f-absorbed man with a stern manner, a square set jaw, wide mouth and
ponderous ears. He was very fond of his two little girls, three and four
years old; but he never had a kind word for me. However, he was not
peculiar in this respect. Boys were not cosseted in those days, but made
to feel the rod and keep their place. It seems to me now that I must
have been to him a necessary nuisance, tolerated for what service I
could render, yet I was not unhappy. My mother lived across the road and
I could see her every day. I had some time for play; the mills, the
tools, the dam and canals interested me and beyond all, I fished to my
heart's content. There was an old mongrel dog at my heels wherever I
went, and together we hunted woodchucks and squirrels without a gun. In
the evening, by the stove, he still hunted them in his dreams,
whimpering and barking as soon as he was sound asleep, and I myself
often had the same dream when I had been unusually excited by the sport.
In the autumn I set snares for partridges which I sold to the Boston
stage drivers for nine-pence apiece. Well do I remember the high hope
with which I entered the silent wood in early morning to examine my
snares, the exhilaration when I found a poor partridge in the noose,
limp and dead, with a white film drawn over her eyes. Pity for bird or
beast or human beings was an unknown feeling then: I liked to torment
such life as I had power over, to see it suffer. The sale of partridges
furnished me with considerable spending money; for what I spent it, I
know not. I am only certain I did not hoard it, as I have never found
any ancient silver pieces in my purse or pockets. I can think of no more
entertaining account book than one which should show the acquisition and
outlay of a boy's money; his financial statement from his fifth to his
fifteenth year. I should like to audit such an account and, however, it
came out I would agree to find it correctly cast, balanced and properly
vouched; for a boy always gets his money's worth and thinks he has what
he wants. In his trades with other boys, money seldom plays any part,
and the little swindler always believes he has got the best of the
bargain. And why? Because he has what he coveted, and what was
another's. Somehow the other fellow's knife is a little better than his
own, it is three blades to his two. When he finds the cheat he has only
to swap again. In this way I traded a dozen times in one summer and came
out with