My Boyhood Part 6

MY DEAR JULIAN,

If you will look westward now across New England about seven o'clock in the evening you will see a light again in my study window--a dim light there on the bank of the great river--dim even to the eye of faith.

If your eye is sharp enough you will see me sitting there by my lamp, nibbling at books or papers or dozing in my chair wrapped in deep meditation. If you could penetrate my mind you would see that I am often thinking of you and wondering how your life is going there at Harvard and what the future has in store for you. I found my path from the study gra.s.s grown, nearly obliterated. It made me sad. Soon, soon, I said, all the paths I have made in this world will be overgrown and neglected.

I hope you may keep some of them open. The paths I have made in literature, I hope you may keep open and make others of your own.

Your affectionate father, J. B.

It was always a source of disappointment to Father that I did not write more, that I could not carry on his work--but this was more than he should have expected. He was an essayist, fired with a literary ambition that never faltered or grew dim for over sixty years. Once I wrote a brief introduction to a hunting story that won a prize in a sporting journal and I can never forget how pleased Father was with it--"It filled me with emotion," he said, "it brought tears to my eyes--write a whole piece like that and I'll send it to the _Atlantic_."

How he loved the telling phrase, the turn of words that was apt and made the form and substance one! I know I had a little silver cup or mug that I used at table, and when I saw my first locomotive bell slowly ringing I watched it and exclaimed, "Cup open bell." How Father did laugh and repeat it to me afterward--the childish way of expressing the strange and new in terms of the familiar and old. The small son of a friend of Father's when he first saw the ocean exclaimed, "Oh, the great rainy!"

and Father would laugh over this expression and slap his sides in glee.

The homely expressions always pleased him. One day some children came to see him. They had been sent by their parents with strict instructions to see "the man himself," and when they asked Father if he was "the man himself" he had a good laugh and told them he guessed he was. He always liked to tell and act out the story of the man who went down into the cellar for a pitcher of milk. In going down he fell down the stone stairs and bruised himself painfully. As he lay groaning and rubbing himself he heard his wife call, "John, did you break the pitcher?"

Looking about in his anguish he saw the pitcher, unbroken. "No," he called back, gritting his teeth, "but, by thunder, I will," and seizing it by the handle he savagely smashed it over the stones. And Father understood exactly how he felt.

The deep interest he took in self-knowledge is well shown in the following letter:

Riverby, Nov. 17, 1897.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I was very sorry to hear of that "D" and "E." I was probably quite as much cut up as you were. I have been melancholy ever since I heard of it. But you will feel better by and by.... One thing you are greatly lacking in, as I suppose most boys are--self-knowledge. You do not seem to know what you can or cannot do, or when you have failed or succeeded.

You have always been fond of trying things beyond your powers (I the same) as in the case of the boat. I think you over estimate yourself, which I never did. You thought you ought to have had an "A" in English, and were not prepared for your low mark in French and German. Do a little self-examination and nip the bud of conceit; get a fair estimate and make it too low rather than too high. I am sure I know my own weak points, see if you can't find yours. That saying of the ancients, "know thyself," is to be pondered daily. I always keep my expectations down, so that I am not disappointed if I get a "D" or an "E." My success in life has been far beyond my expectations. I know several authors who think they have not had their just deserts; but it is their own fault.

I have just read this in Macaulay: "If a man brings away from Cambridge {where he graduated in eighteen hundred and twenty-two} self-knowledge, accuracy of mind and habits of strong intellectual exertion he has got the best the college can give him." That is what I think too.

Your loving father,

J. B.

Slabsides, Oct. 27. {1897.}

MY DEAR BOY,

I found your letter here yesterday on my return from N. J. whither I had gone on Sat.u.r.day to visit Mr. Mabie. I was glad to hear from you. You must write at least once a week. Get the rowing pants you refer to and anything else you really need.... Do not try to live on less than $3.50 a week, Select the simplest and most nouris.h.i.+ng food--meat only once a day--no pie but fruit and puddings. The weather still keeps fine here and dry; no rain yet and no heavy frosts.

Celery is most off; not more than $175 for this second crop. I am taking out the Niagaras below the hill--nothing pays, but Delawares in the grape line. I have had a good deal of company as usual. It cheers me up and keeps me from the blue devils. Your mother is cleaning house and groaning as usual. I can only keep my temper by flight to SS.

Hiram goes to Roxbury to-morrow for two months or more. I shall miss him very much. He stands to me for father and mother and the old home. He is part of all those things. When he is here my chronic homesickness is alleviated.

I hope you will do some reading outside of your courses. Read and study and soak yourself in some great author for his style. Try Hawthorne or Emerson or Ruskin or Arnold. The most pregnant style of all is in Shakespeare. Go into the laboratory some day and have your strength tested. Binder says they can tell you what part is weakest. Watch your health and keep regular hours. Write us as often as you can. How I wish I was a Harvard student too.

With deepest affection, JOHN BURROUGHS.

Doubtless it is a wise provision of Nature that we find our mates in our opposites. It is some natural law working for the good of the race, something to maintain the balance and uniformity of mankind. Certainly in many ways two people could not have been more unlike than Father and Mother. She said he was as weak as water, and he said he could get tipsy on a gla.s.s of water. He always said that Mother made the housekeeping an end in itself, and she said, "You know how he is, he never takes care of anything." How many evenings have I spent in the study when the lamp would begin to burn low for lack of oil and Father would have to run and fill lit and Mother would complain, "Just like you, come mussing around after dark. Why didn't you fill it by daylight?" Ah, me, when it was daylight Father did not need the lamp! It was Mother who filled the lamps, trimmed them and polished the chimneys regularly in the afternoon, while the sun was still up; but it was Father who trimmed and filled his lamp and let it so s.h.i.+ne that all the world might see! After all, I am not sure but what Mother was just the wife for him; he had a streak stubborn determination along with his ambition to write that carried him through any trials of housecleaning or complaints about the housework. A wife in full sympathy with his work, who coddled him and made him think that everything he wrote was perfect, would never have done at all, nor would a selfish, extravagant, or society-mad woman.

Father was temperamental, moody, irritable, easily influenced, easily led, suffering at times with attacks of melancholy, with but one fixed purpose, and that was to write. Mother was economical, thrifty, material, suspicious of people, determined to bring their s.h.i.+p to a snug harbour before old age, and she took the best of care of Father and held him steady and no doubt by her strength of character and firmness gave strength and firmness to his life. Their last years were most happy together and filled with a sympathy and understanding that were beautiful.

Sometimes Father would talk to himself, though but very seldom, and the following two letters are almost as though he were talking to himself.

"I am far less forlorn when he is here," he says of himself and Uncle Hiram. With all his self-a.n.a.lysis he did not see that being forlorn was part of the price he must pay for the simple but intense joy he experienced from the beauty life and Nature.

W. P. Tuesday, Jan. 25 {1897}.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

It still keeps mild here--snow nearly gone, but ice in the river to the elbow. We do not get away yet. Your mother will not stir and Hiram and I will probably go to Slabsides, as she wants to shut up the house.

Hiram came a week ago and stays and eats here in the study--I am far less forlorn when he is here. It probably seems strange to you, I know you have never looked upon him very kindly. But you have never seen Hiram--not the Hiram I see. This little dull ignorant old man whom you have seen is only a transparent mask through which I see the Hiram of my youth, and see the old home, the old days and father and mother and all the life on the old farm. It is a feeling you cannot understand, but you may if you live to be old.

I hope you have given up that boat crew business by this time. It is not the thing for you. You do not go to Harvard for that. As I wrote you, you have not the athletic temperament, but something finer and better.

Good sharp daily exercise you need, but not severe training. If you had been half my age probably those cold baths would have killed you. Old men often die in the cold bath. The blood is driven in and makes too great a strain on the arteries. Write me when you get this and tell me about yourself.

Your loving father,

J. B.

Very likely what I did write told Father much more than I suspected, and he always stood ready with any advice he could give, especially about matters of health. Those were the years when he had many troubles: insomnia, neuralgia, and especially a trouble he called malaria, but which was largely autotoxemia. One doctor seared his arm with a white-hot iron in an effort to do away with the pain of the neuralgia and years afterward Father would laugh about it--"just like African medicine man, driving out the devils in my arm with a white-hot iron--the trouble was not there, it was the poison in my system from faulty elimination." When at last he did discover the source of his troubles how happy he was!

Riverby, Feb. 3 {1898}

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Your letter came this morning. Winter is rugged here too. Snow about 20 inches and zero weather at night. I almost froze the top of my head up there in the old house. The ice men are sc.r.a.ping off the snow, ice 8 or 9 inches. Your mother is in Poughkeepsie, I was down there Monday night.

I doubt if she comes to Cambridge and I am wondering whether I had better come or stay here and save my money. If you can come home on the Easter holidays perhaps I had better not come. If you get a week had you rather not come home then than to have me come now? Tell me how you feel. But I may feel different next week, I may be written out by that time. If I thought I could go on with my work there I would come at once. I am in excellent health and do not need a change. I could not do much with your English Exams. I have a poor opinion of such stuff. That is not the way to make writers or thinkers. I enclose my check for the bill which you must get receipted. Write me at once about the Easter holidays.

Your loving father,

JOHN BURROUGHS.

Later when he visited me in Cambridge he wrote a daily theme, and I copied it and handed it in as my own, and it promptly came back marked "sane and sensible," the instructor quite unconsciously and unknowingly having hit upon two salient qualities of Father's style. I remember the theme he wrote was about the statue of John Harvard who sits bareheaded in the open, exposed to all weathers. Father said he always wanted to go and hold something over him to keep off the snow or sun. The life he led here and the surroundings could not produce other than wholesome and sane writing. The old house spoken of was the original farmhouse that stood up near the road--it was torn down in 1903 and a new cottage put up just below it. Father and I spent one summer there when we rented Riverby to New York people and he spent time there later as for instance:

Sat.u.r.day P. M., Jan. 29 {1898}.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Hiram and I are with the Ackers {who were living in the old house then}.

I find the food and give them the rent and they do the work. I shall have peace now and it will taste good. If I come to C when would you rather I should come? I am not done with my writing yet but may be in eight or ten days. Writing is like duck hunting, one doesn't know what game he will get or when he will be back: that is why I am undecided. I make everything wait upon my writing. It is cold here, down to four two mornings; good sleighing. I rec'd your letter yesterday, I do not know about those plays--ask Mr. Page or Rodman. I hope you are prospering in your exams. This is the new pen, do not like it much yet. The prospect for an ice harvest brightens. Write.

Your loving father

J.B.