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MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM

1833–1843

The old house where I spent these years of my childhood and boyhood is now more than two hundred years old. It was the home of the old Methodists in that section, and had been the headquarters of the sect for a hundred years before it began to have regular "conferences." Here lived the slave-owner Pickering, who married my grandmother, the farmer's daughter. If it had not been for this home, which was a refuge and asylum for the itinerant preacher, grandfather Pickering would have starved. The farm was his anchorage. Otherwise he would have gone adrift.

A religious atmosphere pervaded the place. It left the deepest impress upon my mind. The only paper we took was Zion's Herald, a religious weekly published by Stevens, of Boston. The difference between this calm, religious life of the Methodists and the turbulent, rough, and swearing life of the fo'cas'le was very marked. But it took me a long time to get away from the atmosphere of the fo'cas'le and into that of the Methodists. Even the bath and the clean clothes did not seem to change me very much. I discovered that cleanliness is not so very near to godliness, after all.

Of course the old Methodists had prayers in the morning and at night, and they had grace at every meal. Every one knelt at prayers. But they could not make me kneel. I would not bow the knee. I had not got over the sailors' ways, and the monkeys, and the throwing down sugar from the plantation in the sails—the Santa Claus part of it. I always remembered it.

Of course I was taken to the little church, a mile off up in the woods, where my grandfather preached. It was in his "circuit." As we were coming home one day, and I was driving, the chaise struck a stone, and the old gentleman was jostled considerably. He impatiently seized the reins from me and gave the horse a severe flip with them, and drove the rest of the way himself. The little incident made a deep impression on my mind. I said to myself: "If this is the way Christians act, I do not want to have anything to do with them."

The Pickerings were an ancient Southern—and before that, an English—family. Some of the members lived in South Carolina, some in Virginia, others in Maryland. One of them sat in Washington's first cabinet. Like my grandfather, they were all slave-owners. Judge Gilbert Pickering was chairman of Cromwell's committee that cut off King Charles's head. Grandfather Pickering was a liberal man in many ways. I have spoken already of his freeing his own slaves. He chose the calling of an itinerant Methodist preacher, when to do so meant tremendous financial sacrifice and the loss of social rank. He almost starved at it, but he stuck to it with great nobleness of mind. It gave him a sort of religious freedom.

Once he could have been a bishop in the New England branch of Methodism; but he refused the ambitious title. He did not believe in bishops for their church. And so, setting aside every offer of preferment, every opportunity of rising or getting on in the world, he chose to labor at his simple calling, like a martyr. And he would shortly have found martyrdom in starvation, had it not been for my lovely grandmother, with her thrift and care.

The branch of Methodists to which my grandfather belonged was very liberal. It was so liberal, indeed, that my mother and her five sisters had all been educated at the Ursuline convent at Charlestown, Mass., which was destroyed by the mob in '42. I remember that after the mob burned this convent to the ground the Methodists wanted to buy the site, and applied to the Roman Catholic archbishop in Boston, who replied: "We sometimes purchase, but we never sell."

Another incident of my boyhood may be recalled here, as it illustrates the stubborn pride that had begun to show itself even then. One day an elegant carriage drove up to the old house, and a young lady, beautifully dressed, got out and asked to see George Train. I went up to her, and she told me who she was.

"You must remember, when you grow up," she said, "that I am Miss Sallie Rhoades. We are one of the few families of Maryland," she added, with a pride that was evident even to my boyish eyes, "that have been able to support their carriages for one hundred and fifty years." She spoke with the air of a grande dame, which stung my own pride keenly.

"While I am very glad to meet my Southern relative," I said, with equal pride, even if I could not equal her manner, "we have kept our ox-cart on the old farm for two hundred years." I expected the additional half a century to stagger her. But it did not seem to reach home; and she drove away. This was the last I ever saw of "Miss Sallie Rhoades, of Maryland."

In those days in New England we had to depend very much on ourselves on the farm, and we made as much of supplies as possible. I became an adept at making currant wine, cider, maple sugar, molasses candy, and sausages. I used also to make the candles we burned on the place, molding them half a dozen at a time in the old candle mold, which was never absent from a country house of that day. So, in my lifetime, I have passed from the period of the tallow dip to the electric light.

From four to ten years of age I earned my own living on the old farm. I believe it is the only instance in the world where a child of four supported himself in this way. What I mean by earning my own living is, that while the expense of keeping a little youngster like me was very small, I earned more than enough to pay my way. I dressed myself. No one took care of me. I was left pretty much alone, except in the way of receiving religious admonition. I was always running errands for the men and women of the place. There was constantly something for me to do.

Moreover, I was very ambitious. I wanted to know everything that was going on about me. This has ever been my characteristic. I was born inquisitive. I have never been afraid to ask questions. If I ever saw anything I did not understand, I asked about it; and the information stuck in my mind, like a burr. I never forgot. I soon learned everything there was to be learned on the farm.

The room I slept in was a great wide one, and I slept alone. I was not afraid; but I remember the great size and depth of that cold New England room.

Life on the farm was busy enough. I often set the table and did other things that the hired girl did, and could soon do almost everything just as well as she—from setting the table to preparing a meal. All this I learned before I was ten years old. I mention these little details merely to show the difference between the life I had to lead in old New England and the life my children and grandchildren have since led.

One blessing and glory was that I had the universal atmosphere. The woods and fields were mine. I could roam in the forest and over the fields at will. The great farm was a delight to me. I was never afraid anywhere. In those days there were no "hoboes" or "hoodlums" roaming over the country. We kept no locks on our doors, or clasps on the windows. Everything was open.

On the farm, as about the house, I soon learned everything that I could. I learned to sow and reap, to plant various crops, to plow, hoe, mow, harvest. And I had a special garden of my own, where I raised a little of everything—onions, lettuce, cucumbers, parsnips, and other vegetables. I knew their seasons, the time to plant them, and when to gather them. I was an observer from the cradle. Little escaped my eyes. And I have made it a practise all through my life to master everything as I came to it.

Of books I saw little in those days. The only ones we had on the farm place, in what was termed by courtesy the "library," were the Waverley Novels, Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Watts's Hymns, and the Bible. There was, of course, Zion's Herald, the religious weekly paper from Boston I have already mentioned. These were our literature. I read everything I could get hold of, and soon exhausted the small resources of the farm library.

We were so far from the village and the more frequented roads that the only persons who came to our house were peddlers, who sold us kitchen utensils, such as tin pans and buckets, and the lone fisherman, who would always sound his horn a mile away to warn us of his approach.

The old house had the usual New England parlor or drawing-room, the room of ceremony, never aired until some guest came to occupy it, or there was a funeral or baptism in it. I have never found farmers, anywhere in the world, who had any idea of ventilation. They slept in closed rooms, without any regard to health or cleanliness—for nothing is so cleansing as fresh, pure air. There was the old fireplace, with the great andirons that could sustain the weight of a forest tree, and often did. Everything was a century old, and just that much behind the day; but that was then the case everywhere in New England rural sections.

And what fires we used to have in that cavernous chimney! We would place a tremendous log on the andirons, and build a fire about it. Soon it would give out a terrific heat, but it was not sufficient to warm up the great room, into which the cold air swept through a thousand cracks and chinks. Our faces, bending over the blazing log, would be fairly blistered, while our backs would be chilled with cold. The farther end of the room would be icy cold, for drafts had free play. The house was poorly built, so far as comfort was concerned, although it was stout enough to last a couple of centuries. Not only the winds but the snow found easy entrance. If it snowed during the night, I would find a streak of snow lying athwart the room the next morning, often putting my bare feet in it as I got up in the darkness.

The ignorance of the Puritan farmers of New England was the densest ignorance that I have ever seen, even among farmers. They knew nothing, and seemed to care nothing, about the laws of health or economy. They were content to live exactly in the way their ancestors had lived for generations. They learned nothing, and forgot nothing—like the Bourbons.

This suggests to me the fact that the climate of New England has changed tremendously since I was a boy. Most old people say something like this. When I was a boy there was snow every winter and all winter. Now there is comparatively little snow. Then it used to begin in November, and we were practically shut in on our farms, often even in our houses, for the winter. For six months the snow covered the earth. When we wanted to get out, we had to break our way out with an ox-sled. The old climate of New England has gone.

When I was ten years old I began taking "truck" to the old Quincy market in Boston. It was ten miles away, but I soon got accustomed to going there alone and selling out the farm produce and vegetables. I had to get up at four o'clock in the mornings, in order to look after the horse and to harness him. He was called "Old Tom," and was a faithful, trustworthy animal.

I would arrive at the market before dawn, and would back the wagon up against the market-house and wait for the light. I fed the horse, and now and then, if the weather was particularly bad, I would put him in a stable for a few hours, at a cost of fifty cents, and feed him on oats.

After closing out the "truck," I would drive to Cambridgeport, where I bought the groceries and other supplies for the farm. My grandmother trusted all this to me. After this I got a luncheon, which cost me a "shilling cut," as it was called then—twelve and a half cents. Then I would drive home, and could give to grandmother a full and itemized account of everything, without having set down a word or a figure on paper. This went on for two or three years.

For amusement, as I have said, I had the universal atmosphere, and I had the great old farm, and the forest and the fields. I had them all to myself. I roamed over them, and through them, at will. I used to set box-traps for rabbits and snares for partridges. I had a little gun, also, and a little dog, with which I would hunt rabbits or squirrels. The dog I have always regarded with wonder. He could see a gray squirrel at the top of a tree half a mile away. Some persons think he smelled the squirrel, but I am certain he saw it. And he was only a mongrel, at that. He would lead me to a tree, and I would shoot the squirrel. The little dog—a sort of fox terrier—was the only real friend I ever had. He was my constant companion, whenever I could get to him or he to me. In the winter I used him as a warming-pan. The old farmhouse was cold—very cold. We had no means of heating it. At night I would find the sheets of my bed as cold as an ice-floe. Then I would send my little dog down under the covering, and he would stay there until he had warmed up the bed.

Then there was pigeon-netting. This is an old sport that has, I suppose, died out in New England. In my boyhood, however, great flocks of wild pigeons used to come to the New England woods and forests. The device for catching large numbers of them by netting was quite primitive, but effective.

My uncle Francis (for whom I was named), whom I used to help net pigeons, was quite a sportsman. He was fond of fishing, and he was a great hand at the nets. We had two places for spreading the nets, one in the "vineyard" and the other in a "burnt-hill" in the forest. All the foliage was stripped from several trees that were close together. Then we would arrange the net so it could be drawn together at the right time, spread it over the ground, and bait it. Then we would plant our stool-pigeons. As soon as we saw a flock of pigeons approaching we would stir the stool-pigeons by pulling on a string to which they were attached. They would move about, as if they were really alive. The pigeons would circle about the spot, attracted by the fluttering stool-pigeons, and then they would catch sight of the grain and come down. When the net was filled with them, we would draw the strings, and sometimes we caught as many as a hundred at a time. They were then killed and sold.

By such work as this I was earning my own support. This is a sample of my life on the farm from four to ten years. I wore one suit of clothes a year, and the suit cost originally not more than $10, and was made at home. I had some little pocket-money occasionally. I was permitted to sell the rabbits and partridges, the spoil of my traps and gun. These small resources usually enabled me to keep a few cents—sometimes a few dollars—in my pockets.

There is nothing more extravagant and truly wasteful than a boy with a few dollars in his pockets. He can throw away his slender fortune with magnificent bravado. One summer I had accumulated $17, and, naturally, I was itching to spend it. The hired man was going up to Concord to help celebrate "Cornwallis Day" (October 19), and I got consent to accompany him. There was to be a fair, and I took my money with me—very stupidly. The memory of it was soon all that remained.