sixteen years old found him a
browned, gray-eyed, lumpy sort of a boy, big at the wrong places, and
stunted at the wrong places, with a curious, uneven sort of an
education. He knew all about Walden Pond; and he knew his
Emerson--and was mad with passion to see the man; he had travelled
over the world with Scott; had crossed the bridge with Caesar in his
father's books; had roamed the prairie and the woods with Cooper's
Indians; had gone into the hearts of men with Thackeray and Dickens,
holding his mother's hand and listening to her voice; but he knew
algebra only as a name, and rhetoric was a dictionary word with him.
Of earthly possessions he had two horses, a bill of sale for his
melodeon, a saddle, a wagon, a set of harness; four mouth-organs, one
each in "A," "D," "E," and "C," all carefully rolled in Canton flannel
on a shelf above his bed; one concertina,--a sort of German
accordion,--five pigs, a cow, and a bull calf. Moreover, there were
_two_ rooms in the Barclay home; and the great rock was gone from the
door of the cave, and a wooden door was in its place and the Barclays
were using it for a spring-house. The boy had a milk route and sold
butter to the hotel. But the chiefest treasure of the household was
John's new music book. And while he played on his melodeon, Ellen
Culpepper's eyes smiled from the pages and her voice moved in the
melodies, and his heart began to feel the first vague vibration with
the great harmony of life. And so the pimples on his chin reddened,
and the squeak in his voice began to squawk, and his big milky eyes
began to see visions wherein a man was walking through this vain
world. As for Ellen Culpepper, her shoe tops were tiptoeing to her
skirts, and her eyes were full of dreams of the warrior bold, "with
spurs of gold," who "sang merrily his lay." And rising from these
dreams, she always stepped on her feet. But that was a long time ago,
and men and women have been born and loved, and married and brought
children into the world since then. For it was a long time ago.

CHAPTER IV

The changes of time are hard to realize. One knows, of course, that
the old man once was young. One understands that the tree once was a
sapling, and conversely we know that the child will be a man and the
gaunt sapling stuck in the earth in time will become a great spreading
tree. But the miracle of growth passes not merely our understanding,
but our imagination.

So though men tell us, and