it ; and when you cannot understand the 
 meaning of a passage, learn it by rote, and by 
 the tune that you have learned it, God will 
 have told you what it means. When you play, 
 play with all your might ; and when you work, 
 work with all your soul. Now what is it that 
 Mother has been saying to you, my son?" 
 
 "I must be a gentleman," said Edmund 
 sturdily. 
 
 "And what else?" She restrained him by 
 holding fast his busy hands. 
 
 "Imustwead." 
 
 "Read," said Mother in correction. 
 
 "R-read," repeated Edmund dutifully. 
 
 "Read what?" 
 
 But Edmund was eager to be gone to Norwich. 
 He was ready to start at once just as soon as 
 
FIRST LESSON IN RHYME 37 
 
 he could crowd into his pocket the bladeless jack- 
 knife which was his dearest pride. He could not 
 wait for the hour to come which had been fixed 
 upon for the journey ; he could not wait 
 until he learned that his mother was not going 
 too. Then he began to have doubts, and his 
 babyhood look of wistful questioning returned 
 to trouble the deep pools of his eyes. And at the 
 last, it took considerable coaxing on his mother s 
 part, and a peremptory command from Grand 
 father Dodge to prevent him from climbing out 
 the coach window. But the stage driver, a good 
 sort of man, soon took the lad to sit beside him 
 and going up the hill asked him if he would kindly 
 hold the reins; and Edmund drove the horses 
 and nodded like an old stager to passers along 
 the route who doffed to him and smiled. 
 
 Off at five years old, and the world before him 
 on a Thursday of the summer of 1839! 
 
IV 
 
 A TAVERN ON WHEELS 
 
 RIDING in a stagecoach was~ nothing short of 
 traveling in a tavern on wheels. Once upon a 
 time Edmund had been inside a tavern with his 
 grandfather Dodge, so he knew all about taverns. 
 Wayfarers were continually entering the stage 
 and leaving it. The door was on the swing 
 every time that there was a lull. But instead of 
 a glass of ale, or a night s lodging, or a rasher of 
 bacon that the traveler paid for, it was for an 
 hour s lift or his passage to the next town. These 
 chance passengers Edmund looked upon as 
 transients; they were the one-night lodgers who 
 sit around a tavern hearth to the exclusion of 
 the boarding guests; they were the idlers who 
 loiter around the door and are glad enough to 
 step across the threshold for a minute s cheer and 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 39 
 
 for protection from the elements. They lent a 
 diversion to the journey, but he did not consider 
 them personages of importance like himself. 
 He was a through passenger, a person of conse 
 quence, a traveler whose fare meant a good deal 
 to the company ; he saw at once that he was not 
 expected to give place or discommode himself 
 when a chance traveler hove through the coach 
 door, or a saunterer held up the stage with the 
 caU "Hey!" and the query, "All full inside?" 
 
 The farther little Edmund went, the bigger 
 the world grew and the tinier he. Even the stage, 
 that had seemed as roomy as a village when he 
 first made its acquaintance, became merely one 
 of countless stages when he reached his first stop 
 ping-place, and although it rattled and banged 
 courageously against the cobble stones, and made 
 as much of itself as it could, it was lost in the mul 
 titude of stage-wagons, drags, carts, and drays 
 that closed in behind it and before it. Confusion 
 piled upon confusion ; noise upon noise ; bigness 
 upon bigness. 
 
 Whichever way Edmund turned, there were 
 strangers. Strangers filled the streets. He would 
 
40 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 not have believed there were so many people in 
 the world whom he did not know. Presently 
 strangers lifted him down from the stage. He 
 rode in a railroad coach; then a stranger helped 
 him into a horse car and told him he was in 
 New York City. By nightfall, he had reached 
 Brooklyn where he was to sup and sleep, and 
 other strangers came down a flight of steps to 
 greet him. They said, as if they had always 
 known him, "Oh, this is little Edmund!" They 
 were remarkably well informed. He could not 
 tell who they were, and he would have felt abashed 
 at his shortcomings, if he had not been stunned 
 by the emptiness of it all. He seemed another 
 little boy from the little boy who had romped a 
 while back with his mother and talked so confi 
 dently. 
 
 Then came another spell of traveling in a coach, 
 but the second day was so bewildering that 
 after it was over he could remember it no more 
 than he could remember the coming of his first 
 tooth. 
 
 Following the second day s journey, he put up 
 in Hartford where also the people seemed to 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 41 
 
 have heard of him. A noble, gray haired gentle 
 man said, "Edmund, I am your grandfather 
 Stedman." Edmund said, "I used to live in 
 Hartford when I was a young child. " And 
 his grandfather replied, "Oh, yes, I know." 
 So Edmund was silent, since his grandfather 
 appeared to know even more than his words 
 disclosed. 
 
 The world now seemed running past him, and 
 he alone stood still. Again he was in a stage, 
 seated inside he was too dazed to care now 
 about the horses ; he was seated beside a gentle 
 man who had him in charge. Perhaps the gentle 
 man had had him in charge all the way. Ed 
 mund could not tell ; he could not remember that 
 any one had had him in charge until then. 
 
 "Mr. Tracy/ said the driver, pulling aside the 
 curtain to look behind him into the coach at 
 this gentleman, "the child is pretty young, and 
 kinder peaked looking, although he is so pert. 
 But them fragilous ones sometimes turn out as 
 tough as biled owl!" 
 
 "Who is pretty young?" inquired Edmund. 
 
 Then both the men laughed. 
 
42 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Your wits aren t asleep, Buddie," replied the 
 driver. 
 
 "He s tired to death," said the gentleman who 
 was called Mr. Tracy, "or he wouldn t be this 
 quiet not by the accounts I ve heard of him." 
 
 The driver twisted his reins around the whip- 
 stock. The stage was wandering up a hill. 
 There was little doing. 
 
 "Is that Norwich?" questioned Edmund, as 
 the road crept out from a forest. 
 
 "Dear, no!" said Mr. Tracy, rousing from a 
 nap. "Why, bless me, it s Colchester steeple! 
 It can t be noonday!" 
 
 "It s past noonday," cried the driver, cracking 
 his whip and squinting at the sun. "And it s 
 high tune we were in the town. Lor , I ve been 
 drowsing!" 
 
 ; Trees, fences, houses whirled by as if on run 
 ners; trees whisked past the windows as fast as 
 palings on a fence ; the driver kept his whip 
 cracking to make up for the time that he had lost 
 wool-gathering. 
 
 They baited at Colchester ten minutes. 
 Edmund, little five-year-old, thrust his hands 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 43 
 
 into his pockets and took a turn around the 
 tavern yard like the rest of the men. Then off 
 down the road with crack of the whip, and a 
 Hurrah! The sun dropped lower. 
 
 Edmund was jolted to and fro as if he were a 
 baby again and was once more in the arms of 
 comfortable Susan. He fell asleep, and each time 
 that he fell asleep, he woke up with a start and 
 found a new place out of doors. The opening of 
 a turnpike gate could hardly keep his lids alert. 
 Cottage windows, lit by gold and rosy bright 
 ness, blinked and winked at him. 
 
 "Is this my Uncle James s house?" asked 
 Edmund, when he could gather his wits together. 
 The stage had come to a full stop, and Mr. Tracy 
 was lifting him down. 
 
 "No, this is my house," said Mr. Tracy. 
 "Your uncle lives three quarters of a mile farther 
 down the road. But we will not be able to make 
 the distance before sundown, so I shall have to 
 take you in to spend the Sabbath with Mrs. 
 Tracy and me. I never travel on Sunday; and 
 if I were willing to travel on Sunday, the Judge, 
 your uncle, would not suffer it." 
 
44 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Edmund was numb with weariness. He stum 
 bled between the guiding borders of friendly box 
 to the front stoop, and was soon asleep on Mr. 
 Tracy s sofa. Of his Sabbath spent in Mr. Tracy s 
 family he remembered no more than he remem 
 bered of his sojourn in New York. When the 
 Sabbath was over, two young people came in a 
 buggy for him. Mr. Tracy told him that they 
 were his cousins, Tom and Annie. Edmund 
 did not know who they were until he was told ; 
 indeed he had found no one anywhere so ignorant 
 as he. 
 
 But Annie knew him, and she laughed prettily, 
 and kissed him. She had the gentlest, most 
 inviting smile. She had a sweet voice as well, 
 and a firm, yet tender way of speaking that made 
 Edmund quite content to be standing by her 
 side. When the three, big Tom, little Annie, 
 and he, were settled in the buggy, Annie put her 
 arm around him, and whispered to him that she 
 was so in fear of falling out, Tom drove like 
 lickety-split, and she asked him if he minded if 
 she held on to him for safety. Edmund told her 
 that he did not mind at all. 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 45 
 
 Annie s eyes were the softest gray, and she 
 had round teeth strewn between her lips like 
 dew between the petals of a rosebud. However 
 slightly she smiled, the pretty teeth seemed to 
 smile too. She was tanned from running bare 
 headed in the wind and sun; and as they drove 
 along lickety-split ! the hair around her face 
 lifted and fell as if it were out of breath with 
 the pleasure of running on the keen air ; her hair 
 was neither curly like his mother s nor yet straight ; 
 it had a docile look as if it would lie whatever 
 way she chose. But Tom was a hearty fellow, 
 a typical young squire. 
 
 As they dashed past the Green all the girls 
 cried after Tom, but he took it good-naturedly. 
 He was aware that he was considered a great 
 catch, and was neither conceited over it nor yet 
 self-conscious. He was bluff, broad-shouldered 
 and jovial, ready to kiss all the girls in the town 
 ship, and in a dozen townships. And he had 
 kissed all the girls, first and last, all save quiet 
 Mary Hyde, so Jerry the hired man told Edmund, 
 when he and Edmund were getting acquainted, 
 not many hours later. Tom was ready to do 
 
46 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 errands for the neighborhood ; to break colts for 
 the timid ; he was out and away at three o clock 
 of a morning to follow the hounds, and abroad 
 till an hour after curfew so long as he had a 
 job that kept him stirring; else he would have 
 fallen to sleep in spite of himself and snored as 
 lustily as a man in his prime. 
 
 "There s Cousin Lucrece now!" exclaimed 
 Tom, pointing with his whip. 
 
 A house stood where the road turned, shingled 
 all-of-a-piece ; it was the gray of a gray sky on a 
 midsummer day, and was set in a wilderness of 
 old-fashioned flowers, on a knoll of green that 
 dropped down the hollow into the brook which 
 Tom had just crossed. 
 
 "Is that your house?" inquired Edmund. 
 His uncle s house was beginning to seem as far 
 off as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 
 
 "That ramshackled, crazy old patch!" cried 
 Tom. "No, indeed! That s Betty Darben s 
 house, bless my bonnet ! we keep Cousin Lu 
 crece out of the workhouse, and Cousin Lucrece 
 keeps Betty out. They re both as queer as 
 Dick s hatband!" 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 47 
 
 Edmund did not know who Dick was, but held 
 his peace. He did not like to appear an ignoramus 
 before his stalwart cousin. "I think the garden 
 is real pretty," he commented, surveying the fra 
 grant tangle from under his long lashes. 
 
 "I think so too," cried Annie, smiling down on 
 him. 
 
 "Are we going to bait here?" Edmund asked 
 the instant after. The mare of her own accord 
 had turned into a sort of courtyard that ran along 
 the road, opposite Betty Darben s. At the end 
 of the courtyard toward Betty s was a building 
 like a shop, set in front of a goodly barn ; at the 
 farther end of the courtyard was a large, many- 
 windowed, many-chimneyed house, and connect 
 ing the house and barn stretched a company of 
 united outhouses, one and a half story buildings 
 studded with windows and doors. The whole 
 group was painted and kept up like one house. 
 It was as large or larger than any inn Edmund 
 had yet visited. 
 
 "This is home !" said Annie. 
 
 "I did not know it," observed Edmund. 
 
 "You cherub!" Annie exclaimed, and then 
 
48 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 leaning forward called lightly, "Father, Father, 
 little Ned is here!" 
 
 The shop door opened, and an unkempt fellow 
 in blue homespun caked with mire, and with his 
 brawny throat bare, shambled into the yard. 
 
 "Jerry, this is Edmund!" announced Annie. 
 
 "I know it," replied Jerry laconically, and 
 began unharnessing the mare. 
 
 Even Jerry, the man-of-all-work, knew him ! 
 
 Then down the kitchen steps came a boy of 
 twelve, and after him, Aunt Eunice, and behind 
 Aunt Eunice, Aunt Abby, and then another lad, 
 and a young lady, and another, and a farmhand. 
 Soon there were as many people in the court 
 yard as there had been in the stage. Tom 
 sprang out of the buggy; he scarcely touched 
 Annie by one hand, and presto ! she was on the 
 ground, holding up her lithe, slight arms to 
 Edmund, and smiling on him still with her 
 inviting smile. 
 
 "Annie, put that child down! It will never 
 do to make a baby of him !" cried Aunt Abby. 
 
 Annie put Edmund down, but she kept his hand 
 in hers. 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 49 
 
 "Annie," said Aunt Abby again, "run in and 
 look to the bread ; and Tom, your father wishes 
 you to do some copying for him just as soon as 
 you can. Edmund, I am your Aunt Abby, your 
 Uncle James s wife s sister, your Uncle James s 
 sister-in-law. Your Aunt Eunice this is your 
 Aunt Eunice will show you to your room. 
 The rest of your cousins will be home in a 
 while, and one of them will take you around 
 the grounds. And of course you shall go along 
 to school with them. You must be up and 
 learning." 
 
 Edmund was confounded by his excess of rela 
 tives. He had kept his head until it came to 
 his Uncle James s wife s sister ! at that point 
 his wits seemed to topple over like a spun-out 
 top. 
 
 Already he had forgotten which of the ladies 
 was his excellent Aunt Eunice who was to show 
 him to his room. It was distressing. Surrounded 
 by relatives, he took his way over the granite 
 stepping-stones to the door. In the doorway, he 
 was met by a portly, keen-eyed gentleman in 
 fleckless black. 
 
50 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 As the gentleman did not speak, Edmund ex 
 tended his hand. "I am glad to see you," he 
 said by way of salutation. 
 
 "The child has his father s ways, but he has 
 the Stuart looks," said the gentleman, while his 
 eye glanced over Edmund s head to the ladies. 
 Then he engulfed Edmund s hand and wrist in 
 his calm hand. " Edmund," he replied, "I shall 
 be glad to see you too if as I trust you grow to be 
 a good boy and strive to improve your time." 
 
 Edmund s eyes followed a strand of blue that 
 ran in and out of the homemade carpet. His 
 mother s eyes were blue. 
 
 "He seems to be a very quiet child," commented 
 Aunt Eunice. 
 
 "Quiet for a boy," added Aunt Abby. 
 
 Edmund had never before heard himself called 
 a quiet little boy. But he did not heed the sur 
 prising words ; he was gazing toward the kitchen 
 door. The door stood ajar and half disclosed a 
 pump and sink. He looked up at his stately, 
 magisterially-f rocked uncle as if he were pleading 
 his own case. Then his eyes fell to the strand of 
 blue. He was gathering courage. 
 
A TAVERN ON WHEELS 51 
 
 "May I brush my teeth, please?" he asked 
 swiftly. "I am very sorry to trouble you, but 
 you see I promised my mother that I would brush 
 them every morning, and I haven t done it yet!" 
 
 Instantly from the kitchen rang Annie s laughter 
 and her heartening call. "Of course you may 
 brush them ; you just come out here to me." 
 
V 
 
 THE HURRYING WORLD 
 
 DURING the whole of the first year in Norwich 
 Town, it seemed to little Edmund as if he were 
 still in the stagecoach, traveling traveling, 
 so continuous were the new scenes, new people, 
 new ways. Not only were there his relatives in 
 the Stedman homestead, but there were kins 
 men all around town, and no sooner did he grow 
 wonted to one group than a fresh clan, with half 
 familiar features, mingled among the faces that 
 he knew, and there he was again ! unable to 
 tell Cousin Lucrece from somebody s else Cousin 
 Lucre tia, and with the wayside loafers laughing 
 at him because when Tom called " Good morning, 
 uncle !" to old John, the wood chopper, he called 
 "Good morning, Uncle John! 
 
 Folk were coming and going at his uncle s 
 house. Folk were coming and going along the 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 53 
 
 village streets. Folk were coming and going 
 even at the burying-ground, while he stood idly, 
 but never now surprised. 
 
 He made the remark to Deacon Stedman that 
 the burying-ground was very convenient ! All 
 the gardens behind the houses ran down to the 
 burying-ground. Between the houses were more 
 gardens, and if he wandered through a gate to 
 peer at the flowers, or to sniff at a hyacinth on a 
 window ledge, whether he lifted his eyes or let 
 them fall, there were the soft gray stones with 
 the quiet sunlight brightening them, and the 
 mounds that made a daisied stairway down the 
 slope that silent slope where baby feet so often 
 stumbled and where the bravest man, however 
 dauntless, gave up the fight at last and, lying down, 
 let Nature have her will of him. 
 
 If Edmund followed the brook, he came to 
 the burying-ground. If he lost his way, he found 
 it by going into the burying-ground. The brook 
 and the burying-ground they were his friends. 
 They were always the same, and yet never the 
 same. 
 
 He did not puzzle it out. He lay on the stone 
 
54 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 footbridge in the summer, watching a trout that 
 was two inches long. He trudged along the mir- 
 rory path of crested ice in winter, while the brook 
 purled and sang to him all frozen save its voice ! 
 The brook and the burying-ground were his friends, 
 however the season disguised them. If it rained 
 too hard, he could creep under Frances Whiting s 
 gravestone that stood on six legs like a table, or 
 under the twin roofs of the Halsteads , and make 
 believe that he was in a house of his own. When 
 spring lay hazelike on the hillside, he sat on an 
 out-of-the-way, blossoming mound and practised 
 mumble ty-peg with his knife that did not have a 
 blade. Or he chased a particular red squirrel, 
 scampering and scrambling over hillocks and 
 leaf-filled shallows, while Master Squirrel leaped 
 merrily along the cypresses toward neighbor 
 Spalding s orchard. 
 
 Sometimes the big boys came on a Saturday 
 half-holiday and sat in a circle under the willow 
 beside the Huntington sepulchre, and Edmund 
 in the midst of them. The stories you have 
 read of Captain Kidd are nothing to the stories 
 they told of the doings in the graveyard, while 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 55 
 
 Edmund, wide-eyed, listened. The tigers in the 
 bower of Eden were agreeable messmates in com 
 parison with the sheeted dead who left the bury- 
 ing-ground tenantless whenever their spirit 
 moved them. Such ghosts as there were at 
 Norwich Town were enough to unwring the 
 withers of the parson himself. Sometimes too 
 the boys glanced at him and winked at one an 
 other, and then their accounts waxed intimate 
 beyond belief to frighten little Edmund into 
 running away, or into a fit of terror. But he 
 stood his ground, munching a wisp of grass 
 after the manner of the loungers in Fuller s 
 store, and thriftless of the throbbing heart that 
 beat against his pinafore as if with pinions; and 
 having learned to spit, he spat right manfully. 
 And neither was he much afraid, being of too 
 fine a mettle, as you shall hear a little later on. 
 
 The ghosts also were like wayfarers along the 
 highway of the sixth summer of his life. In 
 the evening they were around him; but in the 
 morning they were gone gone like Betty 
 Darben, who when he went to school, he saw 
 hanged in her window, with her blackened face 
 
56 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 settling against the panes. In the morning she 
 was there, but at noontime, when he ran out of 
 his way to have another look at her, nothing 
 was to be seen except an old woman who stood 
 in the doorway and, plucking him by the sleeve, 
 asked him if he would like to go with her and see 
 the corpse. If gentle Annie had asked him to 
 go anywhere, he would have gone ; but he did not 
 like the old woman, so he said, "No I thank 
 you/ and sauntered off, with the air of a youth 
 who can see a corpse any day that he pleases. 
 After he passed the house, he began to feel that 
 he had been impolite. His mother had told him 
 that he must receive graciously whatever was 
 offered him; she had told him, "Gently takes the 
 gentleman what oft the clown will scorn" He had 
 heard her say to one who brought her roses, "I 
 shall never see a rose that I will not remember 
 you." He went back to the doorway. "You 
 are very kind," he said ; " I thank you very much. 
 I shall never see a corpse that I will not think of 
 you!" 
 
 But the big boys frightened themselves. They 
 started up in alarm if a broken bough sighed to 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 57 
 
 its fellow ; and when a loosened plank in the sep 
 ulchre door was lifted by the fingers of the wind, 
 their faces became one piece with Elijah Leach s 
 white marble headstone ; and Joe Sterry spied 
 behind him fearfully, just as though the hand 
 of a dead Huntington had stirred that creaking 
 plank. 
 
 "I m not scart, Tom Harland!" Joe Sterry 
 cried before he was accused. 
 
 "Well, if you aren t scart, I dare you to go in 
 to the vault and look General Jed in the eye," 
 Tom Harland retorted, glad to cover his own 
 confusion. 
 
 "When I feel like going in, I ll go in, without 
 being dast by you or anybody like you," Joe 
 answered grandly ; and Tom, followed by the whole 
 quaking pack of them, betook himself across- 
 lots home. 
 
 They did not dare little Edmund to make the 
 round of those ancient coffins whose lids were 
 reputed to be fallen in. Edmund was less to 
 them than one of themselves; he was their 
 junior. 
 
 All of each week day, save Saturday afternoon, 
 
58 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Edmund went to a dame s school kept by Mrs. 
 Lathrop, not much to his mortification, since 
 at the time that he entered it he did not know 
 what a dame was. Mrs. Lathrop s house was the 
 second from the corner west from the Ladies 
 Huntington, and nearly opposite the Burying- 
 ground Lane. School was held in the north front 
 room ; the south back room was the kitchen, and 
 the kitchen served as a recess ground in bad 
 weather. It was at Mrs. Lathrop s that his shame 
 at having to wear a pinafore began. Aunt Abby 
 provided the pinafore to spare the wear on his 
 breeches. At first he was rather proud of his 
 pinafore, and he lifted it grandly like the skirt 
 of a coat when he sat down ; but after a week at 
 school, he felt that he was a girl in it. Often 
 he took it off on his way to school and hid it 
 in the Burying-ground Lane, and on his home 
 ward way was forced to put it on hindside 
 foremost, since only so could he button it. 
 He was a funny little apparition when he 
 came forth into the sunlight after one of 
 these labors and strolled nonchalantly past 
 the Spalding house, with his elbows crooked 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 59 
 
 behind him to accommodate the set of his 
 sleeves. 
 
 But it was pleasant going to school to Mrs. 
 Lathrop. From the kitchen drifted whiffs of 
 Shrewsbury drops a-baking. Mrs. Lathrop s 
 hands were often as mealy as a miller s, and her 
 blushful nose shone through an aureole of flour; 
 she breathed of goodies. And just at the hard 
 parts of the lessons, she would be minded of her 
 gingerbread or biscuits, and out she would speed 
 to the oven to try them. Then, if her pans were 
 a success, she was too pleased with herself to find 
 fault with little lads and lassies ; and if her pans 
 were scorched or backward, she would lay aside 
 the lesson for a time in order to give her un 
 divided mind to matters more important. 
 
 In winter Edmund, together with the other 
 boys and girls, would slide down hill on the drive 
 way during recess, a sorry slope, a mole-ridge 
 on a grass plot. But when you are sliding prone 
 for the first time in your life, even a moderate 
 decline satisfies for the hour at least, while a 
 thank-you-marm, if only a protuberant cobble 
 stone, is a sensation. When a melting day 
 
6o A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 came, the children played soldiers, and in less 
 time than I need to tell it, Edmund was made 
 captain. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop, kind, impartial, looked on from 
 the window where she was rolling out caraway 
 seed cookies. Presently she stepped to the 
 doorsill. 
 
 " Edmund!" she called. 
 
 The juvenile battalion halted, Edmund at the 
 head, radiant. 
 
 "My dear," said the schoolma am mildly, "you 
 were captain all through the recess, yesterday. 
 My dear, you are the tiniest scholar of us all. 
 Don t you think that it would be courteous to 
 let some one else be captain?" 
 
 The quivering little frame, moist with energy 
 and enterprise, fronted her squarely. The shin 
 ing eyes fixed on her serious eyes, intent on their 
 meaning. 
 
 Could it be that he was taking more than his 
 share ? 
 
 "They all may be captains!" he cried gener 
 ously; "every one of them may be a captain!" 
 He scanned his disintegrating forces. Leader- 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 61 
 
 ship was necessary to hold the troop in form. 
 He saw it, and added, "And I ll be the general !" 
 
 How he came to lose his half-holidays was 
 through having to go to Saturday afternoon 
 school to Miss Sally Goodell who lived directly 
 across the road from Sentry Hill, under the 
 Harland windows. I very much fear that the 
 little lad was "into everything" just as his aunts 
 declared, and that they wished to be sure of his 
 whereabouts. "Other children will sit still and 
 behave themselves," his Aunt Eunice used to 
 say, as if behaving were an amusement in itself ; 
 "but Edmund must be up and doing, every 
 blessed minute." 
 
 Besides learning to sew a seam, he learned to 
 work a sampler as nicely as a girl. 
 
 "Did you not take up more than two threads?" 
 questioned Miss Sally, glancing from the seam 
 into his anxious, praise-expectant face. "The 
 stitches look a trifle coarse." 
 
 "If you take off your spectacles, I think they 
 will look smaller !" explained the little scholar. 
 
 Gratuitously and unsolicited, he fashioned a 
 nest of fresh grass for the silver bird that oblig- 
 
62 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 ingly held Miss Sally s cloth for her in its tiny 
 beak. But when he was trying to make the 
 bird sit down, along came Miss Sally and tapped 
 him so smartly on the forehead with her thimble 
 that it made the tears start; then she pinned 
 him to her apron, where he stood, while the 
 foolish bird, now empty-mouthed as it was empty- 
 eyed, continued to set in mid-air. 
 
 In manhood, he still could remember having 
 been taken in extreme childhood to a school 
 master in the basement of a church ; he could 
 remember dimly, as in a dream, the gravestone- 
 shaped, receding windows, and how he sat in 
 one of them, with a tin cup tied around his neck 
 by way of augmenting his disgrace. Unaware 
 what wrong he had done and seraphically in 
 different to the covert gibes of the righteous, 
 he continued to sit the afternoon out precisely 
 as he was placed, mildly meditative and inno 
 cently brooding over the school. But whether 
 this was in Norwich, or whether I have confused 
 his earliest memories of Norwich with the faigone 
 days in Plainfield, when he went to school to Mr. 
 Davidson and Mr. Wallace, I cannot say. Pos- 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 63 
 
 sibly the church school was a stepping-stone to 
 Mrs. Lathrop s, just as Mrs. Lathrop s was a 
 stepping-stone to the brick schoolhouse on the 
 Green. Possibly he was withdrawn from the 
 down-town school because it always took him 
 so long to travel to the Landing. 
 
 There was much business for little Edmund to 
 attend to en route. Of course, if he had an apple, 
 he had to stop to give a bite of it to Mr. Coit s 
 heifer, reaching through to the stone wall and 
 calling, "So, bos! so, bos! 7 or coaxing, "I won t 
 hurt you !" if she did not come at once. He had 
 to kick pebbles from the footbridge, where to 
 day the Hospital stands, into the brook; that 
 was a devoir he seldom failed of. And just be 
 fore he came to the Stocking Mill, he stopped at 
 Leffingwell Row to whistle to a canary that hung 
 in the sun from a doorway. He loved that little 
 bird. He could not see it, not when he stood 
 underneath the cage, but he stood underneath 
 the cage nevertheless and chirruped self-forget- 
 tingly until the blithe responses answered, or a 
 burst of golden melody rained down upon his 
 head. Last of all, he came to a halt in front of 
 
6 4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Mr. Bliss s front gate, and with his nose thrust 
 through the palings waited for brown-eyed Betsy 
 to appear. He had heard it said that Tom was 
 waiting on Betsy, and he thought that he would 
 wait on her too. When she came in sight, he 
 called solemnly, "Heigho!" To this Betsy re 
 plied, "Heigho!" after which interchange of 
 greetings, he resumed his journey to school, 
 running till he was out of breath. The Mat 
 thews gateway marked the last of his stop-overs, 
 unless it happened that a passer-by spoke kindly 
 to him, when he stood quite still, delighting in 
 affection ! poor little dog, with his innocent, 
 grave eyes uplifted, and with a bright glow com 
 ing and going, breathlike, on his cheek. 
 
 But it was in the brick schoolhouse on the 
 Green that Edmund s true school days began. 
 The brick schoolhouse was made of one square 
 room, with a long hallway at the eastern end, 
 and was ruled by the Reverend Doctor Gulliver, 
 a good and kind man. The schoolroom had 
 windows on three walls, with desks stretching 
 along the walls under the windows and with a 
 running bench facing the desks. In the middle 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 65 
 
 of the room was a platform for the Reverend 
 Schoolmaster. When I first saw the brick school- 
 house, there were half a dozen heavy nails driven 
 into the plaster, and upon the staunchest of them 
 reclined a large horsewhip painted white, to 
 inspire pallor, I suppose. How my school teacher, 
 Miss Dustin, applied its five-foot, six-inch length, 
 holding at the same time her blubbering offender 
 by the scruff of the neck, or by the ear ! I 
 cannot now understand, but she did so manage, 
 and applied it in the anteroom the hall. And 
 through the anteroom s closed door came the 
 sound of the griping snarl of the lash, followed 
 by the uproarious sobbing of the victim. Thrash 
 ings in those days were conducted behind locked 
 doors; and the howls, the scuffings on the bare 
 boards, the thuds against the wall, the chance 
 overturning of the waterbucket, the two-steps 
 and agonized prancings while the whip curled 
 around the coat pegs were a lesson to inspire 
 the unwhipped boy with awful caution. 
 
 The pegs along the anteroom walls held the 
 youngsters caps and cloaks. The tin dinner 
 pail stood in place under its respective owner s 
 
66 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 wearabouts, provided the distance were too great 
 and the child too tender to make the noon trip 
 home. Midway along the line, beaded and 
 beery-brown, drowsed the wooden water pail. 
 If the afternoon was hot and humid, Reverend 
 Gulliver honored the largest scholar by detailing 
 him to fetch the water pail into the schoolroom, 
 and the masculine Hebe, walking decorously 
 beside the bench, dispensed drinks, while each 
 successive urchin drank more laboriously, with 
 gaze that drifted around the schoolroom over 
 the top of the rust-bearded dipper. 
 
 And Edmund drank with the rest, drank 
 artlessly and endlessly, leaving off now and then 
 to give way to a gasp of exhausted content, yet 
 holding tight to the handle of the pail to signify 
 that his thirst was still unquenched, until Doctor 
 Gulliver called sharply, "Ned Stedman, that 
 will do; don t you know when you have had 
 enough?" 
 
 The day was without a pause for Edmund. 
 Time did not fold its wings for him. He was 
 hurried from one task to another. He was always 
 on the road or at lessons. From week s end to 
 
THE HURRYING WORLD 67 
 
 week s end, he did not have an hour save at 
 twilight, or as he snatched it piecemeal from the 
 noon. Five o clock until seven of a morning was 
 an established hour for study. Miss Louise, 
 who advertised to teach young ladies, could not 
 put up with a pupil who was tardy at five 
 A.M. 
 
 "What!" she said to a laggard and looked 
 truly grieved while she said it, "can you not 
 reach school at five o clock ? at a quarter be 
 fore five even, thus to have time to hang up your 
 cloak tidily and compose your mind? My child, 
 I fear you are a sluggard !" And she said "slug 
 gard " so reluctantly and so sadly that the de 
 linquent lass laid down her head on the desk and, 
 despairing of herself for earth and eternity, wept. 
 
 Edmund was as busily occupied as when he 
 was in the stagecoach staring at strange sights 
 until his eyes burned; and he did not suspect 
 that the bustle and hurry, the going unkissed to 
 bed in a house where he felt more and more a 
 sojourner, the being pushed from pillow to post, 
 would not come to an end. Without thinking 
 it out for himself, the Puritan thrift of time 
 
68 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and pence and affection seemed to him a part 
 of the wearisome journey, a journey that 
 would end in the arms that he longed for. 
 No one had told him that he was never to 
 go back to live with his mother, never, never 
 again ! 
 
VI 
 
 FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 
 
 SUNDAY begins less early nowadays than it 
 began in Norwich Town a century ago. In 
 Edmund s boyhood, the day began at sundown 
 on Saturday, and as it approached, it cast its 
 shadow before. 
 
 Aunt Abby was mistress of the tub, and into 
 the tub the boys went, each in turn, and unless 
 they soaped and scoured and scrubbed them 
 selves from top to toe, Aunt Abby tried a hand at 
 them, and when she turned an ear inside out 
 there was something to show for it, or she kept 
 at her diggings until she was rewarded for the 
 pains she took and gave, and could hold up the 
 washcloth triumphantly and cry, "There! Look 
 at it ! Did you ever see such dirt ? " 
 
 "It s live skin," protested Edmund with the 
 
70 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 earnestness of conviction; and perhaps he was 
 right. 
 
 Whew ! But how cold it was on a wintry day, 
 when he stepped steaming out of the tub to the 
 wet chilly floor of the washroom. How draughty 
 the air became ! Unless the tanned, small hands 
 rubbed fast and hard and succeeded in keeping 
 ahead of the cold, in getting the little beaded 
 legs dry before they grew blue and the fair skin 
 puckered into goose flesh, how suddenly was the 
 air torn into a thousand shreds of sharp-breathed 
 gusts and puffs ! 
 
 Edmund was ecstatic in the tub. In spite of 
 cold, or more chilling admonition, his spirits 
 were continually breaking bounds. He hit upon 
 so many topics of lively interest, he lost his 
 footing so often and nearly fell, only to shout aloud 
 in the excitement of his prowess at catching 
 himself in time, or he fell prone with so mighty a 
 whack that his aunt shut the door to deprive 
 him of an audience. Yet his sudden plunges and 
 splashings, his frenzied dives through steam and 
 sud to recover lost possessions, brought back the 
 boys to the keyhole as often as they left it. 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 71 
 
 At the outset, Aunt Abby looked him over to 
 divest him of possible playthings, and in much 
 sweetness and docility he yielded up a mine of 
 treasures ; yet notwithstanding his good inten 
 tions and her care, he seemed able to pick up 
 limitless articles in the water. She had locked 
 him alone in the washroom one evening, and stood 
 outside the door, and prayed for grace. She 
 had told him to soap himself. For a brief time 
 there was a sound of tremendous activity. Then 
 silence. 
 
 "Edmund!" 
 
 Silence. 
 
 "Edmund!" 
 
 Sepulchral silence. Not even the trickle of 
 suds. 
 
 She unlocked the door and entered. 
 
 No Edmund. 
 
 It was impossible for him to get out of the 
 room. But the impossible was nothing to Ed 
 mund. Aunt Abby s nerves were already un 
 strung. Trembling, she reached her hand down 
 into the frothy water. 
 
 "Squeak I" 
 
72 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 She did riot stop to consider or ruminate. 
 Staid as she was, she jumped like a heifer. 
 
 He had left the tub altogether as being 
 a place not propitious for showing his person 
 to advantage. He stood behind the door, 
 straight as Apollo, proud as Lucifer, happy as 
 a host of carolling angels ; he had soaped him 
 self; he had raised an unbelievable lather; he 
 was as white as the sheeted dead to his very 
 chin. 
 
 She was ready to drop. She stood, shaking 
 from head to foot. It was at that instant that 
 all of his zestful delight died in a cry of alarm. 
 
 "You are stepping on my snake !" 
 
 She lifted her foot quickly ! Her next step 
 was backwards into the hall. He could hear her 
 breathe as if she had been running. "James!" 
 he heard her call to his uncle in a strange, hard 
 voice. 
 
 Edmund stood transfixed with fear. He pre 
 sented a field for birch unparalleled in his experi 
 ence. He heard his uncle s step, and he heard 
 his aunt say sharply, "It is Edmund he has 
 a snake in the washroom." 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 73 
 
 The deacon did not enter, but stood outside. 
 "Where is your snake?" he demanded, looking 
 down at the shivering little ghost. 
 
 Edmund, white as if clad, faced him eagerly. 
 "It is right here, Sir, here in my hands." He 
 opened his hands with exceeding caution. "It 
 is a horsehair snake, Sir. Jerry said that if I 
 kept a hair from a horse s tail in water long enough, 
 it would turn into a snake. I was afraid that the 
 soap would hurt its eyes, so I laid it on the floor. 
 Aunt Abby stood right on it. I guess she s 
 killed it," he added, with a plaintive little choke. 
 "It s all I had to play with that s alive, and it 
 isn t truly alive yet !" 
 
 Aunt Abby s chagrin mounted even higher than 
 her nervous wrath. "Look at him, James," she 
 cried; "look at him!" 
 
 "What have you been doing with yourself?" 
 demanded the deacon. 
 
 The child s invisible innocence was suddenly 
 made visible and fixed like frost on a pane. 
 "Aunt Abby told me to soap myself all over, 
 Sir," he said earnestly. "She told me to do it 
 just as well as I could." 
 
74 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Abby, did you tell Edmund to soap himself 
 all over?" questioned the deacon. 
 
 "I did." 
 
 The deacon s face remained stern, but there 
 was a whimsical leisureliness in his tone as he 
 inquired, "Does Edmund seem to you to have 
 been disobedient, Abby?" 
 
 "He never behaves!" she cried, sick with 
 exasperation. 
 
 "Edmund," said his uncle, " if you do not know 
 how to behave, get into the tub and go to bed." 
 
 Edmund s face became anxious. "Go to bed 
 in the tub?" he asked. 
 
 " Get into the tub rinse the soap dry 
 yourself and go to bed in your bed," said 
 Deacon Stedman. 
 
 Edmund heaved a sigh of relief. He had to 
 go to bed in any case. 
 
 As a rule, the tubbings began early, but whether 
 they came late or soon, there were the boots to 
 be blackened, nearly a score of pairs set along 
 the hearthstone in a crescent, with a stool at one 
 side, and the pot of beeswax and lampblack, 
 the leading make of polish in Norwich Town in 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 75 
 
 1848. Each child must polish his own foot gear, 
 and Edmund polished his brass-stubbed, diminu 
 tively masculine boots till he could see his nose 
 in them ; polished them till even his placid Aunt 
 Eunice lost all patience, and taking up Aunt Abby s 
 plaint cried, " Edmund, stop that; stop, this 
 minute ! If you don t know when to leave off, 
 you would better go to bed ! I never saw such a 
 child!" 
 
 Edmund was always having to go to bed. 
 
 No romping was allowed in the bedroom, and 
 no light, except the ray from the candle in the 
 hall. At bedtime, Edmund sat on the edge of 
 the brown, quilt-covered bed, and kicked till his 
 boots came off ; then, lying back, he kicked till 
 his funny brown breeches fell in a heap. Then, 
 pushing his stockings partly free by way of en 
 couragement, he kicked and kicked. It took a 
 long time and a deal of kicking for the pair to 
 part company with his heels, but when at length 
 they did, they shot up to the ceiling and dropped 
 down where they pleased. Then Edmund dived 
 into bed, dragging his red flannel nightgown after 
 him, all ready for the nocturnal fight with 
 
76 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 his bedfellow over the debatable middle of the 
 bed. 
 
 " Edmund, have you said your prayers?" 
 came his Aunt Eunice s voice from the entry. 
 
 "I am saying them now," responded Edmund 
 in a tone that rebuked conversation. 
 
 It was a pretty sight on the first winter s night 
 of the season to see the little fellows there 
 were no less than six of them nigh of an age; 
 three pairs of brothers sent like Edmund to the 
 deacon to be educated, Hunt and Turville Adams, 
 Emilie and Virgilio Lasaga, Edmund and little 
 Charlie standing in the red firelight in their 
 red flannel gowns, while Aunt Abby stood at one 
 side looking them over to see if the new gowns 
 were too large, or the last year s gowns too small. 
 Uncle James too came in and gave his opinion 
 with a legal, professional precision that made a 
 too large gown look small, and a too small gown 
 swell with pride at being noticed by him. 
 
 The boots were blackened before the tubbing, 
 and before the boots were blackened, the fresh 
 clothes were brought forth from the linen press 
 and laid in orderly piles for the morning. There 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 77 
 
 was no work on the Lord s day; the Lord s day 
 was work enough. 
 
 The Saturday supper savored of Sunday. No 
 trivial speech was indulged in; sound seemed 
 sacrilege. Deacon Stedman did not speak, save 
 to remark to Aunt Eunice, when she was pour 
 ing his tea, "Only up to the blue, Eunice, up to 
 the blue!" He was temperate in all things. 
 After supper, the household assembled in the 
 parlor, and when they were settled, Judge Sted 
 man (you remember that he was a judge as well 
 as a deacon) read a chapter from Holy Writ. 
 Then, standing with his chair before him and 
 with his hand on the top of it, he began solemnly 
 and slowly, after the manner of the good Judge 
 Noyes, to tell the story of the Creation, the Fall, 
 the Expulsion from Eden, the wickedness of man, 
 the Flood, God s covenant with Noah, with Abra 
 ham, with David, the final and supreme scene of 
 the Redemption. He warmed more and more to 
 the subject; he grasped his chair with both 
 hands; he rapped it on the floor; at last, when 
 he came to the Death of Him whom cruel men 
 crowned with thorns and nailed upon a cross, 
 
78 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 he thrust back the chair from him against the 
 wall with a feeling violence that made the 
 windows shake. 
 
 And after Saturday the Sabbath ! 
 
 Hot baked pork and beans, hot steamed brown 
 bread, and apple sauce were the Saturday night s 
 customary supper; cold pork and beans, cold 
 bread, cold apple sauce, the Sunday breakfast; 
 roast sparerib cold and cold vegetables were the 
 usual Sunday dinner. In godly families no cook 
 ing whatever was done on the Sabbath ; warmed- 
 over beans and bread made the Monday break 
 fast. Church worship started off with the ten 
 o clock morning service which lasted till twelve; 
 then came Sunday school till one. Country folk 
 brought lunch with them and ate it circumspectly 
 under the trees behind the meetinghouse. The 
 afternoon service began at two o clock and con 
 tinued until four. Even young children were 
 expected to sit through all the services, and if 
 Edmund felt a trifle languid from an excess of 
 beans and Bible, his Aunt Abby glanced askance 
 at him, and the whisper went from elder to elder, 
 "H m another of his Sunday headaches !" 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 79 
 
 I used to have the Sunday headache myself, 
 and I know what it is. I used to stare idly into 
 the gallery at the orphanage children sitting out 
 lined against the blue of the outer sky, like charity 
 angels ; and then my eyes would wander through 
 the clean-paned windows, and I would watch 
 the beautiful, brave trees with their hands held 
 up to God. But when I wearied, a loving arm 
 that made of itself a pillow slipped around me, 
 and I both laid me down and slept and waked 
 again and did not fear, no, not all the deacons in 
 the world nor yet the stiff looks of a spinster who 
 wore corkscrew curls dyed black, she wears 
 them now ! for it was my mother s arm that 
 held me; and my mother was my house of de 
 fense, my city of refuge. 
 
 The meetinghouse, as it used to be, had a round 
 dome of a sounding board swung in the middle of 
 it. Clustered columns supporting the galleries 
 expanded into Gothic arches. The pews were 
 square, with seats around two sides, and in the 
 center stood an armed chair for the patriarch of 
 the family. Edmund s aunts had wooden and 
 brass foot stoves, and Edmund and the other 
 
8o A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 children sat around on stools on the floor. Of 
 course he could not see anything when he was 
 seated, but he could hear and he did not lack for 
 opportunity to listen. The pulpit was high 
 against the ceiling and was reached by a winding 
 staircase, narrow as Jacob s ladder. 
 
 The Reverend Parson preached according to 
 precedent. He was not to be outdone by any 
 predecessor, however long under the sod, or how 
 ever long-winded; he preached for the best part 
 of an hour by the glass under the pulpit, and into 
 his prayer he condensed all the news of the week 
 public, town, village, and foreign events. So 
 specific and so particular were his supplications 
 and thanksgivings that his congregation listened 
 to the latest and most trustworthy bulletin of 
 affairs at home and abroad. The long prayer 
 was of great interest to the "elderlies", especially 
 to the countryfolk of outlying districts who 
 rarely saw a current newspaper; but to little 
 Edmund, the parson s peregrinations latitudi- 
 nally from the Norwich Landing to the Ganges 
 were indifferently dull, and his peregrinations 
 longitudinally from earth to heaven little better, 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 81 
 
 when they stopped short of hell. Hell was some 
 what interesting, but even the doings in the nether 
 world lost their fascination through familiarity. 
 
 So Edmund amused himself by sitting farther 
 and farther back on his cushionless four-footed 
 stool. He observed that by spreading his legs 
 wide apart the space between his knees was like 
 the letter V. Soon he evolved a little game of 
 his own. First he made the V s smaller and 
 smaller; then he went to the other extreme and 
 made the V s larger and larger till he sat back 
 beyond the limit of balance when, without warning, 
 up went the legs of the footstool, and over he and 
 the bench went together with such a thud of his 
 head on the floor and with such a clatter of the 
 bench against the bare boards that our parson, 
 the terror of Sabbath breakers, came to a full 
 stop. It sounded as if at least the gallery were 
 falling ! Edmund, in his zeal to mend the matter, 
 scrambled from under the pew where he had been 
 shot, and not stopping to set the bench right side 
 up, or not observing that it was topsy-turvy, sat 
 himself down on it with so absolute an abandon 
 that he stuck fast ; and not till his uncle grasped 
 
82 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 him by the collar and lifting him and his stool 
 in mid-air, shook him, did he and his seat dis 
 solve partnership. And when they did dissolve 
 it, there was a second crash more awful than 
 the first. 
 
 In Edmund s boyhood, Mr. Stevens who 
 lived near the path into the burial ground was 
 choir master, and he trained his choir martially. 
 There was no falling behind in time. The 
 singers came down on each beat with a rhythmic 
 regularity that threatened to undo the meeting 
 house, and when a hymn was under way the hills 
 around the Green resounded. The congregation 
 caught the infection of the heartiness and sang 
 with might and main. There were twenty-five 
 men and twenty-five women in the choir proper ; 
 trebles, basses, seconds, and altos, stationed 
 decorously with the men on one side of the 
 gallery and the women on the other side. They 
 sang through their noses and they carried it to 
 the point that it was an art. The women 
 managed the melody, and trilled and wailed and 
 quavered ; those who fell short in style were 
 ranged as seconds ; the basses sang turn-turn, 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 83 
 
 turn-turn, their crescendos were terrific, their 
 minuendos matchless ; the altos soared off by 
 themselves on a high scale of flats. 
 
 Mr. C. P. Huntington, the great-grandson of 
 Washington s aide-de-camp, was as straight as 
 an arrow in his nobility of breed. He had an 
 Adam s apple that must have been the despair of 
 all the Adam s apples in the county. During 
 Mr. Huntington s participation in divine worship, 
 Edmund s interest in watching the Adam s apple 
 was undisguised. There was never an Adam s 
 apple that had such a wonderful range. It 
 worked up and down like a human pump-handle; 
 it was always on time. It descended so low that 
 to dream that it would rise again seemed hope 
 less; then, when all seemed lost, it reappeared, 
 slowly, grandly, with a masterful steadiness that 
 left no question that it could have gone on rising 
 through eternity, if so it had pleased. Mr. 
 Wolcott Huntington also was patrician. He was 
 of a type that nature molds but once in centuries. 
 But he was merely another object of pleasant 
 scrutiny to Edmund. When Mr. Huntington 
 sang, his ears, emulating his kinsman s Adam s 
 
84 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 apple arose in their places, and his mighty shock 
 of iron hair shook like Libanus in a storm. 
 
 Edmund was early assigned a place among the 
 trebles on a bench in the gallery. He had a 
 sweet, clear voice and could carry any tune he 
 heard. All the lads affected to sing, and Edmund 
 and his friends sat in a row together, an ar 
 rangement which no doubt afforded unbounded 
 delectation to the old Gentleman who runs a 
 mischief-bureau for the idle. 
 
 Throughout the hour-long prayer, while the 
 parson conducted the Almighty through India 
 and the Sandwich Isles, Edmund was on a tour 
 personally conducted by himself. 
 
 " There is no courser like a book to bear us miles 
 
 away, 
 Nor any chariot like a page of prancing poesy. " 
 
 Edmund possessed a darling volume of poetry, 
 an old copy of Keats. Where it came from, 
 how he came by it, I do not know; but it 
 was his, and it was buttoned safe against his 
 heart. And when the long prayer was well under 
 way, when the congregation had no ear save for 
 the news, when his own fair brow and fairer lids 
 
FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNDOWN 85 
 
 made the gallery bar they leaned on warm, and 
 he was bowed before the Being who had made 
 him as he was, he drew out his book and read. 
 He was no more sad or lonely, nor chilled by the 
 winter s cold, nor faint with the summer s heat. 
 Unearthly exulting joy awoke in his veins and 
 sang to him. 
 
 And when the parson read again, passing from 
 the largeness of utterance of Isaiah to the human 
 tears and tenderness of "In my Father s house are 
 many mansions," and his iron voice, which at 
 will had risen to the grandeur of the prophet, 
 now sank in despite of his will to the compassionat 
 ing humanness of the Saviour of men, Edmund 
 already in the spirit mounted on the twin wings 
 of longing and need to the throne of the Eternal. 
 
 Incidentally Edmund picked up from the 
 choristers bits of gossip not mentioned by the 
 parson in his prayer. He learned for the first 
 time that the girls of Bean Hill were without 
 counterpart in the whole history and galaxy of 
 beauty, and that the young men sitting behind 
 him were in the habit of attending the midweek 
 meetings in the basement of the Bean Hill Metho- 
 
86 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 dist Church and beauing these charmers home. 
 It was great sport so they told him. Tom 
 Harland spoke of the Backus sisters as devilish 
 fine women. Cynthia Backus was fairly thirteen, 
 and the downright vehemence with which Tom 
 said the " devilish" stirred Edmund with a deter 
 mination to slip out from the Stedman rooftree 
 at the first opportunity. He made up his mind 
 to beau one of these devilish fine women of twelve 
 or fourteen; he would not hang around outside 
 the church door, in the shadows of the elm trees, 
 waiting for her to sally forth, the way the rest 
 of the fellows did; he would wait boldly in the 
 vestry and accost her as a gentleman should 
 accost a lady. This was his covenant with him 
 self on the subject of the Sex. 
 
 So Sunday ended, and Edmund, feeling all 
 prayed out, said his prayers yet once again and 
 went to bed. 
 
VII 
 
 HARLAND HOUSE 
 
 IN Tom and Ed Harland s house on Sentry 
 Hill, you can see the books before you mount the 
 stairway. The walls are covered with them. 
 The walls have not shown themselves for genera 
 tions; the most that they can do is to squint 
 through random spaces left by gadding volumes 
 and, like spinsters around the Green who spy 
 through tilted shutters, try to catch a glimpse of 
 life. The ladies do not live ; they look on life. 
 But the books move and have a being. They 
 warm to the touch of human hands ; they answer 
 to the gaze of human eyes ; they are sought after, 
 and loved, and taken on jaunts from attic to arbor. 
 They share the hearthlight and the lamplight 
 with the family; they enjoy intelligent compan 
 ionship; they are brought forward to be intro- 
 
88 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 duced to strangers; they accompany friendly 
 personages home ; they go visiting their neighbors. 
 
 A black walnut hand rail seems to run across 
 the faces of the books on the upper landing, as 
 if to guard them behind bars, but it is only the 
 baluster, that turns when it reaches the top step 
 and stretches out along the hall. Instead of 
 shutting one off from the shelves, it shuts one in, 
 and like a kind arm forms a comfortable back, 
 if you sit on the floor and lean against its not too 
 distant staves. Books, books, books from floor 
 to ceiling, they are the walls in Harland House. 
 
 Aside from its books, Harland House is a 
 storied place, built as all the around-town houses 
 were built, in the forenoon of the eighteenth 
 century. If you walk from the front door to the 
 street without keeping to the stone stairway, you 
 reach the street, to be sure, but you will plunge 
 headlong down sheer granite cliffs, and all the 
 king s horses and all the king s men cannot put 
 you together again. No Indian chieftain climbed 
 to that house, I assure you, without losing his 
 head before he had a chance to take to his heels. 
 If you poke your nose out of a back-chamber 
 
HARLAND HOUSE 89 
 
 window, you find yourself in hanging gardens, 
 so steep is the terraced slope on which the house 
 has grown. Henry Harland of England built 
 Sentry Hill. He made the finest clocks in the 
 Colonies, and whoever wished to be up to time 
 applied to Master Harland. You will find his 
 name in books that tell of clocks. 
 
 Years later than the time of this story, Tom 
 Harland, Edmund s playmate, married and had 
 a son whom he named Henry after the old clock 
 maker, and Edmund became the little Henry 
 Harland s godfather and encouraged him to write. 
 He wrote Grey Roses, As it was Written, The Cardi 
 nal s Snujf Box, and many other stories, and would 
 have done still better work if that dread disease 
 which lurks spiderlike in ancestral halls had not 
 caught him in its web on the threshold of his 
 manhood. 
 
 Harland House is indeed a storied house, and 
 Norwich Town a storied town. The railroad from 
 Petrograd to Moscow was engineered by a young 
 man whose sister lived on the Sheepwalk to the 
 Landing. His name was Whistler and his son was 
 James McNeill Whistler, the artist. The famous 
 
9 o A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 bridge across the Neva River in Russia was 
 built by Captain Zenas Whiting, who lived in 
 a tiny frame cottage on the hillside behind the 
 old Brick Schoolhouse on the Norwich Town 
 Green. Captain Whiting worked out by himself 
 the problem of a suspension bridge, and in the 
 security of his simple-hearted sincerity, unelated 
 and undismayed, arose from his well-scrubbed 
 deal table and crossed the seas to lend his brain 
 to the destiny of a continent. 
 
 The bridge that he built was the first suspen 
 sion bridge in the Old World ; it was a span be 
 tween the night of despotism and the dawning 
 of liberty. Fuller s Store was bequeathed to 
 Mr. Fuller by his wife s kin, the Clevelands who 
 founded Cleveland, Ohio ; Grover Cleveland, the 
 silversmith s nephew, became our president. 
 Little marvel that Mr. Fuller, who came of a 
 line of schoolmasters, did not grow rich. Men of 
 Norwich in those days were not in the world to 
 grow rich. Character, not greenbacks, was the 
 foundation of their houses. And although they 
 have "fallen on sleep" they share not their graves 
 with oblivion. 
 
HARLAND HOUSE 91 
 
 But this is not telling you of little Edmund. 
 In the gloaming of a midsummer holiday, he was 
 sitting on the floor in the upper landing of Har- 
 land House, reading. He had a book on his knees 
 and a heap of books by his side. He could not 
 read fast enough. His shining eyes darted from 
 line to line, and his attentive forefinger ran along 
 underneath the words to help him keep his place. 
 He was full of business. His zeal ran away with 
 his senses. He heard nothing, saw nothing, 
 felt nothing beyond the magic of the page. It 
 was thus, out of breath, hasting and exultant, 
 that he happened upon Captain Marryat who 
 sailed in the good ship Beaver. A dashing, fine 
 gentleman Captain Marryat was. Edmund went 
 back to the Stedman house convinced that there 
 had never lived his like since time began. He 
 dreamed of Captain Marryat. He talked to him 
 self of Captain Marryat. He played that he 
 was Captain Marryat. All of Captain Mar- 
 ryat s universe was contracted into the span of 
 his unresting little brain. 
 
 Edmund was as fond of books as a water 
 spaniel of a pool. He scented a library afar off 
 
92 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and knew the rounds of them. All through that 
 long midsummer recess, he trotted from one door 
 to another of homes where books abided. Gussie 
 Green had parents who in turn had a library. 
 There was a library in Mr. Daniel Coit s house, 
 besides pictures, prints, and curios. There 
 were other libraries, twoscore of them, such as they 
 were, but not all the libraries belonged to folk he 
 patronized. He passed by on the other side when 
 he came to a house where he felt that he was 
 not wanted. But when he came to Tom and Ed 
 Harland s house, or to Gussie s, or to Mr. Coit s, he 
 slipped through the gate, and mounting the door 
 step, stood at the threshold with his cap in his hand. 
 If he laid hold of the Harland House knocker, it 
 was just in his delight in being tall enough when 
 a-tiptoe to reach it. Having stirred the great 
 brazen S, he let it down in place noiselessly. 
 
 After patient waiting, if no one appeared, he 
 tried the next house, and the next, and the next, 
 until at last some kind mother espied him and 
 called, " Is that you, little Ned ? Come in ! " And 
 Edmund came in, flushing to the finger tips with 
 joy, and with breath shortened for very eagerness. 
 
HARLAND HOUSE 93 
 
 He felt scant "interest or curiosity in Deacon 
 Stedman s books. Possibly he was never allowed 
 to prospect upon the judge s property; there 
 were so many young people under the Stedman 
 roof that perhaps it would not do to give any one 
 of them the freedom of the shelves. Or it may be 
 that the deacon s library was made up of law books, 
 books on theology, and untranslated classics. 
 
 "How is the deacon this morning?" was the 
 greeting that met Edmund on his route. To 
 which he invariably replied, "The judge is bear 
 ing up very well I thank you." Sometimes 
 he offered home items of interest uninvited, or 
 in return for an apple or a Shrewsbury drop. If 
 the gift was an apple, he turned it around as 
 nimbly as a squirrel turns a nut and announced 
 in his sprightly fashion, "It hasn t a speck in it! 
 At our house we eat the specked apples first." 
 And then, cocking his head like a canary, he 
 would add, "And by the time we have eaten the 
 specked ones, they all are specked !" 
 
 When Mrs. Huntington gave him a cookie, 
 he broke it diligently into divers parts. Next 
 he nibbled each piece in turn into a miniature 
 
94 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 cake, and having finished his work, deposited the 
 collection in his pocket. Mrs. Huntington looked 
 on, over her needle. 
 
 "Don t you care for seed cookies, Edmund?" 
 she inquired. 
 
 "Oh, yeth!" he answered, smiling radiantly 
 at her in her simplicity, "but you see I like to 
 have something to take home to the children !" 
 
 But if dancing-footed, rosy-lipped Gussie saw 
 him at the gate, she flew to the door, and snatched 
 him by the hand, and cried out, "Oh, come on in, 
 Ned!" and Ned, glancing past her at the book 
 shelves, entered his desired Eden blissfully. 
 
 Gussie had a book of fairy tales, - - The White 
 Cat, Aladdin s Lamp, Puss in Boots, it was 
 the first book that Edmund read from cover to 
 cover. Time after time he read the tales, and 
 yet each time that he came to the end of one of 
 them he gave way to a prodigious sigh of satis 
 faction. With so heavy odds against the hero, 
 the happy-ever-afterwards ending always seemed 
 an impossibility. He trembled for the White 
 Cat lest she should fail to appear in time to enter 
 tain her rescuer; he trembled for the prince lest 
 
HARLAND HOUSE 95 
 
 he should turn back at the crucial hour. Rapt 
 beyond time and place by his loving solicitude for 
 the prospective lovers, he would whisper to the 
 prince, " Go on don t stop it s all right - 
 just go on a little farther." And to the White 
 Cat he would murmur with the compassionating 
 encouragement of an angel, " Don t cry, White 
 Cat ; he ll come back he s coming back right 
 on the next page!" But this was when he was 
 quite alone. When Gussie read the tales aloud to 
 him, he sat motionless, with all his seething fears 
 and hopes and sighs pent close and fast, and with 
 his luminous deep eyes as big as saucers, until the 
 final word was reached. And then he said, 
 "Gussie, if it were not for Captain Marryat, I 
 am sure that your book would be the finest book 
 that ever was written." 
 
 If it were not for Captain Marryat ! Edmund 
 was loyal. Even the prince who won the White 
 Cat could not make him faithless to the gallant 
 captain. Yet although he would not admit it 
 to Gussie, he knew in his own heart that if he were 
 not already Captain Marryat, he would be the 
 doughty prince. 
 
VIII 
 
 CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 
 
 IN spite of pleasant books and of the long 
 holidays of midsummer which let down the bars 
 and set little Edmund loose in the pasture, life 
 was not all Shrewsbury drops for him. Biding 
 in his uncle s house still seemed a part of the 
 journey that began with the stagecoach. He 
 reached out in his dreams for his mother, but he 
 did not cry. Why should he cry, when he need 
 only wait? You see, he kept supposing that he 
 was going to return. 
 
 And once twice the journey did promise 
 to end. It was after this wise. By the time that 
 Edmund had been in Norwich Town a whole 
 year, he was of course a grown boy; and little 
 Charlie, at home with Mother who was staying 
 now in Newark, was no longer a baby. Charlie 
 was four years old ! 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 97 
 
 "Why, when Edmund was your age," cried 
 pretty Elizabeth, lifting her Charlie s innocent 
 face with her white hands, "he went to visit 
 his Uncle James in Connecticut; he went quite 
 by himself ; he was considered a young man ! 
 What does my darling Charlie think of that? 
 You mother s baby !" 
 
 But Charlie gazed simply at her. He did not 
 understand this talk. He did not remember that 
 he had a brother. He was a very lackwit when 
 it came to worldly matters. 
 
 "Don t look at me so searchingly ! " cried 
 Elizabeth, rumpling his hair into a halo. "Don t 
 you wish to go to Norwich Town? Don t you 
 wish to have a nice journey?" 
 
 Charlie shook his head. He was content to 
 stay right where he was. 
 
 "Wouldn t you like to see your big brother? 
 Wouldn t you like to have Edmund come to see 
 you?" 
 
 Charlie nodded. He was always quiet and 
 docile ; he had little to say. Speech for him was 
 either nodding or shaking his head. 
 
 "Wouldn t you like Edmund to take you back 
 
98 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 with him to make your kind Uncle James a visit? " 
 questioned Elizabeth, coaxing. That was a happy 
 idea to have Edmund come for Charlie and 
 take the little fellow to Norwich. It would give 
 Edmund a bright holiday, and it would forestall 
 possible reluctance on the baby s part. 
 
 So Edmund arrived a fortnight later, with bluff, 
 hale Tom as overseer. The day, I think, was in 
 the late summer of the year 1839. Before the 
 coach drew up before his mother s gate, Edmund 
 had seen her and was out of it. He was in her 
 arms sobbing how he sobbed! he sobbed 
 enough for the bygone year. And afterwards, 
 through all the dinner hour, he sat smiling bless 
 edly at her through tears that would keep well 
 ing, he, not heeding his plate, but reaching 
 under the tablecloth to pat her hand till 
 Elizabeth, mindful of how in another day or two 
 she was going to put a period to all this joy of his 
 by sending him from her, burst into bitter weep 
 ing and had to leave the table. Then at the last, 
 at the hour of parting, Tom was forced to lift 
 him bodily, he clung to her so and wept so wildly, 
 and even she reproached him, saying, " Dearest, 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 99 
 
 do you not know that I have no money ? Do you 
 not know that I am acting for your good?" 
 while Charlie, little weaned angel, repeated 
 without a sigh her Farewell and followed Tom 
 as he was bidden. 
 
 The poplars that rose golden above his guar 
 dian s rooftree in Norwich Town and caught the 
 setting sunlight were colorless as prison walls to 
 Edmund, as he and Tom returned with little 
 Charlie. Hope hope hope, the heart s ethe 
 real sun, was slowly sinking beneath the horizon 
 of his thoughts. 
 
 He shared his bed with Charlie now. Across 
 the room stood a second bed in which slept Al 
 and Hunt Adams. The Stedman manor seemed 
 more than ever a house of wayfarers to Edmund. 
 The inn seemed to have crept into his own little 
 bedchamber. But Charlie did not appear to heed 
 or comprehend. Charlie was a pattern child. 
 Perhaps he was not lusty. Having a mother, 
 he was motherless, and he had never known 
 brother or father. Aunt Abby approved of him. 
 "He sits still and behaves himself all day long," 
 she remarked to Edmund, and gave Charlie a 
 
ioo A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 gingerbread boy with currant eyes which she 
 had made on purpose for him, and which was no 
 more troublesome than he. 
 
 Underneath Edmund s window, the boys 
 bedchamber was the southeast room on the 
 ground floor, stretched rows of box and plats 
 of lavender, larkspur, and a host of flowers. The 
 outer world was passing fair. Overhead in the 
 noonday sky were other gardens, wide reaches 
 of blue meadow land, where clouds like thistle 
 down were straying; and at night still wider 
 stretches of limitless dim gardens, with uncounted 
 stars for flowers and with bands of shining dust 
 for paths. 
 
 Everywhere in the outer world there was space 
 enough for thousands and thousands of little 
 boys to run amid, run amid and never be 
 found. One night it came about that Edmund 
 went to bed like Diddle-dee-dumpling, my son 
 John, arrayed in his roundabouts. That was 
 to save him the time of dressing at daybreak. 
 At daybreak, he was climbing out of the window 
 and running down the road in his green-checked 
 pinafore. He ran as hard as he could run because 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTEB 
 
 he was running away, and when boys ran away 
 he supposed that they ran without stopping. He 
 reached the wharves on the Thames at a little 
 after five o clock. A schooner swung at the 
 farther dock. Supporting himself against a pile 
 of timber leaned a bleared, bronzed, tipsy skipper 
 dressed in the ministerial black of a swallow-tail 
 coat and plug hat. Gold rings hung from his 
 ears. He leered and lounged and accosted with 
 genial good will even a truck of kegs which a 
 deckhand was shifting. 
 
 "Are you a Sea Captain?" inquired an appa 
 rition at his knee. 
 
 "Right, sonny!" cried the skipper, "Captain 
 Hudson of the Ann and Emily neatest craft 
 afloat due to sail from this here port at five- 
 thirty precisely." 
 
 You may be sure that Edmund lost no time in 
 telling the good-natured captain his story. He 
 told him that his mother was a poor woman in 
 Newark, a widow who took in washing for a living. 
 And that he was on his way to help her. He 
 said that he could work, although he was so little, 
 and if Captain Hudson would give him a chance 
 
A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 to work his passage to New York, he would show 
 him that he was not afraid of hardship. Captain 
 Hudson was in a generous mood, so aboard they 
 went, where Edmund entered his name in a clear, 
 firm hand Henry Wilson. Edmund used to 
 say, in after years, it was singular that he took 
 " Henry Wilson" for a name, inasmuch as when 
 he did finally reach the great metropolis, a young 
 man bearing the name "Henry Wilson" was one 
 of his earliest associates. 
 
 After the anchor was weighed, Captain Hud 
 son and Henry Wilson paced the deck. 
 
 "You walk better on the boat than you walk 
 on the land," observed Henry Wilson. It was 
 true. Captain Hudson, who had pawed the air 
 now with one foot and now with the other when 
 Henry was trying to help him locate the gang 
 plank, was as steady as Gibraltar the instant he 
 walked the planks. "The Almighty made my 
 legs to walk a deck," said the captain. "I can t 
 seem to get used to terry firmy." 
 
 "Is terry firmy the gang plank?" inquired 
 Edmund. 
 
 "Precisely," said the Captain. 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 103 
 
 A fog like rain closed them in. There was 
 nothing to be seen fore or aft, or to port or star 
 board ; there was nothing for the Ann and Emily 
 to do but catch a breath when she could and 
 feel her way along the channel. Henry and 
 Captain Hudson stood side by side. Henry felt 
 very much at home. 
 
 " Ain t you got no brothers and sisters, sonny ?" 
 inquired the Captain. 
 
 "Six brothers," said Henry. While he was 
 having brothers, it occurred to him to have some 
 sisters; so he added, "and six sisters. I am the 
 oldest." 
 
 "Wai, I swan!" cried the captain. "I reckon 
 some of them were triplets, warn t they?" 
 
 "Oh, they were all triplets," replied Henry. 
 It seemed the proper thing to say. 
 
 "Your pa left your ma with her hands full; 
 there s no gainsaying that." 
 
 "He couldn t help it," spoke up Henry ear 
 nestly. He had a suspicion that the captain 
 might not think well of his father. "He truly 
 couldn t," he repeated, "He died of acussump- 
 tion!" 
 
io 4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Wai!" ejaculated Captain Hudson. His 
 bleared eyes narrowed. The twinkle at the cor 
 ners of his lids faded into crow s feet. "I had a 
 little sister," he said slowly, "pert as you be; 
 and pretty? Lord ! I d have put my little Lizzie 
 against the Queen of England ; and she died of a 
 cussumption too !" 
 
 They took a turn in silent sympathy. 
 
 "I wouldn t like to have rings in my ears," 
 commented Henry in a moment. "But I think 
 that it is much nicer to have rings in your ears 
 than in your nose," he hastened to add, lest he 
 seem to reflect unfavorably on the skipper s 
 taste. "Bulls have rings in their noses. You 
 can make a bull do anything if you get him 
 by the nose ! We have a sow that has a ring in 
 her snout. I think it is shocking. It is against 
 Nature. God gave the sow her snout to root 
 with for her young. My uncle told me that sows 
 do not mind it. But I said, How do you know? 
 Are you a sow? Well, said he, the bulls do 
 not mind it. And I said, Wouldn t you mind 
 it, if you had a ring in your nose, and were made 
 to walk along beside a cow which is Aunt Eunice, 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 105 
 
 because cows are ladies? 7 I have matters of 
 importance to attend to/ said my uncle. That 
 is what the bull thinks, I said. When you 
 know more, you will talk less/ said my uncle. 
 My uncle says that I am a bad boy." 
 
 "A nice little nipper like you a bad boy?" 
 repeated the skipper. He patted the misty head. 
 "Your uncle must be a rum one !" 
 
 Henry did not understand, but he was not 
 to be outdone. He took pride in all his relatives 
 and friends. He sprang like a trout to the fly. 
 "Yes, he is/ he said brightly ; "and he s a deacon 
 too." 
 
 "Lord Almighty" 
 
 "Do you ever go to Conference Meeting?" 
 inquired Henry. "I think you would enjoy 
 listening to Deacon Sterry pray he hems and 
 haws so. But I don t think you would care for 
 Deacon Hyde ; he prays so easily. I think you 
 are a very kind man, Captain Hudson; I think 
 you would be a deacon if you lived on land. 
 We pray a great deal at our house. We pray 
 before each meal, and we pray mornings and 
 nights, and when we go to bed we pray, 
 
io6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and we pray all day Sundays mostly. Do you 
 pray?" 
 
 " Praying s a kind of a habit/ commented Cap 
 tain Hudson. 
 
 "I ve heard you say Lord God several times 
 and then finish to yourself. When my uncle 
 isn t home, we have silent prayer. I didn t 
 say my prayers this morning. I forgot." 
 
 The skipper closed his eyes. Surrounded by 
 Henry s reminiscences of his praying relations, 
 he decided that silent prayer was the better part 
 of valor. 
 
 Henry likewise closed his eyes. They sat, face 
 to face, with lids screwed tight, and lips moving 
 nimbly. Presently Henry said "Amen", and 
 they both arose. 
 
 "Suppose we go below and have a snack," said 
 the captain, and down they went, hand in hand. 
 
 The cook was hashing corned beef and cold pota 
 toes. He served it in the chopping bowl in which 
 it was chopped. The crew sat around a bare 
 table. The first thrust at the hash was reserved 
 for the captain, because of his rank ; the crew 
 followed suit. There were not knives enough 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 107 
 
 to go around, but Captain Hudson gave Henry 
 a knife, because Henry was his guest. Captain 
 Hudson left the fork to the bo swain, and the bo - 
 swain spiked the hash well enough by the help of 
 thumb and forefinger. Henry noted that each 
 seaman, when waiting for a chance at the dish, 
 sat with his knife grasped midway between hilt 
 and blade and with the hilt planted upright on 
 the greasy boards; so he did likewise, bringing 
 his knife down with a manly vigor that made the 
 wood resound. 
 
 The half tipsy skipper, the sailors reeking of 
 vile tobacco, the crude hash, the close air, and the 
 foul steam of fog- wet tarpaulin, were a part of 
 the play to Henry. He fell to with a will. He 
 plied his knife as if he had been born with a blade 
 in his mouth. 
 
 While breakfast was under way, the Ann and 
 Emily ran her nose into the shoals near Hunting- 
 ton Works, two and a half miles down-stream ; 
 and on the shoals she stuck. 
 
 Nothing could be done but wait for the tide 
 to flood. But Edmund I mean Henry did 
 not mind lying by in the least. He was free, 
 
io8 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and he was happy. It was so beautiful to be 
 free. He paced the decks with his hands in his 
 pockets. Under his mist-frosted hair, his color 
 grew. To be free was more beautiful than any 
 thing in the world. To be out of doors in the 
 wet and weather all by himself, and with none 
 to call or chide him was the most wonderful hap 
 pening, the most marvelous end that could pos 
 sibly have come to his wearisome journey. He 
 began to question how it was that he had never 
 before run away. He might just as well have 
 run away a hundred times. He told himself 
 that it was the easiest thing in the world. All 
 one had to do was to get up at dawn, and slip 
 out, and run and run till one came to the river. 
 And to think that he was going to his mother ! 
 That was the best of it all. He had been very 
 stupid not to guess that of course his loved mother 
 would have had him stay with her if she had 
 had money enough ; he had been very unkind not 
 to think of it. He had been ungrateful to cry 
 and cling to her, as if she could help sending 
 him to Norwich Town, when she was acting 
 for his good. Her kin in New Jersey might beat 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYATS MANTLE 109 
 
 him, but no one save she could drive him off 
 again, and when she saw how he could earn his 
 bread so that his board did not cost her a penny, 
 she would let him live with her. He was certain 
 of it. Besides working for his own lodging, he 
 would work for her too. It was easy to earn 
 one s living ! Was he not earning his passage 
 that very moment ? 
 
 Now while Henry Wilson, as quiet as the Ann 
 and Emily herself, lay waiting for the tide to turn, 
 the orderly Stedman household was thoroughly 
 upset. 
 
 " Where is Edmund?" asked his guardian. 
 Not till the patriarch was closing the Bible at 
 family prayers did he discover that his nephew 
 was missing. 
 
 Aunt Eunice looked at Aunt Abby and Aunt 
 Abby looked at Annie. No one knew. None of 
 the mothers in Israel had missed him. Only the 
 Adams boys sat stiff and straight ; little Turville s 
 eyes were fixed on space, and he was swallowing 
 rapidly. 
 
 "Turville,". said Deacon Stedman, "tell Ed 
 mund to come to me at once." 
 
no A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "I I can t, Sir- 
 
 "Obey me instantly." 
 
 Turville wound up his hands in the hem of his 
 jacket, and twisted his toes around the chair leg. 
 
 "He s runned away/ he said weakly. 
 
 "Run away?" cried Deacon Stedman. "Why 
 should he run away, I would like to know?" 
 His face paled. "Where did he run?" he ques 
 tioned. 
 
 "To the Port, Sir. We were all going to run 
 away, Sir, but we were scart, Sir." 
 
 "Scart!" repeated the deacon. "Scart of 
 what?" 
 
 "Scart of you, Sir." 
 
 "Let us implore the Divine Blessing," said 
 Deacon Stedman. But he left the room as soon 
 as he said "Amen." He was in a state of mind, 
 you may be sure. It would make a seven-days 
 scandal for him with his reputation of fatherly 
 oversight to have his charges running away. He 
 drove to the Landing without pausing for breath. 
 At the wharves, he held up the first lounger. 
 
 "Halt!" he cried sharply. "Have you seen 
 my nephew?" 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE in 
 
 11 Don t know who your nephew is, Jedge," 
 said the tar; "but if he is a right handsome 
 gentlemanly little chap in a green tier, and as 
 dern lively as old Gooseberry - 
 
 "That s my nephew !" cried the deacon, thrash 
 ing with his cane among the kegs and timber as 
 if to beat the boy out of cover. 
 
 "He sailed in the Ann and Emily, Captain 
 Hudson master, at six o clock this morning." 
 
 The deacon, clutching and puffing, clambered 
 down into a skiff. "Overtake the Ann and 
 Emily, and I ll pay you well," he said shortly. 
 
 "I ll row you, old gent; now don t you be 
 anxious. We won t be long in overtaking her 
 -not in this fog." 
 
 The skiff, loosed from her moorings, shot into 
 the river. 
 
 Down-stream, at Huntington s Shoals, the 
 rain was falling fast and fine. The rain was as 
 pleasant as the mist. The mist had gathered on 
 Henry s brow till it formed into frail fingers that 
 stole softly down his cheek. But the raindrops 
 pattered lightly on his eyelids like his mother s 
 fingers tapping upon a pane. He had left off 
 
ii2 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 thinking altogether, while listening to the long- 
 drawn, gurgling swirl of the slowly ebbing tide. 
 He heard a myriad of voices in its murmur; he 
 saw a world of colors in its quiet, constant foam, 
 in the eel grass stretching seaward in the 
 drift and waste that came sailing from the hidden 
 town and was swept outward to the hidden sea. 
 When he was drenched to the skin, Captain 
 Hudson called to him to go below and keep dry. 
 So he trotted down, as he was told. He could 
 still hear the whispering music of the water. 
 With his head resting on the table and with his 
 eyes closed, he sat hearkening to it and talking 
 back to it. After a while, chug, chug, came a 
 sound of little waves slapping the ship s side. 
 The sound was accompanied by a muffled dipping 
 echo, as if some fabled sea-horse was galloping 
 on the crests. And then came a voice a cry 
 in the fog, and the skipper s answering call. 
 
 " Ship ahoy!" 
 
 "Ahoy!" 
 
 The cabin floor dropped under Edmund s feet. 
 His hopes sank to the bottom of the Thames. 
 He knew that voice, it was his uncle s. 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 113 
 
 You recall how blindly Cinderella ran when 
 midnight overtook her at the prince s ball, and 
 her brave disguise faded into rags? Well, the 
 mystic hour had tolled for the runaway in the 
 cabin; he was no longer the resourceful, self-re 
 liant Henry Wilson, but little Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman, and he came up the hatchway to the 
 deck ready, in a child s unconsciousness of power, 
 to give himself up at once. 
 
 The skiff was lying alongside the Ann and Emily, 
 riding easy in the calm. Deacon Stedman had 
 dragged himself up to the gunwale, but he could 
 not hoist himself over the beam. That portion 
 of his person bounded by his waistcoat was too 
 portly an obstacle to be easily managed. There 
 he was, gripping on with both his hands, his toes 
 in the skiff, his head above the ship s gunwale, 
 steaming with exertion, beside himself with the 
 uncertainty of his footing, and glaring at Edmund. 
 
 Edmund stood like a seaman with his feet set 
 wide apart. 
 
 "So you are the young gentleman that was 
 going to run away ? " said the deacon, when he could 
 command his wind. "Why did you run away?" 
 
ii4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 " Because, Sir, no one but Annie ever speaks 
 kindly to me, Sir, and because I wanted my 
 mother." 
 
 "I thought you wanted to be a great man." 
 
 " I do, Sir." 
 
 "Did you ever hear of a great man running 
 away?" 
 
 "Yes, Sir; Captain Marryat." 
 
 "H m ! Well, my young Captain Marryat, you 
 step down into this skiff just as fast as you can." 
 
 Neither spoke during the hour s row to Nor 
 wich, a long hard pull against the tide. When 
 they stepped foot on the wharf at the Landing, 
 the rain was driving faster and finer than ever. 
 
 "Edmund," said his uncle, while a twinkle 
 lit his steely eye, "you are so small and so spry 
 that I believe you could run between the rain 
 drops from the Landing to the Green without 
 getting wet. However," he added, and grasped 
 Edmund by the hand. He was too wary to give 
 his nephew a chance to prove his agility to skip 
 and slip between the drops. He kept fast hold 
 of him, and hand in hand, prodigal and guardian 
 reached home. 
 
CAPTAIN MARRYAT S MANTLE 115 
 
 " Can t somebody in the house mother the lad 
 a little?" Edmund heard his uncle ask, as that 
 gentleman strode into the kitchen after sending 
 Edmund to his room for dry clothes. 
 
 "He s had just as much mothering as my chil 
 dren ever had/ replied Eunice. 
 
 "But can t you see that he s different from our 
 boys; he is more spirited," said the deacon 
 patiently and yet in desperation. 
 
 "He is the Devil!" spoke up Aunt Abby 
 decisively. 
 
 "Abby Abby " remonstrated the deacon. 
 
 Abby wiped her flushed face with her apron. 
 "You need not Abby me, James," she said firmly. 
 
 "Abby," interposed the deacon, kindling, "I 
 wish you to understand I wish every one of 
 this household to understand that the lad is 
 wretchedly unhappy, and that it is the talk of 
 the neighborhood. It seems to me that each 
 one of us might be a trifle more lenient with him 
 a trifle less ready to push him to the wall." 
 
 It was an unheard-of event for Deacon Sted- 
 man to interfere with the rule of the ladies, and 
 in the silence that followed his departure from 
 
n6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the kitchen, Edmund felt that his own course was 
 justified. 
 
 A few minutes afterwards, Annie slipped into 
 Edmund s room, and kneeling before him, called 
 him her bad, bad boy, and mopped his wet hair, 
 and kissing him, tossed his pinafore into the 
 entry, and told him that he need not wear it any 
 more, because he was too large; and that she 
 was going to tell her father. But she sat in the 
 chair by the door a long time, with a look in her 
 eyes so vague and yet so gentle. 
 
IX 
 
 TWILIGHT AND EVENING STAR 
 
 LITTLE Charlie, too, went on a voyage some 
 years later. He did not run away. Deacon 
 Stedman, who was his guardian no less than 
 Edmund s, found a ship for him on which to em 
 bark and helped him off. Charlie signed for a 
 three-and-one-half-year whaling voyage with Cap 
 tain Potter, whose hide was as tough as a walrus s, 
 and who was as much at home on an ice floe as 
 is a polar bear. Although Charlie reached a 
 man s estate, he reached it without a man s 
 strength, and in those days folk believed that 
 to be driven through and through with salt and 
 sleet, to fight for life against the elements, was 
 a cure-all for youthful ailments; but the trip 
 must be long and rigorous to be effectual. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that Charlie bunked with 
 South Sea Islanders and vermin, because his 
 
n8 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 guardian thought it best, Charlie, a gentle, 
 studious, brave youth, too gently born to be 
 reared roughly. All the crew deserted save he. 
 "And he sailed, and he sailed," past many a 
 strange land and stranger people; he saw peli 
 cans and flamingoes that flew in clouds of pink 
 and white and, settling, made islands with their 
 wings ; he saw trustful seals vacant-eyed as little 
 children and too ignorant of ill to be affrighted; 
 he saw great whales 
 
 "come sailing by, 
 Sail and sail with unshut eye, 
 Round the world forever and aye." 
 
 It was to slaughter these dumb creatures that 
 the good ship Mount Wollaston wandered to and 
 fro, from snow to heat; and Captain Potter fell 
 upon them lustily. But Charlie had little heart 
 for taking life. Was life not what he sought? 
 
 Like Edmund, Charlie was fond of books; 
 and Edmund, his big brother who loved him, 
 gave him his own copy of Scott to take with 
 him. 
 
 Charlie sailed farther than Edmund had ever 
 dreamed of sailing. Between whiles he sojourned 
 
TWILIGHT AND EVENING STAR 119 
 
 in cities where the rain fell for weeks together, 
 yet where the sun seemed always overhead, just 
 as on Robinson Crusoe s island. Yet before his 
 journeyings were half-way done, he was ponder 
 ing over a longer voyage and longing to reach 
 home and say good-by to Edmund. He was in 
 fear that he would not reach home in time. At 
 night he tossed in his bunk, he was so fearful. 
 
 But Charlie reached New York at last ! And 
 he brought with him Edmund s book per 
 meated from cover to cover with sperm oil. He 
 brought too, as a gift to Edmund, his own log, 
 a journal in which, as a seaman, he had entered 
 each day s course and weather and spoil. Ever 
 afterwards Edmund doubly prized his copy of 
 Scott ; and he prized the logbook, so neat, so 
 painstaking, so like a gentleman s and a scholar s. 
 
 Charlie, who went away as cabin boy, returned 
 as first mate. He was less sunny-lipped than 
 Edmund, less erect and mischievous, but then 
 you see he had that still longer journey to muse 
 upon. Perhaps his knowledge of his father made 
 him thoughtful. It may seem strange, but it is 
 true that although Charlie did not remember 
 
120 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 his father, or think at all of him when he was a 
 little lad, yet on the last voyage homeward he 
 thought of him every hour. 
 
 You may be sure that pretty Elizabeth, who 
 at this time was sight-seeing in Paris, was proud 
 of him. I could tell you much of her gay life at 
 the Court of Italy, and of her home in Florence, 
 circled by the Brownings and their brilliant co 
 terie. His Uncle James too was proud of him; 
 and so was Edmund. 
 
 But Charlie never returned to Norwich to the 
 only hearth that he had known. Norwich seemed 
 a hopelessly long way to him now that it was so 
 near. Edmund went to the ship to meet him, 
 and Charlie laid his head down on Edmund s 
 shoulder thinking to rest a little while per 
 haps through the summer in the house of his 
 mother s kin in Brooklyn, and then go on to 
 Norwich Town. 
 
 Elizabeth s kinsmen wrote to her, and Ed 
 mund wrote. But when the mother opened 
 Edmund s letter, a lock of hair dropped from it, 
 and then she knew that Charlie her baby 
 had already set sail for the Undiscovered Country. 
 
X 
 
 PRINCE FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 
 
 THE noise of Edmund s attempt to run away, 
 and of his failure, spread through Norwich Town. 
 "Hello, Captain Marryat!" "How s the fog, 
 Captain Marryat!" "Ahoy there, Captain 
 Marryat!" were the greetings that belayed him 
 as he sauntered around the Green on his return 
 to private life. 
 
 He passed by the salutations of his townfolk 
 with dreamy unconcern. His mind, unoccupied 
 for the nonce by its own inventions, drifted. It 
 wanted only the current of an idea to quicken and 
 direct its motions. He passed the Coit house, 
 Mr. Coit s son had given a party in the spring. 
 Tom and Ed Harland had given a party; the 
 Spaldings, the Hydes, the Armses, the Pecks, the 
 Lathrops, the Clevelands every boy and girl 
 of his acquaintance had given a party. Edmund 
 
122 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 came to a dead stop. He only was left. Why 
 had he never given a party ! Why had it not 
 occurred to him how remiss he was ! He had been 
 unpardonably rude. 
 
 He lifted the latch of Mr. Spalding s gate and 
 walked in. Mrs. Spalding herself answered his 
 knock. 
 
 "I have come to invite you to my party 
 you and your family! 7 he announced, a little 
 short of wind. 
 
 "No! Indeed? What time is your party to 
 be?" said Mrs. Spalding. 
 
 What time? The question of the time had 
 not occurred to Edmund. "At five o clock to 
 day," he answered; and suddenly sighed in the 
 relief of having settled the hour so easily. " Good- 
 by!" He walked off. 
 
 He came upon Lady Louisa Huntington cross 
 ing the sidewalk. "You are please to come to 
 my party you and your friends. It is to be at 
 five o clock," he announced instantly. 
 
 "Of course we will come. How very kind of 
 your uncle and aunt. I am so surprised," said 
 Lady Louisa. 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 123 
 
 "I am inviting all the old families," exclaimed 
 Edmund, and rosy with hospitality, ran on. 
 The party was progressing incredibly well. It 
 was much easier giving a party than he would 
 have supposed. Details settled themselves. At 
 the Cleveland house no one was in sight. He 
 walked to the front door as was proper, consider 
 ing the occasion. He was growing confident and 
 he pulled the bell-handle boldly. 
 
 No one came. 
 
 He would have run around to the back door 
 but for Mr. Peck s manservant, who was watch 
 ing him from across the Green. He pulled the 
 handle again. 
 
 Still no answer. Perhaps the bell rang in the 
 kitchen, and he had not pulled hard enough. 
 He laid hold of the handle with both hands; 
 he set his feet against the house; he pulled 
 manfully. 
 
 Out came the bell-handle; it came out alto 
 gether ; wire came out after it lots of wire. But 
 the bell did not ring, so he kept pulling the wire. 
 
 Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling-ling ! The bell rang 
 at last. How fortunate! It would never have 
 
124 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 done to have slighted the Clevelands. As he 
 pulled on the wire, he could hear the bell coming 
 along the floor towards him. There was a silence 
 and a hitch; the bell had caught. He gave the 
 wire as skilful a yank as if he were fishing, and his 
 line had caught on a snag. He heard a chair go 
 over, then along came the bell again. Ting-a- 
 ling-ling ! Ting-a-ling-ling-ling-ling ! Along came 
 Mrs. Cleveland; Josh the hired man; Angelina 
 the maidservant; Scipio the dog, too scared to 
 bark and too fascinated to run away. Edmund 
 faced them. 
 
 "I am glad you heard the bell," he said with 
 a swift sigh. 
 
 "There have been times when I have not heard 
 it, but I heard it this morning," said Mrs. Cleve 
 land in a very peculiar tone. 
 
 "I had to pull it for quite a while before I 
 could make it ring," he explained politely. He 
 handed her the handle. "I knew that you could 
 not be deef not at your age," he added. 
 
 Mrs. Cleveland laughed outright. 
 
 He did not know why Mrs. Cleveland laughed, 
 but he laughed too. He was so happy to be happy. 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 125 
 
 "I came to invite you to my party, Mrs. Cleve 
 land," he said. He felt sorry for Josh and Ange 
 lina. "I would like to invite Josh and Xina 
 but it is the judge s party too, and I am 
 inviting only those whom" He did not 
 know how to finish. He looked from Mrs. 
 Cleveland to Angelina and back again at Mrs. 
 Cleveland, in pain and yet aware that it would not 
 do to invite the hired help. " those whom 
 those whom" he repeated, distressed and dis 
 traught ; " those whom God hath joined 
 together let no man put asunder ! " 
 he ended in a flash of delight at escaping from his 
 dilemma. 
 
 For the credit of the Stedman family, he went 
 up one side of the Green, circled the triangle, and 
 came down along the Around-Town road. 
 
 As he neared the parsonage and was leaving 
 the sidewalk for the gutter, in order to pass by 
 on the other side like a true Levite, it occurred 
 to him that at all functions of importance the 
 clergy was present. There was no help for it. 
 The parson must be invited. He sat down on 
 the wall and dusted his boots with a mullein leaf, 
 
i26 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 wiping the soles as nicely as the tops. He tip 
 toed along on the grass to keep clean and lifted 
 the massive knocker. There was one loud, round, 
 firm, full knock. He was pleased with it. It 
 betokened business. 
 
 "I have a message for the parson," said Ed 
 mund to the woman who came to the door. 
 
 "The parson is in his study. What name shall 
 I say?" 
 
 Edmund knew that the woman knew who he was. 
 Why did she ask that question? "You may tell 
 him that it is Judge Stedman s nephew/ he an 
 swered and gulped several times. He was scarlet. 
 
 "You are to walk into the library," announced 
 the woman, after leaving him for an interminable 
 time. 
 
 The parson was seated at his desk, writing. 
 
 Edmund placed himself in a chair next to the 
 door and waited for him to speak. He watched 
 the sand in the hourglass falling falling 
 falling. When at length the parson spoke, Ed 
 mund jumped quite out of his chair. He stood 
 up as if that were what he had been intending to 
 do right along. 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 127 
 
 The parson said, "Bubble, what is your 
 errand?" The parson called all the boys 
 "Bubbie" and all the girls "Sissie." 
 
 "I have come to ask you," Edmund said and 
 then faltered. He gulped and began again, 
 adopting a more official form. "We have come 
 to invite you to our party. We are going to have 
 the very best food to eat. The Judge would like 
 you to invoke the Divine Blessing!" 
 
 The parson eyed Edmund and Edmund 
 eyed the parson ! 
 
 "At what hour is the party to be?" inquired 
 the parson. 
 
 Edmund s wits left him. He could not re 
 member what hour he had told Lady Louisa ! 
 "It is a kind of continuous party," he said help 
 lessly. 
 
 "What!" thundered the parson in the tone 
 which he used when he was denouncing sinners 
 from the pulpit or demanding, "Why will ye die !" 
 
 Edmund took a step toward the door. "If 
 you come when the Ladies Huntington come, 
 you will be in plenty of time," he replied, to his 
 own unexpected relief. 
 
128 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 The parson cast a keen glance at the rug upon 
 which Edmund had stood the minute earlier, to 
 see if he had tracked any dust into the house. 
 Every strand was fleckless. His eye returned 
 to the doorway. Edmund was gone. 
 
 Wing-footed little Iris that Edmund was, he 
 never made a swifter exit than from the parsonage. 
 
 On the road again, his quickened heartbeats 
 slackened; his color dropped; he studied the 
 scenery. North, west, south, claimed his pen 
 sive, loving, lingering gaze ; the cold height of Gal 
 lows Hill with the storm-racked pines upon it ; the 
 feathery stairway of fern and moss behind Mr. 
 Peck s tavern, down which the rivulets sprang 
 as if with feet and up which the pale mists from 
 the burial ground climbed at night like troops of 
 childish ghosts striving to reach their oldtime 
 playground; the meetinghouse rocks with the 
 meadow lands beyond them dipping into pools 
 of sunlight and song. He kept his eyes averted 
 from the east. The glimpse of the Stedman 
 manor and the blue smoke mounting comfortably 
 from the kitchen chimney did not appear to be 
 a subject of pleasing contemplation. Yet the in- 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 129 
 
 evi table was before him. He arrived at the 
 Stedman doorsill at last, despite his quiet pace, 
 and entered the kitchen with as brave a front as 
 he could muster. He was beginning to have 
 his doubts. 
 
 It was baking day; his Aunt Abby was just 
 about to try a card of gingerbread with a wisp. 
 "Don t make a draught, Edmund !" cried the 
 good lady. 
 
 "I think it will taste very nice," commented 
 Edmund. Innocency and bravado mixed but 
 not mingled streaked his cheek with white 
 and red. 
 
 Aunt Abby, glancing over her shoulder, caught 
 sight of his face, and forgetful of her gingerbread, 
 turned upon him. 
 
 "What have you been up to, Edmund; you 
 have been into some mischief ! I know you." 
 
 "I think gingerbread is ever so much nicer 
 than layer cake for a party," he said, sighing. 
 "I don t like layer cake. Layer cake makes me 
 sick to my stomach." 
 
 "Who is going to have a party?" exclaimed 
 Aunt Abby. She had never been sure of what 
 
130 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 was happening since the day that Edmund came 
 to town. 
 
 "I am going to have a party a surprise 
 party. I have invited them." 
 
 "You?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 She dropped into a chair, then rallied sharply, 
 brought to by the thought of Tom, Dick, and 
 Harry. 
 
 "Whom have you invited?" she questioned 
 anxiously. 
 
 "All the bloods," said her nephew solidly. 
 
 Within five minutes, Eunice, Jerusha, Mary, 
 Annie all the womenfolk were in the kitchen 
 beating eggs, greasing tins, creaming butter. No 
 family in the county stood higher socially than 
 Judge Stedman s. The party was upon them; 
 there was no help for it. For the honor of the 
 family, the party should be received and enter 
 tained befitting Stedman traditions. 
 
 If Edmund had been a little bird listening to 
 a sermon by Saint Francis he could not have been 
 more sweetly silent and attentive during the rest 
 of the forenoon. Only once did he offer to cheep. 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 131 
 
 When Aunt Eunice was searching in the preserve 
 closet for a particular bottle of raspberry vinegar, 
 his little face, all anxiety, peered through the 
 dusk of the closet into the ray of the tallow dip. 
 
 " Don t you think that we might give the par 
 son a little Barbadoes?" he questioned earnestly. 
 " The captain always gives him a little Barbadoes." 
 
 By five o clock the most extensive, elaborate, 
 and merry lawn party in town history was 
 under way in Deacon Stedman s orchard, and 
 Edmund, forgotten and overlooked by his elders, 
 flitted to and fro, gay as a bird, glad as the dawn, 
 instant in season and out of season, wild with 
 pride and glee ; handing Lady Louisa a cate 
 and cousin Lucrece a raspberry vinegar. Ah, 
 what a party he was giving ! 
 
 "Bent almost double, 
 
 Deaf as a witch, 
 Gout her chief trouble 
 Just as if rich. 
 
 Greeting her next of kin s 
 
 Nephew or niece, - 
 Foolish old, prating old 
 
 Cousin Lucrece!" 
 
132 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 In the horse sheds behind the meetinghouse, 
 he told the fellows about it afterwards. "That 
 party was my own concern ," he explained grandly. 
 
 " When are you going to give another?" 
 inquired Hallet Junior, who, like poor Josh, was 
 not elected as one of the "bloods" on the first 
 count, and was looking forward to a possible sec 
 ond chance. 
 
 "Can t just tell whether I will give another," 
 said Edmund. "Next week I am going to take 
 the deacon with me to Hartford to visit my 
 grandfather. My Grandfather Stedman has a 
 lot of money. He owns a bankbook. I have 
 seen it." 
 
 "Are you going to bring us anything?" in 
 quired Legs Porter. A topless opinion of Ed 
 mund s munificence was beginning to bedizen all 
 minds with dreams of gain. 
 
 "Oh, I shall bring all of you presents," replied 
 Edmund. 
 
 "Me too?" questioned Little George. "What 
 will you bring me?" 
 
 "How would you like a gun?" inquired the 
 clique of speculators in castles in Spain. 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 133 
 
 "0-h!" -George gasped in his delight. 
 
 "Bring me a pony, Stedman ! that s a good 
 fellow," cried Stevens above the babel of com 
 missions for guns. 
 
 "I think I d better make a note of it," com 
 mented Edmund and, untangling an inch-long 
 lead pencil bit from his pocket, he recorded Ste 
 vens s name on a scrap of the Aurora that he had 
 cut to serve as a notebook. 
 
 Edmund did truly go to Hartford. You see, 
 Deacon Stedman was called to Hartford on busi 
 ness and decided to take the boy to give him a 
 change and holiday, and to see his grandfather 
 and his cousin Griffin. But from the minute 
 Edmund climbed into the stage wagon in front of 
 the old Cross Keys Tavern on the Green, till the 
 minute he climbed down from it again, at his 
 homecoming, he did not once think of George 
 Brigden or of presents. It makes a difference 
 whether you are behind a horse shed with your 
 friends, or alone in a strange world with a judge 
 before whom obsequious strangers give place. 
 Edmund sat still as a toad all eyes and ears. 
 The journey, the baiting, the arrival, seemed a 
 
i 3 4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 thousandfold more wonderful now that he was 
 older and unwearied than it had seemed when he 
 was five. The noises fascinated him. At his 
 grandfather s house, he lay awake half the night, 
 barkening to an occasional dray as it jolted over 
 the cobblestones. He could have stood still 
 forever, it seemed to him, staring down River 
 Street at the ships that went and came. The 
 world seemed very large and he very small, and 
 he was content to keep his hand in his grand 
 father s hand, and hasten along, with short, 
 vehemently quick steps keeping abreast of the 
 old gentleman s strides. Diagonally across the 
 street from his grandfather s house was the house 
 in which he had been born, and in which his cousin 
 Griffin lived. 
 
 "Look into Edmund s eyes, Grif," said the 
 old gentleman to the lad. "Edmund is like his 
 father, your uncle, the same guileless, steadfast 
 front." 
 
 Griffin looked into his little kinsman s eyes and 
 met his own eyes mirrored in their blue ; and 
 he laughed and took Edmund s hand in timid 
 young cousinliness. But Edmund was more of 
 
FLORIZEL ON HIS TRAVELS 135 
 
 a talker. "Do you love it out-of-doors?" he 
 asked. "And do you like the White Cat? I 
 do. When I grow up, I am going to write - 
 just like my mother. And I am going to be a 
 gentleman. What are you going to do?" 
 
 Griffin shook his head ; he could not tell. His 
 eyes were not shadowed with the haze of an un 
 toward destiny! yet down the hillside of years 
 not greatly distant, when the gardens of New 
 England should give their loveliest garlands to 
 the red scythe of war, a sky as blue and brave as 
 his blue eyes is bending down in pity of one daunt 
 less flower that will never lift itself again. 
 
 My own father was at headquarters when the 
 rumor overtook him that his colonel, Griffin 
 Stedman, was shot to the heart. He sprang to 
 his horse and spurred to the rear, with the sharp 
 shooter s bullets whistling across his gauntleted 
 wrists. Stretched out on a couch in his tent he 
 found his friend, twisting his fierce yellow mus 
 taches and pulling them straight. His brows 
 were drawn in mortal anguish. He did not 
 moan or toss. My father sat by his pillow and 
 watched. It was the Sunday before Petersburg. 
 
i 3 6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 The tidings had been telegraphed to Washington 
 and an order making the colonel a general was 
 speeding back over the wires. But another 
 messenger came apace, bearing to the brave, the 
 accomplished Griffin Stedman a furlough without 
 limit. 
 
 No : Edmund did not once think of Norwich, or 
 of his impressive promises ; not until he came 
 into sight of the Green and descried all the boys 
 in the town forgathered there in expectation of 
 him and his presents did he recall his notebook. 
 Parched with shame, loose-jointed with mortifi 
 cation, downcast, dispirited, loath, footing his 
 way as slowly as a nonagenarian, the returning 
 traveler crawled from the stage to the ground. 
 
 " Where s my gun? " cried the crowd. " Where s 
 my pony? " 
 
 Edmund shook his head. He felt that he was 
 less than the littlest frog in the pool. 
 
 But his shame burned its lesson into his soul. 
 Never again did he make a promise that he did 
 not keep. As a man, men knew that his word was 
 his life ; they could depend upon whatever went 
 out of his mouth ; they could count on him. 
 
XI 
 
 AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO! 
 
 ALL the boys at Deacon Stedman s looked 
 forward to the midsummer holidays. It was their 
 chief topic of talk. 
 
 Mr. Robert Aikman came to live in the house 
 hold at the closing of the school year. When 
 the reason for his coming was made known, the 
 boys wilted. He was to open a summer school in 
 the brick schoolhouse just north of Sentry Hill, 
 and so soon as the boys finished the regular school 
 year on the Green, the deacon was planning to 
 hand them over for the summer to Mr. Aikman. 
 
 Oh, brazen sky ! Oh, heaven without ears ! 
 
 "The children seem to have the spring fever 
 early this season, * remarked Aunt Abby and 
 fetched from the closet the jug of brimstone 
 and treacle. That brimstone-laden treacle ! The 
 
138 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 boys usually pranced after taking it to prove 
 that their health was reestablished and that 
 a second dose was superfluous ! They walked 
 past Aunt Abby with a sprightliness that made 
 the cure-all famed. Their gait was elasticity 
 itself; they bolted whatever food was set before 
 them. They bowsed into the corn-meal mush 
 audibly. 
 
 But for once the treacle seemed to have lost 
 its savor. Just as poor Smike and the urchins 
 of Dotheboys Hall lined up each morning and met 
 the spoon, so Edmund and little Charlie, Hunt 
 and Turville Adams, and the Lasaga brothers 
 lined up for double doses. Yet not even double 
 doses of the brimstone appeared to strike in. 
 
 Edmund grew peaked; he felt languid and 
 peevish. When the morning came that he must 
 set out for Sentry Hill schoolhouse and Mr. 
 Aikman, he moved as if he had the rickets. He 
 stubbed along in the middle of the highroad, with 
 one foot trailing behind him. When he dragged 
 his foot forward, the toe scraped a groove in the 
 dust. He gave vent to a funny little noise, 
 something between a snort and a grunt, with 
 
AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO! 139 
 
 the regularity of a hiccough. He was oblivious 
 of all passers. He was dead to the world and to 
 the future. 
 
 When he entered the schoolhouse, he went 
 stubbing across the room to his seat. He re 
 sented having to study in summer, and his feel 
 ings infected his feet. His knees gave way; 
 his chest fell in, and his shoulders stuck out. 
 Even his lower lip hung down as if it still were 
 confronted with the treacle spoon. The scholars 
 were ready to laugh at the sight of him. The 
 boys were dead set against going to school ; they 
 itched to tickle the nose of a trout with a nice 
 writhing worm; mutiny was written in their 
 books. 
 
 "Edmund Stedman," cried Mr. Aikman, "can t 
 you walk properly !" 
 
 Edmund, brought to self-consciousness by sud 
 denly finding himself an object of amusement, 
 came to a blank stop. 
 
 "Lift your feet!" commanded Mr. Aikman. 
 
 Edmund lifted one foot with as much diligence 
 as if he were extricating it from a quagmire; 
 he set it down with precision and squareness. 
 
i 4 o A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Then removing his attention from his foot, he 
 glanced up at Mr. Aikman for approval. 
 
 "Walk naturally !" cried Mr. Aikman in wrath. 
 
 "Ain t I walking naturally?" asked Edmund, 
 in genuine surprise. 
 
 The school burst into laughter. 
 
 "Walk across the room the way you always 
 walk, or take a feruling," returned Mr. Aikman. 
 
 Edmund did not move. 
 
 Mr. Aikman picked up his ferule. "Are you 
 going to start?" 
 
 "I ve forgotten how I walk," spoke up Ed 
 mund, in sheer perplexity. 
 
 The big boys laughed outright. 
 
 "I ll give you something to help you remember ! " 
 cried Mr. Aikman. He thrust back his chair 
 against the wood stove, and hurled his ferule at 
 Edmund s head. 
 
 Everybody knew what that meant. 
 
 "You lick that boy, and you ll have me to 
 lick," muttered Dave Stevens, a raw-boned un 
 caring youth. 
 
 "What s that, Stevens?" said Mr. Aikman 
 sharply. 
 
AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO! 141 
 
 Stevens was silent. 
 
 "Stevens knows when to close his shutters," 
 whispered Joe Case, a giant of a fellow. 
 
 "I ll give you ten demerits, Stevens," said Mr. 
 Aikman ; "and you too, Case." 
 
 Stevens held out his hand. "Thanks." 
 
 The girls tittered nervously. 
 
 Mr. Aikman discreetly overlooked Stevens s 
 offer to take whatever was coming his way. 
 His face was swollen with anger. Although a 
 good man, he was brutal. He was given to hu 
 miliating his pupils and had a habit of hurling 
 his ferule at an offender, and expecting the 
 offender to fetch the ferule to him and take the 
 licking. 
 
 When Edmund saw the ferule coming, he took 
 a step alert and natural enough to satisfy the 
 most exacting eye. The ferule struck the black 
 board and fell with a clatter. 
 
 It was Mr. Aikman 7 s way of throwing down 
 the glove. Edmund accepted the challenge. 
 Without waiting to be told, he picked up the 
 ferule and walked to Mr. Aikman. He was white 
 and pulsing with excitement and tensity of feel- 
 
142 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 ing. His slim little wrists hung from his out 
 grown coat as blue- veined and delicate as a girl s. 
 His hands were small and elegant, but one of 
 them was fastened on the old ferule with the 
 grip of a man. He extended the ferule to Mr. 
 Aikman without quailing. 
 
 Now Edmund was a little lad. He was slen 
 der. He walked among his mates like a cock- 
 robin among roosters. His slight stature was 
 his daily shame, a shame which he faced in 
 his heart and to which he bid defiance. More 
 than all, he was helpless ; he had no father 
 no one to stand between him and the world. Mr. 
 Aikman was a grown man. He was master of 
 the situation by reason of brute force, years, and 
 the crowning endowment of authority. If he 
 had seized Edmund s ready palm and levied his 
 blows upon it, as he would have done in the case 
 of any of the other boys, Edmund would have 
 taken his punishment without rebelling. But 
 no, the schoolmaster was bent on breaking his 
 spirit, on humiliating him, on making him cry 
 with mortification. He grasped him by his 
 collar and laid him across his knee. And all 
 
AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO! 143 
 
 the girls looking on ! It was too much to be 
 borne. 
 
 In his anger and haste, the schoolmaster did 
 not observe that his chair did not stand squarely 
 on the platform, that when he had shoved it 
 backwards, one leg had caught against the foot 
 of the stove. Edmund espied it and set the ball 
 of his foot firmly against the stove. Mr. Aikman 
 raised his ferule in the air. Edmund gave a 
 push with all his might against the stove. Over 
 went Mr. Aikman s chair; over went Mr. Aik 
 man on the top of his chair ; over went Edmund 
 on top of Mr. Aikman. 
 
 Pride was Mr. Aikman s ruling passion as well 
 as Edmund s, and it was strong in death. In his 
 downfall, he had no thought of saving himself. 
 He held on to his head with both hands. He 
 did not wish to lose his wig before the young 
 ladies ! Mirth and consternation demoralized 
 the school. Robert Aikman w r as only an instant 
 in getting on his feet, but in that instant Edmund 
 sprang through the doorway, and taking the 
 stone steps at a leap, flew up the road for dear 
 life. 
 
144 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 What should Mr. Aikman do? Run like a 
 woman for Edmund, or look after his school? 
 He wisely decided to bring back order into the 
 fold, and to let the black sheep go for the present. 
 Edmund and he lived under the same roof; 
 he had him as surely as if he had him in his hand. 
 
 To tell the truth, Edmund was prepared for 
 any fate. He was not certain that his uncle would 
 not kill him when he learned of the disturbance. 
 Mr. Aikman was held in sincere esteem in the 
 Stedman household. Every one thought well of 
 him and spoke well of him, excepting Jerusha 
 who did not appear to think of anybody, and 
 seldom addressed the school-teacher. So Edmund 
 went to Jerusha s room with the unstudied inten 
 tion of making his case strong with her, but when 
 he looked into the understanding serenity of her 
 gaze, he said bluntly, "Cousin Jerusha, I m the 
 dickens." He hung around a minute and finally 
 confessed, "Jerusha, you know that fellow Aik 
 man ; well, I shouldn t be surprised if he took a 
 scunner at me, some time. 
 
 But that fellow Aikman said nothing when he 
 returned to dinner. Manifestly, he had sched- 
 
AH, THE IMMORTAL PASSADO! 145 
 
 uled the storm for the next evening, when there 
 would be time for the accessories. Meanwhile 
 Edmund made up his mind to go back to school 
 and brave the lion in the den. He could not 
 stay home, and he was too conscience-oppressed 
 to play truant. 
 
XII 
 
 OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 
 
 BUT the school affair was not ended. Accord 
 ing to the rumor that came from Fuller s store, 
 it had only just begun. 
 
 It transpired that after Edmund fled from 
 school, Mr. Aikman returned to the classroom 
 and dismissed Joe Case and David Stevens for 
 the remainder of the day. But at the close of the 
 afternoon, he announced to the scholars that he 
 would give Joe and Dave a feruling at the outset 
 of the next morning s session. This announce 
 ment was reported in Fuller s store in the presence 
 of Joe Case, whereupon Case declared that he 
 Tvould pull off Mr. Aikman s wig. Joe Case was 
 more than Mr. Aikman s match in brawn and 
 height, but Mr. Aikman was as active as a hornet. 
 Mild-eyed Mr. Fuller said, "No, no, Joe, better 
 
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 147 
 
 be a good lad," but the Indian hunter who some 
 times brought flowers and herbs to Jerusha 
 pricked Joe on, not only to pull off the wig but 
 to keep it as a memento. Levi Wattles wagered 
 ten to one on Joe Case, and Particular Perkins 
 wagered ten to one on Mr. Aikman ; but when the 
 sexton offered to hold the stakes, both bettors 
 waxed cautious, and bet over again without 
 stipulating any amount. 
 
 The younger set heard the talk in the store, and 
 forthwith ran to the Stedman Manor to forewarn 
 Mr. Aikman. Because Edmund was the primal 
 cause of the trouble, no one dared to tell the 
 deacon, or Aunt Abby, or Aunt Eunice; Annie 
 confided in Miss Moffit, the mantua-maker, and 
 at dinner Miss Moffit took her place beside the 
 schoolmaster as if she were attending his obse 
 quies. But Miss Moffit s supreme betrayal of 
 apprehension was when passing him the butter, 
 she shook with fear, her face turned white, 
 she passed the dish with the air of one who is 
 handing her best friend a sod to cover his coffin. 
 The little girls were stark with terror. They fol 
 lowed Mr. Aikman with looks that implored 
 
148 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 him to stay away from school. Every hour he 
 appeared more diminutive in their eyes, and as 
 he lost in size, he gained in support. 
 
 But Mr. Aikman, undaunted, held to his pur 
 pose. Armed with a rawhide, he strode to school 
 at the usual hour. The scholars had already 
 gathered. 
 
 Mr. Aikman took his stand in the middle of the 
 room. He called first for Dave Stevens. Dave, 
 affecting the booby, crawled forward, and for the 
 amusement of the school, burst forth into such 
 blubberings when the ferule stung his palm that 
 the scholars laughed aloud. The laugh was on 
 Mr. Aikman. 
 
 After Dave, wiping his nose with his sleeve, and 
 digging his fists into his eyes, had taken his seat, 
 Mr. Aikman called for Joe Case, and Case, com 
 ing forward, made a snatch at the schoolmaster s 
 wig. But Mr. Aikman was too quick for him; 
 springing to the top of his desk, he brought the 
 rawhide around Joe s neck and shoulders. So 
 began one of the biggest fights ever known in 
 Norwich Town. 
 
 "Get him by the leg!" cried little Stedman, 
 
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 149 
 
 in a ferment of excitement to have the under-dog 
 seize his one chance. 
 
 Joe grabbed the teacher by the leg; he tried 
 to wrench him off his feet. Again and again, 
 with his head laid against Mr. Aikman s knee for 
 protection, he sprang at the rawhide, but Mr. 
 Aikman was too spry. At last Case snatched 
 up the poker and tried to fell his opponent with 
 it, the rawhide curling around him at every turn. 
 
 Either man might have taken the other s life 
 in that moment; Case was blindly desperate; 
 Mr. Aikman was infuriated, but cool. 
 
 The girls ran down the stone stairway for help, 
 and having reached the street, flew back again 
 to see if the fighters were still living. They 
 fluttered up and down like frightened doves. The 
 flock of them laid hold of George Brigdon who 
 was passing on the Out-Along-Road, but George 
 feared to enter the school and stood at the door, 
 ready to run if the field of battle shifted towards 
 him. 
 
 Mr. Aikman subdued Joe at last. Joe, with 
 his face and neck looking like a piece of red- 
 barred calico, admitted that he was beaten; 
 
1 50 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and Mr. Aikman expelled him at once and for 
 ever from the school. He expelled Dave Stevens, 
 also. 
 
 Would you like to hear what became of Dave 
 Stevens? He could have killed Mr. Aikman 
 that day of the fight, if he had chosen. He was 
 a human bulldog, he never let go, when he 
 once laid hold. He was a brave fellow nothing 
 could make him cower. He was not of a spirit 
 that can set itself to petty tasks. Not long after 
 his trouble with Mr. Aikman, he hired himself 
 out to Mr. Wilcox in the Scotland Road, and 
 was told to clear a field of stone. He cleared the 
 space by flinging the stones into the adjoining 
 lot; then off he went, and did not return. He 
 disappeared from Norwich, and was not heard of 
 till the John Brown Raid at Harper s Ferry. 
 If you wish to read about Dave himself, read 
 the ballad How Old Brown Took Harper s Ferry, 
 written by Edmund nearly a score of years 
 later, when he was no less stirred by the fight 
 forerunning the Civil War than he was stirred 
 that summer morning at the outposts of his 
 youth. 
 
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 151 
 
 " Twas the sixteenth of October, on the evening of 
 a Sunday ; 
 
 This good work , declared the Captain, shall be on 
 a holy night ! 
 
 It was on a Sunday evening, and before the noon of 
 Monday, 
 
 With two sons and Captain Stevens, fifteen pri 
 vates black and white, 
 Captain Brown, 
 Osawatomie Brown, 
 
 Marched across the bridged Potomac, and knocked 
 the sentry down." 
 
 But the authorities soon had the Martinsburg 
 Sharpshooters, the Charlestown Volunteers, the 
 Shepherdstown and Winchester Militia, and the 
 Government Marines marching upon Stevens 
 and his captain, while the Virginia gentry gath 
 ered to the baying. They stabbed old Brown 
 three times to make sure, they were so in fear 
 that he might trick them. Dave was literally 
 shot to pieces yet he breathed. It seemed as 
 if it was not in him to die. The authorities 
 nursed his brave, shot-riddled carcass back to life 
 in order that he might be hanged and know it. 
 And they hanged him on a tree like men of 
 
152 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Golgotha. After the hanging, the parson went 
 with Dave s father to Washington. 
 
 The parson was a person of authority and 
 presence, and Dave s father needed influence to 
 help him in his pleading with the law for the 
 body which he wished to bring back to the old 
 burying ground. So Dave s father came home 
 with his little son ; for now that Dave s hard life 
 was over, Dave was again a little lad to the fond, 
 overtried, broken-hearted father, he was his 
 helpless son, his dearly-born, his onetime hope, 
 who must be swathed and carried, and who 
 would sleep once more as in a cradle and never 
 cause him grief. 
 
 But all this history may seem gloomy; you 
 may be wondering what punishment was at 
 hand for little Edmund when his guardian learned 
 of the commotion that he had aroused. 
 
 Not a word was said to Edmund until the sun 
 down after the fight, when Deacon Stedman sent 
 for him to come to his study. Shrewd, bluff 
 Doctor Butler, the family physician whom Ed 
 mund had passed when he went stubbing to school, 
 was just stepping into his chaise as Edmund 
 
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 153 
 
 crossed the hallway. Edmund could see that 
 Doctor Butler had been talking about him. 
 
 "Edmund/ said the deacon, "I have been 
 advised and now that my attention is called 
 to the matter, my judgment commends the sug 
 gestion that you let your lessons go until 
 autumn, and take the run of the fields." He 
 patted Edmund s head. 
 
 Edmund braced himself. The supper bell was 
 ringing. He heard Mr. Aikman s step. In an 
 other moment all would be over. The storm 
 would break. 
 
 Edmund and the schoolmaster sat opposite 
 each other at table. When they took their places, 
 Mr. Aikman eyed Edmund. Edmund eyed him 
 back intrepidly. Mr. Aikman raised his teacup ; 
 Edmund, gulping, raised his mug. A suspicion 
 of a smile unsteadied Mr. Aikman s lip; he 
 accorded Edmund a silent, but not unfriendly nod. 
 
 Edmund s spirits leapt with joy. He shot 
 back at Mr. Aikman a smile of illimitable brother- 
 liness. Mr. Aikman had not taken a scunner 
 at him after all ! The surety of it, and the swift 
 remembrance of the promised vacation which 
 
154 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 until that instant had seemed a fortune forerun 
 ning a downfall, went to his head. He could 
 not eat his supper. Not the self-confident stare 
 of the treacle and brimstone jug on the dresser 
 could make him do it. He was all thanksgiving. 
 So soon as he was dismissed from table, he stole 
 out of doors into the still air. He gazed unbe 
 lievingly out upon the night-damp that arched 
 the Lathrops lowlands in a canopy of mist. Then 
 he shinned the apple tree within touch of the 
 bedchamber where Charlie and the Adams boys 
 would soon be sleeping. He settled himself. 
 The wisteria that lay limp and light along the 
 boughs was not more at home than he. He was 
 attempting to take in the joys of this mortal life. 
 
 Presently the inner gate stirred. Jerusha was 
 going to Sunday-school teachers meeting with 
 Mr. Aikman. They were coming through the 
 garden. Edmund gazed broodingly down 
 through the gloaming, incurious as a star. Clove 
 pinks spread under him, girdled in green. Mar 
 joram climbed over into the path. 
 
 In the grape-wreathed eaves a house dove 
 murmured. The perfumes from the flowers as- 
 
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN 155 
 
 cended as if the flowers themselves were lifted 
 to his freckled nose. Such a quiet little lad as he 
 was, when he was quiet. He sniffed the keen 
 scent of the cedar as the new gate swung for the 
 first time on the night air. Dreamily following 
 Mr. Aikman and Jerusha with eyes as deep as a 
 sloe s, he thought of a host of things between 
 whiles, of the trough that he was planning 
 to make into an aquarium of the toad that he 
 was taming in the hope of presenting it as a gift 
 to his aunt. Jerusha had not appeared to favor 
 Mr. Aikman; when she was not haughty with 
 him, she mocked him to his face by her indif 
 ference. Now they walked decorously, Jerusha 
 and her teacher, he in Sunday black, she in a 
 green silk that fell leaflike from her full-blown 
 shoulders. The marjoram held its breath, fear 
 ful of the schoolmaster s boot; and when only 
 Jerusha s shawl brushed its leaves, it filled the 
 dusk with the spicy fragrance of its relief. Mr. 
 Aikman had come within the shadow of the 
 apple boughs and had halted. It was Edmund 
 now that held his breath. Mr. Aikman and 
 Jerusha stood, circled around with roses, 
 
156 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Jerusha the fairest and the palest. And Mr. 
 Aikman gathered her like any rose, and, lifting 
 her face in his hands, gazed deep into it, himself 
 bending until his lips met hers. 
 
 The utter sweetness of the silence, the unfathom 
 able tenderness of Mr. Aikman s look, flooded 
 Edmund s soul. Little gentleman in heart, he 
 closed his eyes. He was choked with desire and 
 blinded by an ethereal sadness, a sense of the 
 unguessed bliss that waited in the world. He, 
 too, could love ; he knew that he could if 
 only Jerusha would let him love her the way that 
 Mr. Aikman loved her. If only he had some one 
 of his own to guard and cherish some one - 
 or a little bird ! He would love to have a little 
 bird. 
 
 After a long time, he opened his eyes. Jerusha 
 and the schoolmaster were gone. Gone, too, 
 was the new moon, fallen like a petal from the 
 sky ! And at his feet, as he slipped to the path, 
 lay a ring of petals that had fallen from a willess 
 rose. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE WANDER SUMMER 
 
 EDMUND was out of doors before dawn in his 
 zeal to begin his vacation. He had not realized 
 how greatly he was counting upon it until Mr. 
 Aikman s arrival almost crossed it from the calen 
 dar and he had been left with innumerable enter 
 prises unfulfilled at the tips of his fingers. 
 
 He ran up and around the Green, he had so 
 much to do, and then he walked ; and last of all 
 he lay down on The Doorstep wall in the broad 
 sun as lazy as a lizard. He escorted his mates to 
 the schoolhouse door, and at the close of school 
 was waiting to receive them into freedom. To 
 crown the hour, he was given a knife. He carried 
 it open and to the fore, ready for every purpose. 
 He cut Miss Moffit s baste with it; broke the 
 seals on available letters; picked his small white 
 teeth. He picked them like a pirate. He bade 
 
158 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the boys sit down and look at him play Mumble- 
 the-peg. Hunt Adams, with brown bare arms 
 clasped around brown bare knees, watched the 
 knife with covetous eyes. Edmund cast it twice 
 - three times. It struck Hunt s knee. Horrors ! 
 It slid into the flesh, amid the joint, as easily as 
 into mire. Edmund laid hold of it mightily; 
 the blade snapped short. 
 
 "Now see what youVe done, Hunt!" cried 
 the boys, when they found their tongues, "stick 
 ing your knee into everything ! YouVe broken 
 Ned s new knife!" 
 
 Doctor Butler dragged the blade out with 
 tweezers, but Edmund had the sympathy of them 
 all. He was the hero. His knife had done it. 
 Besides, he was full of business. He was on the 
 road before the sun and was going all day long, 
 yet his plans still kept ahead of him. Again he 
 had only a bladeless knife, but his interests grew 
 with the days. 
 
 Standing tiptoe at the window of Lathrop s 
 tavern, he peered in at the partners "making 
 graces." His fingers tapped on the sill in rhythm 
 with the girls feet ; his breath halted for Tom the 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 159 
 
 Fiddler each time that that pathetic comedian 
 paused with bow uplifted. A dancing party on 
 a midsummer night was a fine thing. But in 
 winter, ah, winter after all was the season for 
 dancing ! Once in the winter he had stolen out 
 of bed and scurried to the tavern to see the fun, 
 and none of the Stedman household was the wiser. 
 His Captain Marryat adventure had taught him 
 how easy a thing it is to run away provided 
 you have a place to run to. He did not dream 
 any more of running away to his mother. Rumors 
 that she was journeying hither and yon, and that 
 she was so successful, so admired, made him falter 
 and seem strange. No, he did not cheat himself 
 with dreams of her. His mother was for older 
 playmates ; he understood the household s whis 
 pers. But whenever he was taken by an inclina 
 tion to cool his bare toes in the starry dew, or 
 spy for moths among the moon-white flowers, he 
 waited till his bedfellows were sleeping, and then 
 let himself down from the window. And when 
 ever he felt as if he would like a little frolic, out 
 he stepped as airily as Peter Pan ! The girls 
 petted Edmund, and none of the big boys told on 
 
160 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 him when his luminous soft eyes shone through 
 the gloom at them, hours after curfew s calling, 
 or his joyous hand sprang to curb a restive horse. 
 He was the village sprite. When Edmund went 
 to bed after eating in silence his bowl of mush and 
 apple sauce, no one tucked the coverlet safe around 
 him; no one kissed him good night and chided 
 fondly, "Now not another word, my Dearheart; 
 shut your eyes fast and go to sleep !" Little boys 
 who have no mother must be excused for tripping 
 abroad with the fairies. 
 
 But that night of the dancing party in winter was 
 the best fun. Sleighs in a covey flew over the 
 Yantic. They took the bridge with a whir; ha, 
 ha, the tollman was too slow ! Old Faithful did 
 not get a ninepence from a single couple of them ! 
 On a peal of bells and a roundelay of song, the 
 couples dashed into the tavern yard, and chat 
 tering and chaffing, fluttered down into the snow. 
 And out from the tavern stepped Goodman Lath- 
 rop, ruddy as a Baldwin apple ! The old hearth 
 blazed as if gone mad; the kettles steamed as if 
 to burst themselves and with the cream and 
 clabber freezing in the dairy at the Stedmans. 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 161 
 
 Tom the Fiddler played Money Musk to close; 
 then in to supper, two by two, the young folk 
 marched, with mine host Lathrop leading. The 
 joy of youth was in them; they leaned against 
 the walls with laughter. Edmund, standing in 
 the dark and dearth, clapped his hands and cried 
 "Bravo ! Bravo !" when Jim kissed Susan. But 
 when the supper was done and the sleighs started 
 forth, it would have been inexplicable to any old 
 Dryasdust why the couples dropped so far aloof. 
 But Edmund was no dullard. Each couple was 
 in love, of course just as Jerusha and Mr. 
 Aikman were in love, and just as brawny Tom 
 loved Mary. 
 
 And no sooner were the buffalo robes tucked in 
 than he was beamingly solicitous to have the 
 young folk well away on the turnpike and happy. 
 
 Listening to the melodies in the tavern, he 
 learned them by ear, and soon could play them 
 on Tom Harland s jew s-harp. With Tom and 
 Ed Harland and Harry Bond, he sat on the ledge 
 under the full moon and the Harland elm, and 
 played Money Musk as merrily as the fiddler. 
 He could play any one of the tavern tunes, if 
 
162 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 you gave him time to feel around for it a little. 
 In the sunlight, too, the quartet sat there and 
 learned delicacy of touch and patience of en 
 deavor, making miniature bladders out of the 
 leaves of a starveling wan plant that by crouch 
 ing close to the earth held its own on the windy 
 brow of Sentry Hill. To-day that same timid 
 leek the selfsame root grows on the Har- 
 land rocks. It lives generation in and generation 
 out, while men blow by like leaves. 
 
 In a pother of patriotism, Edmund embraced 
 the example set by the older boys, and marching 
 belligerently upon Harriet and Lizzie Arnold s 
 door, flung clods, mud, stones, at it. Harriet 
 and Lizzie Arnold were the helpless, undefended 
 cousins of Benedict Arnold, and they lived out 
 their days in a sorry cottage (our country con 
 fiscated the Arnold property because Benedict 
 Arnold betrayed us to the king) at the bend in 
 the Hartford turnpike, north from Dodo Perkins s 
 shop, where to-day the good priest Father Mc- 
 Cann lives and, tending his parish as if it were a 
 garden, makes a flower plot of Edmund s base 
 of supplies, the gravel bank. The Arnold 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 163 
 
 sisters did not marry none would marry the 
 gentle creatures ; and when they died, the fathers 
 of the boys who persecuted them buried them in 
 nameless graves in the old burying-ground. And 
 there they lie, somewhere, innocent, ostra 
 cized Gentility condemned to death while still 
 alive, because of their kinsman s treachery. 
 Whether Benedict Arnold knew or not that his 
 far relations suffered for his shame, he sent them 
 from England a monthly stipend so long as they 
 lived. 
 
 Edmund, with his mates, meandered among 
 the pumpkins in a certain cornfield on hills to the 
 southward of Stedman Manor, culling here an 
 ear and there an ear. Afterwards, he and they 
 built a fire behind his uncle s orchard wall and 
 gnawed their spoils. They called themselves 
 buccaneers and, by their own stories of the havoc 
 they wrought, the town had cause to blench with 
 fear. They knew well enough that they were 
 thieves, and they ran as if the whole police force, 
 or at least the parson, were after them when they 
 mistook the rustling of a field mouse for the foot 
 fall of the Owner. 
 
164 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 The boys were chagrined indeed when they 
 learned by chance that the vague Owner against 
 whom they pretended that they were armed to 
 the teeth was Dan Oilman s Aunt Lathrop, a 
 kindly soul, who would have cooked them her full 
 field if she had guessed their emptiness. They 
 never prigged the Lathrop corn again; they 
 prigged the deacon s. 
 
 But the hours between meals were a Sabbath 
 long, and it is to be remembered that even the 
 disciples gathered maize on the Sabbath when 
 they were ahungered. Edmund was ahungered 
 all that summer. But at the home table, when 
 ever he cleared his plate and looked at his uncle 
 in a way that invited a second helping, one of his 
 aunts was bound to exclaim, "I declare, James, 
 Edmund must have something the matter with 
 him ; his appetite is abnormal !" 
 
 Edmund caught six darling trout in Bobbin 
 Mill Brook, which he christened My Brook be 
 cause he loved it, trout large enough to fry ! 
 Oh, the glory of it to see them sizzling each 
 moment crisper and more brown in a tin cover over 
 the live coals of his orchard fire ! He treated like 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 165 
 
 a lord and dished up his petty fingerlings with as 
 much circumstance as if they were whales. He 
 crowded an entire fish on each of his six mates, 
 and in his pride swallowed such gulps of air that 
 wind-filled and ecstatic, he watched them eat, 
 and himself felt no lack. 
 
 The year before, in the brook that runs to the 
 river, the brook that is the Bury ing-ground 
 Brook and the Bobbin Mill Brook joining hands, 
 he had come upon a tremendous fish, fat, 
 still, and sleepy. With one snatch he clutched 
 it, and over the meadows was flying with it, done 
 up in his pinafore as a present to his aunts. He 
 was always taking presents to somebody. He 
 was in raptures. Only to think of catching so 
 huge a fish with his hands ! But his aunts, the 
 worldly-wise ones, turned away. "A sucker!" 
 was all they said. Edmund, who had entered 
 the kitchen winged, slunk off to bury out of 
 sight the trophy that disgraced him. He did 
 not know what a sucker was; he did not guess 
 till then that there were suckers in the world. 
 He had never been young before, and until one 
 has learned either by experience or hearsay, no 
 
i66 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 one knows everything especially in regard to 
 suckers. 
 
 Nature herself became Edmund s school-teacher 
 that summer. He wore smooth the short cut 
 to the swimming hole in the river Yantic, a 
 lovely spot which any city older than Norwich 
 would cherish, and in the delight of swimming 
 forgot for the time the pains and shames of 
 encounters with suckers. The big boys shoved 
 him headlong and ducked him under, and soon 
 he was diving among lily pads and under them 
 as reliant as a loon. He made a raft and poled 
 it Bobbin Mill Brook was an uncaring, whirl 
 ing current six feet across when a rainfall freshened 
 it. He beguiled fisherman Goss to let him hold 
 the helm of the catboat Osprey, and his buoyant 
 heart rose at the lift of the surge. He rode the 
 three-year-old colt bareback. With his arms 
 strained from their sockets, he sat beside Mr. 
 Bela Peck and drove his span at a spanking 
 pace. 
 
 Mr. Peck s haw-haw ! awoke the hills. He 
 was a gentleman, large, powerful, tenacious, who 
 never felt the bit of ill-health. He drove his 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 167 
 
 own horses until he was past ninety and died at 
 ninety-six, untamed to the last by wasting sick 
 ness. The beautiful Peck library a library for 
 students was bequeathed to his town by his 
 daughter; and it is housed to-day in an aerie 
 as secluded as a cloister. 
 
 Like the rest of the boys too, now that Ed 
 mund was of an age to sit on the singers bench 
 in the organ gallery and be classed as one of " thim 
 young treble/ he carried to church as his contri 
 bution to the exercises a hollyhock bell in which 
 he had caught a bumblebee napping, and in the 
 middle of the long prayer he and his mates let 
 go the silken edges of the flowers, and out flew 
 the captives. Buzz, buzz, buzz ! How the 
 burly, bustling gold-knees stormed up and down, 
 now over the deacons bald pates and now under 
 the parson s nose ! Edmund was so taken up 
 watching the congregation that he forgot him 
 self and his part in the affray, and when one of 
 the buzzing oafs hied past his ear, he jumped so 
 suddenly to his feet that the other end of the 
 bench, already overweighted, since half the chor 
 isters were on their feet to see the fun, went down, 
 
i68 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 precipitating the fat, fair Miss Forty flat against 
 the shanks of the first tenor who was a bachelor 
 and he never thinking to assist her, but heaving 
 his arms aloft in his fear of having a lady on his 
 hands. 
 
 Edmund went to the Bean Hill Methodist 
 Meetinghouse to attend the mid-week conference 
 meeting whenever he could manage it. Bean 
 Hill held the captain s share of the beauties of the 
 county. It was a great lark to watch Harry 
 Bond now get the mitten and now the girl. He 
 himself asked Cynthia if he might "squire" her 
 home, and when he asked, she tucked him under 
 her arm and said to Tom Harland, his rival, 
 "You don t mind having Edmund along, do you, 
 Tom? He s such a pretty dear!" The girls 
 simply laughed at Edmund, he was so young and 
 sprightly. He would have enlarged the borders of 
 Cynthia s roguish black eye if only she had not 
 been a lady. He had a great respect for the Sex. 
 
 The boys who were intending to beau girls 
 home sat on the last bench in the vestry. During 
 prayer, they bowed their heads and, having sur 
 veyed the field, engaged in a hushed dispute over 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 169 
 
 the merits of their respective fair ones. Now 
 on a night when the verbal strife hung fire, owing 
 to the absence of the Sherman girls, Ed Harland 
 passed along the line for inspection an old pistol 
 that he had found in the loft of Dodo Perkins s 
 shop. Edmund was metal hot on the anvil at 
 the sight of a pistol. In his zeal to examine the 
 weapon, he let it slip, and crash, bang ! It struck 
 the floor it discharged. Ladies screamed and 
 fainted. They believed themselves shot. Even 
 when the bullet was found embedded in the 
 wall, Elder B. still fingered his waistcoat, he was 
 so sure that he was peppered. 
 
 The shooting-up, as the report of it reached 
 Deacon Stedman, was a ruffianly attack made 
 upon a God-fearing and peaceable public. Ed 
 mund was kept on bread and water for a week 
 and under lock and bolt. But time in his garden- 
 kirtled bed-chamber did not hang too heavily 
 on his hands. 
 
 "Harland!" he piped softly from the window 
 of his prison. 
 
 Harland shook his head and continued to walk 
 on the further side of the road. 
 
170 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Harland!" 
 
 Harland would neither hear nor see nor turn, but 
 came to a state of standstill, like a pickerel in a 
 pond. 
 
 " Harland, " Edmund called, "if you will bring 
 me a book, I will let you take my knife. 7 
 
 Harland blinked at the bait but did not bite. 
 "The one that Hunt broke?" he asked. 
 
 "New one brand new New York." 
 
 Harland crossed the road to the window. 
 Twenty minutes later* Edmund had his book. 
 He used the book as a hostage for two books. 
 When toward twilight he tired from reading, he 
 stood with his nose flattened against the pane. 
 He watched his toad in the garden-walk wait 
 sagely for its supper to come within reach of its 
 tongue. He watched 
 
 " a wondrous Argosy, 
 The Armada of the sky ! " 
 
 He watched Venus pouring the loveliness of 
 the afterlight into her cup. During a spell of 
 sharp unseasonable cold, he saw the young crea 
 tures shiver as they came homeward against the 
 east wind; and not so many years later, since 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 171 
 
 he was still a youth when he told tales to his 
 youngest son, he wrote : 
 
 " Which is the Wind that brings the rain? 
 
 The East- Wind, Arty ; and farmers know 
 That cows come shivering up the lane, 
 When the East begins to blow !" 
 
 He learned that a southeast storm is six hours 
 coming, six hours at its height, and six hours going 
 to the minute. 
 
 When he was let out of his prison, he felt ban 
 ished and estranged. The family treated him dis 
 tantly. On the street Miss Moffit hurried by him ; 
 she feared lest he might shoot. So he kept by him 
 self for awhile, and, for days together, tramped 
 to Greenville and watched the workmen laying 
 railroad ties. So well he watched them and so 
 observantly, that when he was grown, he directed 
 the laying of a stretch of the first section of the 
 first Pacific Railway. 
 
 As in the bygone summers, the boys sat among 
 the gravestones on the burying-ground slope, and 
 Edmund in the midst of them. But although he 
 continued to be the youngest as well as the 
 smallest, he was their leader when it came to 
 
172 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 tales of eye-witnessed encounters with ghosts, 
 in particular with General Jed s. He unnerved 
 his mates to a degree that the boldest durst not 
 pass the lane after dark. Poor little George B, 
 - George was always termed little, although he 
 was not so exceedingly short of stature, when 
 called upon to choose between being pursued to 
 bed by his father and having to face alone the 
 shadows cast by his tallow dip, preferred the 
 chastening which seemeth grievous to the com 
 panionship of his overwrought imagination ! 
 
 Ed Harland revolted once but was everlast 
 ingly downed. 
 
 "Stedman," said Harland, "you talk as if you 
 dast do anything." 
 
 "Try me," said Edmund. 
 
 "I dast you to go into the Huntington vault." 
 
 "I walked all around inside it yesterday," said 
 Edmund coldly. 
 
 "On your honor?" 
 
 "Ain t-thet-wet?" said Edmund, thrusting his 
 forefinger into his mouth and withdrawing it. 
 "Ain t- that-dry?" he went on, stropping his 
 finger across his trousers seat. 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 173 
 
 " Cut-your-throat-if-you-tell-a-lie ? " inquired 
 little George. 
 
 "Yes," said Edmund. And there was not a 
 boy who disbelieved him. They stared at him 
 in mute surmise. 
 
 "Did you see anything?" Tom at length 
 questioned. 
 
 Edmund nodded. Reticent as Lazarus, he 
 would not say a word. His reserve awed them 
 more than speech. 
 
 "Miss Moffit," remarked Edmund, the next 
 evening, to the mantua-maker who was stay 
 ing overtime to work upon his clothes, "are 
 you fearful when you go home alone in the 
 dark?" 
 
 "No," said Miss Moffit, extracting a pin from 
 her person to make fast a pleat in his new breeches ; 
 "no, but I do not think it proper for a female to 
 go abroad after dusk without an escort." 
 
 "But I don t believe that any one would dast to 
 touch you because you are so full of pins," said 
 Edmund feelingly; "I ll beau you home, if you 
 would like to have me, Miss Moffit. Would you 
 feel timid with me?" 
 
174 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Oh, no!" exclaimed Miss Moffit; and when 
 the hour came, they were on the road. 
 
 They passed Betty Darben s ruinous wall and 
 descended into the hollow. 
 
 "Can you remember when Betty Darben 
 hanged herself?" inquired her escort genially. 
 "I can. My, but she looked queer! But she 
 didn t look half so queer as our Jerry looked when 
 he hanged himself from our apple tree. Did you 
 see him, Miss Moffit?" 
 
 "No," said Miss Moffit briefly. 
 
 "If ever you would like to see a hanged person, 
 or a corpse, I will let you know if I find one. I 
 found Jerry myself. I am quite a hand at finding 
 hanged people. We might find one now; we 
 might walk straight into some one hanged from 
 one of the trees, and we might hit him with 
 our faces so that he would swing back and 
 forth" - 
 
 "Can t you find something else to talk about 
 than suicides, Edmund?" exclaimed the lady. 
 
 "Oh, yes !" he said cheerfully. 
 
 "Then keep still," said Miss Moffit in nervous 
 haste. 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 175 
 
 Blackness dropped like a well before them. 
 The footbridge appeared to have fallen into it. 
 The unearthly screeching of an owl afar or near, 
 the eddying brook, the silent hushes more nerve- 
 racking than sound, drew Miss Moffit s ears 
 now this way and now that. 
 
 "Have you ever been in a vault, Miss Moffit?" 
 spoke up Edmund once more. 
 
 Miss Moffit stopped short as if she were lis 
 tening to something. "Don t talk so loudly," 
 she said, between a brace of shortening breaths. 
 
 "Well," replied Edmund in a whisper that 
 chilled her to the marrow, "I ll tell you how it is ; 
 in a vault the corpses lie all around in mouldery 
 coffins, but you cannot see inside unless the covers 
 rot through and fall in. The first coffin to the 
 right is all dropped apart, and you can see the 
 corpse, and the corpse is as black as black, and 
 his eyes are holes, and they keep staring at you 
 without seeing anything ..." 
 
 "Land ! Master Edmund, when you are quiet, 
 you act so queer ! And when you talk, how you 
 do talk ! You give a body the creeps." 
 
 "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Moffit?" 
 
176 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Miss Moffit was walking as if to overtake her 
 evanished girlhood. She was already past the 
 Hollow and was taking the hill in anxious jerks. 
 
 "I d a deal liefer walk to the Green alone, 
 Master Edmund, than have you along. You ll 
 be raising the dead, next." 
 
 "I ll go home now if you would like me to," 
 said Edmund humbly. 
 
 Miss Moffit grasped his shoulder. The en 
 trance to the Burying-ground Lane was upon 
 her. "No," she said instantly. She did not 
 let go her grip of him until the long way over 
 past her sister opened the door and let her in 
 through the candlelit vines. 
 
 The door closed on Edmund and left him grop 
 ing for the gate. Stumbling and scampering 
 he took to the road, and feeling the shingly slope 
 ebb beneath his feet, knew that he was passing 
 the old brick schoolhouse, and nearing the Hollow. 
 Betty had certainly looked queer; the sight of 
 poor Jerry had make him wet and cold; old 
 General Jed was grewsome beyond f orgetfulness ; 
 and all three of them and innumerable others 
 were lying right before him, behind the weeping 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 177 
 
 willows. His heart beat fast. Was he af 
 frighted ? No ! he told himself. When he reached 
 the lane into the Burying-ground, he clambered 
 to the sidewalk and made himself walk ex 
 ceedingly slow past the entrance, in order to 
 give old Jed a chance to catch him by the 
 ankles! But neither General Jed nor Betty, 
 nor yet the ghost of anybody else emerged. 
 When he gained the Hollow, he was surer of his 
 footing and laid legs to the ground like a rabbit 
 pursued. Within sight of the lamp in his guar 
 dian s window, he was ashamed of himself for hav 
 ing run, and went back through the Hollow - 
 back and forth, and down and up. A fearful 
 fascination mastered him. The curfew rang; 
 still he paced and paced again the shadowy 
 ravine. A clock in the Richard house struck 
 ten. Up he scurried and down drenched with 
 night-damp. He knew now that he was afraid, 
 and he knew that he was determined not to 
 go home until he had gotten the best of his fear. 
 If there was a ghost anywhere in all the uni 
 verse, he would give it the chance of its life to 
 come out like a man. As he crossed the foot- 
 
i;8 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 bridge for the twentieth time, on his way toward 
 the Green, suddenly a shape of darkness, looming 
 larger than mortal, crowned the brow of the hill 
 for a slow instant and then descended toward 
 him. It was a spectre. It was coming for him. 
 His thoughts stopped short, but his feet did not 
 fail him. Faster and faster he walked to meet 
 it; he ran; he met it head-on; he stove the 
 schoolmaster full in the paunch. Mr. Aikman s 
 wind was clean knocked out of him. 
 
 "Hello, Stedman," he said, when he had re 
 covered enough to know what had struck him. 
 
 "Hello, Aikman," said Stedman. 
 
 "You seem to have been bound my way," 
 remarked the schoolmaster, dryly. 
 
 Edmund paced along beside him. In the lan 
 guage of Scripture, he "joined himself unto him." 
 "Our names are a deal alike," he observed as 
 they proceeded. 
 
 "Both of us, it seems, is a man." 
 
 "Only you have an Aik in your name instead 
 of a Sted," replied Edmund, sparkling. 
 
 "I acknowledge I have a little ache in front of 
 me," said the rammed schoolmaster. 
 
THE WANDER SUMMER 179 
 
 Edmund laughed in delight. Mr. Aikman 
 almost laughed. 
 
 So they reached the house and were parting, 
 Mr. Aikman to climb Wooden Hill to Blanket 
 Fair by the front staircase, Edmund to climb 
 thither by the back way. But something timid 
 yet confident was thrust through the baluster 
 rails at Mr. Aikman. 
 
 "What s this, Edmund? 7 said the master, 
 glancing down. 
 
 "The right hand of fellowship!" said Edmund 
 awkwardly. 
 
 Mr. Aikman laughed at last. He grasped 
 Edmund s hand and shook it. "Edmund, you 
 are a companionable little cuss. Good night !" 
 
XIV 
 
 GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 
 
 OF all the astonishing lots that ever befell 
 man, the most astonishing was the lot that befell 
 Edmund on a day of the autumn when he was 
 eight years old. 
 
 His uncle sent for him to come to him in the 
 library. "Edmund," he said, "are you aware 
 that your mother is about to become Mrs. Kinney 
 of Newark?" 
 
 "Will I still be her little boy?" questioned Ed 
 mund, after an anxious moment. 
 
 "Of course you will still be her son; she is 
 your mother whomever she marries. The dif 
 ference is this : that whereas now you have no 
 father, when your mother marries Mr. Kinney, 
 he will stand in your father s place; he will be 
 a father to you. Have you any message to send 
 to Mr. Kinney?" 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 181 
 
 Edmund s color came and passed like breath 
 on a pane. He was bewildered with excess of 
 joy. Another father ! He had overheard it 
 gossiped that his mother was to marry now this 
 gentleman and now that, but none had told him 
 that the gentleman whom she wedded would 
 be his father ! 
 
 "When you write to him," Edmund at last re 
 plied, "tell him that I love him already ! " 
 
 On the sixteenth day of November of the year 
 1841, Edmund s mother was married to the Hon 
 orable William Burnett Kinney, owner of the 
 Newark Daily Advertiser ; and, as the bride re 
 cords in her "Journal," she went the following 
 week with her husband to see her little sons and 
 to spend Thanksgiving Day. 
 
 Very grand indeed felt Edmund in his posses 
 sion of a new papa. The father whom he had 
 known in babyhood was slight and lithe. Mr. 
 Kinney was stout and straight and stately. He 
 cut off the tips of the bittersweet vine with his 
 cane as if they nothing mattered. He trod the 
 ground impressively ; his foot had no more sen 
 sibility than his boot for trifles. He crushed 
 
1 82 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Charlie s toy soldier under his heel and did not 
 guess it. Edmund treasured that little crushed 
 soldier. Even his guardian, whom he respected 
 greatly, would have been aware that he was 
 treading on something and would have halted. 
 Edmund felt instinctively that Mr. Kinney would 
 stop at nothing short of his own bulk. 
 
 Every blind around the Green was closed as 
 the Honorable Mr. Kinney passed ladies were 
 peeping between the slats at him. The parson 
 preached his Thanksgiving sermon to empty 
 minds; everybody s wits were gadding. Every 
 body was thinking of the bride and groom, and 
 each was telling himself that Elizabeth Dodge 
 had kept her weather eye open. The Stedman 
 household, conscious of the fresh feather stuck 
 in the cap of its prestige, was pleased. But 
 Edmund was a deal prouder than they all. The 
 birthday shilling that he had been hoarding to 
 present as a wedding gift to his mother he put 
 into his pocket. Money within touch, he felt 
 more in keeping with the honor of walking be 
 hind Mr. Kinney. 
 
 Later in the day, when Edmund escorted Mr. 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 183 
 
 Kinney along the Green to the store, Mr. Fuller 
 ran on ahead to unbar the shutters and open the 
 door. This walk was Edmund s first chance to 
 be alone with his new father, and he sparkled 
 with devotions. When Mr. Kinney inadver 
 tently hit him with his cane, Edmund confided to 
 him that it did not hurt a bit, that he liked it. 
 
 Conversation did not flourish. 
 
 "Let me see," said Mr. Kinney, after a pon 
 derous silence, "you are eight years old, are you 
 not, Edmund?" 
 
 "Going on nine," answered Edmund, skipping 
 beside him. He had been saying "going on nine" 
 since his anniversary morning not yet seven weeks 
 gone by. 
 
 Edmund s correction appeared to close the 
 subject. Mr. Kinney was silent once more. 
 
 "I can let you have a chew of tobacco, if you 
 would like it," spoke up the little lad who was so 
 eager to be a son to him. "I have a piece of a 
 plug I found in front of Peck s, and I d love to 
 give it to you." 
 
 "What I have in my mouth, Edmund," said 
 Mr. Kinney with dignity, "is a piece of lovage." 
 
1 84 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "But if you would rather chew tobacco, you 
 need not mind me," persisted Edmund. "I have 
 never chewed/ he went on confidingly, " cept 
 Ladies Chewing Tobacco. Do you know Ladies 
 Chewing Tobacco ? It is a soft, white, freckled 
 flower that blossoms in the spring, and after you 
 have chewed it quite a while, you can spit just as 
 if you had a regular quid. Sometimes the stalk 
 is doubled up as if the flowers were laughing, 
 but don t you eat them when they are wrinkled ! 
 They have teeny green bugs under the leaves ! 
 I did not know it at first." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 "Would you like to have me call you father ?" 
 he inquired, after a wistful interim. 
 
 "Edmund, you may address me in whatever 
 way you think proper," replied Mr. Kinney. 
 
 "Well," said Edmund, sighing, "perhaps I 
 had better call you Mr. Kinney until we are 
 better acquainted. But if I should write to you, 
 I will call you father in the letter." 
 
 At the store, Mr. Kinney drew out a roll 
 of greenbacks, and Mr. Fuller had no change, 
 having parted with his cash the night before 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 185 
 
 to Mrs. Whaley, who came with a five-dollar 
 note. 
 
 " How much money do you want, Mr. Kinney ? " 
 asked Edmund, diving his hand into his pants 
 pocket, as if into a mint of silver. 
 
 "Twenty-four cents, Edmund," said the gentle 
 man, and out sprang Edmund s shilling joyously. 
 
 " Never mind the penny," said Mr. Kinney to 
 Mr. Fuller; and to Edmund, "I ll make it all 
 right with you, my boy, I have plenty of change 
 at the house." But he never paid Edmund back 
 his shilling ; he never thought of it again. 
 
 When Edmund and his new papa set forth 
 towards Fuller s store, Edmund s hand, like a 
 tendril in the wind, hovered airily around Mr. 
 Kinney s ready to cling at a touch. When they 
 returned, Edmund s legs lagged; his arms hung 
 as if wilted. Mr. Kinney went directly to his 
 bride and stationed himself beside her on the 
 sofa. Edmund lingered shyly at the threshold 
 for a moment and then walked off to his room. 
 
 In his room he found Charlie seated on the 
 floor, trying to surmount the mystery of winding 
 a top which the visitors had brought him. 
 
i86 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Edmund stood and looked at him. "Charlie," 
 he questioned earnestly, "do you know that that 
 beautiful lady is our mother?" 
 
 Charlie nodded. 
 
 "When you kiss her, she kisses you back. 
 Wouldn t you like to live with some one like her 
 all the time?" 
 
 Charlie nodded ; artless, innocent sage of six, 
 what else was there to do ? 
 
 Edmund grasped him by the shoulders in 
 despairing fierceness. "Charlie, are you going 
 to let her go?" he demanded. "Don t you 
 know that she is the only mother we have ? Don t 
 you know that if we let her go away without us, 
 we will never be her little boys again, never, 
 never?" 
 
 Charlie nodded. Charlie, Charlie, what an 
 unresisting, angelic little wight you were ! 
 
 Edmund shook him, Edmund unstrung with 
 inward sobs. "Go talk with her, I tell you. 
 Don t you know that you are her little baby? 
 She may listen to you. Don t you know that 
 God sent you to her to comfort her when He was 
 going to take away our true papa? Haven t I 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 187 
 
 told you that she said it ? Put your arms around 
 her, Charlie ; tell her that you are her baby! " 
 
 "Yes," said Charlie softly, but on the doorsill 
 he turned back and shook his head. 
 
 "She don t want us," he said guilelessly, and 
 nothing that Edmund could say prevailed on him 
 to intercede. He sat down on the floor and went 
 on with his labors over his top. 
 
 To Edmund, Charlie seemed no longer a brother 
 but an unrelated, gentle waif too silly- witted to 
 feel a loss or fight against it. Edmund s new 
 papa, his mother, and now his brother all he 
 loved was slipping from him. 
 
 But he could not keep away from his mother. 
 He would talk to her about her new husband; 
 that seemed the topic uppermost in her mind. 
 
 He entered the room very delicately. She 
 was sitting alone. At the sight of her fair, beauti 
 ful hand outstretched to him, he forgot his studied 
 part, and ran to her. 
 
 "Mother -mother," he murmured, with his 
 cheek against her shoulder. 
 
 She drew back her head the better to see her 
 boy, and instantly he remembered himself. "I 
 
i88 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 won t cry/ he told her. " You need not be afraid, 
 Mother. I will not let a single tear fall on your 
 pretty dress." He stroked her shoulder, his eyes 
 following his fingers with fain, expressive glances. 
 
 "Do you love me, little son?" 
 
 "Oh!" was all he said, and he stood with in 
 drawn breath and quivering chin. Then he 
 slipped down by her chair, with his head against 
 her knee, but with his coat sleeve drawn safe 
 across his lids. When he lifted his head, he 
 whispered, "I should judge that you have married 
 together with a very fine man." He was remem 
 bering his part ! "Is my new papa a governor?" 
 
 Elizabeth smiled, self -pleased. "I think I 
 have done very well. No, Edmund, Mr. Kinney 
 is an editor. He read my writings, and that is 
 how he came to seek me out." 
 
 "I heard Joab, the new man who does our 
 chores, say that a mole could see that Miss Eliza 
 beth had the governor right under her thumb, 
 and I thought Joab meant Mr. Kinney." 
 
 Elizabeth laughed mirthfully. "I am not sure 
 but that Joab did mean Mr. Kinney !" 
 
 Edmund s eyes shone lustrous through return- 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 189 
 
 ing mistiness. "You belong to Mr. Kinney 
 now, don t you, Mama?" 
 
 Elizabeth laughed her musical laughter. "Or 
 Mr. Kinney belongs to me?" 
 
 "But Charlie and I belong to you ; we belonged 
 to you first, didn t we?" 
 
 There was no gainsaying it, and because there 
 was no gainsaying it, he climbed beguilingly into 
 her lap and, with his hand upon her heart, caressed 
 her bosom with his hand. 
 
 "Edmund, you are an adorable little lad 
 you are so loving ; do you know it ? You are an 
 embodied caress!" 
 
 He could not tell what to say. But in the 
 earnestness of his love for her, self-consciousness 
 was not in him. 
 
 "Mother, your eyes are the color of the little 
 blue flowers in the meadow that look as if they 
 were sewed in cross-stitch." 
 
 " You pretty Imaginer ! You mean the bluets." 
 
 "Mother, I can do cross-stitch. Mother, when 
 I am a man, I am going to buy you a dress, and 
 I am going to cross-stitch it all over with little 
 blue eyes." 
 
A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Eager, innocent darling already embroider 
 ing the blue fields of her eyes with the shadows 
 of his own. 
 
 "Mother, do you love Mr. Kinney very, very 
 much?" 
 
 "Why, yes, Edmund, I love him. But you 
 see, my darling, I had to think and plan for the 
 future. It was necessary to consider your wel 
 fare and Charlie s, and mine also. You will 
 understand it better when you are older." 
 
 "I can understand anything that is explained 
 to me!" he said in a child s pure wisdom. She 
 enclosed his fondling hand in hers and tapped 
 with it lightly on the chair-arm. Her veined, 
 veiling lids alighted on her cheek. 
 
 "Mother needed some one to love and care for 
 her, Edmund. Mother was all alone in the 
 world." 
 
 His hands sprang to her temples to compel 
 attention. "I tried to come to you," he cried 
 passionately. "Don t you remember that I 
 wrote and told you? Mother, I was almost 
 there!" 
 
 "But you are only a little boy." 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 191 
 
 "It was God that made me little. But I can 
 take care of you, Mother. I will sit all night 
 and watch over you ; and when you take your 
 nap in the afternoon, I will not let a fly come near 
 you. And, Mother, I would have married you 
 myself, but Tom told me that the United States 
 wouldn t let me because I was your son ! Mother, 
 don t you see?" 
 
 His deep eyes shone like twin lamps newly 
 lighted. She could not bear to put them out. 
 
 "Mother/ 5 he pleaded, "I can love you although 
 I am so little. Darling," he whispered in touch 
 ing worship, remembering that it became him to 
 entreat her as a lover should entreat his dear 
 one, "I will love you all over ! I will walk with 
 you under the rose tree, and enfold you in my arms, 
 and not speak ; but just say Oh Oh." 
 
 With a stifled moan she hid her face in his 
 hair: but at length she half withdrew her lips, 
 and when she did withdraw them, she said 
 steadily, "Edmund, I would take you to live 
 with me, if it were possible. Do you not know 
 that I would? But Mr. Kinney has a grown 
 son of his own already. He might not take 
 
A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 it kindly from me, if I had you around the 
 house." 
 
 "But I will fight him, if he isn t kind to you," 
 cried Edmund, starting up in a ferment. "I 
 fight all the fellows that pick on little Charlie; 
 I don t care how large they are. And when the 
 big Spaniard gets me by the head, I kick him in 
 the shins!" 
 
 "But listen, my son. These are excellent 
 Christian people with whom you live. You 
 have plenty to eat and are comfortably housed. 
 Why are you not content to stay here and be 
 happy?" 
 
 Was it possible that she did not know! He 
 locked his hands behind his head in unreconciled 
 restraint ! He was trying to be manly, but again 
 his chin was quivering, his eyes were filling. 
 " Mother, I think it must be because I belong 
 to you ! " The hands that had been locked were 
 flung around her neck. "Mama! Mama!" 
 he sobbed in abandon, "when our pastor preaches, 
 Can a mother forget her suckling child? I 
 always know that he means that she cannot, 
 and I always know that it is you !" 
 
GOD TEMPERING THE WIND 193 
 
 "I forget you? Never, never, my baby, my 
 Poet-boy ! But oh, my child, I am so helpless !" 
 
 And there in the doorway towered Mr. Kinney, 
 frowning. 
 
 "Edmund/ said that gentleman, "you would 
 best go out and play." 
 
 Play ! tear-splashed. 
 
 "Mrs. Kinney needs to lie down and rest," 
 Mr. Kinney added, when Edmund did not stir. 
 
 "You are going, Dearest, aren t you?" whis 
 pered Elizabeth to her son. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "And you are going to be brave and bright," 
 she babbled, laying her soft lips to the shell that 
 was his ear; "you are going to be a gentleman, 
 and if God wills, a poet? Above all else, you 
 are going to be honorable?" 
 
 It was their secret, hers and his, he 
 whispered "Yes." 
 
 The brow of the groom, who stood aloof and 
 alien, darkened. Man that he was, he was 
 jealous of the orphaned child. 
 
 But Elizabeth, the young bride, held fast her 
 first-born for a moment more. Lingeringly she 
 
194 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 kissed him. "And Edmund, you do not think 
 hard of Mother?" she pleaded. 
 
 Edmund, spent with the pain of his loving 
 heart, slipped gently to the floor. " Mother," 
 he said in winning sweetness, "/ think that you 
 are very kind to little boys!" 
 
XV 
 
 FULLER S STORE 
 
 FOR a fortnight, Fuller s store gave the go-by 
 to political wranglings in order to gossip over 
 Elizabeth Dodge Stedman Kinney s marriage, 
 husband, and visit. 
 
 Edmund, perched on the counter, dealt out 
 details gloryingly. "My mother," he boasted, 
 "why, my mother could have married a lot of 
 men. But it is against the United States to 
 marry more than one man at a time. My mother 
 could have married all the men in New Jersey, 
 if it had not been for the United States. There 
 was one gentleman named Esquire I know 
 that he was in love with her. I heard my Uncle 
 James say it. But he died, so she married Mr. 
 Kinney. Mr. Kinney is real nice. When my 
 mother says to him, Pick up my thimble that I 
 have dropped/ he gets down on his knees and 
 
196 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 searches till he finds it. My Aunt Abby makes 
 her curls with quince seeds, but God curled my 
 mother s hair. My mother s hair is like the sun 
 when it begins to shine through the trees before 
 you are out of bed in the morning, and you squint 
 at it. If you pull a curl of hers out straight and 
 then let go the end of it, it will wind around your 
 finger in teeny, teeny, golden curls, ever so many of 
 them, millions of them, I guess. My mother s 
 curls cling just like babies fingers ; but they look 
 like gold. I shouldn t be surprised if they were 
 some kind of soft gold like the gold that the angels 
 have in heaven. The streets in heaven are gold, 
 and there is no weeping there nor any tears. If an 
 angel slipped down, a little young girl-angel that 
 could not fly very well, she would hurt herself 
 if the streets were hard, and she could not help 
 crying just a little. So I suspect that God makes 
 the gold soft like moss. My father left me a 
 fortune. I heard our Joab say to Sambo, I 
 swan, the Jedge is making a good haul out of thet 
 job ; he clears a slick five hundred an-nul. But 
 Abijam Lewis says that my uncle doesn t make a 
 red cent out of me, not a red cent. Mr. Kinney 
 
FULLER S STORE 197 
 
 hasn t a bit of money that isn t gold. He never 
 carries shillings. I should not be surprised if 
 my cousin Tom espoused Mary Hyde. I saw 
 him look at her. When he becomes in love, he 
 will be desperate. I know cussiderable about 
 falling in love. I told my Uncle Charles that 
 Elizabeth Strong was going to espouse him, and 
 it turned out just as I perdicted. When I was a 
 little boy, I didn t know what twins were. My 
 Aunt Eunice said to my Uncle James, James, 
 Charles has twins ! and he said, Blessed is the 
 man that hath his quiver full of them. But 
 twins are babies ! I would not like to have very 
 many of them I d just as soon have a few. 
 Queen Anne had twenty-four children, and they 
 all became defunct. When I read about it, I 
 said to Joab, Joab, I d be awfully sorry for you 
 if you should have twenty-four little children, 
 and they should be defunct. But Joab said, 
 I should be more sorry for myself if they lived. 
 What would I do with them? Joab is right. 
 To feed and educate seventeen or eighteen head, 
 especially of twins, would be a cussiderable re 
 sponsibility." 
 
198 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Queen Anne was ancient history. Fuller s 
 store had heard before from Edmund touching 
 her royal joys and sorrows. Old Dailey sent a 
 squirt of tobacco juice from the pork barrel to 
 the stove, a good eight feet. It was his way 
 of prefacing a remark. 
 
 " Edmund, what is an-nul?" he inquired. 
 
 "An-nul is what Joab said/ replied Edmund. 
 
 The loungers pulled sly faces. 
 
 "If you don t know what it means, why don t 
 you look it up in that dictionary of your uncle s 
 which you talk so much about?" 
 
 "I am going to look it up when I get the op 
 portunity," replied Edmund. 
 
 "Did you look up Jezebel?" asked Mr. 
 Learned s manservant. 
 
 "Yes, I did," retorted the boy, flushing. 
 "Jezebel isn t in the dictionary; but tiring 
 is," he added pointedly. Jezebel had vexed Ed 
 mund s sympathetic soul immeasurably because 
 if she " tired her head " at the window, he could not 
 understand why she did not draw it in. It was 
 grievous enough to go to dogs as completely as 
 she did, without first tiring one s head. 
 
FULLER S STORE 199 
 
 "Don t tease the lad," interposed Mr. Fuller 
 mildly. "He s learning as fast as he can; he s 
 young yet." 
 
 "Dodo has drawn a high old picture of Mr. 
 Peck," resumed Edmund, to get back at Mr. 
 Learned s manservant. "Mr. Peck is stepping 
 into his chaise, and B. J. is pushing him up by 
 the elbow. Dollars are dropping out from Mr. 
 Peck s cuff. Dodo calls it" - 
 
 "Aren t you going to read us the newspaper?" 
 again interposed Mr. Fuller. He was the village 
 peacemaker. 
 
 "Yes, read us the news!" cried a farmer who 
 had stopped to hear the news read. 
 
 They depended on Edmund to read aloud the 
 Courier to them. He read a paragraph or two 
 in his fresh treble. He came to the word loco- 
 focoism. He scanned it an instant. "Pickles," 
 he said, and started on. 
 
 Ed Harland haw-hawed. 
 
 "You need not haw-haw at me; I m not 
 your girl," remarked Edmund, glancing over 
 the top of the newspaper at the handsome 
 youth. 
 
200 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Didn t know that Eddie Harland had a girl !" 
 cried a gaffer. "Who s your girl, Eddie?" 
 
 With brows drawn down and mouth set fast, 
 Harland stared vacant-eyed out of doors. He 
 looked as if he had never spoken in his life and 
 never intended to speak. 
 
 " Harland, you look like a predestinated oyster/ 
 piped Edmund in ingenuous honesty. 
 
 "I d rather look like a predestinated oyster 
 than act like a predestined fool, Captain Mar- 
 ryat," retorted Ed Harland, stung to speech. 
 
 "Close your shell!" cried Edmund hotly. He 
 had been having too much Marryat from Harland. 
 
 Harland closed it. He closed the door also, 
 closed it on his heels and went out, shrugging 
 his shoulders as he disappeared foot by foot in 
 climbing the rickety stairway to the cobbler who 
 had a room on the second landing. Fuller s 
 store was a rambling building with the butcher 
 in a basement opening on the turnpike, and with 
 Fuller s store proper and the cobbler s fronting 
 on Cross Keys Lane and the Green. 
 
 The cobbler was a philosopher and a character. 
 There was always a pair of boy s boots on his 
 
FULLER S STORE 201 
 
 bench, and the boys loafed around while he 
 worked. Sometimes he drove them out, waving 
 his leathern apron and shooing them before him, 
 or scourging the air with a fistful of leathern 
 thongs. But the boys came back like flies. The 
 cobbler was better than Fuller s store. 
 
 "Seems to me, Edmund, I have heard some 
 thing about you and young Halle tt," drawled 
 old Dailey. " Come, now, what was it, Innocence ? 
 Didn t he send you down to the wharf to buy a 
 racy book, and what was it you brought back to 
 him ? Daboll s Almanac ! " 
 
 Laughter greeted Dailey s sally. 
 
 Edmund turned crimson. "Daboll s Almanac 
 is a very interesting book," he returned sturdily. 
 "I read it. It tells about the tide and the moon 
 and the weather." 
 
 "I am inclined to believe you, Edmund," com 
 mented the bell ringer. 
 
 Mr. Fuller had gone to the cellar, and conversa 
 tion, rid of his watchful ear, waxed careless. 
 
 "Come, Edmund," said old Dailey, and winked 
 at the loungers, " tell us just how it was. How do 
 you get hold of these books ? " 
 
202 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Edmund felt that they were making sport of 
 him, but every one looked serious. Setting his 
 hands deep in his pockets, he jerked his hands 
 towards his girth, thrust his tongue into one 
 cheek, and, intent to acquit himself in all points 
 like a man among men, spat out into the group. 
 " There s a fellow in the Strand," he began, "who 
 knows a place in New York where he can buy 
 them. And when he goes to New York he buys 
 them for ten cents apiece, but he will sell them in 
 Norwich for a shilling. Only you mustn t squeal 
 on him. I went down to the wharf, it wasn t 
 for Hallett, but I won t tell you whom it was 
 for. I told the fellow what I wanted was some 
 thing racy, and he gave me the Almanac; he 
 said that he guessed that was about my size. 
 Then Hallett but it wasn t Hallett got mad 
 and called me a softie." 
 
 "Well, aren t you a softie?" inquired Dailey. 
 
 "No, Sir, I am not." 
 
 "Have you never read one of these books?" 
 
 "No, Sir." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Whetted by the gibes of the old men, the little 
 
FULLER S STORE 203 
 
 lad s wits kindled. " Because I have never had 
 the chance!" he cried, blinking both eyes in an 
 attempt to wink like Dailey. 
 
 Guffaws rocked the rafters. The coarseness 
 of the laughter repelled him. The fire in his eyes 
 sank in glowing cloud. 
 
 " Besides," he added stoutly, "I don t know 
 that they are good style ! I promised my mother 
 that I would never read any books that were not 
 good style. My mother told me that if I read 
 cheap books, I would grow up and never know 
 what it was to appreciate a fine book; I would 
 have to ask other people, * Is this a fine book ? 
 but I would not be able to tell by myself. She 
 said that instead of having a taste for things that 
 counted for something, I would be content to 
 read trash, and I would become like what I read. 
 My mother says that taste is like a plant, and that 
 it grows if one tends it, but that if one neglects 
 it and leaves it to itself, it will die. My mother 
 says that if I do not take care of my taste, I will 
 lose it ; and that if I once lose it, there is not any 
 doctor that can make it come back. I am ter 
 ribly in fear of losing my taste." 
 
204 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Silence surrounded him. This dissertation on 
 good taste seemed a rebuke to the morals of his 
 audience. 
 
 "When I read the Almanac, I was in fear that 
 I might lose what taste I have/ he continued in 
 innocent concern, " because I am still somewhat 
 young, so my taste must be young; and so it 
 would not take so much to kill it." He glanced 
 around the group : Dailey, a brutal drunkard 
 murdering his gentle wife by imperceptible de 
 grees and wrecking the lives of his babes ; Jack 
 son, a worthless idler; Jim Smith, half-witted; 
 Wetherell whose word was worth as little as his 
 work ; a half score of others loungers and 
 loafers, vicious or thriftless, without ambition 
 and without shame, beneath honor and beneath 
 reproach. It was well enough for them to read 
 bad books. His heart beat high as he looked upon 
 them. He would be a gentleman ; he would make 
 something of himself. He would not be as one 
 of them when he grew up. He let himself down 
 from the counter slowly. 
 
 "What are you reading now, Edmund?" 
 inquired Mr. Fuller who, emerging from the 
 
FULLER S STORE 205 
 
 cellar hooded with cobwebs, overtook the last 
 word. 
 
 "Paradise Lost, Sir," replied Edmund. He was 
 a child once more ; his grave thoughts made him 
 forget to play the part of a man. "Only I have 
 to place a marker in the pages to tell me where 
 I leave off," he added brightly; "at least, some 
 times I do. But I think it is very entertaining 
 when Adam awakened and found Eve. I bet he 
 was surprised ! It must have made God sorry 
 to have Eve disobey him. I don t know why she 
 did it." He gazed musingly among the candy 
 jars, so many of them and so many kinds of 
 candy; at the lowest count, six! "And I like 
 apples too !" 
 
 "But I don t think that I would touch one," 
 he continued, "if I thought it was going to bring 
 mortality upon the offspring. But perhaps I 
 would!" He sighed. "Anyway, my Aunt 
 Abby would not have given an apple to my Uncle 
 James, at least not until it was specked !" 
 
 Mr. Fuller was closing up. He closed up 
 when he went home to meals. At night he 
 dropped the bars to the doors and windows, but 
 
2o6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 at noon he simply latched the door. One by 
 one the loungers drifted out to go to dinner 
 Mr. Fuller was their clock. 
 
 "Will you walk along with me, Edmund?" 
 said the fatherly man. 
 
 "I am not going home to dinner, to-day," 
 said Edmund offhand. 
 
 " Won t you take dinner with me?" 
 
 Edmund shook his head. 
 
 "My little Susan was a-baking pumpkin pies 
 when I came away this morning," said the store 
 keeper. 
 
 "Mr. Fuller," said Edmund frankly, "I will 
 tell you how it is. I was a naughty boy this 
 morning. I cursed." 
 
 "You cursed!" repeated the storekeeper in 
 sorrowful reproof. 
 
 "Yes, I did. Aunt Abby said that I was 
 into some mischief, and I wasn t. I told her 
 I wasn t. And she said, Then what are you 
 doing with the hammer? and I said, Oh, drat 
 it! " 
 
 "That was wrong, Edmund, very wrong." 
 He pressed Edmund s hand fondly. 
 
FULLER S STORE 207 
 
 "My uncle says that I am not to have any din 
 ner to-day." 
 
 "Then it would not be right for you to go home 
 to dinner with me," said Mr. Fuller thought 
 fully. He went back to the store door and set 
 it ajar. "Edmund, there re some crackers and 
 cheese behind the counter, and if you feel like 
 nibbling a little, help yourself; I don t call 
 nibbling eating." 
 
 Edmund s pride would have kept him from 
 taking anything that he did not pay for, even if 
 he had been hungry. But he was not hungry. 
 His breakfast of cold pork, with a lecture from 
 his uncle, had not agreed with him. The lecture 
 left a lump in his throat, and the pork a lump in 
 his stomach. He managed to swallow the lump 
 in his throat, and it settled down quite familiarly 
 with the lump of undigested pork. He could 
 still feel the pair, hot, hard, defiant, but quite 
 quiet. They did not stir. " Oh, I m not hungry," 
 he answered buoyantly; "and, anyhow, I d 
 better attend to an appointment I have with 
 the cobbler, or I may inconvenience the old 
 chap!" 
 
208 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Mr. Fuller started down Cross Keys Lane, 
 and then turned back. 
 
 "You are sure you aren t sick, Edmund ?" he 
 asked benignly. "You look a little feverish 
 and kind of peaked." 
 
 "I feel sick in my stomick, but I don t feel 
 sick anywheres else," said Edmund reassuringly, 
 and, inch by inch, his shapely legs disappeared 
 along the cobbler s stairway just as Harland s 
 legs had disappeared. 
 
 But Edmund had miscalculated his day; it 
 was no easy matter to keep track of the days 
 when every day save Sunday was a holiday. 
 The cobbler was off for the afternoon, and the 
 big boys hired his loft for the time. They 
 had formed a club called the Desperado Gang, 
 and they had made arrangements to meet in the 
 loft whenever the cobbler was taken by a provi 
 dential cold, or was tending his garden, or away 
 on errands to the Landing. The meetinghouse 
 sheds offered them shelter while they were 
 forming their club. In fact, the club had been 
 Edmund s idea. And now that the gang was 
 organized and housed, his mates had left him out! 
 
FULLER S STORE 209 
 
 He observed that Bond, who had mounted just 
 ahead of him, dealt the door three crisp raps. 
 Edmund rapped in like manner. Little George 
 was doorkeeper and opened the door stealthily. 
 Edmund peered into the room. There before 
 him in life and blood was gathered a downright 
 desperate-looking company, brow-beating repro 
 bates seated around a table. Their hats were 
 pulled down over their brows. Mason was dealing 
 cards. He whipped out each card with a charm 
 that would have incited a saint to be a sinner. 
 
 "Hello, Baby!" exclaimed Legs Porter, catch 
 ing sight of Edmund. "It is you, is it?" 
 
 Edmund walked in, full-chested. "I m no 
 more a baby than you are, Porter," he answered 
 back and gave the unsuspecting Legs a side 
 shove that sent him sprawling. He seated him 
 self in Legs s chair. 
 
 Everybody laughed. 
 
 "Order!" cried Harland; "or the police will 
 be upon us!" 
 
 Every one was as still as the grave. 
 
 "Didn t know you, Harland," remarked Ed 
 mund. 
 
210 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Harland s own mother would not have known 
 him. His hair was dragged down to his eyes. 
 His collar was turned up. He slouched in his 
 chair. He looked the very cut-throat. 
 
 "What are you playing?" inquired Edmund. 
 
 Cards were being laid down and taken up again 
 with impressive violence. Words were hissed back 
 and forth. Every lad watched his fellow with dark, 
 suspicious glances. Every man s hand was against 
 his brother. All was mystery villainous, in 
 tense, but nothing seemed to get any " forrader." 
 
 "Never mind what we are playing," said 
 Little George portentously. He felt mightily 
 pleased that he had been included in the gang, 
 but was in momentary fear of the parson ten 
 miles away in Hebron ! 
 
 "We are gambling," spoke up Alphabet Sher 
 man. 
 
 "Well, where s your money?" questioned Ed 
 mund. He knew a thing or two about gambling. 
 He had watched the men behind the blacksmith 
 shop gamble. 
 
 "Bring on the drinks," exclaimed Mason with 
 a flourish. 
 
FULLER S STORE 211 
 
 "Give me my chair," cried Legs who, now that 
 he was on his feet, was a demonstration of his 
 nickname. 
 
 "Then I ll have the table!" cried Edmund, 
 who would not be downed. Springing to the 
 middle of the age-blackened board, he stood aloft 
 on it. Little regard was paid to him ; Windy 
 Briggs had fetched forth the bottle. It was grim 
 and ugly. 
 
 It was a fit bottle for such a gang. Each of 
 the boys in turn lifted it to his lips and pretended 
 to swallow. Tears sprang through their lashes, 
 they shut their eyes so tight. Harland held his 
 throat with his hand and beat his chest as if he 
 was on fire. 
 
 Edmund stamped upon the table in wild ex 
 citement. "Drat!" he cried, it was all so des 
 perate and devilish. 
 
 Captain Kidd who houghed the hamstrings of 
 the haughty, who stirred eyeballs instead of plums 
 into his Christmas pudding, who would have 
 thought nothing of using shin bones for paling- 
 pegs, was not a circumstance to the meekest of the 
 gang. 
 
212 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Here, Baby," cried Legs. He reached behind 
 him to the bucket, laid hold of the cocoanut 
 dipper, and dishing up a draught of water, 
 handed it to Edmund. 
 
 With one fling, Edmund sent the water into 
 Legs s face. Everybody cheered him. He bran 
 dished the dipper airily. 
 
 "Where re your wits, Legs!" cried the gang. 
 "He s too rapid for you !" 
 
 Edmund was transported with triumph at 
 appearing the man. 
 
 "You haven t got the cork out!" he shouted 
 suddenly. He had spied the truth. "You ve 
 borrowed the bottle from the captain s nigger, 
 and you are afraid to open it ! You ve promised 
 to give it back again ; that s what you ve 
 done!" 
 
 "Shut up, you Baby!" cried Little George, 
 red as if to burst. 
 
 It was true that they had borrowed the bottle ; 
 they had given Sambo ninepence to filch it from 
 the captain s cellar and loan it to them for the day. 
 
 " Baby me again, and I ll baby you!" 
 cried Edmund, beside himself. 
 
FULLER S STORE 213 
 
 "Baby I" retorted Little George, and held the 
 bottle tauntingly just above Edmund s head. 
 
 Edmund sprang into the air to snatch it. He 
 was quick, but for once Little George was quicker. 
 Edmund sprang again, and as he sprang, he aimed 
 a blow at the bottle with his dipper. 
 
 There was a crash of glass a headlong 
 gush; down came the contents of the bottle. 
 Heavens it was Barbadoes! Down it came, 
 a quart of it, a fiery baptism over Edmund s 
 head, over his shoulders, down his spine. It 
 trickled from his trousers; it ran to the floor. 
 Blinking, he stared out at his mates from under 
 brows that dripped. 
 
 He stepped from the table to a chair and from 
 the chair to the floor. He was as white as death. 
 He lifted the latch and walked out. No one 
 spoke to him; no one had the sense to think to 
 save him; no one went with him; he was a 
 walking delegate from Perdition; he would set 
 the town on their scent. He would "squeal" on 
 them. The truth would out ; the Barbadoes was 
 out. The Barbadoes was on parade ! The gang 
 was appalled. 
 
2i 4 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Harland alone had the force to gather up the 
 cards. The gang would have left them and the 
 broken bottle to tell the tale after Edmund had 
 told it. 
 
 Edmund passed Fuller s store more dead than 
 alive. He reeked of Barbadoes. He came to 
 Mr. Lathrop s Tavern in his blank terror not 
 certain where he was. There were no longer any 
 distinguishable places in the world; he made 
 road and sidewalk alike by his presence. He 
 profaned the neighborhood wherever he passed. 
 He left wet spots whenever he stood. His 
 own goal, his one aim, was his little room at 
 Deacon Stedman s. It came to him dimly, yet 
 terrifyingly and surely, that his bed had been 
 changed from the ground floor to a tiny chamber 
 over the kitchen. He would have to pass through 
 the kitchen. He would have to leave his trail 
 on the stairs. 
 
 He shied through the judge s gateway, lest he 
 touch it. No one was in the kitchen. He crept 
 on all fours up the stairs to keep the fumes on 
 a low level. He felt hot and cold and horribly 
 dizzy when he came to a standstill in his room. 
 
FULLER S STORE 215 
 
 In the close air, the fumes seemed multiplying. 
 He supposed that he would smell through the 
 remainder of his days. He thought of the next 
 Sunday when he would sit in his uncle s pew, 
 with all the deacons in the meetinghouse holding 
 their noses. The thought of having to go through 
 life with himself was nauseous. He crawled into 
 bed to smother the smell. He dragged the cover 
 let over him. He began to reek with sweat, 
 and the sweat reeked of Barbadoes. Each pore 
 breathed it. When he lifted the sheet, a puff 
 issued forth like smoke from an oven. Suddenly 
 the lump came back into his throat and brought 
 the pork with it. A convulsive moment, and he 
 was rid of them, but in his weakness and wild 
 nervousness, he hung over the side of his cot as 
 if over the side of a ship. It seemed as if his 
 stomach would never give over its paroxysms of 
 revolting. He burned with fever. He heard 
 his Aunt Abby s footfall on the landing. She 
 came to the door, then turned, and hastened 
 down. Immediately came his uncle, sniffing 
 like a hound. His gray face was drawn with 
 anxiety and wrath. 
 
2i6 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 " Edmund Clarence Stedman," he said sternly, 
 when he strode to the bedside, "you have been 
 drinking!" His voice was doom. 
 
 "That s the pork," whispered Edmund, after 
 a wandering survey. And indeed it was the 
 truth; the poor little beggar had had nothing 
 else in the only cupboard that the good God had 
 given him. 
 
 "You have been to the Landing!" cried his 
 uncle. 
 
 Relieved that his uncle did not demand to 
 know where he had been, Edmund returned 
 his glare with the tranquil countenance of a 
 cherub. His brow cooled. Even in his hour 
 of darkness, when fear and pride beat against 
 him like a blast, it did not occur to him to let 
 go loyalty and shield himself at the expense of 
 his mates. 
 
 "You have been frequenting some wretched 
 hole, some disreputable, back-street gin shop. 
 No place short of the most indecent den would 
 sell drink to a child like you a gentleman s 
 son!" 
 
 Edmund gazed at him wide-eyed. 
 
FULLER S STORE 217 
 
 "You are intoxicated!" cried the judge in 
 sudden thunder. 
 
 "Am I?" The little lad s tone was edged 
 with unbelieving dismay. His startled eyes were 
 dark with terror. 
 
 "Are you?" echoed his uncle in scorn. "You 
 are a dissolute, lost youth. You are not fit for 
 the society of virtuous companions, do you know 
 it? Are you?" he reiterated. "Look at your 
 self!" 
 
 Edmund obediently pushed back the coverlet 
 and gazed at his rum-soaked front. 
 
 "I am not talking about your clothes; I am 
 talking about you!" cried his uncle in uncontrolled 
 grief. "You are a disgrace to me to the Sted- 
 man name to your mother !" 
 
 Edmund had not thought of the inner disgrace ; 
 he had not thought of his mother. 
 
 "Oh!" he moaned, as if suddenly cut to the 
 heart. He stared at his uncle. Deacon Sted- 
 man turned on his heel he had gone as he 
 came. 
 
 Edmund was alone. Dailey, the town drunkard ; 
 Jackson, the ne er-do-well ; loafers, sots, half-wits, 
 
218 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 imbeciles, passed in pictured procession before 
 his mind. And he was one of these ! Was he 
 one of these, a disgrace to his mother ! he 
 who had dreamed to make a man of himself for her 
 sake? Slow, scalding tears crept to his eyes. 
 He turned his face to the wall. " Mother, 
 Mother/ he kept crying, "Mother, Mother, I 
 am not a lost youth, I am not a lost youth ! " 
 
 But kind Nature, Edmund s only nurse, was 
 near with Slumber her handmaid, and soon he 
 was sleeping deeply carried for the nonce into 
 one of the many mansions prepared even on earth 
 for little children and for them who bear in their 
 breasts the hearts of innocents. 
 
 When Edmund appeared abroad once more, 
 he was wan and thin from fasting and confinement. 
 But he was as cheerful as ever. He had been 
 punished. He felt that his uncle had been 
 avenged. More than that, sun, wind, and soap 
 had freed his wearables from all suspicion of 
 spirits. His hair alone breathed of Barbadoes 
 a little, a very little, when it was wetted. As 
 he passed Fuller s store on his way to see the river, 
 the door of the cobbler s lodge was opened, and 
 
FULLER S STORE 219 
 
 Legs, as awkward on his pins as if on stilts, hurried 
 down the steps and overtook him. 
 
 "I say, Stedman," he exclaimed, and gave 
 Edmund a clap on the back, " you re the right 
 sort, you didn t squeal on us; and we have made 
 you an honorary member of the gang !" 
 
XVI 
 
 A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 
 
 I WAS two and a half years old when I came with 
 my parents, my elder sister, and baby brother, 
 to live in the old Simon Huntington house at the 
 end of the Green. The windows of our Blue 
 Room, which was never occupied because it was 
 haunted, looked directly across the Around-town 
 Road into the par son s windows. There was 
 only the road between our houses, but there were 
 the Cross Keys Lane, the great butternut tree 
 on the Green, and the New London turnpike 
 between our gardens. We children never gath 
 ered the butternuts. I cannot remember that 
 any one ever gathered them, although they fell 
 as free as showers into the two-forked road and 
 over the pale long grass. The parson s presence 
 stood in Sabbath-like guard over everything 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 221 
 
 in his neighborhood. But the boys feet kept 
 the grass cropped on the far end of the Green 
 which was beyond the ken of his windows. 
 
 The Green was a long-drawn-out triangle, 
 with the apex under the parson s nose, and the 
 base skirted by the Cross Keys Tavern, the 
 jailer s two keys hanging crossed on a tree in 
 front of his door, in days gone by, reminded the 
 heedless of his calling and named the tavern, 
 Fuller s store, the Lathrop house, the Academy, 
 and the Union Hotel. But all of these buildings, 
 together with the sacred meetinghouse, the 
 chapel, the whipping post, and the wayfarers 
 at the triple crossroads, were nothing in compari 
 son with one slat in the parsonage shutter. 
 
 As I recall the parson, he was as tall as the 
 meetinghouse belfry, and ancient past all possi 
 bility of growing more aged. Undoubtedly there 
 were occasions when he donned a hat Ed 
 mund, when he grew to be a man, recollected a 
 gray-white beaver. But his flowing locks so 
 impressed me with a sense of his venerableness, 
 that if his head was covered I took no account of 
 his headgear. Or possibly he loomed so high 
 
222 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 above me that I, looking up, beheld his beaver 
 foreshortened and was not aware of its existence. 
 I can see him to-day as plainly as if two decades 
 past were yesterday. He affected a neckcloth 
 after the fashion of the previous century, a 
 soft, fleckless cambric muffler, fine as cloud, that 
 mounted in indistinguishable folds from his 
 shoulders to his chin. Above the neckcloth 
 protruded stiffly the two points of his immaculate 
 starched collar. He never turned his head or 
 bent it not to my remembrance. He walked 
 the village like a marble man. To us children, 
 he surpassed the seven wonders of antiquity. 
 No one of us knew when, where, or how, and no 
 one questioned, and yet every one believed that 
 he had broken his neck, and that the surgeons 
 had fashioned a new neck for him out of pure 
 gold, and had amiably stuck his head to the top 
 of it, and soldered his body to the bottom. If 
 Lot s wife had been overtaken by the proverbial 
 salt on a trip across the Green, her remains would 
 have excited little comment. Salt is cheap. 
 But our parson with his neck of virgin ore, was 
 an offering to attract robbers. The first time 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 223 
 
 that I promenaded to our front gate, after my 
 arrival in Norwich Town, a bevy of school chil 
 dren was waiting to tell me about the golden 
 neck. They showed off the parson as the town 
 marvel. We tiptoed behind him, whispering 
 busily and conferring endlessly. If he should 
 turn his head however so little, the children 
 told me, his neck would crack, and his head 
 topple down ! What an awful responsibility he 
 was! 
 
 Shivering and alone in the Blue Room, I peered 
 out like a young ghost ; I was held a prisoner to 
 the pane by the fascination of catching a glimpse 
 of the parson with the golden neck. But I 
 whisked away as quick as s cat! when I saw him 
 opening his door ! If he should espy me, if he 
 should bow to me, his neck would break, and I 
 would have his head, his golden neck, and him 
 self a tragedy in three parts on my hands. 
 The thought of having to present myself at the 
 parsonage door, bearing the preacher s august 
 head on a charger, was too appalling to dwell 
 upon, and the event too possible to be risked. 
 
 There came a time when there was talk that 
 
224 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the parson was dead ; but could a gold neck die ? 
 Of course not! Whoever heard of such a thing. 
 My little brother, panting from happy play, 
 was led by an old crone into the darkened par 
 sonage and his dimpled hand was laid on the cold 
 brow of the parson who had lain three days in 
 his shroud. My brother shuddered and then 
 shrieked. Never afterwards till he was a grown 
 man would he go into the dusk alone. I could 
 set my orange inside the Blue Room and, even 
 at high noon, he would not dare to open the door 
 to pluck it forth. He was in terror of the touch 
 of that dead brow. But he was only a baby, 
 he was only four years old ; and his gentle mother 
 had shielded him from frights and taught him that 
 the dark held no dismay. 
 
 But whether the parson and his neck were 
 dead or not, none of us ever picked up the butter 
 nuts. Good Mr. Weitzel, who came to the par 
 sonage after the parson s departure, heard my 
 brother s cart wheel creak as we trudged along 
 under his study windows, and, fetching an oil 
 can, bowed down on all fours for our help our 
 cart was so tiny and he so tall. He inspected 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 225 
 
 the axle-tree so gravely, he dropped the oil so 
 painstakingly, that we ourselves were impressed. 
 Moreover, he told us, while we looked on criti 
 cally, how a trifle of oil had made many a cart 
 wheel run easily. 
 
 But Mr. Weitzel was not the parson. If the 
 parson had stooped, he would have lost his head. 
 
 The parson was the Visiting Committee of the 
 District. There may have been other worthies 
 on the committee, but throughout his term in 
 office, no one presumed to officiate. The Visit 
 ing Committee, with his gold neck shrouded in 
 cambric, appeared in the schoolroom doorway 
 about once in every so often. Instantly the idle 
 drone of voices stopped. The girls began to 
 quake, and the older boys to look defiant. When 
 I was a child, I was not allowed to study, but by 
 the time that my brother was nearing four, I 
 fell into the way of leading him to school, it was 
 the only means of getting him past the minnows 
 in the brook. He was a handsome, merry child, 
 too mischievous to be controlled, and I loved 
 him. Since I was not to study, I sat on the 
 platform and as monitor heard lessons. I can 
 
226 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 see now that I must have been a day of rest and 
 gladness to our schoolmistress who, leaving me 
 in absolute charge, made trips home, or gossiped 
 with a neighbor, or sewed. 
 
 When the parson entered the schoolroom, the 
 fall of a pin resounded tumultuously. Without 
 turning his head to right or left, or glancing up, 
 or more naturally down, he took our school 
 mistress s chair which she vacated for him. 
 
 "Madame, your order is tolerable," he an 
 nounced after meditating favorably on the death 
 like silence. "You appear to appreciate the value 
 of discipline. I trust you do as well by the 
 intellectual development of the youth entrusted 
 to you as you do by their deportment." 
 
 The most phlegmatic of us shared our teacher s 
 increasing agitation. 
 
 He turned to the schoolroom, readjusting his 
 body to the angle. "If seven crows sat upon a 
 tree, and I should shoot three, how many of the 
 crows would remain?" he asked piercingly. 
 
 Our wits were stricken. Not a countenance 
 disclosed the intelligence of a mole. Our teacher 
 looked at me imploringly. 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 227 
 
 My brother, in the lovely words of Kerrick, 
 "heaved up his either hand." 
 
 "Buddie, you may answer," said the Visiting 
 Committee. An exultant glint lifted his lids. 
 
 "Four, Sir," said my brother. 
 
 "Wrong!" cried the Committee in triumph. 
 
 We looked aghast. We counted it over on our 
 fingers. Our brains were useless. 
 
 The Reverend Committee stated the problem 
 over again. 
 
 My brother, scarlet and confounded, was still 
 on his feet. He was a sturdy, fearless child with 
 a will of his own, and a mind not given to surren 
 dering unless convinced of an error. 
 
 "Did you say you shot thwee, Sir?" he 
 lisped. 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "And there were seven, Sir?" 
 
 "Correct." 
 
 "Then there would be four left," said my 
 brother. 
 
 "None would be left. If I should shoot three, 
 the rest would fly away." 
 
 The Reverend Committee had visited the school. 
 
228 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 The Committee descended the platform and 
 walked out. 
 
 "I d kill him if I could," remarked my brother 
 fiercely on the way home. 
 
 All the little boys burned to kill the parson. 
 And the grown boys, when they saw him coming, 
 passed by on the other side his grandchildren 
 among them. We were Priests and Levites 
 together there was not a Samaritan around the 
 Green. 
 
 The parson had no eyes at least none that 
 I remember. Two pools of lapis lazuli unlighted 
 as a moonless sky in which the last star dies, lay 
 under the shadow of his shaggy brows and beet 
 ling lids. His countenance was ruddy but it 
 did not warm. He was Saint Nicholas without 
 the heart of the Saint. If he had carried a pack, 
 it would have been loaded with treatises on 
 Predestination, Regeneration, and Original Sin. 
 He was the last oak in the forest of Puritanism ; 
 he stood without verdure. No bird built its 
 nest in his branches. He carried a cane, and the 
 cane w r as like unto himself it had a golden 
 neck. 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 229 
 
 The parson s breath was Anathema Maran- 
 atha to a stocking-hung hearth. He set a ban 
 on Popish festivals. Christmas in Norwich Town 
 was barely observed. Raisins, candy, and an 
 orange were the orthodox gifts. We would 
 sooner have desecrated the Sabbath than have 
 celebrated Easter, and we were horribly strict 
 in our observance of the Sabbath. The first 
 person in Norwich Town who dared to send 
 Easter greetings promiscuously and undisguised 
 was Mrs. White from Cleveland, who came upon 
 us Christians much as the Pope might have come 
 upon the Pilgrims. I recall to this day the card 
 she sent across the street to me on Easter morning, 
 and Sunday too ! think of it ! It was a pic 
 ture of a fresh-cheeked Miss in a crimson frock, 
 skipping with a rope of Jacqueminot roses done 
 against a background of burnished gold. I was 
 crazed with joy. I could not contain my ecstasy ; 
 I ran about the house, hugging the card and kiss 
 ing it, and extending it toward every one I met, 
 only to snatch it back as impetuously and clasp 
 it fast, and cry, "It s mine, it s mine!" My 
 mother who was Kentish, and as much out of her 
 
2 3 o A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 setting in New England as a chime in a sepulchre, 
 was adorable to us little ones. In our lack of 
 amusements, she used to cut out paper dolls, 
 houses, trees, and curious creatures that would 
 have staggered Adam to name. But the damsels 
 that she created were from rude wrapping paper. 
 At the sight of Mrs. White s card, I was utterly 
 without conscience. I flaunted my gay Pari- 
 sienne in my mother s face ; and my mother, more 
 happy in my happiness than I myself, slipped 
 down upon her loving knees to kiss me and my 
 card. Sunday in Norwich Town was a day of 
 absolute serenity in spite of its gloom. With 
 my mother in the house, the day was not unlovely. 
 Even babes were taught to commune with their 
 own hearts and be still. No haste, no stir, no 
 travel; not a sound but church bells calling; 
 no fret, no taking thought for any morrow save 
 Eternity. And before the day s close, we learned 
 a chapter from the prophets. But what the Sab 
 bath was two generations earlier than my day, 
 and with no mother in the house, it is easier for 
 me to imagine than for you. 
 When Edmund was in pinafores he ran 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 231 
 
 pellmell when he saw the preacher coming, just as 
 I ran when I saw him. Edmund too was in alarm 
 for the parson s head, although the parson and 
 his neck were at that date in the heydey of their 
 strength. By the time that Edmund was ten 
 years old, he crossed to the north side of the Green 
 if the parson appeared upon the south side. A 
 year or two later, the "gang" cut for themselves 
 hickory staves after the fashion shown them in 
 their parson s. They made themselves high 
 pasteboard collars and swathed their throats in 
 handkerchiefs. They resurrected white beavers 
 in divers attics, and when the parson left home 
 on a Saturday forenoon for the railway station, 
 a bodyguard of six escorted him. Childhood s 
 bewilderment had given place to vague aversion, 
 and vague aversion to intelligent revolt. 
 
 The clergyman did not observe them; he was 
 thinking of the sermon which he was to preach 
 in Lebanon in exchange with his brother of the 
 cloth. When he returned Monday noonday, the 
 same stern- visaged, undemonstrative group was 
 waiting for him at the station. He paced the 
 platform, they paced the platform ; he took to 
 
232 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the sidewalk, they took to the sidewalk. "Their 
 garb is outrageous !" he said techily to himself, 
 but their garb was precisely like his own. "Those 
 youths should be locked up; they should be 
 flogged!" he said again. But why locked up? 
 They were picking their way needfully, follow 
 ing exactly in his footsteps. When he reached 
 the bridge across the Yantic, he was in a white 
 heat of passion.- He turned on them. But 
 the mortification of it! They all turned. In 
 stead of facing six pairs of mischievous young 
 eyes, he found himself fronting six incommuni 
 cable backs ! He strode on, stabbing and thrash 
 ing the air with his cane, unthinking that just in 
 his rear, six hickory staves were curvetting and 
 plunging as if possessed. 
 
 When he preached to his flock the next Lord s 
 Day, I do not doubt that it was on the wicked 
 ness of dissolute youth. He certainly complained 
 to Edmund s guardian ; he alluded to the ultimate 
 end awaiting a sad and wild career; but he re 
 frained from giving details. 
 
 "The parson did not dare to say a word to my 
 father about me/ outspoke Asa Wilcox, when 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 233 
 
 the boys held a conference meeting of their own 
 behind the meetinghouse. "My father would 
 have brought him to the point ; my father would 
 have said, See here, now, what has the boy 
 done? Put it down in black and white, and I ll 
 take it out of his hide for you ! 
 
 "He did not dare to come to my father," harped 
 Little George. 
 
 "What shall we do next?" cried Edmund. It 
 made him uncomfortable to have his guardian s 
 allegiance to him questioned. 
 
 "We can stop up the ditch," said Legs. Legs s 
 arms were nearly as long as his pins; he was as 
 good as a pitchfork at shoving sods under the 
 skid. 
 
 "We always do that anyway, when it s cold 
 enough," remarked Ed Harland. 
 
 Stuffing the Lathrop ditch with sods on the 
 first severe Saturday afternoon was an effectual 
 way of getting the best of the God-fearing deacon, 
 whose precept and practice set dead against 
 laboring on the Sabbath. 
 
 "Let s tie a string to the meetinghouse bell- 
 clapper and hide in the rocks, and at midnight 
 
234 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 we ll ring the bell like Scotland Va-burning !" 
 suggested Windy. 
 
 "Then I ll do the ringing/ put in Edmund 
 promptly. "I ve been thrashed three times 
 for ringing the bell, and I ve never done it 
 yet!" 
 
 "Let s paste verses upon the signposts around 
 the Green Saturday night; then we ll have the 
 best of the parson he ll have to face them all 
 day Sunday." 
 
 "We ve done that before," commented Harland 
 with a sniff. "If we are going to do anything, 
 let s have something new ; and bear in mind that 
 we aren t children !" 
 
 Everybody sighed and sat in a brown study. 
 There was nothing going on no mirth, no fun, 
 no recreation ; no normal outlet for the natural 
 activities of a boy. 
 
 "Suppose we ask Captain Ben to take us with 
 him when he goes to haul wood?" proposed 
 Edmund. 
 
 "He ll expect us to help him," returned Harland 
 laconically. 
 
 "Harland, you down everything that every 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 235 
 
 one suggests," cried the gang. "What do you 
 say to do?" 
 
 Harland shrugged his shoulders. Then they 
 all sighed again. Life was truly dull. 
 
 "Let s go to the Dance Hall in the Strand/ 
 spoke up Stevens. "I know the fellow that runs 
 it, and he says the girls are stars." 
 
 "I ve seen the girls," returned Edmund, loy 
 ally contemptuous although ignorant; "they are 
 not half as handsome as Margaretta Huntington 
 and Cynthia Backus." 
 
 "I would not ring in Retta Huntington, if I 
 were you, Stedman," said Harland. 
 
 Edmund had backed the sylph Margaretta 
 straight into an airhole in the ditch, the winter 
 earlier, when his head was turned with skating 
 with her. Miss Retta was furious. She disdained 
 the Around-Town youths, and in her hauteur 
 and beauty queened over even the bloods at the 
 Landing. To be caught abroad with a little lad 
 like Edmund was a blow to her pride. The most 
 that he could do, when he jumped into the hole 
 to pull her out, was to clamber forth again, since 
 she was twice his size ; while the fair one, too 
 
236 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 exasperated and mortified to save herself, glared 
 at him from her icy pool circled by petticoats 
 floating and freezing on the wave. And when 
 she did climb out, she flew clinking homeward, 
 regardless of her escort. Unluckily a heartless 
 wag, to whom Miss Retta had given the mitten 
 on an earlier occasion, descried her flying over the 
 fields with Edmund in pursuit. Soon the whole 
 of Fuller s store was laughing. Edmund never 
 again spoke to Miss Retta. He did not dare ; no, 
 not after he was a Wall Street broker and was no 
 more in fear of bears and bulls than you and I 
 are of ladybirds. Margaretta was the nunlike 
 Sara s sister ; she was sister also to Webster 
 Perit children of Captain Ben. 
 
 "I m going to the Dance Hall," spoke up 
 Stevens with a yawn and a stretch. 
 
 "So am I," joined in Alphabet. "Come 
 along, Steddy!" 
 
 "I have an engagement." 
 
 "I know your engagement," interrupted Legs. 
 "You are all ready to sneak off now !" He poked 
 Edmund in the ribs. 
 
 "Out with your tome; where is it?" cried 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 237 
 
 Windy, but Stevens had the bookworm by the 
 collar and shook him like a stocking. 
 
 "Quit!" cried Edmund good-naturedly and 
 hugged his coat-front. 
 
 Stevens set him down. "What is your book?" 
 he asked with a drawl. 
 
 "Keats." 
 
 "Never heard of them." 
 
 "Just wait and I ll read you a page." 
 
 The gang sat down, sheltered and warm under 
 the sheds that gathered the sunlight as if in a 
 sheepfold. 
 
 Edmund read : 
 
 "In a drear-nighted December, 
 
 Too happy, happy tree, 
 Thy branches ne er remember 
 
 Their green felicity ; 
 The north cannot undo them, 
 With a sleety whistle through them, 
 Nor frozen thawings glue them 
 
 From budding at the prime. 
 
 "In a drear-nighted December, 
 Too happy, happy brook, 
 Thy bubblings ne er remember 
 Apollo s summer look ; 
 
238 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 But with a sweet forgetting, 
 They stay their crystal fretting, 
 Never, never petting 
 
 About the frozen time. 
 
 "Ah, would twere so with many 
 
 A gentle girl and boy ! 
 But were there ever any 
 
 Writh d not at passed joy ? 
 To know the change and feel it, 
 When there is none to heal it, 
 Nor numbed sense to steal it, 
 
 Was never said in rhyme." 
 
 Edmund had forgotten himself altogether. 
 He might have been sitting on his mother s knee, 
 his eyes so welled with light. 
 
 Beyond the belfry, the snow-burdened elms 
 moved like ships in the sea. 
 
 "I like it," said Stevens, weighing his words, 
 "only it makes me feel blue. It makes me feel 
 like committing suicide. That s the way with 
 poetry. If it s poor, it s too poor to read; and 
 if it s good, it s too good. Cussing and gambling, 
 and going to the Devil relieve a man; they re 
 like pulling the bung out of a cask when the 
 wine is working, but reading poetry is like ram- 
 
A PARSON OF THE OLD SCHOOL 239 
 
 ming the bung in, when it s starting to pop al 
 ready. I d go to the bad; I d do something 
 extreme, if I read poetry, I d get so cock-full 
 of feelings. I d like to go to the bad," he added, 
 "or to war, or to something, anything that s 
 alive ! I m sick of picking up stones in durned 
 old never-ending huckleberry pastures, and lis 
 tening to the parson." 
 
 "That s the way that poetry makes you feel!" 
 cried Edmund. "I ll read you something else, 
 Stevens wait !" 
 
 "Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art! 
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, 
 And watching, with eternal lids apart, 
 Like Nature s patient, sleepless Eremite. 
 The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of pure ablution round earth s human shores, 
 Or gazing on the new, soft-fallen mask 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors 
 No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, 
 Pillowed upon my fair love s ripening breast, 
 To feel forever its soft fall and swell, 
 Awake forever in a sweet unrest, 
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, 
 And so live ever or else swoon to death." 
 
240 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" ejaculated Stevens. He smiled 
 a wan smile and let his head slide down on Ed 
 mund s shoulder. He was subjugated by his 
 sensations. "I m going to the dance hall/ he 
 cried, starting up. "I m fizz-full up to my eyes, 
 S teddy, and the bung will pop, if I don t get to 
 moving ! Off I am !" 
 
 And off he was, striding down the turnpike 
 like an outlaw. And only a few years later, 
 while picking up the stones in the Reverend 
 Wilcox s sheep pasture as I have already told 
 you, he suddenly straightened and, taking one 
 deep free breath of the boundless dawn, was off ; 
 and lost to kith and friend till that October day 
 when, literally shot to pieces, he dropped beside 
 John Brown at Harper s Ferry. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE GILDED CAGE 
 
 THUS it was that the years passed, and that 
 Edmund s brook sped to the river, bearing away his 
 fair childhood on its white shoulders. 
 
 When the first frost nipped the noses of the 
 hazelnuts, he no longer arose betimes and, 
 standing in the roadway in front of the Sigourney 
 house, engaged in a fisticuff fight with prospective 
 followers. No, he tumbled the toddlers into a 
 barrow, and with the older children flocking as if 
 at the heels of a second Piper of Hamelin, he 
 mounted the hill, all gaiety and gusto, to discover 
 to them his long-secret find, a patch of bushes 
 hidden by overgrown sumacs in a field to the 
 south of Farmer Yerrington s pasture patch on 
 the Canterbury turnpike. 
 
 Canterbury Turnpike dear name ! Time be- 
 
242 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 shrew them that rechristen thee Elm Avenue, or 
 Roosevelt Parade! 
 
 Edmund did not talk so much as when a child. 
 He did not hand out family facts, and, led on by 
 the curious and the idle, discourse upon matri 
 monial and kindred subjects. The Stedman 
 skeleton stayed where it belonged, and no doubt 
 felt ennuied enough, after its seven fat years of 
 trotting abroad with Edmund and being intro 
 duced by him into the genial society of Fuller s 
 store. 
 
 In and out of his uncle s house, Edmund came 
 and went as silent as the skeleton itself. The 
 exacting and hot-tempered old Puritan did not 
 understand his nephew, and his nephew did not 
 understand him. The birch, the spiritual go- 
 between, did its best, but it gave out of neces 
 sity. It is extinct along the Stedman byroads. 
 
 In more ways than the one, Edmund felt sorely 
 his stultifying environment. He was as blithe 
 as a bird, but he was restless for sun and sky. 
 It was his impulse to sing. 
 
 He would have been content to bide in the 
 cage, if his uncle would have let the door stay 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 243 
 
 open. But the zealous deacon must have the 
 door shut and fastened, and whenever the little 
 prisoner fluttered his wings, the keeper stowed 
 the cage in the dark. 
 
 Boylike, Edmund accounted that his keep and 
 lodging cost his guardian little ; he was too agile- 
 witted not to foot up debit and credit columns for 
 himself. During many an interminable evening, 
 when he sat in the shadow of the spirit-lamp 
 copying documents for his uncle who, whether 
 as Town Clerk or as Judge, had endless papers 
 to be recorded, his eyes lifted to the judge s face 
 and fixed upon the judge s eyes. Did his guar 
 dian treat him and Charlie justly? The yearly 
 stipend which he supposed was his own and 
 Charlie s was not spent upon them ; was it 
 stored for them? By being very careful of his 
 clothes, would he one day profit by his thrift, 
 and be enabled to take Charlie and make a start 
 in business near his mother? Unhappy ques 
 tionings troubled him. His pinions were worn 
 with beating against bars. But no answering 
 light softened the steel-gray eye of the staunch 
 patriarch. No message save of business abstrac- 
 
244 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 tion met the frank gaze of the young copyist. 
 A look of sufferance passed over Edmund s brow, 
 his lip so instant in smiles drooped waywardly 
 as hour after hour sifted by, and his fine, nervous 
 handwriting flowed behind his pen, and no inti 
 mate word was spoken to make the silence com 
 panionable or to cheer the monotony. When 
 he dropped into Fuller s store, it was with a 
 reckless laugh. 
 
 To tell the truth, he kept Fuller s store in a 
 twitter with his spirits and amusing verses, 
 verses marked by a joyous truthfulness that set 
 the sedate and suspicious gentry on a cushion of 
 pins and needles. He was mirth itself; even 
 old Chicko, who was supposed to be as blind as 
 a bat and as deaf as an adder, laughed when 
 Edmund laughed. His verses were crude and 
 unpremeditated, but their beat was as sure as 
 the pulsing of Tom the Fiddler s viol string. He 
 dashed off a taking couplet in Lydia Lovejoy s 
 autograph album, and soon all the girls in the 
 village were mad to buy autograph albums and 
 have Edmund inscribe them. Lithe, debonair, 
 and ready-hearted, incredibly shy and incredibly 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 245 
 
 daring, he was welcomed by a call of " Hello, 
 Steddy, old boy!" or " Hello, E. C.!" wherever 
 he appeared. Everybody was glad to see him 
 coming, everybody except the aforesaid and over- 
 pious gentry who were with him always. They, 
 good souls and wary, prayed with one eye open 
 when Edmund was in the sanctuary. Since the 
 Sabbath morning when he accidentally let his 
 Keats fall over the gallery rail, they felt that he 
 was no respecter of Perkins. 
 
 "Land! Master Stedman, ride Meg around the 
 Green if you like !" said the stable keeper jocosely 
 on a day when Edmund hung about the skittish 
 roan as if he longed to mount her. "You can 
 pay me when you come into your property." 
 
 Butcher and baker and candlestick maker 
 offered to trust Edmund, merely for the mirth 
 of it. He was so proud and so poor and so ridicu 
 lously serious in recording his obligations. 
 
 Deacon Stedman laughed grimly when he 
 learned that Dick Staples, the livery keeper, was 
 trusting his nephew. "You ll never get a cent 
 from the boy, I warn you!" he exclaimed in 
 indignation. 
 
246 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Then the boy will never get a cent!" replied 
 the stableman pointedly. "You can t fool old 
 Dick on a lad or on a hoss. If Master Edmund 
 comes into his own, he ll pay me gold for silver !" 
 
 And with the first money that Edmund pos 
 sessed, he was back in Norwich paying petty bills 
 which all save he had forgotten. He was never 
 done paying imaginary debts. Whoever knew 
 him, knows that throughout his life he went up 
 and down the world as if he were his brother s 
 debtor. He journeyed three hundred miles by 
 horseback and stage in early manhood, to thank 
 an aging lady who in her far girlhood had given 
 him his first copy of Tennyson. 
 
 A half-day in the judge s library and a lecture 
 from the old gentleman had a like effect on Ed 
 mund. He lit out to Fuller s store, or to the 
 cobbler s, in a mood to feel that being good did 
 not help, and being bad did not matter. Only 
 when darkness came upon the house, when the 
 angel of sickness stayed not his sword for the 
 blood already spilled on the lintel, did Edmund 
 forget constraint. He seemed to understand 
 grief from some unremembered aforetime. He 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 247 
 
 stood like a star in the gloom. One who had been 
 Mary s playmate came to him to die on his shoul 
 der; he seemed to understand so much better 
 than her elders what that strange last journey 
 meant. 
 
 He was himself also whenever he was out of 
 doors for any length of time, and alone. The 
 hardening influence of uncongenial environment 
 the chill of feeling that he was an object 
 of disapprobation melted. He straightened 
 gradually, as you have seen a savin straighten 
 when its head is released from a snowdrift. His 
 heart burst into bloom at the sight of the spring. 
 He sang at the sound of the ripples in the river. 
 He thought that it was the reach and spread of 
 the elms that lifted something within him, but it 
 was something within him that lifted him above 
 the treetops. He traced every stream to its 
 source. He mooned along the Yantic River, not 
 knowing what he sought, or what he found. 
 
 He spied the water lily planting her own garden ; 
 he saw her coil the stem of her full-bloom flowers 
 into tightening spirals, and draw each ripening 
 seed pod down into the ooze. He contemplated 
 
2 4 8 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the father bass guarding the helpless fry. He 
 learned to know the mother bass, and just when 
 and where to find her dozing. He brought home 
 orchises, Arethusa, Indian s Moccasin, and coral 
 root, "airbs", the country folk called them, - 
 and made bouquets for Annie and for Tom s 
 wife, for Tom was married long ago. He had 
 "espoused" Mary Hyde, just as Edmund had 
 "perdicted"; and Tom and Mary had had a 
 little son, Lewis; but Lewis died. Edmund 
 helped the languishing grub to a comfortable 
 lodgment on the trunk of the Norway spruce and 
 stood solicitously guardful while its sallow coat 
 grew translucent, and, splitting noiselessly, set 
 free the young cicada. And then he stood guard 
 over the cicada until the dewlike beads at its 
 thighs unfolded into wings as blue and frail as 
 smoke from an autumn fire, and the tender 
 body and wonder-wandering eyes gathered tex 
 ture from the sunlight and breeze. 
 
 He tramped to the field where the chieftain 
 Mian torn ono lost his life. He learned all the 
 legends. Nothing escaped him. 
 
 His uncle directed his studies but did not 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 249 
 
 control them. His mother gave him a volume of 
 Coleridge and added a copy of Byron. Eliza 
 beth was carried away with Byron and, like a 
 child, must send it at once to her Edmund, - 
 or more likely, keen-sighted herself and always 
 level-headed, she trusted his poetic instinct and 
 would not withhold any good thing from his 
 growth. Edmund s guardian, the strict and 
 narrow-minded deacon, would have suffered none 
 other than Elizabeth to give Edmund the books 
 which she gave him. But pretty Elizabeth was 
 doing so well in a worldly way that Deacon Sted- 
 man could not find fault with her judgment. 
 Deferring to the Will of a Higher Power, she 
 yet managed to send forward her own will like 
 an advance agent to arrange for her next move. 
 In spontaneity and ardor, Edmund was his mother 
 over again. Byron was the breath of freedom to 
 him. The sunlight breaking on the surf of Greece 
 
 the blare of clarion and fife the canvas 
 clapping its hands for gladness intoxicated him. 
 
 Mary too devoured Byron, not Mary Hyde, 
 Tom s wife, but Tom s saintlike sister Mary, 
 
 seated cross-legged on her bedroom floor before 
 
250 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 her highboy, with the book open amid laven 
 der-sweet linen. At the sound of an approaching 
 foot, she rammed the drawer shut and, with 
 flaming cheeks and eyes that burned, fell to the 
 knitting which she held in her lap. And the good 
 aunts never guessed. 
 
 The ring of adventure, the keen scent of high 
 emprise, transported Edmund. To him books 
 were the Chariot of Israel and the Horesmen 
 thereof. They were wings. Mr. Coit, his Sun 
 day-school teacher, whom he loved and revered, 
 had been to a hundred foreign ports. Only to 
 see him pass on the street made the deep violet 
 of Edmund s eyes blaze. His spirit burned with 
 in him at the sight of an elephant s tusk or a 
 Hindoo god upon a cabinet. When Mr. Coit 
 talked to the Sunday-school class about Jonah 
 and the whale, Edmund listened as to one who 
 has inside information. Mr. Coit was a good 
 man, Edmund and his mates had decided that 
 point among themselves, and they were right; 
 he was a good man. Across the road from Sted- 
 man Manor would have lived Captain Potter, 
 and a stone s throw from the Peck Tavern would 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 251 
 
 have lived Captain Havens, if the two had been 
 content to live on land. What wonders must 
 there not be in the deep, when Captain Havens 
 could be enticed to leave his fortnight s bride, 
 the belle of the town, and sail away on a three- 
 year whaling voyage ! Next door to Mr. Coit 
 lived Mr. Thomas. His house was also enchant 
 ing with sketches of naked savages. Naked 
 savages ! there was something about a native, 
 naked savage that brought blood to Edmund s eye. 
 
 The practical and the romantic were bedfellows 
 at Norwich Town, and Edmund took his half in 
 the middle. He alluded to the Orient as famil 
 iarly as if he had come to Norwich on a monsoon. 
 He gave Particular Perkins a black eye, because 
 Particular questioned whether Edmund s mother 
 was, as Edmund maintained, more beautiful 
 than an Asiatic siren. Edmund was furious for 
 his mother s reputation as a beauty. 
 
 For a moment after worsting Particular, Ed 
 mund was too dazed to realize his victory. Then 
 he sat down with a thud, and surveying Particular, 
 repeated, "My mother is more beautiful than an 
 Asiatic siren." 
 
252 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 Not a word from Particular. 
 "In a hay-Tern" added Edmund by way of 
 emphasis. 
 
 Particular gave no sign. 
 Edmund began again : 
 
 " I ve lived at ease in Libya, 
 Where maidens all are fair. 
 I ve viewed the hay-rem s beauteous flock. 
 For them I do not care. 
 My mother she is lovelier far 
 Than all the other ladies are." 
 
 It was a stanza from his latest poem. 
 
 A spasm shook Particular. But he might 
 have been a deaf mute ; he made no response. 
 
 Unresting and untiring, Edmund s fancy strayed 
 everywhere. In his unconscious quest for what 
 was not, he was easily unmindful of barren 
 dreariness. His hill-shadowed bed chamber was 
 now the City of Brass and now the Palace of the 
 Alhambra ; the gutted dip against his wall was 
 the sevenfold candlestick; he had only to turn 
 the leaf of his book, and he was swept through 
 time and tide and stranded on Galapagos; he 
 had only to hear Mr. Coit say Guerilla, and he 
 
THE GILDED CAGE 253 
 
 himself was riding a la Espagnole from Demerara 
 to Vera Cruz. Everything was actual to him. 
 He did not merely read the Eve of St. Agnes; 
 he was the Moor, laden with lucent syrups tinct 
 with cinnamon. He was Sir John Franklin, and 
 the Spy, and Alexander Selkirk; he was Roland 
 Graeme and Roderick Dhu and Captain Bonne- 
 ville; he was piteous Lear and compassionate 
 Cordelia both in one. The story of the young 
 king seated solitary on a throne who, having a 
 wife was yet wifeless, and who was youthless 
 although a youth, haunted him. Each year that 
 he lived he remembered the story more clearly. 
 But when he came upon felicity pictured on a 
 page, or freedom mirrored in a word he was once 
 more like a sloop with her keel greeting the 
 sun and with her beam drinking the sea. He has 
 often told me that woes more crushing or happiness 
 more piercing never burdened or blest his later 
 years. He has told me that nothing is sweeter 
 than young joy, unless it is peace, and that no 
 horror exceeds the nightmares of childhood save 
 fear, the most terrible of all the emotions which 
 clutch the heart of man. 
 
254 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 He hurried just as he hurried when a child. 
 He was in haste to reach the future, a future 
 with his mother. When he brooded, his days 
 were lonely his loved one seemed indefinitely 
 removed. When he was glad, his days were 
 days of immeasurable fulness. The future 
 seemed at hand. 
 
 Over all was his love for poetry, his passion for 
 immortal excellence; an unconscious outreaching 
 desire for perfection victorious over change. 
 Lying under the shade and light of the elms that 
 arched the burial ground, he gazed at their 
 gnarled, far fingers clasped against the inscrutable 
 sky. He looked upon those mighty trees as 
 though they were deathless, and yet, as he pon 
 dered and dreamed, tears grew in his eyes and 
 splashed down his cheeks to the grass. 
 
 The certainty had begun to stir within him 
 that it is in men to be more than earth that 
 perishes. He had begun to dream that he might 
 live when the trees of the field were sod. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE SNOWS or YESTERYEAR 
 
 UNDER the Stedman rooftree it seemed as if 
 little children were always dying. Mr. Charles 
 Stedman grew worn and stoop-shouldered, peer 
 ing into tiny graves to see if they were rightly 
 fashioned. Beth, his patient wife, often caught 
 her breath as she sat sewing and, clutching some 
 useless sock to her bosom, leaned sobbing against 
 the wall. First and last, there was baby Bessie, 
 just old enough to lisp : 
 
 " Gentle Jesu, meek and mild ; " 
 
 and then May, one year older; and Henry Bull, 
 named for good Doctor Bull ; and Charles Henry 
 but Charles Henry did not die until he was 
 past five years old, which was so advanced an 
 age for Stedman children that his mother was 
 thankful and so hopeful ! Then Frederick Strong 
 
256 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 died; and afterwards the baby Edward Strong, 
 on the evening of his only fete-day ; - - all of 
 these Charles Stedman s children, and not one of 
 them, save Charles Henry, had seen the spring 
 come thrice. Surely it was never planned to 
 take so many little children from one mother. 
 Perhaps there was a mistake among the angels, 
 or some ignorance among them that watched their 
 cradle. But there was One who must have cared, 
 who finding none amid His Shining Legions to 
 handle the pretty babes as knowingly as she who 
 bore them, fetched their mother to them; and 
 around her feet they lie, in the burial ground, 
 like a swathe of budded flowers. 
 
 Then Mary, Tom s wife, died; and within a 
 year Tom died; stalwart, wind-ruddy Tom who 
 had never known a sick hour in his life, and who, 
 after Mary s burial, rode forth in stoic strength 
 like a prospering Esquire, while everybody whis 
 pered that he had his eye out for another help 
 mate. Stalwart, season-hardened Tom was taken 
 sick with Mary s cough and was gone like a flaw 
 of snow in April. 
 
 Deacon Stedman bought a plot in the new 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 257 
 
 cemetery that was laid out along the boys swim 
 ming pool in the Yantic River, a fairer slope 
 than it is to-day, when the city fathers filch 
 its loveliness inch by inch and bury it under 
 refuse. 
 
 "Our plot is four times as large as anybody s 
 else plot," Edmund boasted when it was bought. 
 "My uncle s plot is four ordinary plots. And 
 I shouldn t be surprised if it wasn t large enough 
 now !" he added, when he saw that he was making 
 an impression. "But as I told my uncle, the 
 little ones don t take up so much room as the 
 grown-ups, and when two die the same day, we 
 can bury them in one grave, the way we buried 
 the twins." 
 
 There is supposed to have been a general con 
 viction around the Green that it was vastly nicer 
 to go to the house of mourning than to the house 
 of feasting. But although Edmund preferred 
 the feasting, he took the funerals philosophically. 
 He liked to have his family in the lead; and he 
 did not hesitate to speak right proudly that his 
 uncle had the finest funerals and the most funerals 
 in the town ; that his uncle could beat everybody 
 
258 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 in the line of having funerals and doctors. When 
 a spring passed with no funeral to mark it, Ed 
 mund felt abashed and untrustworthy, and not 
 until August, when the twins died, did he feel 
 that his uncle s reputation was retrieved. Aside 
 from making double amends for lost mortuary 
 laurels, the death of the twins arrested his thoughts 
 very little. He was even fretted and harassed 
 because of having to give up time to the ob 
 sequies. At the grave, he stood first with his 
 toes turned out like the parson and then with 
 his toes turned in like pigeon-toed Lathrop ; and 
 he yawned profoundly. You see he was in the 
 midst of reading the Arabian Nights; and reason 
 ably it was of much less moment to have two 
 babies sicken and sleep than to be forced to leave 
 Ali Baba in the cave of the Forty Thieves. 
 Edmund s heels were set in graveyard clay, but 
 his heart was in Arabia. 
 
 Yet when he was back at his book, or was 
 saying Sesame to the darkness as he dreamed 
 awake in his bed, the faces of the twins, pale 
 against their one pillow of immortelles, emerged 
 strangely from the time-yellowed page, or from 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 259 
 
 the gloom of his bedchamber s unlighted night 
 and drifted before his eyes. 
 
 When Lewis, Tom s firstborn, died, the third 
 summer after the death of the twins, and just a 
 year afterwards little Henry followed, Edmund 
 had an uncomfortable sense of concern steal upon 
 him, and he stared at the flower-coverleted little 
 form, thinking of the painted bob that he tucked 
 beneath the tiny fingers, and which the baby 
 fingers did not take. It was well enough for 
 girls to die, but it was another matter when 
 Turville dropped top and kite, and too weak to 
 lift his hand, lay with his head in Annie s lap, 
 while his mates took turns in making him ready 
 for bed. 
 
 At night, Edmund roused himself from sleep 
 to draw the coverlet over his brother Charlie, 
 and by day he slackened his pace to Charlie s; 
 but he clapped him on the back and cried, "Stir 
 your pegs, old Codger ; don t be a milksop !" 
 
 Charlie a milksop ! an orphan, ailing in an 
 alien house and never once repining. 
 
 An unforgettable happiness came to Edmund 
 during those latter days of his childhood. Seven 
 
260 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 years had passed since the Thanksgiving when 
 his mother came to visit him and brought with 
 her a new husband. Now she returned not 
 for an hour, or a day, but for a visit ! and 
 brought two darling little girls. They were 
 Edmund s half-sisters. Clementine, the older, 
 had eyes much like Edmund s, the same deep 
 violet, with dark lashes, black by contrast with 
 her shining hair. She did not look in the least 
 like her father. Neither did her baby sister, 
 Mary. Edmund, Charlie, Clementine, Mary, 
 and pretty Elizabeth herself, looked like a family 
 of five children, and Honorable Mr. Kinney did 
 not appear to have any part in the affair. I dare 
 say that he looked upon their youthfulness as the 
 sea of his severance. Edmund did not hang 
 about his mother as once he hung about her, for 
 the reason that she had her little daughters, and 
 that he was the brother of two little girls who 
 were to be guarded and escorted. But his eyes 
 lifted to his mother s eyes with the most adoring 
 love, and it was "Mother, here is a footstool," 
 before she guessed that she wanted it, and 
 "Mother, let me." and her scarf was around her 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 261 
 
 throat before she felt the night-damp. Mr. 
 Kinney, who was profound but not quick-witted, 
 was beside himself. And Elizabeth would lean 
 towards him and say with tantalizing sweet 
 ness, "Isn t Edmund a delight? Did you ever 
 know a lad so tender and so thoughtful, and, 
 Mr. Kinney, have you heard what strides he has 
 made with his books ! He reads Latin as easily 
 as English ! He is going to enter the University 
 at fifteen to please his mother, mind you ! 
 He is going to try for the English prize, of course, 
 and he will take it too. No one shall outstrip 
 my boy." 
 
 Mr. Kinney loved her to desperation. He 
 stalked up and down. He shifted the twin mani 
 kins on the shelf with an abruptness which threat 
 ened to undo them. But when he strode into 
 the entry, Elizabeth glided to the threshold, 
 closed the door, and turned the key. She must 
 not have her thoughts distracted by outside 
 interruptions when she was helping her Edmund. 
 
 Edmund adored his mother; he hung upon 
 her least hint in regard to his studies. When 
 she told him that she expected him to bend 
 
262 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 every nerve and effort to becoming a notable 
 man, he was in a seventh heaven of fervor; he 
 forgot play and the passing hour ; and when she 
 told him that he must think of others first, that 
 he must not consider his right to study as more 
 important than another s right, he was torn with 
 conflicting self-interest and self-abnegation, and 
 ready to despair. To become great, and to think 
 rather of others than of oneself seemed an im 
 possible combination. But when she whispered 
 to him "Yale", he was silent, for his heart said 
 "Princeton." Enter Yale, a hundred miles re 
 moved from her in Newark, when he could be 
 half that distance nearer ! He set his heart on 
 going to Princeton. 
 
 She overlooked his first drafts of groping 
 verse ; she showed him his good points and ex 
 plained why they were good ; she showed him his 
 faults, and told him how to overcome them. 
 Without his knowing it and without knowing it 
 herself, she taught him to be a true critic. 
 
 Soon she was telling him that he disclosed 
 promise of doing better work than she had done. 
 Joy-blinded, she kissed his blinded eyes, she 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 263 
 
 was so proud, so glad. "My Poet-boy !" she 
 murmured, while his mad bleed surged in his ears, 
 and the room swayed around him in his rapture. 
 
 The two had many an artless conference to 
 gether, with head against head over a scrap of 
 paper, and with eyes aglow with earnestness. 
 Mr. Kinney looked upon these tete-a-tetes with 
 an unforgiving countenance ; he was of the opin 
 ion that Deacon Stedman was responsible for 
 Edmund s education, and that Elizabeth ought 
 not to be burdened. 
 
 Burdened indeed those two lovers, mother 
 and son ! Elizabeth locked Edmund alone with 
 her, whenever she was of a mind to have a talk with 
 him. She knew that a mother should respect 
 a young son s confidences. If Mr. Kinney s 
 step was heard in the hallway, she shot like 
 sunlight to the door and, breaking into girlish 
 laughter, flung it wide, and asked him if he was 
 looking for her. And when he said, "No, no, 
 my Dear, " she pulled his august head prone with 
 her sparkling fingers and set so playful a kiss on 
 the one spot where his hair had taken leave that 
 for the moment he was willing to walk away aim- 
 
264 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 lessly ; and when he walked away, she locked the 
 door again. 
 
 Elizabeth knew how to manage her husband. 
 She combined tact, helpfulness, and charm. 
 The uncouth entered her presence and left it, 
 bearing a touch of the patrician. She could 
 not help lifting the lowly toward her level; 
 she made gods of the great. Perfection was 
 her passion. 
 
 I could tell you more of Mr. Kinney, who was 
 a commanding personage in the world of men, 
 although a boyish unbalance smote him at a 
 teasing look from his child- wife. She was irre 
 sistibly fascinating. If she had quoted to him, - 
 while unpacking the eighty ball dresses which 
 she brought from the Italian court, Pope s 
 epigram on Bacon, he would have beamed as if 
 sanctified. He was her willing slave. He suf 
 fered excruciatingly from gout, and when his 
 throes were at their worst, bellowed like Bashan. 
 Each time that he underwent an attack, he would 
 say that he could not understand why he was 
 afflicted, inasmuch as he had never had a touch 
 of ill health until that hour. And when he was 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 265 
 
 well again, he swore that he had never been ill 
 a day in his life, which was just what he should 
 have said, and just what you and I will doubtless 
 say if either of us happen in a like case. He was 
 a downright fine scholar of the old school. He 
 sat up till morning in his library, like the gentle 
 man he was, drank whisky and read Aristotle 
 and Plato. But he came down to eight o clock 
 breakfast as fresh as may be. During the days 
 in Italy, when Mrs. Kinney was pleasure-driving 
 with him through the mountains, her fat Pomer 
 anian Toto jolted from her lap now and then and 
 rolled to the ground. "Arretez!" Mrs. Kinney 
 would say in elegant leisure to her coachman. 
 But to Mr. Kinney she said, "Mr. Kinney - 
 Toto!" and that gentleman, testing the timber s 
 state, climbed stiffly down and trudged back for 
 the Pomeranian who sat in the road waiting for 
 the Honorable Minister to Italy to deposit him 
 on his mistress s knees. 
 
 Clementine was a little love, a born coquette. 
 She placed her hand in Edmund s with coy, en 
 trusting sweetness. He lifted her to the arm of 
 
266 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 the settle and seated himself beside her. Charlie 
 had taken Mary to himself. 
 
 "Clementine," Edmund whispered in spite of 
 his intent to say nothing to make her feel con 
 strained, "won t you be my little girl?" 
 
 "No, I won t," said the wee fairy decidedly. 
 Then, with a lengthening glance at the tall slight 
 youth above her, she added yieldingly, "but I 
 will let you be my little boy." 
 
 "Shall I tell you a story?" he asked. Story 
 telling was his chief magic. 
 
 "Not about bears," said Miss Clementine 
 quickly, "nor mouses !" 
 
 The story ran on pleasantly. Miss Clementine 
 let herself down from the settle s arm to her 
 brother s knee. Her charmed eyes did not waver 
 from his lips, and she sighed when the tale was 
 done. "That was a nice story," she told him. 
 "Boy, do you know any more?" She folded 
 her hands upon her blue sash. 
 
 "Wouldn t you like to be my little girl?" he 
 entreated. 
 
 "Perhaps," whispered Miss Clementine softly. 
 
 And so it was covenanted, and throughout the 
 
THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR 267 
 
 bright length of that brief visit, Edmund played 
 that Clementine belonged to him and was his 
 very own. 
 
 It was after Clementine had gone away, to 
 gether with the little sister, the fair mother and 
 Honorable Mr. Kinney, that Tom s wife, Mary, 
 died. And when she died, she left behind her a 
 tiny daughter whom Tom called " little Mary." 
 
 Edmund was studying to enter the university 
 that autumn, and through the sultry dog days, 
 he sat in Mary s curtained bedchamber, rocking 
 the baby s cradle. He was comforted for Clemen 
 tine s loss after a more complete and a sweeter 
 fashion than he had dreamed could fall to him. 
 He droned over his Greek verbs with his head on 
 little Mary s pillow, and his dream-filled gaze 
 fixed on her sleeping lids. He sang lullabies to 
 her of his own making in whispering beguilement ; 
 he cooed to her when she cooed, and quieted her 
 when she cried. He spent hour in and hour out 
 with her, and, kneeling while she slept, circled 
 her pillow with one arm, while with his free hand 
 he turned the pages of his grammar. He had 
 felt bitter towards his uncle and aunts, bitter 
 
268 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 toward the whole of Norwich Town, which in 
 truth was crude and stulted to one of his high 
 breed and spirit. But a new life entered his life 
 with his intelligent keen love for little Mary. 
 His life had been as narrow as a well, now it 
 became as deep. He had a live thing to love. 
 He heard his uncle s voice in the orchard ; he 
 heard his aunts footfalls come and go in the 
 busy house. Ah, how good was his guardian 
 to let him sit by little Mary ! How kind were 
 his aunts and cousins to let him nurse the babe 
 and tend its cradle ! He felt poignantly grateful. 
 The possession that he had yearned for was his; 
 his was a fullness of love for which his heart had 
 hungered. To have a little child all of a man s 
 own seemed to him the most celestial bliss that 
 God could bestow on mortals. He kissed the 
 clinging fingers. His smiles rained down upon 
 the hair-drift on the pillow. 
 
 And little Mary slumbered ; and, not lacking 
 for a mother s love, little Mary waxed strong. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE DOORSTEP 
 
 IT was in the Old Academy at Norwich Town, 
 the second year before Edmund went to Yale, 
 that he made his initial appearance as a man 
 
 among men. Anna G , a newcomer at the 
 
 Green, was the first young lady in his life to take 
 him seriously. 
 
 The academy at the Landing, where Ed Har- 
 land prepared for college, was held by Mr. 
 Pettis on the second floor of a columned house 
 in School Street that overlooked the town and 
 half the county. It was the school of the bloods. 
 Edwin Ely, Jim Coit, and Will Aiken all of 
 whom became generals during the Civil War 
 also attended. Tom Harland, Dan Gilman, Don 
 Mitchell, Ike Bromley, and Jonathan Trumbull 
 widened, first and last, the circle of the gifted 
 and the merry. Mr. Pettis did not whip. 
 
270 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 On the hillside topping Pettis s Academy was 
 an excellent free school kept by Mr. Joseph 
 Thurston and Miss Gilbert. Mr. Thurston and 
 Miss Gilbert, he in front and she following hard 
 upon him, bent almost double as they toiled up 
 the perpendicular path of rolling gravel on their 
 way to their school. Just far enough to their 
 rear to be out of reach the bad boys pursued them, 
 mocking. 
 
 "Old Joe!- 
 Old Joe ! - 
 
 Old Joe kicking up ahind and afore ! 
 Miss Gilbert kicking up ahind Old Joe !" 
 
 Old Joe flogged, birched, rattanned, made 
 untoward pupils toe the mark, and what was 
 worse, sent them upstairs to Miss Gilbert to en 
 dure the punishment of standing in the middle 
 of her floor among her girls. But to crawl aloft 
 only to find that lovely Mary Prentice was doing 
 penance on the floor, to be condemned to the 
 delight of sharing her ignominy, was the pleas 
 ing pain that fell to my father s lot during his one 
 day in the school. His father, my grandfather, 
 at once sent him back to Mr. Pettis. He had 
 
THE DOORSTEP 271 
 
 sent his boy to Mr. Thurston to be birched, not 
 to be set among girls. 
 
 The Norwich Town Academy was opened in the 
 Old Court House on the Green when the court 
 was transferred to the Landing. Doctor Gul 
 liver, Mr. Aikman, and other dignitaries ruled 
 and feruled in pedagogic succession. They were 
 without competitors in the field. The serene, 
 quaint three-story building gazed east and west 
 through dormer windows. Weeping willows 
 swept the panes with frail tracery, or drew in 
 across the sills like curtains. The stairs were 
 folksy, dim and worn and easy. Edmund 
 and his mates did not mount in pairs like the 
 elephant and the kangaroo. They straggled 
 along in shoals; for Edmund, you must know, 
 attended the Norwich Town Academy because 
 of Judge Stedman s loyalty to birch as well as 
 to breeding. 
 
 To-day Norwich Town has a Queen Anne 
 schoolhouse, I wish it were defunct ! multi 
 colored, with a dirt yard and smug maple trees 
 planted at exact intervals on the turnpike. Every 
 one who passed the Old Academy stopped to 
 
272 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 look at it. Every one who passes the new school- 
 house stops to look at it too ! 
 
 Edmund was hardly settled in the large room 
 in the Old Academy than he was sent to 
 sit on the girls side. Anna had no deskmate, 
 so Anna was his victim. As he sat down in 
 the double seat beside her, she folded close 
 her skirts with an air of effronted excellence; 
 she would let him see that she eschewed the 
 wicked. 
 
 "Hello, Anna !" he said softly. 
 
 She gave him a stony frown. 
 
 He glanced at the sum on her slate. 
 
 She rubbed the slate blank. 
 
 " I ll do your sums for you; would you like 
 me to, Anna?" he whispered at the risk of a 
 strapping. 
 
 She took her Speller, turned her back squarely 
 upon him, and sat with her feet in the aisle. 
 
 Anna s ears hid in her hair. They were like 
 bits of dawn. Her cheek too was dawnlike. 
 The minutes were long, and the minutes were 
 slow. He filched Anna s pencil furtively, be 
 guiled by the bare surface of the slate. He drew 
 
THE DOORSTEP 273 
 
 a picture of Anna ; he drew a picture of himself. 
 He set off his own likeness with huge moustaches. 
 At the foot of the slate, he wrote : 
 
 "This picture is of A and ME. 
 A is my girl, and 7 am E. n 
 
 " Anna ! " he whispered. His whisper was softer 
 than a sigh. 
 
 Curiosity mastered Anna s chilly righteousness. 
 She turned her head a mite. In her simplicity, 
 she gazed at the magnificent moustaches the 
 bewildering combination of A and ME, and / 
 and E, not comprehending. Then it came to 
 her that the lady was she, she who never 
 broke a rule, and that the disgraced Edmund 
 called her his girl. Her brow blazed with shame. 
 She was merciless ; she laid the back of her hand 
 against her nose and pointed her forefinger at 
 him. 
 
 " Fie !" she said. 
 
 He colored to his throat. He tried to meet 
 her glare for glare, but he could only swallow. 
 
 After school, when they met in the lane, they 
 were enemies. They detested each other; they 
 would not walk on the same flagstones. After 
 
274 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 a year s rivalry in looks of undisguised estrange 
 ment or obtrusive indifference, Anna came un 
 expectedly upon Edmund as he stepped from 
 the store. Just behind him stalked Particular 
 Perkins. If Anna sniffed at Edmund, Particular 
 would espy it. Moreover, the two had outgrown 
 childishness. Her nose turned up, her lips pursed, 
 but she stayed on the flagstones where she be 
 longed. So likewise did Edmund. They blushed. 
 "Good morning, Anna! 7 said Edmund, the 
 next time that they passed. "Good morning, 
 Edmund!" she murmured and hastened as if to 
 answer a summons from home. 
 
 When April came, Anna in the gush of rosy 
 youth, shot up to the height of the sweetbrier 
 that climbed the garden wall. 
 
 "To me, when in the sudden spring, 
 
 I hear the earliest robin s lay, 
 With the first thrill there comes again 
 One picture of the May. 
 
 "The veil is parted wide, and lo, 
 
 A moment, though my eyelids close, 
 Once more I see the wooded hill 
 Where the arbutus grows. 
 
THE DOORSTEP 275 
 
 "I see the village dryad kneel, 
 
 Trailing her slender fingers through 
 The knotted tendrils, as she lifts 
 Their pale pink flowers to view. 
 
 "Hark ! from the moss-clung apple-bough 
 Beyond the tumbled wall, there broke 
 The gurgling music of the May, 
 Twas the first robin spoke !" 
 
 Edmund and Anna listened to the robins. 
 They wandered over Wawecus Hill, searching 
 for the Mayflower amid the lingering snow. 
 Together they sat on the burying-ground wall 
 under the weeping willows, while the orchard 
 behind them rained apple blossoms. Edmund 
 read poetry to Anna, but Anna the dryad! 
 did not care for print and paper. She plaited 
 herself a wreath, and with the brook for a mirror, 
 crowned her careless hair. Sometimes she set 
 herself to braiding the grasses that stood around 
 her and so beguiled the time until Edmund should 
 be done. When he finished reading, he would 
 ask, "Was that not beautiful, Anna?" and Anna 
 would answer, "Yes, Ned," not knowing what 
 he had read, or what it was that he asked, and 
 
276 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 lifting her eyes halfway to his in timid uncer 
 tainty. 
 
 And it was beautiful, the drifting shadows, 
 the sweet air, the solitude of loveliness, and the 
 simplicity of unconsciously passing childhood. 
 Besides, there was the brook flowing sweetly and 
 endlessly, turning from their twin shadow to kiss 
 the grassy mounds and gliding lightly to the river. 
 
 When Anna loitered in the lane, Edmund 
 happened by; and when Edmund took the path 
 across-lots, Anna happened at the stile. 
 
 "Stedman, if you are so smitten on Anna G., 
 why don t you beau her home from meeting?" 
 tauntingly inquired Ed Harland, who was sup 
 posed to have gotten the mitten, since he would 
 beau nobody those days. 
 
 Edmund beaued Anna home. When he was 
 older, he set the memory of the snowlit night to 
 song. The snowbird was Anna, his dryad of 
 the Mayflowers ; Maple Lane was the lane past 
 Fuller s store; and the " Doorstep" was the 
 doorstep of Anna s house, the house where I 
 lived when I was a little girl like Anna, and where 
 I first knew Mr. Stedman. 
 
THE DOORSTEP 277 
 
 The Doorstep 
 
 "The conference-meeting through at last, 
 
 We boys around the vestry waited, 
 To see the girls come tripping past 
 Like snow-birds willing to be mated. 
 
 "Not braver he that leaps the wall 
 
 By level-musket flashes litten, 
 Than I who stepped before them all 
 Who longed to see me get the mitten. 
 
 "But no, she blushed and took my arm ! 
 
 We let the old folks have the highway 
 And started toward the Maple Farm 
 Along a kind of lover s by-way. 
 
 "I can t remember what we said, 
 
 Twas nothing worth a song or story ; 
 Yet that rude path by which we sped 
 Seemed all transformed and in a glory. 
 
 "The snow was crisp beneath our feet, 
 
 The moon was full, the fields were gleaming ; 
 By hood and tippet sheltered sweet, 
 Her face with youth and health was beaming. 
 
 "The little hand outside her muff, - 
 
 Oh, sculptor, if you could but mould it ! 
 So lightly touched my jacket-cuff, 
 To keep it warm I had to hold it. 
 
278 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "To have her there with me alone, - 
 
 Twas love and fear and triumph blended. 
 At last we reached the foot-worn stone 
 Where that delicious journey ended. 
 
 "The old folks, too, were almost home, 
 
 Her dimpled hand the latches fingered, 
 We heard the voices nearer come, 
 Yet on the doorstep still we lingered. 
 
 "She shook her ringlets from her hood 
 
 And with a Thank you, Ned, dissembled, 
 But yet I knew she understood 
 With what a daring wish I trembled. 
 
 "A cloud passed kindly overhead, 
 
 The moon was slyly peeping through it, 
 Yet hid its face, as if it said, 
 
 1 Come, now or never, do it ! do it I 
 
 "My lips till then had only known 
 
 The kiss of mother and of sister, 
 But somehow, full upon her own 
 Sweet, rosy, darling mouth, I kissed her ! 
 
 "Perhaps twas boyish love, yet still, 
 Oh, listless woman, weary lover ! 
 To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill 
 I d give but who can live youth over ! " 
 
THE DOORSTEP 279 
 
 On his first holiday from Yale, Edmund called 
 on Anna. Despite dream and desire, he had 
 entered Yale. His guardian s choice was fixed, 
 and his mother acquiesced. He intended to 
 pay his respects to Anna s family, but the elder 
 sister Emily, who let him in, led him straightway 
 to the closed, cold parlor. She felt her way 
 across the room and left him sitting on a horse 
 hair-covered chair. She had regarded him cu 
 riously. Her folk were not considered the equal 
 of the Norwich Town folk; they hailed from a 
 region on the Hudson River. To hail from the 
 Hudson was considered more questionable, if 
 possible, than to hail from Cleveland. Cleveland 
 was at least settled by the Cleveland family of 
 Norwich. Forebears not bom in New England 
 are of course little better than no forebears at 
 all. When Emily returned to the parlor, she 
 brought Anna and a tiny spirit lamp. She 
 placed the lamp on the high mantle-shelf. Anna 
 placed herself on the chilly sofa beneath it. 
 Emily retreated circumspectly, latching the door 
 behind her. The sounds of family bustle in the 
 kitchen came to a hush. Edmund sat still and 
 
280 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 erect on his black chair. Through the closed 
 doors, the measured voice of the grandfather 
 clock could be heard, telling the moments soberly. 
 
 "I have heard tell that it is very fine in Yale," 
 Anna at last murmured. 
 
 "We have registers," said Edmund. The 
 furnace in the university chapel fascinated him. 
 He spread his hands in its warmth whenever he 
 was unobserved. 
 
 She spoke again. "I have heard tell that 
 you are very smart." 
 
 He stared at the lamp. How kithless and mor 
 tal it seemed ! Its tristful ray and Anna s pen 
 sive face each lighted a niche in the lifeless room. 
 He could think of nothing to say. 
 
 "We have registers in the chapel," he re 
 peated, after another long silence. "In my 
 room, I have a wood stove, but we don t ha,ve a 
 fire in it now. We have burned all our wood, 
 so we have to wait till next term." 
 
 "I suppose you are sorry to come home," said 
 Anna plaintively. Poor little Anna ! Without 
 her whilom comrade, her days were like an 
 emptied cup. 
 
THE DOORSTEP 281 
 
 "Everything around the Green seems slower 
 than it used to be," replied Edmund. 
 
 It was true. Everything was slower without 
 Edmund. The grandfather clock reflected for 
 a moment and then ticked, "Yes." The slow 
 sound of its ticking gave Edmund a feeling that 
 he had tarried as long as was mannerly for a first 
 call. He arose, shook hands with Anna, and 
 stepped into the star-soft night. He walked back 
 and forth through the Hollow where he had scur 
 ried as a child. He felt unsatisfied and yet at 
 peace. Under its silvery shield Bobbin-Mill 
 Brook his brook sped from his feet onwards 
 to the river and called to him as it ran. He 
 thought of his mother, his books, his future. 
 He could outdo his classmates without striving. 
 "When I am twenty-one, I shall be free," he said 
 aloud; and the ripples sang under the ice. By 
 delving and dallying in the offices of the Courier, 
 he had learned the making of a newspaper from 
 start to finish. It was his secret, his surprise for 
 the mother he loved. Soon, sooner than his 
 dear one dreamed, he would try his fortunes in a 
 city office as a writer ; he would live near her at 
 
282 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 last ; perhaps even have a home where she might 
 visit him; and he would make his home so fair 
 that she would wish to linger. Charlie, sensitive, 
 refined, considerate Charlie, should live with 
 him too. Perhaps who knew he might have 
 little Anna for his wife. On and on, his musings 
 ran to the river, and above his plans hung the 
 thought of his mother, a luminous sky arching 
 its stars above the hills. 
 
 Already he was foregoing play for poetry. 
 I have his boyhood s own book with his pencil 
 lines around the words, 
 
 Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseris 
 Sublime feriam sidera vertice 
 
 which means that if Song would only let him 
 join the ring of them that sing around her, Glad 
 ness would lift his head to the stars. He was 
 writing his first long poem, Purgatorio, and the 
 joy of yielding to an impulse that came without 
 labor and yet spurred him to laborious toil was 
 inexpressible. It was a deep, exultant joy to 
 beat back and forth for a word, and suddenly 
 to come upon it; suddenly to write better than 
 he knew how, to have a phrase, a line, an 
 
THE DOORSTEP 283 
 
 image, spring through his pen before he knew 
 that it was there. Revelation of some hiding 
 power somewhere, greater than himself, outside 
 himself, yet leagued with him and ready to lay 
 bare its holy arm and run with swift feet to his 
 help if only he made the rough places smooth, 
 if only he made the paths straight. Not by 
 might, nor by power, but by the spirit. He could 
 not sleep for happiness. Fruitionless drudgery 
 and the crowning instant were alike to him. He 
 had found what he wanted to do in life, and he 
 knew that he could do it. 
 
 When he reached his guardian s house, he 
 opened the door noiselessly and mounted the 
 bare stairway to his chamber. High over the 
 poplar-pillared hills, the golden moon was soar 
 ing. He seated himself on the floor at his window, 
 and with his head on the golden sill, followed the 
 moon. He could hear his brook, afar and musical, 
 beating melody from its barriers. The future 
 seemed full to overflowing and piercingly sweet. 
 His feeling of bitterness toward the house, which 
 in spite of his love for little Mary was not home, 
 passed from him. His chafing under his surround- 
 
284 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 ings, his eager restlessness, the aching languish- 
 ment of hope deferred, waned. On the shore of 
 his young life, the tide of time that had ebbed 
 and flooded, bearing promises to his feet and 
 bearing them away, halted for a gracious hour 
 and lay still. His cares his thought for Charlie, 
 his guileless innocent solicitude for his mother s 
 welfare, the memory of the hyacinths in blue 
 bottles in how many casements ! seemed borne 
 beyond his ken and beyond the need of him. 
 Only three years to freedom three years to 
 his mother ! She and he, they~ were to have 
 heavenly times together. They had promised 
 each the other. 
 
 And in less than the school-year, he was stand 
 ing on the steamer wharf in the great metropolis. 
 Flowers, baskets of flowers, armfuls of flowers, 
 flowers carried by friends, flowers held aloft by 
 porters, streamed up the gangway to the giant 
 ship like gardens moving. The deck was strewn 
 with flowers. Little Clementine and Mary trod 
 upon them and stood like born princesses. And 
 between her lovely daughters, throned in an easy 
 chair, embowered in roses and with a bouquet 
 
THE DOORSTEP 285 
 
 for her footstool, sat beautiful Elizabeth, receiv 
 ing the farewell embraces of the three hundred 
 friends and acquaintances who had come to bid 
 her Bon Voyage ! It was her hour of triumph. 
 Honorable William Kinney had been appointed 
 Minister of the United States to Italy. She and 
 he and her little girls were to sail away from crude 
 America and make their home on the hearth 
 of Art, close to the heart of Poetry. The scene 
 was like a play, a midsummer day s dream. And 
 every one was gay and so glad. Edmund, who 
 with exquisite neatness had dressed himself in 
 his scant best, retreated to the background and 
 stood peering through the press of luxury and 
 warmth at the one face, the one face. Elizabeth 
 was nervous lest he might go mad, his eyes were so 
 wildly longing. She feared that just at the leave- 
 taking, he might fling himself upon her and cling 
 as he had clung when he was a witless child ; or, 
 having parted from her, he might hide himself in 
 the ship so as not to leave her. She had a hundred 
 pretty fears, a hundred little starts and frights and 
 terrors. She tried to keep from glancing at him, his 
 wistful piercing eyes so fastened upon hers. And 
 
286 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 once, only once, he strode through the multitude, 
 and folding her hand in his, held it with a pressure 
 that cried to her like speech ; it was as if nothing 
 could tear him from the mother whom he had 
 worshipped afar off through the sad long years ! 
 
 But at last the hour set for sailing was upon 
 them all, and the friends who had trooped to the 
 ship with their joyous good-byes, waved handker 
 chiefs from the wharf. Elizabeth had seen her son 
 go ashore with them, and she searched for his 
 face in the maze of faces. He was not there. 
 The hawser dropped. She leaned from the side 
 of the ship, and at the final instant discovered 
 him alone in the shadow of the wharf, grasping 
 a pile with both hands for support, his face 
 white, his eyes straining through tears to catch 
 the last glance of farewell that her eyes cast be 
 hind. Little marvel that years later she could still 
 write in her journal : Oh, what a moment was that ! 
 His earnest despairing look was photographed 
 on my heart, and Time has never effaced it !" 
 
 Frailer and more ethereal grew the steamer. 
 Now she took the crests of the sea like a swimmer. 
 Now she settled to the trough like a slumbering 
 
THE DOORSTEP 287 
 
 gull. Soon she no longer seemed to move 
 and have a being. She dropped below the hori 
 zon with the dissolving lightness of a cloud ! 
 Edmund was alone. 
 
 He turned back from the eddying waters. 
 His mother s fondest friend had gone the way 
 of the world. He was alone. Too bereft to 
 look before him, he stumbled through the gloom 
 of the wharves. 
 
 His mother was his life and his mother was 
 gone. His mother was the reason for his en 
 deavors the cause and reward of his efforts. 
 His mother was gone! The whole world was 
 an inn to him now. 
 
 Between him and the sun, the smoke from 
 climbing chimneys blew like flame from wall to 
 wall. He lifted his eyes. Before him towered 
 the turrets and spires of a mighty metropolis 
 more marvelous than the City of Brass. His 
 pulses stirred; he drew a deepening breath. 
 This was the city that he had dreamed to con 
 quer for his mother s sake. He would conquer 
 it. He would make a man of himself for his 
 own sake. He thrust his hands into his pockets, 
 
288 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 and his fingers closed upon a pencil. He would 
 make a way for himself. Nothing should stop 
 him, nothing hinder. He would strike out alone 
 and unhampered. Pie would give himself to 
 poesy. He would cut free from every one. 
 
 Ah, but he could not forget the hyacinth that 
 Mary had nursed into bloom with her wasting 
 fingers ! He thought of his brother Charlie. 
 He could not cut free from Charlie ; he could not 
 cut free from any one who needed him ! A com 
 passionating tenderness set its tremulous touch 
 along his lip. He had given himself to poesy, 
 but in the same hour he gave himself to Dame 
 Care, the invited fairy, whose outward similitude 
 is grievous, but whose ways are memories of con 
 tent. 
 
XX 
 
 THE INFINITE SHORE 
 
 THE graybeards in Norwich Town who used 
 to quote Seven grains to the hill and three to 
 the harvest would be in high disfavor nowadays. 
 Nowadays we know that heaven never intended 
 that four out of every seven children should die 
 without a chance to play, or that little lads should 
 not be set like saplings in a garden. Edmund s 
 youth was cramped and shaded, yet he grew to 
 manhood as fair on every side as a tree that is 
 surrounded by sun. John, the Beloved Disciple 
 who drank of the chalice of life, saw in visions a 
 land that needed neither sun nor moon. Perhaps 
 little Edmund who loved so ardently tasted of 
 that same chalice. 
 
 His mother did not always sail away or dwell 
 in Tuscany. Her husband, the Honorable Min 
 ister, died at fourscore years, and Elizabeth, 
 
290 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 beautiful in a youth of spirit that Time could 
 not dim, came back to Edmund, her dearest son. 
 In the far days of his boyhood, she had sat on 
 the steamer deck throned amid flowers; but in 
 her latter years, she sat throned in the home that 
 he had prepared for her, clad in the sweetest silk, 
 the frailest lace, with his love and honors at her 
 feet. Her hair looked even more ethereal with 
 the silver dust that Time sprinkled over it than 
 with the gold dust which her fingers were wont 
 to scatter. And she took her son s face in her 
 exquisite hands and kissed him just as she had 
 kissed him in his childhood ; and her eyes welled 
 with happiness, and his eyes brimmed. Edmund 
 was irrepressible in his tenderness of her, and in 
 a kind of celestial gaiety. Whatever his cares, he 
 never faltered. 
 
 The dryad Anna was not with them. Anna 
 had not been born in Norwich, and you re 
 member that not to have been born in Norwich nor 
 even in New England was considered an unfor 
 givable blot in the eyes of the Elect. When 
 Edmund had come home again from college, 
 Anna was gone, flown like a bird before frost. 
 
THE INFINITE SHORE 291 
 
 Her family had tried to live through the wintry 
 disapproval of Norwich Town and win a crumb 
 of warmth. But the Elect would not open so 
 much as a blind to them. Nipped with the cold 
 at last, they sold the Doorstep House, packed 
 their goods, and returned to the unmentionable 
 State of New York from which they had come. 
 No one could tell Edmund where they had gone. 
 What did Edmund do? He waited till he was 
 twenty years of age before he married. And 
 then he married a little wife as near like pretty 
 Anna as one young lady wren is like another. 
 
 Elizabeth s old friends gathered in Edmund s 
 home, and Edmund came and went as self-for 
 getful as in the days when he was giving his first 
 surprise party and handed a raspberry vinegar 
 to Cousin Lucrece. But after his marriage, the 
 party was his own private affair, and he paid for 
 all the cakes. 
 
 Elizabeth lived to see her son honored in two 
 continents as gentleman, poet, critic, wit, scholar, 
 financier. Her dream was granted. More than 
 all else, he was kind. With his heart of song, 
 he followed the path of toil, while the life which 
 
2 9 2 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 
 he dreamed to live emerged from a mist of hopes 
 like one of the Islands of the Blessed, only to 
 dissolve and disappear in the sea of unselfishness. 
 Noble in candor, unswerving in loyalty, touching 
 in sincerity, fine in friendship, chivalrous to a 
 degree beyond the comprehension of the Philis 
 tine. He never spoke or thought a blighting word. 
 Narrowness of faith was not in him. He was 
 afraid of nothing in life or death. 
 
 He turned to business for the sake of earning 
 leisure for poetry, but both his leisure and purse 
 went with his gift of himself. I have heard it 
 said that if he had not spent his first-rate powers 
 on third-rate beginners and on the needy, he 
 would not have been constrained to toil by day 
 and work by night as best he could manage it. It 
 is true. But there is not a word in any gospel 
 to show who is third-rate or who is first, or whether 
 he who helps his brother is not a better judge of 
 whom he helps than he who carps. 
 
 Edmund s interest in others was spontaneous 
 and without measure. He did more to encourage 
 young writers both in America and England, he 
 gave himself in more ways to strengthen literature 
 
THE INFINITE SHORE 293 
 
 and native art, he was more widely loved than 
 any writer who foreran him. He made business 
 an art. It was not the poets of America, but the 
 "bulls" and " bears 7 of Wall Street who joined 
 hands and furnished in his name a room in Rome 
 in the house of the poet Keats. 
 He wrote of Hay : 
 
 "Love, Honor, rose to him indeed, 
 As vapors toward the sunlit sky, 
 But his the generous heart, at need, 
 Without a pang to put them by." 
 
 He wrote in his lines on Lincoln s hand : 
 
 "For here in knotted chord and vein 
 I trace the varying chart of years ; 
 I know the troubled heart, the strain, 
 The weight of Atlas, and the tears." 
 
 He spoke of his friends with the simple direct 
 ness of the Lady Margaret Ley who spoke of her 
 father; and Milton wrote to the Lady Margaret 
 Ley: 
 
 "So well your words his noble vertues praise 
 That all both know you to report them true ; 
 And to possess them, Honour d Margaret." 
 
294 A NEW ENGLAND CHILDHOOD 
 He wrote of Song : 
 
 " Bring no more flowers and books and precious 
 
 things ! 
 
 speak no more of our beloved Art, 
 Of summer haunts, melodious wanderings 
 In leafy refuge from this weary mart ! 
 Surely such thoughts were dear unto my heart ; 
 Now every word a newer sadness brings ! 
 Thus oft some forest-bird, caged far apart 
 From verduous freedom, droops his careless wings, 
 Nor craves for more than food from day to day ; 
 So long bereft of wildwood joy and song, 
 Hopeless of all he dared to hope so long, 
 The music born within him dies away ; 
 Even the song he loved becomes a pain, 
 Full-freighted with a yearning all in vain." 
 
 But Joy no less than Care ran to meet Edmund ; 
 he knew more happiness in a minute than many 
 men discover in a lifetime. And to the last, he 
 laughed the laughter of a boy. He never let go 
 the motto which his mother gave him in his boy 
 hood; he kept the faith of Him who said that 
 the second commandment is like unto the first. 
 He was even as Enoch whom God loved and 
 Enoch was not, for God took him. 
 
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