There are three things which every man persuades himself he can do better than anyone else: poke the fire, handle the reins, and tell a story. Unless the poker is hidden, the next man will take it and give the embers two or three additional touches. This is a universal trait. In case of peril, it is instinct in a man, to make motions in reaching out to take the lines. If a story is known to another person, it is pure nature in him on hearing it told, to show how some detail might have been better rendered. I add a fourth thing that a person wants to improve upon no matter who is handling it. If my splendid teacher were again instructing me out of a book showing the difference between memory and recollection I would have to bite my tongue to compel it to silence. I should indeed of all men be the most miserable unless I could bear testimony. You say the miracle of memory has been the theme of your study. That for a summer was mine. It is common for scholars, taking what they call a palimpsest, an ancient manuscript and applying chemical process to so renovate it as to enable them to plainly read it. The effusions of later profane poets and the recent chronicles of monks have been over-spread upon the precious parchments. The orations of Cicero and precious versions of the New Testament have been over-laid and were regarded as lost. The early inscriptions were supposed to be effaced from our own memories.

Books Written by Ourselves

But a magician, in an instant, seemed to touch, with a sponge, the whole surface of the memory, and things that had been invisible were found to be well embalmed and made immortal. All that had become dim was found to be stereotyped forever. Thus every stage of one's existence leaves him some memorial of its presence in the life of today. I did not know what large deposits I had once been making in the bank of memory. This is occasioned by the fact that a boy lives his first years more keenly alive, to the things about him, than does a man. Even our food does not later have its earlier relish. If a man thinks, that what he recalls of a thing, when absent from it, is the whole of his memory of it, he very much underestimates the fact. It is the glow of youth, the freshness of heart, that give us those bright memories by which we save the past from the extinguishing stroke of oblivion,

The flaming sword which once guarded the gates of our youthful paradise is not turned against us preventing, as in the case of our first parents, our return to our early homes, as many persons, by keeping at a distance, appear to believe. One can approach this Eden boldly. The password at the gate is Welcome. Any pilgrim like myself will have his astonishment divided between the disclosure made of his own power of recollection and of the unforeseen suggestiveness of the place, when memory faithful to her task unties her budget.

It was a blessing to me to be well born, yet I was born with neither a gold nor a silver spoon in my mouth. My warfare has been at my own charges. While my classmates and associates were enjoying a winter vacation, I taught a country school. There is a choice spot to me. To revisit the earth without viewing that scene and unclasping, there, the book of memory would be like quitting London before one has stood within the shadowed aisles of Westminster or coming back from Italy without entering the gates of the Eternal City.

A Hard Road to Travel

I thought I had seen mud before but slow progress to the rural school-house gave me a deep experience of it. Any evidence of road making could not be found. There was a track, we could not lose it, yet you could not make much headway in it. The condition of the road conditioned the opening of the school. The roads were three rods wide and often three feet deep, particularly when the frost was coming out of the ground. They then became yeasty, which heaves the sub-soil, and stirs and mixes the surface loam, in preparation for seed sowing in the spring. It was not a time to be abroad. Traveling was then a very different act from that which it has now become. The conditions were beyond conception and utterance. As memory is the recognizing faculty, it identified, on the way, the same old farmhouse hastening indeed to its ruin, the same old fire which glows upon the ample hearth, the same old well thumbed Bible which lies, as ever, upon the altar, the same "old oaken bucket" which hangs in the well. My heart made me so familiar with the neighborhood that I could have mapped it, from recollection, without other aid. The vividness of everything touched me. It was like an experience of reading snowbound in Whittier's old home. It is like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for a conception of a strange reality. No words can possibly describe the impression. All the men that lived hereabouts were so well known to me that were my imagination strong enough I might almost have seen their ghosts. Many of those I knew in active life had passed the summit and were going down the hill; indeed some have already gone out of sight. The names and works of some of them are now nearly stranded on the stream of time. But they once exercised a powerful influence on the local life of their day. We plodded our way to school and all carried our dinners. At noon-tide we were brought into a fine intimacy.

Teaching and Learning

I never had such close association with boys and girls. Some of the warm-hearted little creatures would exchange portions of their dinner with each other, not for variety only but as an expression of kindly feeling. The generosity of the little people was a very real and fine thing. They give what they want. They love to bestow. It is to them a pleasure and a luxury. When they met on the first day of school it was pathetic to see the intensity of their pleasure on being again with each other. They lived on scattered farms, miles apart, and were gladder to see one another than anybody should be. No one ought to feel so isolated and detached, or, on the other hand, so yoked up with adults as if on the principle of breaking in a colt with a cart-horse. They love to be with those of their own age and kind. They return to the original meaning of fellowship, fellow in the same ship. Many of their interests are the same. Their destination is identical. A young man's social nature craves the companionship of his mates. He is susceptible most of all to the influences of good or evil from young persons of his own age and tastes and ambitions in life. We are told distinctly what "the fellowship of kindred minds" is like.

Transported Back to the Past

In one hand, I hold, as I write, that marvel of creative volumes Webster's spelling book, of which more than a million copies are still sold annually. "The boy that stole the apples," as in "Fable First," is still in a composed attitude in the tree just where he placed himself long years ago waiting for "The old man to try what virtue there was in stones." It is remarkable that every individual in school recited from Webster's spelling-book. If I could choose a picture of myself it would be at the time when I sat in a country school-house and had a little Abecedarian that hung down her head and kept one thumb in her mouth, stand at my knee learning letters beginning with the "perpendicular reading" on the alphabetical page and coming later, in an eventful day, to "horizontal reading" beginning, of course, with the monosyllabic and well-remembered words, "Go on." The wonder that abides with me is how those tiny scholars that had only set foot on the first step of learning's ladder, were kept in school after being taught only in three or four brief intervals during the day to know their letters, by sight, and as some one expressed it also by name, for six wearisome hours with nothing doing to enable them to beguile their time. The Kindergarten was yet to be. The scheme of public transportation by which all scholars are assembled at one central point in a township and graded and given instruction by methods adapted to their years had never then come to the attention of the people not even in their dreams. With no slates, no stationery, no desks in front of them, no attention from anyone, their natures as playful as kittens, accustomed to the sweep of the fields, full of animal spirits and frolic, packed for the day in a box-like room when, to use their expression "school's up," out they would rush tumultuously to enjoy God's great and good out-of-doors. To "keep school" my implements of learning were a ruler, a bell, and a Bible. The "district" supplied a water-pail and tin dipper. About midway to recess after "school's in," as a reward for fine behavior, one envied scholar was designated to pass the water. In this common sacrament we all partook, in beautiful communion of spirit, day after day from the same rusty dipper, microbe, baccilli, and other like organisms not being then invented.

A Boy a "Feeble Beginning of a Mighty End"

As soon as the school was established civilization was safe. Many of the scholars were almost men and women in size, but they were not as old as their stature indicated. A real responsibility fell upon the teacher, for all the training that some young citizens ever had, was obtained in one of these little crowded school-houses that dot the farming communities of the state. Many began an active useful life without troubling any other school, college, or academy. At their freedom year, came to many of them a point where their education stopped and their adult life began. It gave to my work a peculiar interest, as I tried like John Adams, when teaching in Worcester, to regard the school as the world in miniature, that before me were the country's future jury-men, judges, tradesmen, capitalists, law-makers and office-holders. One only had to imagine, what might prove true, that a certain boy was to go upon the bench of the Superior Court, as proved to be the case in one of my classes, that another was to be a titled clergyman, as came true, that others were to be honored in the high administration of executive offices, it turned out to be a fact, in order to stimulate a teacher to that course of effort, without which youth fitted for those respective offices would be lost. What government we had was never called government. I never happened to find any bad boys. A thorough search in the gallery of memory has been made in vain to discover them. Anyway they did not exist to me. I taught branches that I had never myself taken in school. My mind was let out to its limit to keep one day ahead of my classes.

Human Nature Unchanged

Life was full orbed in that little "knowledge box" as it was sometimes used for meeting by the Society of Friends and so on "fourth day," for a little space of time, school gave way to a Quaker wedding. The very profound and continued silence that preceded the ceremony made it extremely impressive. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. The beauty of the bride, and the maxim accords with truth, she that is born of beauty is half married, she needs to borrow nothing of her sisters, gave her that attractiveness which conferred an immediate power over others. This beau ideal of a young Quakeress, her simple, modest, consistent apparel, which was chiefly drab, relieved by the use of dark olive colored material, enlisted everyone's attention. Without the aid of priest or magistrate, without prayer or music, after a fitting quiet interval, they took each other by the hand and in the presence of witnesses, among them all the school, including the teacher, solemnly and calmly promised to take each other for husband and wife, to live together in the fear of God, faithfully, so long as they should live. A record was then produced for signatures. It was signed by the happy company, the bride using her new name. After the relatives had signed, good feeling so prevailed that the scholars down to those of few years added their signatures, which detracted nothing from the legality of the document.

Here I formed my strange liking, to which I have to plead guilty, for country boys. These sturdy little men did not complain of their lot though at times it was hard. They had the ring of the genuine coin. With entire naturalness they assumed that they had their own way to make. Their calculations were not based upon a legacy. A young man in need of money who has expectation from an unmarried aunt looks upon toil in a different way from what he would if she had nothing to bestow. "What is the matter with Kansas?" When this question was raised it was found that she had been helped, and by that act she was done for.

The Coronation of Labor

Here is the secret of country boys when they go up to the city. They are not done for. The reflex influence of this is often a hindrance. It is not self help. It overlooks economy, enterprise, personal initiative, and intense application. The young man with money usually takes a young partner from the country to get the practical ability and energy. The country home is like a bee-hive for industry in every profitable way. Farm life looks toward more productiveness. Eight or ten hour limits are not observed in days that are from morn to dusk. The country boy does a lot of unrequited labor. He hitches up, breaks out the road, and takes the whole bunch to the evening singing school. He takes off the wagon body, puts it upon runners, and stows it so full of mortal souls that they had to be cautioned, by their parents, as the sons of Jacob were by their father, "not to fall out by the way." Lay a plank on the ground, someone has truly said, and a million people can walk it without thought of losing balance. Lift it twenty-five feet and only one in a thousand will dare to walk it. Lift it one hundred feet and not more than one in a million will venture upon it. Country boys keep their balance near the ground. As persons grow stilted they lose their poise. If they have a disposition to rise higher it is by the old way of climbing, step by step, making each rise count one. They are not at first familiar with the elevator to carry them up and so suppose that their chance is by the stair-case. "One thing I must observe," says an Englishman, writing from Andover, "that I think wants rectifying, and that is their pluming pride when adjoined to apparent poverty." John G. Brady had not only "apparent poverty," but the real thing when deserted by his father, when he was made a ward of a Children's Aid Society. He became governor of Alaska. Some such boys were ravenous for knowledge. They were awkward and uncouth but possessed minds that were bright, vigorous, susceptible, and retentive. It was a joy to teach them.

Not Criticism, Just Description

"You're a colt," said a farmer, "bye and bye you will grow to be a staid old horse. Till you do steady down and lose your coltish tricks I will enter with you into the spirit of your colthood, for I know you're not vicious. There is not a streak of evil in your nature." I saw a fine picture at one of the world's fairs of the School of Charlemagne, at the moment that Alcuin is informing the emperor that the poor boys have surpassed the rich in scholarship. It is a symbol of the way that things level up in every country. Country boys learn to feel their way, which is the healthiest method, and I have had frequent painful occasions to contrast it with the plunging method that we are frequently called to witness. At no other point, at the same exposition to which I have referred, were gathered so dense a crowd as about the model school for the blind. A poor girl without sight was reading about some boys that came upon a hive of wild bees and honey. When a word seemed difficult to her, she would instinctively apply both hands to the pages. Men coming from all quarters into this presence would unconsciously uncover their head. Feeling one's way excites sympathy. The poor have the gospel preached to them. Have any of the rulers believed on Him? No, no, no, it was the common people that heard Him gladly. City merchants advertising for a clerk often say, "One from the country preferred." I used to see the boys studying the map of the future and laying out work for manhood and age. Their longings were to be men. They were panting to have a part in the great drama of life and would rush in as soon as any door was open. It did not occur to them that the world already owed them a living, that they were to be fed by the raven. The man who calls upon Jupiter was to put his own shoulder to the wheel.

To Go to the Top, First Go to the Bottom

It is a riddle that persons, like the Lawrences, coming from the country, Groton, into the city out-step the natives and become their masters. Country life and country education are at least practical and invigorating to body and mind and hence those who are thus qualified triumph in the race of life. Country training and experience serve as a foothold for progress. Amos Lawrence, the initial genius in Boston in that line of merchant princes that founded Lawrence and the mills in Lowell and Ipswich (when one of the mills of Ipswich was losing one hundred dollars a day, one of the Lawrences was sick and the only comment was "too much Ipswich,") when a clerk in a dry-goods store sold a parcel of goods, promising to have them delivered in Charlestown by twelve o'clock M.,—the porter, who was to take them over, failed to return as soon as was expected,—loaded the goods on a wheelbarrow and trundled them over the long bridge, through the streets thronged with ladies and gentlemen, and had them there on time. It was a natural act of the country boy. A city young man would have felt an inclination to wait. Andrew Carnegie came over from Scotland with only a sovereign in his pocket but with sovereignty in his soul and fired a stationary engine at two dollars and a half a week.

The Renewal of the Face of the World

Jeremiah says, "Pharaoh King of Egypt" is but a noise. He agitates the atmosphere. He is a clamorous self advertiser. On the other hand a country boy reaching the city is often obliged to raise the simple bread and butter question. Give us this day our daily bread. I used to find these boys extremely capable and very warmly affectionate. City boys gave their mothers what money would buy, while the country boys gave their mothers what money could not buy, and no one was happier than the country mother with a letter from her boy telling her that there was so much love in his letter that he would have trouble in getting it into the envelope. She thought she saw that he was winning a widening way into recognition from his employer, also from his associates. Such a man is likeliest to realize in life all the promise he gave in boyhood. If a country boy lost a step he felt that he must make it up. I could stand before that boy, hat in hand, and pay him honor and respect. He is not top heavy. He is solid. The corner stones of character are laid in place and well laid. Splendid specimens of boyhood, first work hard to supply their needs and then go on to make money to supply their wants. By all the rules of the business world they have earned all that they have gained.

Cables Binding to Safe Moorings

On "first day" there being no school I worshiped with Quakers and never to this hour have departed from their heaven-born doctrines. When George Fox prayed, the spirit bearing witness with his spirit, men trembled, and so were called Quakers because they thus quaked. The wonder is not that they were agitated, but that people do not quake where they sit in profound silence until the spirit moves. When a person rises one's first thought is, There, that's the motion of the spirit, the inner witness. It is the responsive factor in us that makes the Quaker doctrine take hold. They have an Inward Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. A friend, a lady with a serene, intelligent, illumined face, fluent and correct in expression, with most engaging modesty, moved by the spirit, arose and spoke, with a power stronger than human genius, her understanding being opened, her heart enlarged, in a manner wonderful to herself exhorting us to take heed to the light within us. That was reasonable. Who could say nay to such entreaty assuming that there is in us that which of itself responds to it, "as face answers to face in a glass?" In the intense quiet, in the solemn silence, all being retired into the presence chamber of God, the attitude being that of Samuel when he said, "Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth" when an angel voice speaks to us who would not follow whithersoever it leads the way? "Go feel what I have felt" and you will know by experience how Quakers get their name. It is a respectful doctrine; it only urges recognition of what hath shined into our hearts to give us light.

Revisiting the earth I say now, on the site where I taught school, what I felt then, that Quaker doctrines are as honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. Even the men's manners are gentle and winsome and kindly, and kindly enough to proceed from the spirit. When conducting social affairs I have in uncounted cases asked that we might imitate the Quakers who before leaving their positions, beginning in the high seats, shake hands with those on the right and left who are next to them, it means we are on a level and on good terms, we must be social.

A Fashion that is Wearing Away

When men were clad in short clothes, wearing knee buckles, laces, and ruffles, and frills, and fringes, and finery, and frippery, the Quakers took strong ground for plain, unaffected simplicity in male attire and they carried the day. Honor to whom honor is due, I am with them as usual. The weather worn, long used, hard used little one room, one story school-house without an entry, is now in declining condition and exceedingly infirm. It seems broken, decrepit, wears a look of great age, seems inclined to melancholy and its dissolution is near. The dear old seminary of letters was not young when I was introduced to it. Change and decay have passed rapidly upon it. There is no making life stand still. I went back to it with my heart in my eyes. Its well worn old threshold and its battered entrance spoke of hospitality to vigorous youngsters who had reached their freedom year, when education stopped, and their adult life began. It was assumed that the door, exposed to the weather, would bind a little at the bottom, and so simultaneously with putting their hands to the latch the children would strike the door at the bottom with one of their heavily shod feet. The act was so unconscious and so natural that no impression was made except on the door.

Time Can Obliterate as Well as Create

The floor of that little edifice wore sundry patches of new white pine boards which were nailed over the crevices and flaws which gave the appearance of new cloth in an old garment. This rickety fabric has ceased forever from the name and form of a seat of learning, but it is tight full of memories and of public favor. A child when going through a museum said he liked the sculpture better than a painting because he could walk around the sculpture. With that feeling of regard for sacred places and times and things which we felt in our childhood, I viewed that building and went round about it, that I might tell it to the generation following. If anyone shall say,

I shall still look upon it with reverence. It has performed its office and its pictured form will bring up facts and throng my vacant hours with beautiful visions. Lord Jeffrey speaks fondly of that "dear retired adored little window" where he labored and prepared himself for the arrival of that brighter day which is almost sure to come to those who are careful to fit themselves for the duties that accompany it.

A Table of Priorities

The progress of the allied forces in the German war seemed at first very slow, partly because of the colossal number of men engaged, but chiefly because Germany derived a great advantage at the start. It is a difficult matter to make up for a bad beginning. On revisiting the earth we seemed to be set down upon a commanding eminence, having a panoramic view of occurences which showed distinctly the path we had trodden. If we noticed the milestones, we observed a succession, that was unbroken, that led directly to the place where, with different ways opened to us, we made life's vocational adventure. In the light of that first move we see the way to every subsequent position. Years rise up like the steps of the Pyramids and more and more extensive becomes the review of life. How different a landscape looks when we have simply reversed our steps and are faced the other way. I must always remember it as one of the pleasures of life, that all the invisible lines that connect every later service and place of residence were set vibrating from the desk where I taught my first term of country school when I was seventeen.

A SEAT OF LEARNING FULL OF MEMORIES

Tremendous Trifles

Taking deliberately one's position, here, that point in life, of which everyone's personal history has so many examples, the peak Teneriffe, the effect of volcanic action, after much slumbering, fills all the foreground. From such a mount of vision "see thy way in the valley."

that seemed trifles, that, on a review of life, have a new significance. It can be seen at a glance that all subsequent events are a lengthened chain from this early landmark, at which, hat in hand, I stood. The connection is direct, the links are distinctly interlocked. As in the growth of a stalk of corn, each section makes a close jointure with the next below it as well as with the next above it, so is it in any individual career. The same school, the second winter, was needed to give publicity to a situation, which resulted in an invitation to take the school at the community center, an elevation which had not even in dreams and reveries entered my mind. Out of this came an appointment to teach in a college town and so to this hour every stage has brought about the next step which the last one made inevitable. In that first school was struck the medial key-note. It is the C, and the whole melody of life rests upon it. Some people remark upon fruit and flower, as if detached and independent of their seed. Not by God's mercy! Personal history has its teachings, a golden thread runs through it, on which are strung, a series of events in a logical succession, represented in pictures unrivalled for their distinctness, delineated by time's own hand and lifted out into powerful relief. The more widely I looked for connected events the more I saw. It pleased the Father to command the light to shine out of darkness. Dull and unimaginative as I am, even I felt the divinity stir within me, and I found it difficult to suppose otherwise than that, while the public takes no cognizance of such things, yet a look into one's personal biography exhibits a moving picture of Providence. To feel that we are tethered to a place of beginning, though we live on the other side of the world, is not to say that we would like to go back there to reside. We are viewing it only as a factor in our past life. It was like the experience once of reading Whittier's Hampton Beach when there. It made past history realistic. It was like standing in the presence of the Lion of Lucerne after being indebted only to memory for your conception of its vivid character. No words can possibly describe the impression, of thus revisiting the earth and doing our own thinking instead of sending some neighbor to do it for us.

Critical Periods

Instead of seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, how much more self-respecting for each of us to himself stand in the actual presence of these silent talkers and perceive the guide marks to all the paths which led us through the tangle of life. Above all else one lesson blazes out in letters of living light. How careful Providence is about beginnings. It is only in looking down upon the battle field that we can clearly discern the maneuvers that lead to victory. We must place ourselves at a given point, not too remote from the causes, that make our history, to justly estimate them, if we could begin again, that tragic wish having been conceded to us, all our activity would be best used at these clearly discerned centers. To gain greater effectiveness opportunity here makes his call upon us and comes unawares and his approach is invariably disguised in humble garb.