and Sunshine was another discovery. I cannot tell to whom I was indebted for Ivanhoe but I read and re-read it with the most intense pleasure. At the same time or near it I borrowed a huge bundle of The New York Saturday Night and The New York Ledger and from them I derived an almost equal enjoyment. "Old Sleuth" and "Buckskin Bill" were as admirable in their way as "Cedric the Saxon."
At this time Godey's Ladies Book and Peterson's Magazine were the only high-class periodicals known to us. The Toledo Blade and The New York Tribune were still my father's political advisers and Horace Greeley and "Petroleum V. Nasby" were equally corporeal in my mind.
Almanacs figured largely in my reading at this time, and were a source of frequent quotation by my father. They were nothing but small, badly-printed, patent medicine pamphlets, each with a loop of string at the corner so that they might be hung on a nail behind the stove, and of a crude green or yellow or blue. Each of them made much of a calm-featured man who seemed unaware of the fact that his internal organs were opened to the light of day. Lines radiated from his middle to the signs of the zodiac. I never knew what all this meant, but it gave me a sense of something esoteric and remote. Just what "Aries" and "Pisces" had to do with healing or the weather is still a mystery.
These advertising bulletins could be seen in heaps on the counter at the drug store especially in the spring months when "Healey's Bitters" and "Allen's Cherry Pectoral" were most needed to "purify the blood." They were given out freely, but the price of the marvellous mixtures they celebrated was always one dollar a bottle, and many a broad coin went for a "bitter" which should have gone to buy a new dress for an overworked wife.
These little books contained, also, concise aphorisms and weighty words of advice like "After dinner rest awhile; after supper run a mile," and "Be vigilant, be truthful and your life will never be ruthful." "Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves" (which needed a little translating to us) probably came down a long line of English copy books. No doubt they were all stolen from Poor Richard.
Incidentally they called attention to the aches and pains of humankind, and each page presented the face, signature and address of some far-off person who had been miraculously relieved by the particular "balsam" or "bitter" which that pamphlet presented. Hollow-cheeked folk were shown "before taking," and the same individuals plump and hearty "after taking," followed by very realistic accounts of the diseases from which they had been relieved gave encouragement to others suffering from the same "complaints."
Generally the almanac which presented the claims of a "pectoral" also had a "salve" that was "sovereign for burns" and some of them humanely took into account the ills of farm animals and presented a cure for bots or a liniment for spavins. I spent a great deal of time with these publications and to them a large part of my education is due.
It is impossible that printed matter of any kind should possess for any child of today the enchantment which came to me, from a grimy, half-dismembered copy of Scott or Cooper. The Life of P. T. Barnum, Franklin's Autobiography we owned and they were also wellsprings of joy to me. Sometimes I hold with the Lacedemonians that "hunger is the best sauce" for the mind as well as for the palate. Certainly we made the most of all that came our way.
Naturally the school-house continued to be the center of our interest by day and the scene of our occasional neighborhood recreation by night. In its small way it was our Forum as well as our Academy and my memories of it are mostly pleasant.
Early one bright winter day Charles Babcock and Albert Button, two of our big boys, suddenly appeared at the school-house door with their best teams hitched to great bob-sleds, and amid much shouting and laughter, the entire school (including the teacher) piled in on the straw which softened the bottom of the box, and away we raced with jangling bells, along the bright winter roads with intent to "surprise" the Burr Oak teacher and his flock.
I particularly enjoyed this expedition for the Burr Oak School was larger than ours and stood on the edge of a forest and was protected by noble trees. A deep ravine near it furnished a mild form of coasting. The schoolroom had fine new desks with iron legs and the teacher's desk occupied a deep recess at the front. Altogether it possessed something of the dignity of a church. To go there was almost like going to town, for at the corners where the three roads met, four or five houses stood and in one of these was a postoffice.
That day is memorable to me for the reason that I first saw Bettie and Hattie and Agnes, the prettiest girls in the township. Hattie and Bettie were both fair-haired and blue-eyed but Agnes was dark with great velvety black eyes. Neither of them was over sixteen, but they had all taken on the airs of young ladies and looked with amused contempt on lads of my age. Nevertheless, I had the right to admire them in secret for they added the final touch of poetry to this visit to "the Grove School House."
Often, thereafter, on a clear night when the thermometer stood twenty below zero, Burton and I would trot away toward the Grove to join in some meeting or to coast with the boys on the banks of the creek. I feel again the iron clutch of my frozen boots. The tippet around my neck is solid ice before my lips. My ears sting. Low-hung, blazing, the stars light the sky, and over the diamond-dusted snow-crust the moonbeams splinter.
Though sensing the glory of such nights as these I was careful about referring to it. Restraint in such matters was the rule. If you said, "It is a fine day," or "The night is as clear as a bell," you had gone quite as far as the proprieties permitted. Love was also a forbidden word. You might say, "I love pie," but to say "I love Bettie," was mawkish if not actually improper.
Caresses or terms of endearment even between parents and their children were very seldom used. People who said "Daddy dear," or "Jim dear," were under suspicion. "They fight like cats and dogs when no one else is around" was the universal comment on a family whose members were very free of their terms of affection. We were a Spartan lot. We did not believe in letting our wives and children know that they were an important part of our contentment.
Social changes were in progress. We held no more quilting bees or barn-raisings. Women visited less than in Wisconsin. The work on the new farms was never ending, and all teams were in constant use during week days. The young people got together on one excuse or another, but their elders met only at public meetings.
Singing, even among the young people was almost entirely confined to hymn-tunes. The new Moody and Sankey Song Book was in every home. Tell Me the Old Old Story did not refer to courtship but to salvation, and Hold the Fort for I am Coming was no longer a signal from Sherman, but a Message from Jesus. We often spent a joyous evening singing O, Bear Me Away on Your Snowy Wings, although we had no real desire to be taken "to our immortal home." Father no longer asked for Minnie Minturn and Nellie Wildwood,—but his love for Smith's Grand March persisted and my sister Harriet was often called upon to play it for him while he explained its meaning. The war was passing into the mellow, reminiscent haze of memory and he loved the splendid pictures which this descriptive piece of martial music recalled to mind. So far as we then knew his pursuit of the Sunset was at an end.
XIII
Boy Life on the Prairie
The snows fell deep in February and when at last the warm March winds began to blow, lakes developed with magical swiftness in the fields, and streams filled every swale, transforming the landscape into something unexpected and enchanting. At night these waters froze, bringing fields of ice almost to our door. We forgot all our other interests in the joy of the games which we played thereon at every respite from school, or from the wood-pile, for splitting firewood was our first spring task.
From time to time as the weather permitted, father had been cutting and hauling maple and hickory logs from the forests of the Cedar
