Revisiting the Earth Part 11

_Through Tears of Memory_

There is no other such dark day as when a boy parts with his home and his native state for good, to find a home G.o.d only knows where, and the old life that meant so much to him is over. There were our friends, there was our home, and there are our graves, my father having given commandment concerning his bones. Pardon me, gentle reader, if for the moment I speak with a personal accent. An individual cannot inherit his experience. It is my feeling that it is well to know some part of the world thoroughly. "He who is everywhere is nowhere." Neither a globe-trotter, running like a wandering Jew all over the world, nor a tramp knows the countries he travels over. Here in my early day was a place without amus.e.m.e.nts.

The hoe, the hod, the plough, the scythe, the shovel, the woodsaw, and the axe, these are all old friends of mine. It is possible that as things are now viewed our sphere had in it a trifle too much of constraint, that the soul had hardly free play enough to unbend and recreate the mind, that we settled down too early, like well broken horses, to the work of life. A little shadow pa.s.ses over my mind as I think of the a.n.a.logy to bitting a horse. But when at sunset all nature rings the Angelus, we all say in our hearts, G.o.d bless the town and all its people.

_Unterrified Visitors_

"It would be no unprofitable thing," said Increase Mather, "for you to pa.s.s over the several streets and call to mind those who lived here so many years ago." On my approach, the homes of my day, that now survive, seemed to come right out to meet me. The old citizens appeared to start forth from their portrait frames. "They come like shadows and so depart." The old time town was revivified. The dry bones were stirred and made to live. The gates opened their arms widely finding us early residents and bold enough to enter. The same bordered walk led up to the front door. Houses, Say on. You want to speak. Utter your voices. Tell your story. I know its truth. You will not startle me. Many appeared to answer me as I stood, with my greetings, before them. Our old relations are all in my heart. In my day, everybody knew his neighbor and his neighbor was everybody. As is known of ancient Athens, at its best, quoting from an oration writer, "It is impossible for a man in this city to be of good repute or otherwise without all of us knowing it."

Even the most beautiful scenery needs absence to gain its hold upon us, and to unite a new and an old revaluation into something better than either. There is an old proverb, What is ever seen, is never seen. What is always heard, is never heard. The sound of Niagara becomes inaudible to the waiters at the hotels. "To feel the same thing always and not to feel at all, come to the same thing." A man casts his shadow over "A land where all things always seem the same."

_When the World was Young_

As a boy goes zig-zagging along, dilatorily, of a May morning to school, in and out, among and around the byways, where anything unusual is proceeding, he actually knows a town better than many a man who has lived in it longer, and I would not barter the pleasant memories of my early home for treasures of gold. I would not exchange even the impressions made indelibly on my mind for a gift of public office. There is nothing that I care to take in exchange for my soul. Upon the side of Mt. Blanc is a little patch of verdure called Le Jardin. It is always green. In the deserts are oases. In the ocean wastes we find islands of tropical beauty, so here with nature's extreme fertility we have, enameled with flowers, what they call in Evangeline's land a Grand Pre, extending to the horizon's out-most rim.

_You Can't Paint the Sunrise_

In boyhood's happy days, in the jocund season of youth, the gra.s.s grew quietly in the highways of the town, and bleating sheep and frolicsome calves sported about on the verdant savannas. In the days of which I am writing, cattle and horses were lawful commoners, and roamed at will over much of the town plat. On rising early a boy would find a group of small cattle just in the act of making up its mind that day was breaking. Some would be rising from their hard beds, some had risen and commenced to graze, others were still lying as they had reposed all night, the dew glistening on their hair. Mists were floating over the low grounds in the swales of the prairies, but the reddening east was waking all nature into newness of life, and presently, the ever-punctual sun rose up to do his circuit of the earth. It was a healthy boy's walk amid the fields of morning and he was enraptured with the delightful vision. The day began earlier then. It was long, and like a clothes-line being so extended, required a prop in the middle, hence dinner could not be deferred then until an evening hour. Noon is now becoming as extinct as the mastodon. It faded out. It seems unreal, and belongs to the past.

Boys did not carry watches and became quite expert in using a north and south fence for a divider in finding that medial line that cuts the day in halves. We still have the expressions A. M. and P. M. but we make little use of the M. We have G.o.d's time, and man's time, for the sake of daylight saving, but my memory testifies that we used the daylight for about all it was worth, anyway up to our limit, at both ends of the day.

People then were much more expressive than they are now. If they felt refreshed and exuberant they did not care who knew it. We used to feel with d.i.c.kens, Give us, oh give us, the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, he will do it better. He will persevere longer.

"Amidst the storm the Pilgrims sang, And the stars heard, and the sea, And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthems of the free."

Children were very much more commonly sung to sleep with a mother's foot upon the rocker of the cradle. If we could take out of our minds the fact that the hymn most widely used was for children, we all would say, How beautiful! Pious hymns and patriotic songs were the great leaders.

Down through the corridors of time I can still hear the voices of both men and women who sang as they wrought. They who found that their wives did not sing when employed about the house set themselves to find the reason of the suspension and to remove it. This being done, unconsciously the house was gladdened again by impromptu song. From the fact that men worked more in solitary, quiet places, as contrasted with factories, having heavy machinery, men used to whistle. Some became very expert. When one man would say, Let's see how does that tune go? the custom was for the other to take up a few bars by whistling. When soldiers or parades or processions were pa.s.sing, if the band should stop, those marching would take up some patriotic or other air and all would whistle it. This would spread to the boys on the side walk and extend through the town, and be revived the next day.

_Another Relic of the Past_

Men worked more hours and had more ch.o.r.es to do, early and late, so being physically weary, when they sat down to read there was a kind of physical preparation for it. The eye did not drop on a newspaper casually at any time. To begin to read required then a kind of personal adjustment ill.u.s.trated remotely by that of a person who sits down when about to partake of a meal. Thus we used to see people take a book, and get ready to read it as you often see a person now who is about to sing in public, show what he is going to do by using a moment or two in getting himself ready for it.

It augurs well to discover more generally established what the French call the Hotel of G.o.d. The Hospital used to be in the same cla.s.s with the Hospice. It was originally an outgrowth of the church, through the element of charity, very much as we find it on missionary ground in foreign lands. There was usually a chapel included in the construction.

It seemed on review to be the strong and rugged that were struck down, while the semi-invalids appeared to live to ripe old age. He who wins in the first round, does not always seem to come out, in the final test, as the best man. The battle is not to the strong. Like Romulus and Remus placed in a trough, cast adrift on the Tiber, nourished in the marshes by a wolf, some persons seem to be strengthened by the worst things to which they are exposed, while others succ.u.mb at their approach. It is hard to pa.s.s this same matter over as applied to the college without setting down outstanding ill.u.s.trations. Some who were distinctly strong, like the pendulum of a dying clock soon pa.s.sed away.

"_A Flood of Thoughts Comes O'er Me_"

It became a great trial to me that our forbears never half believed one of the most eloquent and profound statements of the inspired volume.

Recognizing, in faith, these beautiful words, what a mockery is artificial light, and how unnecessary a watcher. "Surely the darkness shall cover me, the night shall be light about me, the darkness and the light are both alike." When a soul had left its body and is wearing a crown, it was then the custom, when one of our neighbors had been invited, to be a guest in heaven, for some one of us who felt tenderly and neighborly to offer to serve as a watcher. It was then counted good form for someone other than a member of the family to keep awake throughout the night and that, in no remote part of the house out of which the spiritual world had just received a tenant. It was then the rule of my life never to resist my good impulses and to me it seemed to fall to render this melancholy duty which struck into my soul with terror. My fright, I suppose would have been less if I had lived a better life. I noticed the rattling of the plastering over head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GROUNDS OF THE BELOVED COLLEGE]

"Deep horror then my vitals froze."

I did not know that a bureau with its closed drawers contained so much creaking. It seemed a self-starter. A mid-night lunch had been made ready. I was usually fond of the pleasures of the table, but this repast was the least welcome of any I ever tasted. I needed no artificial aid to keep awake. I was far removed from drowsiness. My eyes would not be surprised at anything in that presence except sleep. This night seemed as much too long as all other nights seemed to me too short, but I sat it out alone till the day, to my inexpressible relief, dawned over the distant fields. Soon after I reached my room some of my a.s.sociates called me to wake me for breakfast. "You didn't suppose I was asleep, did you?" Lord Brougham pretended to die in order to read what was said of him in the papers. At Athens, Alabama, a minister preached his own funeral sermon for he said, "I know my own faults and my own good points as n.o.body else knows and I am not going to have people after I am gone talking of a thing they don't understand." The whole affair was arranged as if it had been the real thing, with the minister's family in the pew in deepest mourning. By very much of what I had been reading, and by more, that all along I had been hearing, while my motives were well enough in volunteering my services as a watcher, yet I was surprised to find how ill-fitted I was for the office. The minds of ingenuous childhood would not now be subjected to quite so much frightfulness.

There seems to be something in them when well stirred up, that responds with fearful alacrity to that kind of address. It can be found any time in children if one has the lamentable disposition to try to appeal to it. By an unintended combination of circ.u.mstances I had been supplied with uncommon numbers of ghost stories until I was afraid to be out alone, particularly in some localities where it was extra dark.

On leaving the neighbor's house for home I would induce someone to stand in the door until I, after moving rapidly, should shout back that I was safe.

_Stepping Into the Past_

The bogy-man in the cellar is not conjured with in governing children now as much as formerly, still a child likes those plays best which give a good deal of exercise to the imagination. So on the other hand the ills we imagine afflict us most. The microscope magnifies the object without altering it. How the thoughts of those troubled times of long ago come trooping over the hills and valleys of memory after so many years have been pa.s.sed to our account in the book of the Recording Angel. There are some sights that we can never forget. Some occurrences are so scenic and suggestive that they come home unbidden to every man's heart and are with him in the market and on the street.

_The College Empire_

When I first came on the campus the students' rooms were bare and uninviting. No freshman's room was carpeted. A mat in front of his desk and one in front of his bed, a very plain bureau, three or four chairs, a wash-stand, pail, pitcher and bowl, and a few text-books made the outfit. An apartment was featured best by what it did not have. We lived the simple life. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The new president came in the morning of an opening educational era, during which more improvements have been made than occurred in long centuries before. With great distinction he served his day and its sun sank before the horizon in its evening splendor and that of his youthful, buoyant successor rose in its morning glory. The initial steps or incidents in the election of the present sovereign if ever known are now lost to history. The event was so spontaneous and natural that we can only say in scriptural language, Now it came to pa.s.s. The vote was only a memorandum. It was what everyone wanted, everybody expected.

In my day we all knew one another. A college may be good as an inst.i.tution of learning and still fall far short of supplying what we feel this elite college did for us. The elective system has not been wholly a blessing. If left to himself, a student might elect to follow the line of the least resistance. In one of these inst.i.tutions the whole cla.s.s never meets together after the first day for any academic purpose.

The cla.s.s is no longer the social unit it once was. No two men take exactly the same course.

_Just How it Feels_

A boy's relation to his home is changed the instant his feet betake themselves to cla.s.sic ways. His face is set toward an independent career. It is a beginning of a detachment and the home is behind this program and perhaps without quite recognizing all the results and sacrifices that are involved. No family is ever again quite the same after it has a son graduated from college. The plane of life is lifted all around. The kind of atmosphere in which he must live and move and have his being, for four years, will affect him. The traditions and the predominant type of student character will give him a pull which it is hoped is in the right direction. Where the majority of the students are disposed to do right, and to make a serious use of their great opportunities, the chances are that the graduate will feel his life long that he paid his tuition to the college, when he was for a fact most indebted to his a.s.sociates. All testimony shows that students recite to the faculty and learn from one another. We are well beyond the old heresy that a boy goes to college for his mental training, enters society for his social life, and the church for his religious development. The college ideal, as stated, is to give a boy opportunity to do for himself the best he can do, also to do for each student the best that can be done for him and to give all possible advantage to the poorest student.

_Just Plain Friends_

We all drank at the same fountain and felt the thrill of the same spirit. There was no caste or social cla.s.s. We may well doubt whether higher life success would have attended us, if we launched from a different port. An earnest endeavor was made to put a young man on an equality with the demands of his time. It undertook to furnish a basis from which it was possible for him to advance himself to that level of usefulness, in his generation, to which his native gifts relegated him.

The college cannot undertake to supply brains. In the presence of stupidity even the G.o.ds are powerless. I do not need to praise the college. As Cromwell said of his government, "This is a thing that speaks loudly for itself." Webster made, in the greatest address ever delivered to a jury, much of the proverb, Murder will out, but this is no peculiarity of murder. Character will out, mental discipline will out, education will out, and the lack of education will out. Without this item some vocations cannot be entered at all, and there is no vocation in which the mental training would not be a fine additional equipment.

_Rekindled Fires_

At my Alma Mater, on revisiting the earth, in conversation with friends the inquiry was altogether natural, at Commencement, as to how I would approach things, if I were to begin my studies again. I would try to remember that it is the intensity of the work that does the good. A horse needs, in practice, to be tested at his top speed. He must have the occasional fast mile to fit him for a real occasion. The mind requires to be tasked. The faculties ought then to be alert. The need is of "sinewy thinking." Gird up the loins of the mind. Pull yourself together. We read of One who, as he prayed, sweat. Study and have it over. Dawdling over a newspaper is the arch enemy of all this. When one reads he ought to read with attention. If, by this power, we throw our whole minds upon an important subject, we make it a prompt and easy matter of recollection. Genius is really intensity of thought, feeling, emotion, activity. All the faculties are in earnest. "A man is not educated, till he has the ability to summon, in case of emergency," said Webster, "all his mental power in vigorous exercise to effect his object." The great gain is in the undivided, intense mental power of application. Be all there. Play hard. To spend two hours on a lesson that could better be done in one is a suicidal process. The greatest benefit of study is the trained power to concentrate the faculties. What one sees, he ought to see strongly. The importance of this matter lies in the fact, that the habits which a student acquires while pursuing his studies, generally adhere to him through life.

If I could begin again, I would give my chief attention to disciplinary study. If a person has a fair library, as every man and woman should have, he would acquire information, daily, his life long. While a student, his aim should be discipline. It is a vice for him to spend so much time over fugitive ephemeral literature which is like the gra.s.s, in the morning it flourisheth, in the evening it withereth. After hard work, skimming over such gossipy literature as one finds in the papers may restore tone to the mind but it is not to be cla.s.sed as reading, but as recreation. Its effect dies with the day that gave it birth.

Of all my studies, I have rejoiced most in the discipline acquired by the study of Latin. If I could go back and acquire early a cla.s.sical enthusiasm I would make myself sure of the educational pa.s.sion.

_Fortune Keeps Her Own Secrets_

There is a certain fluency of speech, fertility of expedient and power of application which a student should cultivate for what Lord c.o.ke called the "occasion sudden." The appeal to students to aim at good public speaking, while in college, and to awaken then and there, the active powers of the soul, is based upon two observations: that Albert Beveridge like recent orators showed his gait while still in his university, and that such gifts are not ideal but practical and not studied merely for their own sake but because of their connection with our civil liberty. To attain an end so indispensable if, in my studies, I was worked out to my limit, I would incline to the discussion of questions that would not send me to the library but into the open air, themes on which I could prepare myself during a stroll, subjects that I could stick in the corner of a mirror to formulate while I shaved.

Why did not the negroes do more to help secure their own emanc.i.p.ation?

Can a man change his disposition?

Why do ministers that do not believe in the inspiration of the Bible use a text? A man will take a text and explain it away. Why did he choose it?