all rode like cavalrymen,—that is to say, while holding the reins in our left hands we guided our horses by the pressure of the strap across the neck, rather than by pulling at the bit. Our ponies were never allowed to trot. We taught them a peculiar gait which we called "the lope," which was an easy canter in front and a trot behind (a very good gait for long distances), and we drilled them to keep this pace steadily and to fall at command into a swift walk without any jolting intervening trot.—We learned to ride like circus performers standing on our saddles, and practised other of the tricks we had seen, and through it all my mother remained unalarmed. To her a boy on a horse was as natural as a babe in the cradle. The chances we took of getting killed were so numerous that she could not afford to worry.
Burton continued to be my almost inseparable companion at school and whenever we could get together, and while to others he seemed only a shy, dull boy, to me he was something more. His strength and skill were remarkable and his self-command amazing. Although a lad of instant, white-hot, dangerous temper, he suddenly, at fifteen years of age, took himself in hand in a fashion miraculous to me. He decided (I never knew just why or how)—that he would never again use an obscene or profane word. He kept his vow. I knew him for over thirty years and I never heard him raise his voice in anger or utter a word a woman would have shrunk from,—and yet he became one of the most fearless and indomitable mountaineers I ever knew.
This change in him profoundly influenced me and though I said nothing about it, I resolved to do as well. I never quite succeeded, although I discouraged as well as I could the stories which some of the men and boys were so fond of telling, but alas! when the old cow kicked over my pail of milk, I fell from grace and told her just what I thought of her in phrases that Burton would have repressed. Still, I manfully tried to follow his good trail.
Corn-planting, which followed wheat-seeding, was done by hand, for a year or two, and this was a joyous task.—We "changed works" with neighbor Button, and in return Cyrus and Eva came to help us. Harriet and Eva and I worked side by side, "dropping" the corn, while Cyrus and the hired man followed with the hoes to cover it. Little Frank skittered about, planting with desultory action such pumpkin seeds as he did not eat. The presence of our young friends gave the job something of the nature of a party and we were sorry when it was over.
After the planting a fortnight of less strenuous labor came on, a period which had almost the character of a holiday. The wheat needed no cultivation and the corn was not high enough to plow. This was a time for building fence and fixing up things generally. This, too, was the season of the circus. Each year one came along from the east, trailing clouds of glorified dust and filling our minds with the color of romance.
From the time the "advance man" flung his highly colored posters over the fence till the coming of the glorious day we thought of little else. It was India and Arabia and the jungle to us. History and the magic and pomp of chivalry mingled in the parade of the morning, and the crowds, the clanging band, the haughty and alien beauty of the women, the gold embroidered housings, the stark majesty of the acrobats subdued us into silent worship.
I here pay tribute to the men who brought these marvels to my eyes. To rob me of my memories of the circus would leave me as poor as those to whom life was a drab and hopeless round of toil. It was our brief season of imaginative life. In one day—in a part of one day—we gained a thousand new conceptions of the world and of human nature. It was an embodiment of all that was skillful and beautiful in manly action. It was a compendium of biologic research but more important still, it brought to our ears the latest band pieces and taught us the most popular songs. It furnished us with jokes. It relieved our dullness. It gave us something to talk about.
We always went home wearied with excitement, and dusty and fretful—but content. We had seen it. We had grasped as much of it as anybody and could remember it as well as the best. Next day as we resumed work in the field the memory of its splendors went with us like a golden cloud.
Most of the duties of the farmer's life require the lapse of years to seem beautiful in my eyes, but haying was a season of well-defined charm. In Iowa, summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality during the last days of June, and it was not strange that the faculties of even the toiling hay-maker, dulled and deadened with never ending drudgery, caught something of the superabundant glow and throb of nature's life.
As I write I am back in that marvellous time.—The cornfield, dark-green and sweetly cool, is beginning to ripple in the wind with multitudinous stir of shining, swirling leaf. Waves of dusk and green and gold, circle across the ripening barley, and long leaves upthrust, at intervals, like spears. The trees are in heaviest foliage, insect life is at its height, and the shimmering air is filled with buzzing, dancing forms, and the clover is gay with the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.
The west wind comes to me laden with ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sail and tinkle in the sensuous hush, now sinking, now rising, their exquisite notes filling the air as with the sound of fairy bells. The king-bird, alert, aggressive, cries out sharply as he launches from the top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the plover makes the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast purple-and-white clouds move like stately ships before the breeze, dark with rain, which they drop momentarily in trailing garments upon the earth, and so pass in majesty amidst a roll of thunder.
The grasshoppers move in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad with delight of the sun and the season—and over all, and laving all, moves the slow wind, heavy with the breath of the far-off blooms of other lands, a wind which covers the sunset plain with a golden entrancing haze.
At such times it seemed to me that we had reached the "sunset region" of our song, and that we were indeed "lords of the soil."
I am not so sure that haying brought to our mothers anything like this rapture, for the men added to our crew made the duties of the kitchens just that much heavier. I doubt if the women—any of them—got out into the fields or meadows long enough to enjoy the birds and the breezes. Even on Sunday as they rode away to church, they were too tired and too worried to re-act to the beauties of the landscape.
I now began to dimly perceive that my mother was not well. Although large and seemingly strong, her increasing weight made her long days of housework a torture. She grew very tired and her sweet face was often knotted with physical pain.
She still made most of our garments as well as her own. She tailored father's shirts and underclothing, sewed carpet rags, pieced quilts and made butter for market,—and yet, in the midst of it all, found time to put covers on our baseball, and to do up all our burns and bruises. Being a farmer's wife in those days, meant laboring outside any regulation of the hours of toil. I recall hearing one of the tired house-wives say, "Seems like I never get a day off, not even on Sunday," a protest which my mother thoroughly understood and sympathized with, notwithstanding its seeming inhospitality.
No history of this time would be complete without a reference to the doctor. We were a vigorous and on the whole a healthy tribe but accidents sometimes happened and "Go for the doctor!" was the first command when the band-cutter slashed the hand of the thresher or one of the children fell from the hay-rick.
One night as I lay buried in deep sleep close to the garret eaves I heard my mother call me—and something in her voice pierced me, roused me. A poignant note of alarm was in it.
"Hamlin," she called, "get up—at once. You must go for the doctor. Your father is very sick. Hurry!"
I sprang from my bed, dizzy with sleep, yet understanding her appeal. "I hear you, I'm coming," I called down to her as I started to dress.
"Call
