In Hopkinton I began to feel myself too old to play with girls. Boys were numerous and knew more than those I had met before. I soon caught up with their manners and customs, and in some respects bettered them. I outdid them in mischief, looted the best apple trees, beat them at ball and managed to escape my tasks oftener. My work was stitching the counters of boots; my mother and sister filled their spare time with the same employment. Indeed, at this period it was our sole means of support. The making of boots, pegged boots, double soled and welted, with legs treed until they were as stiff and hard as boards, was the chief occupation of all that portion of the town called Hayden Row. For a mile or more up and down this street were the houses of the bootmakers, each with its little shop, either attached to the house, or built in the yard. Each had from two to six workers. Generally every part of the boot was made in these shops; the stock was cut and distributed from some larger shop to which the finished boots were returned to be put in cases and shipped. The smaller shops were the centers for the gossip, rumors and discussions which agitated the community. There men sharpened their wits upon each other, played practical jokes, sang, argued the questions of that day, especially slavery, and arranged every week from early spring to late autumn a match game of ball either among themselves or the bootmakers of neighboring towns for Saturday afternoon, which was their half holiday. All this was possible where the men sat on low benches, making scarcely any noise, and doing work which did not often require concentrated attention. My uncle was a stern abolitionist, as were the other bootmakers; and before I knew it, I was one; nor did I know at that time that there was any other opinion in the world. Little did I understand or care for the subject. My uncle took the Liberator, and it was sometimes read aloud in the shop, and I can remember feeling angry at some of the stories of cruelty to slaves. I am glad I was brought up in such an atmosphere, for I have not changed on this point, as I have in so many other of my beliefs. The only church in the place was the Methodist, and my mother had, almost for the first time since her conversion at the age of fourteen, an opportunity of mingling with the brethren and sisters of her own faith. The chief financial pillar of the Methodists of New England, Lee Claflin, was a citizen of Hopkinton, although his place of business was Boston. He was, when I knew him, a rather short, fat man with a large head and a face beaming with benevolence and good will. To be noticed, to be spoken to by him was a great honor, so that when he laid his hand upon my head and inquired if I were a child of grace, although I had not the least idea what he meant, I was equal to the occasion and said, "Yes, sir." My mother smiled at my confession and I have no doubt her heart was made glad; for though she was not at all rigid in the religious discipline of her children, the great desire of her life was that they should be converted and saved from the toils of Satan. I had, as early as I had any conception of my own, a certain image of Satan as something huge, an aggregation of all the largest objects with which I was most familiar, arms and legs as long as the tallest trees and church steeples, and it was of his size that I was afraid, rather than of his temptations and torments, which I heard thundered from the pulpit. I had a fear, born of sundry rough encounters with larger boys, of that which was superior in strength, and to me Satan was as a big and ugly boy, whom I sometimes looked for along the road, expecting him to dart out from behind the stone walls, or clumps of bushes. Many writers have said harsh things about the former religious creeds and preaching of our New England forefathers, especially in their effects upon children. I do not agree with them. It did often save the wayward from peril, and offered a rich field for the imaginative interpretations of children. What does the modern child find in a modern sermon to give him any sort of quickening? Yes, my dear pulpit orators, with no wing left to imp your eloquence, recover Satan in all his immense, Miltonic grandeur and energy.

Those happy Hopkinton days were filled with many new and fascinating objects and boyish pursuits to which I gave an undivided heart. I learned all the tricks and sleight-of-hand with which the bootmakers amused themselves and puzzled each other in their shops. I was long in discovering the secret of the best trick of all, which was making names and pictures appear on the bare plaster of the shop walls by striking on them with a woolen cap such as we all wore. Then there were all sorts of string, button and ball tricks, and my pockets were full of articles with which to astonish the uninitiated. He, who introduced or invented a new trick or puzzle, was the hero of the shops for a day; and for many days after, as soon as learned, the men and boys were confounding each other by its performance. In those days Signor Blitz was travelling the country, giving his necromantic shows, and left behind him everywhere a taste for his wonderful performances. Our ingenuity was exercised in weaving watch chains in various patterns with silk twist; in making handsome bats for ball, and in making the balls themselves with the ravelled yarn of old stockings, winding it over a bit of rubber, and in sewing on a cover of fine thin calf skin. This ball did not kill as it struck one, and, instead of being thrown to the man on the base, was more usually thrown at the man running between them. He who could make a good shot of that kind was much applauded, and he who was hit was laughed at and felt very sheepish. That was true sport, plenty of fun and excitement, yet not too serious and severe. The issue of the game was talked over for a week. I did my daily stint of stitching with only one thing in mind, to play ball when through; for the boys played every afternoon. When there was to be an important match game the men practised after the day's work was done.

Meanwhile my education was entirely neglected. I attended no school at this time, either summer or winter, and came as near acquiring a trade as I have ever done. In fact I longed to be able to make the whole of a boot, to last, peg, trim, gum, blackball and stone it, all processes of the craft as then practised. But how does one know when he is learning? I was laying up a good store of things more valuable than any in books, whilst the free life I led was preparing in me the soft and impressionable tablets on which could be traced future experiences and acquisitions of a more intellectual kind. Tomorrow would come and this was its preparation. Yet not consciously can one prepare for it all that it is to hold. I became a graduate of the shops of the bootmakers before acquiring the whole of their trade, but not before absorbing most of that which constituted the overflow of their lives. I began to imitate the manners and conversation of men. Ridiculed for this, I retreated into myself and became more observant and more silent. A small, very dim yet new light appeared to me—reflection, silent thoughts at night, and when alone; questionings with no least effort at answers. My new world as yet was not much more than a mile square, as in my native town; within that mile I knew every natural object and all the people. Everybody called me by my first name, prefixing, usually, "little curly" or "snub-nose," and my companions gave me nicknames according to their likes or dislikes. I much affected the company of boys older than myself, especially my cousins, whom I naturally looked up to and very much admired. They would have none of me, called me "nuisance" and "tag-tail." This last epithet wounded me sorely and made me slink away like a whipped cur. Added to my mile-square world, I had now also the germs of memory. Faintly and at long intervals I remembered my life in Bellingham; but it seemed another planet, far off, indistinct, and I had as yet no desire to return to it.