How affably and graciously she received me — the little Eve — all smiles and obligingness and encouragement for the lumpish, awkward Adam. How she made me sit down on a seat by her, and put her little white arm cosily over my neck, as she laid the spelling-book on her knee, saying — —”I read in Baker. Where do you read?”
Friend, it was Webster’s Spelling-Book that was their text-book, and many of you will remember where “Baker” is in that literary career. The column of words thus headed was a milestone on the path of infant progress. But my mother had been a diligent instructress at home, and I an apt scholar, and my breast swelled as I told little Susie that I had gone beyond Baker. I saw “respect mingling with surprise” in her great violet eyes; my soul was enlarged — my little frame dilated, as turning over to the picture of the “old man who found a rude boy on one of his trees stealing apples,” I answered her that I had read there!
“Why-ee!” said the little maiden; “only think, girls —— he reads in readings!”
I was set up and glorified in my own esteem; two or three girls looked at me with evident consideration.
“Don’t you want to sit on our side?” said Susie engagingly. “I’ll ask Miss Bessie to let you, ‘cause she said the big boys always plague the little ones.” And so, as she was a smooth-tongued little favorite, she not only introduced me to the teacher, but got me comfortably niched beside her dainty self on the hard, backless seat, where I sat swinging my heels, and looking for all the world like a rough little short-tailed robin, just pushed out of the nest, and surveying the world with round, anxious eyes. The big boys quizzed me, made hideous faces at me from behind their spelling-books, and great hulking Tom Halliday threw a spitball that lodged on the wall just over my head, by way of showing his contempt for me; but I looked at Susie, and took courage. I thought I never saw anything so pretty as she was. I was never tired with following the mazes of her golden curls. I thought how dainty and nice and white her pink dress and white apron were; and she wore a pair of wonderful little red shoes. Her tiny hands were so skillful and so busy! She turned the hem of my brown towel, and basted it for me so nicely, and then she took out some delicate ruffling that was her school work, and I admired her bright, fine needle and fine thread, and the waxen little finger crowned with a little brass thimble, as she sewed away with an industrious steadiness. To me the brass was gold, and her hands were pearl, and she was a little fairy princess! — yet every few moments she turned her great blue eyes on me, and smiled and nodded her little head knowingly, as much as to bid me be of good cheer, and I felt a thrill go right to my heart, that beat delightedly under the checked apron.
“Please, ma’am,” said Susan glibly, “mayn’t Harry go out to play with the girls? The big boys are so rough.”
And Miss Bessie smiled, and said I might; and I was a blessed little boy from that moment. In the first recess Susie instructed me in playing “Tag,” and “Oats, peas, beans, and barley, O,” and in “Threading the needle,” and playing “Open the gates as high as the sky, to let King George and his court pass by” — in all which she was a proficient, and where I needed a great deal of teaching and encouraging.
But when it came to more athletic feats, I could distinguish myself. I dared jump off from a higher fence than she could, and covered myself with glory by climbing to the top of a five-railed gate, and jumping boldly down; and moreover, when a cow appeared on the green before the school-house door, I marched up to her with a stick and ordered her off, with a manly stride and a determined voice, and chased her with the utmost vigor quite out of sight. These proceedings seemed to inspire Susie with a certain respect and confidence. I could read in “readings,” jump off from high fences, and wasn’t afraid of cows! These were manly accomplishments!
The school-house was a long distance from my father’s, and I used to bring my dinner. Susie brought hers also, and many a delightful picnic have we had together. We made ourselves a house under a great button-ball tree, at whose foot the grass was short and green. Our house was neither more nor less than a square, marked out on the green turf by stones taken from the wall. I glorified myself in my own eyes and in Susie’s, by being able to lift stones twice as heavy as she could, and a big flat one, which nearly broke my back, was deposited in the centre of the square, as our table. We used a clean pocket-handkerchief for a table-cloth; and Susie was wont to set out our meals with great order, making plates and dishes out of the button-ball leaves. Under her direction also, I fitted up our house with a pantry, and a small room where we used to play wash dishes, and set away what was left of our meals. The pantry was a stone cupboard, where we kept chestnuts and apples, and what remained of our cookies and gingerbread. Susie was fond of ornamentation, and stuck bouquets of golden-rod and aster around in our best room, and there we received company, and had select society come to see us. Susie brought her doll to dwell in this establishment, and I made her a bedroom and a little bed of milkweed-silk to lie on. We put her to bed and tucked her up when we went into school — not without apprehension that those savages, the big boys, might visit our Eden with devastation. But the girls’ recess came first, and we could venture to leave her there taking a nap till our play-time came; and when the girls went in Susie rolled her nursling in a napkin and took her safely into school, and laid her away in a corner of her desk, while the dreadful big boys were having their yelling war-whoop and carnival outside.
“How nice it is to have Harry gone all day to school,” I heard one of my sisters saying to the other. “He used to be so in the way, meddling and getting into everything.”
— —”And listening to everything one says,” said the other. “Children have such horridly quick ears. Harry always listens to what we talk about.”
“I think he is happier now, poor little fellow,” said my mother. “He has somebody now to play with.” This was the truth of the matter.
On Saturday afternoons, I used to beg of my mother to let me go and see Susie; and my sisters, nothing loath, used to brush my hair and put on me a stiff, clean, checked apron, and send me trotting off, the happiest of young lovers. How bright and fair life seemed to me those Saturday afternoons, when the sun, through the picket fences, made golden-green lines on the turf — and the trees waved and whispered, and I gathered handfuls of golden-rod and asters to ornament our house, under the button-wood tree! Then we used to play in the barn together. We hunted for hens’ eggs, and I dived under the barn to dark places where she dared not go; and climbed up to high places over the hay-mow, where she trembled to behold me — bringing stores of eggs, which she received in her clean white apron.
This daintiness of outfit excited my constant admiration. I wore stiff, heavy jackets and checked aprons, and was constantly, so my sisters said, wearing holes through my knees and elbows for them to patch; but little Susie always appeared to me fresh and fine and untumbled; she never dirtied her hands or soiled her dress. Like a true little woman, she seemed to have nerves through all her clothes that kept them in order. This nicety of person inspired me with a secret, wondering reverence. How could she always be so clean, so trim, and every way so pretty, I wondered? Her golden curls always seemed fresh from the brush, and even when she climbed and ran, and went with me into the barn-yard, or through the swamp and into all sorts of compromising places, she somehow picked her way out bright and unsoiled.
But though I admired her ceaselessly for this, she was no less in admiration of my daring strength and prowess. I felt myself a perfect Paladin in her defense. I remember that the chip-yard which we used to cross, on our way to the barn, was tyrannized over by a most loud-mouthed and arrogant old turkey-cock, that used to strut and swell and gobble and chitter greatly to her terror. She told me of different times when she had tried to cross the yard alone, how he had jumped upon her and flapped his wings, and thrown her down, to her great distress and horror. The first time he tried the game on me, I marched up to him, and, by a dexterous pass, seized his red neck in my hand,
and, confining his wings down with my arm, walked him ingloriously out of the yard.
How triumphant Susie was, and how I swelled and exulted to her, telling her what I would do to protect her under every supposable variety of circumstances! Susie had confessed to me of being dreadfully afraid of “bears,” and I took this occasion to tell her what I would do if a bear should actually attack her. I assured her that I would get father’s gun and shoot him without mercy — and she listened and believed. I also dilated on what I would do if robbers should get into the house; I would, I informed her, immediately get up and pour shovelfuls of hot coal down their backs — and wouldn’t they have to run? What comfort and security this view of matters gave us both! What bears and robbers were, we had no very precise idea, but it was a comfort to think how strong and adequate to meet them in any event I was.
Sometimes, of a Saturday afternoon, Susie was permitted to come and play with me. I always went after her, and solicited the favor humbly at the hands of her mother, who, after many washings and dressings and cautions as to her clothes, delivered her up to me, with the condition that she was to start for home when the sun was half an hour high. Susie was very conscientious in watching, but for my part I never agreed with her. I was always sure that the sun was an hour high, when she set her little face dutifully homeward. My sisters used to pet her greatly during these visits. They delighted to twine her curls over their fingers, and try the effects of different articles of costume on her fair complexion. They would ask her, laughing, would she be my little wife, to which she always answered with a grave affirmative.
Yes, she was to be my wife; it was all settled between us. But when? I didn’t see why we must wait till we grew up. She was lonesome when I was gone, and I was lonesome when she was gone. Why not marry her now, and take her home to live with me? I asked her and she said she was willing, but mamma never would spare her. I said I would get my mamma to ask her, and I knew she couldn’t refuse, because my papa was the minister.
I turned the matter over and over in my mind, and thought some time when I could find my mother alone, I would introduce the subject. So one evening, as I sat on my little stool at my mother’s knees, I thought I would open the subject, and began: —
“Mamma, why do people object to early marriages?”
“Early marriages?” said my mother, stopping her knitting, looking at me, while a smile flashed over her thin cheeks: “what’s the child thinking of?”
“I mean, why can’t Susie and I be married now? I want her here. I’m lonesome without her. Nobody wants to play with me in this house, and if she were here we should be together all the time.”
My father woke up from his meditation on his next Sunday’s sermon, and looked at my mother, smiling. A gentle laugh rippled her bosom.
“Why, dear,” she said, “don’t you know your father is a poor man, and has hard work to support his children now? He couldn’t afford to keep another little girl.”
I thought the matter over, sorrowfully. Here was the pecuniary difficulty, that puts off so many desiring lovers, meeting me on the very threshold of life.
“Mother,” I said, after a period of mournful consideration, “I wouldn’t eat but just half as much as I do now, and I ‘d try not to wear out my clothes, and make ’em last longer.”
My mother had very bright eyes, and there was a mingled flash of tears and laughter in them, as when the sun winks through raindrops. She lifted me gently into her lap and drew my head down on her bosom.
“Some day, when my little son grows to be a man, I hope God will give him a wife he loves dearly. ‘Houses and lands are from the fathers; but a good wife is of the Lord,’ the Bible says.”
“That’s true, dear,” said my father, looking at her tenderly; “nobody knows that better than I do.”
My mother rocked gently back and forward with me in the evening shadows, and talked with me and soothed me, and told me stories how one day I should grow to be a good man — a minister, like my father, she hoped — and have a dear little house of my own.
“And will Susie be in it?”
“Let’s hope so,” said my mother. “Who knows?”
“But, mother, aren’t you sure? I want you to say it will be certainly.”
“My little one, only our dear Father could tell us that,” said my mother. “But now you must try and learn fast, and become a good strong man, so that you can take care of a little wife.”
CHAPTER II. OUR CHILD-EDEN
MY mother’s talk aroused all the enthusiasm of my nature. Here was a motive, to be sure. I went to bed and dreamed of it. I thought over all possible ways of growing big and strong rapidly — I had heard the stories of Samson from the Bible. How did he grow so strong? He was probably once a little boy like me. “Did he go for the cows, I wonder,” thought I, “and let down very big bars when his hands were little, and learn to ride the old horse bare-back, when his legs were very short?” All these things I was emulous to do; and I resolved to lift very heavy pails full of water, and very many of them, and to climb into the mow, and throw down great armfuls of hay, and in every possible way to grow big and strong.
I remember the next day after my talk with my mother was Saturday, and I had leave to go up and spend it with Susie.
There was a meadow just back of her mother’s house, which we used to call the mowing lot. It was white with daisies, yellow with buttercups, with some moderate share of timothy and herds-grass intermixed. But what was specially interesting to us was, that, down low at the roots of the grass, and here and there in moist, rich spots, grew wild strawberries, large and juicy, rising on nice high stalks, with three or four on a cluster. What joy there was in the possession of a whole sunny Saturday afternoon to be spent with Susie in this meadow. To me the amount of happiness in the survey was greatly in advance of what I now have in the view of a three weeks’ summer excursion.
When, after multiplied cautions and directions, and careful adjustment of Susie’s clothing, on the part of her mother, Susie was fairly delivered up to me; when we had turned our backs on the house and got beyond call, then our bliss was complete. How carefully and patronizingly I helped her up the loose, mossy, stone wall, all hedged with a wilderness of golden-rod, ferns, raspberry bushes, and asters! Down we went through this tangled thicket, into such a secure world of joy, where the daisied meadow received us to her motherly bosom, and we were sure nobody could see us.
We could sit down and look upward, and see daisies and grasses nodding and bobbing over our heads, hiding us as completely as two young grass birds; and it was such fun to think that nobody could find out where we were! Two bobolinks, who had a nest somewhere in that lot, used to mount guard in an old apple-tree, and sit on tall, bending twigs, and say, “Chack! chack! chack!” and flutter their black and white wings up and down, and burst out into most elaborate and complicated babbles of melody. These were our only associates and witnesses. We thought that they knew us, and were glad to see us there, and wouldn’t tell anybody where we were for the world. There was an exquisite pleasure to us in this sense of utter isolation — of being hid with each other where nobody could find us.
We had worlds of nice secrets peculiar to ourselves. Nobody but ourselves knew where the “thick spots” were, where the ripe, scarlet strawberries grew; the big boys never suspected them, we said to one another, nor the big girls; it was our own secret, which we kept between our own little selves. How we searched, and picked, and chatted, and oh’d and ah’d to each other, as we found wonderful places, where the strawberries passed all belief!
But profoundest of all our wonderful secrets were our discoveries in the region of animal life. We found, in a tuft of grass overshadowed by wild roses, a grass bird’s nest. In vain did the cunning mother creep yards from the cherished spot, and then suddenly fly up in the wrong place; we were not to be deceived. Our busy hands parted the lace curtains of fern, and, with whispers of astonishment, we counted the little speckled, blue-green eggs. How roun
d and fine and exquisite, past all gems polished by art, they seemed; and what a mystery was the little curious smooth-lined nest in which we found them! We talked to the birds encouragingly. “Dear little birds,” we said, “don’t be afraid; nobody but we shall know it;” and then we said to each other, “Tom Halliday never shall find this out, nor Jim Fellows.” They would carry off the eggs and tear up the nest; and our hearts swelled with such a responsibility for the tender secret, that it was all we could do that week to avoid telling it to everybody we met. We informed all the children at school that we knew something that they didn’t — something that we never should tell! — something so wonderful! — something that it would be wicked to tell of — for mother said so; for be it observed that, like good children, we had taken our respective mothers into confidence, and received the strictest and most conscientious charges as to our duty to keep the birds’ secret.
In that enchanted meadow of ours grew tall, yellow lilies, glowing as the sunset, hanging down their bells, six or seven in number, from high, graceful stalks, like bell towers of fairy land. They were over our heads sometimes, as they rose from the grass and daisies, and we looked up into their golden hearts spotted with black, with a secret, wondering joy.
“Oh, don’t pick them, they look too pretty,” said Susie to me once when I stretched up my hand to gather one of these. “Let’s leave them to be here when we come again! I like to see them wave.”
And so we left the tallest of them; but I was not forbidden to gather handfuls of the less wonderful specimens that grew only one or two on a stalk. Our bouquets of flowers increased with our strawberries.
Through the middle of this meadow chattered a little brook, gurgling and tinkling over many-colored pebbles, and here and there collecting itself into a miniature waterfall, as it pitched over a broken bit of rock. For our height and size, the waterfalls of this little brook were equal to those of Trenton, or any of the medium cascades that draw the fashionable crowd of grown-up people; and what was the best of it was, it was our brook, and our waterfall. We found them, and we verily believed nobody else but ourselves knew of them.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 304